What a Wonderful World

I love this song and this video is sure to put a smile on your face.

The importance of pondering the wrath of God

Sin.  Everyone of us at some point in our life have loved to do it.  We ignore God and His providence and His promises and His love shown to us through His law and have done life our way.  We want our best life now when He has promised us our best life then (in Heaven with Him).  God has taken great pleasure in giving us blessings and guidelines to live our life.  God has kept everyone of His promises and has never let anyone down.  God works everything out for our good as we remain in His will, doing what He wants, loving what He loves, desiring the same things He desires.  And He desires to spread the fame of His name around the world and bring the knowledge of His glory to everyone.  This is what He deserves.  This is what we are called to do.  And yet, there are things we would rather do than to remain in His will.  We love so many other fleeting pleasures at the expense of forfeiting eternal pleasures.  Who’s fault is that?  Ours.  How could God be so forgiving?  How could He overlook such foolishness?  Why doesn’t He just destroy us in our own folly?  What we have earned with our sin is death.  And God’s wrath burns against us because of our offenses.  How intense that wrath must be!  The punishment and consequence of an offence is equal to the worth of the One who has been offended.  In the case of all sin, the One who is offended is Almighty God.  The fair punishment for our sin is unending separation from His presence and torment beyond comprehension.  I say beyond comprehension because His greatness and worth is beyond comprehension.  It (His worth) is without end and our offenses deserve a punishment that is as endless.  This is what we deserve, no less.  Yet there is good news.  There is one who never sinned, never made any offence against God, did what He wanted, loved what He loved, and desired what He desired.  He lived and died to spread the fame of God’s name and the knowledge of His glory around the whole world.  He was perfect.  Perfect beyond comprehension.  From the thoughts in his mind to the desires of his heart He was perfectly tuned to the will of God.  In fact He claimed to be God in the flesh.  So He was murdered by men for claiming to be God.  He died a shameful death on a cross and he died to save us from our sins.  God’s wrath was poured out onto Jesus, God’s Son, even though He had done nothing wrong and committed no sin.  Jesus took the wrath that was directed to us upon Himself and gave us His perfection in the sight of God. 

 

Many people since then have accepted Jesus as their Savior and placed their trust in Him for salvation and yet, with the lack of holiness among those who claim to belong to Him, how many people actually pondered what we have been saved from.  I’m afraid there are a lot of believers that have confessed belief in Christ in order to make an okay life a little better.   They say “My life wasn’t the best before I met Jesus but now things are getting better and I’m becoming a better person”.  People think, “Hey, my life could be better maybe I should believe in this Jesus guy too so that things could be better for me, too”.  This is a tragedy!

 

What we have are people who have never pondered the weight of our offenses against a holy and vengeful God and in so doing have never come anywhere close to an understanding of the breadth of the sacrifice that Jesus has made on our behalf.  People that hope to be saved from their quasi-happy lives and given super-happy bliss with no remorse, repentance, guilt, or reflection on our sin and the wrath that it creates toward us.  No thought to being hated by everyone and salvation being given only to those who endure. mark 13:13 And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.  No thought to holiness being a requirement to see God. Heb 12:14 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. No thought to fear and trembling in obedience before our Almighty God. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, Phil 2:12

I’m afraid these may be the ones whom we read about in Matt 7:

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

I had an up-close and personal example of this with one of my boys.  He had deceptively disobeyed one night and received a spanking for it.  After we embraced for a time and we began to talk about how much God and daddy hates deception and yet we love my little guy, so we don’t want him to practice things that are disobedient and deceptive.  My four-year-old little theologian and philosophy major looked at me in my face and said:  “daddy, I remember when I was deceptive one time before and you didn’t spank me but you forgave me instead”.  Of course I told him that I forgave Him this time as well but that there are ALWAYS consequences for our misbehaviour.  It took some time but eventually it sunk into my head the concept here.  No punishment, no understanding of the weight of the offense.  No understanding of the weight of the offence, no tendency to repent or change our ways. 

 

I pray that God gives us a deeper understanding of the weight of our offences so that we may embrace Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf more fully and glorify God in the abundance of His grace and mercy ever so much more.

Vintage Jesus

It has finally arrived!  The pdf copy of Mark Driscoll’s new book Vintage Jesus just popped up into my e-mail box and I began reading it today.  I have downloaded it and decided to peek at it only to discover that I may finish reading it before the hard copy arrives.  Honestly, it is much different that what I expected.  I expected a side-splitting narration of sorts on the life of Christ presented as only Mark can do, and much to my surprise what I have is a very clearly articulated, easy to understand rendering of doctrinal theology with a solid biblical framework.  I am NOT at all disappointed, in fact I am pleasantly surprised.  Still yet, I am sure that Driscoll has a few comedic surprises and brow-raising depictions of biblical history that would make it relevant to the TV saturated and liberally jaded culture of today. 

 To whet the taste for this new journey, the dedication reads:

This book is dedicated to

anyone who takes Jesus seriously,

but not themselves.

Chapter 1      Is Jesus The Only God

In typical Driscoll fashion Mark writes:

Who exactly is Jesus? Is he a good man or God, the half-brother of Lucifer
or a prophet, liar or truth-teller, therapist or communist, stand-up
comic or just my uber-fly, holy homeboy? So much has been said about
Jesus that it only seems appropriate to let Jesus speak for himself.

then He proceeds to explain in crisp detail ten ways Jesus flatly said that He was God and He does so in a manner that I never saw coming. His plain, in your face, no holds barred, passion for truth comes at us with guns blazing. Some may disagree with his colorfully descriptive style of bringing the biblical culture into the new millennium mindset but they must admit that they dont understand his style any more than they understand the younger generation. Case in point. Furthermore, in this book even the critics will be swept away by Marks integrity in staying true to the scriptures and letting the bible speak for itself in most cases.  The most potentially controversial statements in Chapter one are available on the the Vintage Jesus website.  I just love this guy!

laughter is like good medicine

laughter is like good medicine

It sure is good to have a relationship with the Almighty creator of all things, including laughter

I wonder if Jesus laughed when he told the Pharisees to take the log out of their eye
[close your eyes and picture that]
or the blind leading the blind and them both falling into the ditch … that is a funny sight
cracks me up

the log thing reminds me of that Dairy Queen commercial for the flaming hot burger or chicken sandwich or something
there is a guy in the office eating his flaming hot something or other and when he opens his mouth to talk flames shoot out

it catches his papers on the desk on fire
and then he tries to blow it out and catches the desk on fire

someone asks what is wrong and he starts to tell them but covers his mouth really quick before he burns em up

now picture us with a log in our eye trying to help everyone else with their sