The Christmas Story in One Verse

As one who sometimes struggles with assurance of his own salvation, I find great comfort in the fact that I love God’s Word and that love is one sign that salvation is true in your life. I take it literally, except when the nuances of language clearly delineate it as speaking in metaphors and symbols. I believe it is true in its entirety, rejecting any ideas of the world that the stories are myths and fables. I believe it speaks with the full authority of God Himself, having been written by men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. I believe it is sufficient in itself and that it provides all the knowledge and wisdom of how to live this life, that it does not need man’s help in instructing us about the human heart, soul, and spirit.  I also believe it is a treasure trove of truth that in this life we will never exhaust its fruit and that it must be mined like a mine of precious jewels. These are but a sampling of why I love God’s Word.

Yesterday, being Sunday, was yet another opportunity to gather with brothers and sisters in Christ to hear it preached. And it was one of those sermons I always love. It was sermon that our pastor preached on one passage, one specific verse, and I am always fascinated by these sermons because they always show the depth of the scriptures, that you can spend forty-five minutes expositing and drawing out so much with just one verse.

Being the Sunday before Christmas, it was a Christmas message. Pastor Micah went a different direction than others have in the past. He chose this one verse.

John 1:14
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Not the typical scripture for preaching the Christmas story, yet it really does capture the essence of Christmas and why it’s important.

Is there a more accurate statement that describes what happened on the day Jesus was born? The first chapter of John is a vital one because in it we find the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Jesus is the Word. Because He is the Word, we know He is eternal. Because He is eternal, we can know that the truth of His deity is true. Because He is God, then the Gospel makes sense. Christmas is about God coming down to earth and doing so as a man so that He could do what we cannot; live a perfect and sinless life. This made Jesus the one and only possible sacrifice for sin. This is why He is called the lamb of God.

Jesus came down to us and when He came as a babe in a manger, it was so much more than just that part of the story. He came as this verse says, full of grace and full of truth. Both are equally important in our lives. The truth of His sinless nature and why He came must not be allowed to pass by us. We are not like Jesus. We are the opposite. He came as a sinless man; we are sin-filled. Because he came as truth we are revealed as lost sinners and as those who cannot save ourselves. But because He also came full of grace, we have hope. When we receive the Christmas story as it is in truth, we can receive His gift; the gift of salvation and rebirth into His kingdom.

The depths of theology that one can dig into out of this verse are vast and deep. They tell the real story of Christmas. I suggest each of you take that journey. Find out for yourselves the wonders of the Christmas story by committing to a life-long journey that looks deeply into the joy of salvation through the reading and the study of God’s Word. Find a church in which the leadership is committed to making disciples through the saving and transformative power of God’s Word.

There is a gift for you this Christmas. Receive that gift. The gift of Jesus. The Word, that became flesh. The Word that dwelt among us. See the glory of this Jesus. Hear the truth He brought. Receive the grace he offers. He is full of grace and of truth. We need both.

This is the story of Christmas. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas

Studies in Psalms - Psalm 7

Let God Be your Judge

“Do not judge me”, one of those oft heard refrains from people in the world. Psalm 7 speaks of judgment and in it we find David crying out to God about the judgment of him that led to Saul’s pursuit on his life. So, David cries out to God.

Psalm 7:1-2

O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

The secret to judgment in our lives is honesty with ourselves and with God. In response to his ordeal, David goes to God in a soul-searching appeal. David knows that God sees the truth and has enough faith in God to allow Him to be His judge. Like David, we’re not getting away with anything. God sees all sin, even the sin we hide from others.

Psalm 7:3-5
O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah

David speaks here to the truth of God being the righteous judge. He is willing to accept the judgments of our righteous God. David knows the importance of repentance.

Psalm 7:6-13
Arise, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous— you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.
 God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.
 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow;
 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.

David also understands that sin will in the end, bring its own judgment. He knows a man can dig his own hole and it can get so deep that he cannot get himself out of it. This is why we need a savior. This is why we need Jesus.

Psalm 7:14-16
Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies.
He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.

The lesson for us? Examine yourself daily as scripture tells us to in 2 Corinthians 13:5. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal you own sin, then confess and repent of it. Then by faith in Christ, let His blood cover your sin. Rejoice and praise God for the gift of Christ’s righteousness is imputed to you and be restored to relationship with your heavenly Father.

Psalm 7:17
I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.

Seven Things to Remember as seen in Deuteronomy – Part 5

Despite all God had done for Israel it seems they kept messing up. Why were they so forgetful? Sometimes my wife tells me I forgot to do something she told me to do and she gets upset with me. I think the years have proven true some of the stereotypes we men have been labeled with. I tend to remember the things I want to remember and forget the things that really aren’t important to me. If we men were being completely honest we would probably have to admit we forget things we really didn’t want to do in the first place and then we face the wrath of our women. Israel was no different. So, God reminds them in Deuteronomy 9:7:

 
Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.

If it were not for the good graces of God, the Jews would have been wiped out for as we read in the previous verse from Deuteronomy 9:6 when God told them, “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.”

Not only were they stubborn, they just didn’t believe God’s promises as we read from Hebrews 3:19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

We are no different than Israel. We are stubborn sometimes, insisting on doing it our way. Sometimes we just don’t believe God and our faith fails us. We are afraid to step out in faith and lay hold of what God has given us. So we flounder in our Christian walk. We step in and out of our sins. We wander in our own wilderness and provoke God in our stubborn, sinful activity.

Praise God our Father that He has not left us alone to wander in our own flesh. He has given us the Bible to light our way and His Holy Spirit to guide us and teach us in our journey. No, we cannot earn God’s salvation but this does not mean we wander aimlessly or set up camp to dwell in a live of disobedience. We must fight the good fight in defeating the enemies that want to keep us out of the spiritual land of Canaan, where in Christ we can find rest.

Hebrews 4:11
 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

As we read our Bibles and the old stories of Israel we must remember and learn. God gave us His Word to help us as we read in Hebrews 4:12 which says “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Let us never forget we are not alone in this fight.

Hebrews 4:14-16
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

We must remember that we, too, have provoked God. But thanks be to God, He sent Jesus to save us. He provided the way. He gave us clear instructions.

1 John 1:8-9
 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Remember your sins and confess them. Then remember after that to move on because the blood of Christ has cleansed us from all unrighteousness. Don’t be rebellious. Don’t be stubborn. Believe God. Take the land He has given you.

Humility - The Way To Win the Battle Before It's Fought

In his book The Art of War, Sun-Tzu said this, “Every battle is won long before it is ever fought.” Nothing could be truer than this statement as it pertains to the Christian life. The problem with man is that he thinks he can control his little world and the higher up a man goes in a society, the bigger area of control he thinks he has. In reality man has very little control.

It seems that one of the greatest areas of contention in theology today is found in the teaching of the sovereignty of God. While I can understand the unsaved man hates the idea of God being in control, for the life of me I cannot understand the Christian who finds this concept unacceptable.

The longer I study the Bible and the more I seek a deeper relationship with God, the more I see the need for humility to become my end goal in life. First of God’s Word tells me humility is an important trait. First of all salvation is dependent on it.  Job speaks of this in Job 22:29 saying, "When you are cast down, you will speak with confidence, And the humble person He will save.” The Psalms declare it as we see from Psalm 76:9, “When God arose to judgment, To save all the humble of the earth.” James speaks of it in James 4:6, “But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."

We cannot save ourselves. In order to receive the free gift of salvation we must believe by faith that Christ died on the cross for us. We must drop the notion that we can do anything at all to contribute to our salvation as we read in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” This is the first step of humility when one becomes Born Again. Even the first step towards God is not of our doing but His as we see from John 6:44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”

The truth is our lives are dependent on God. We like to take credit for our successes in this life. we brag of our academic accomplishments, of our progression at work, of our athletic accomplishments, and our heroics on the battlefield. We even take credit for our children’s great deeds. Yet scripture is clear, all good things come from God. Hear God’s word from Acts 17:24-26, "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.” The bottom line is that everything we have and everything we accomplish in life is a result of what God has blessed us with.

Read the Old Testament and observe carefully the men and women God chose to do His work. They were drunks, prostitutes, pagans, murderers, adulterers and on and on the list goes. Look at the life of Esau and Jacob. Truthfully which one would you choose to be the leader of God’s chosen people? Jacob was a lying, conniving con man. He stole the birthright from his own brother and did so by deceiving his own father.

So what does God look for when choosing those who will serve Him? He looks for a man who will come to the point of humility by recognizing his own weakness and failures. He looks for a heart that will receive discipline and react in repentance when confronted by the truth of his own sin. Jacob did that. David did too. How about you? We must understand the depths of our sinfulness and cry out in humility to our God who loved us so much He sent His only Son to die in our place and to pay the penalty we deserve.

This leads us back to the statement of Sun-Tzu, “Every battle is won long before it is ever fought.” The Christian life is no easy way; it is a day to day battle. Our goal is to become like Christ so that we, like Him, can go out into the world sharing the Gospel and being a light to this dark world we live in. The Christian life is a battle-filled life but we fight from victory, not for victory. Jesus won the war on the cross at Calvary but each day we must fight the good fight of faith. But the battles we fight will be won before we fight them. They will be won by the time we spend in reading, studying, and meditating on God’s Word, hiding it in our hearts that we might not sin against Him (Psalm 119:12). They will be won by the time we spend on our knees praying for God’s hand to upon us (Philippians 4:5-7). They will be won by humbling ourselves and confessing to God that He is our strength and our only hope (Psalm 20:7).

The victory will be won in this life through humility. Call on the Lord this very day. Come to Him in humility. He shall not turn you away.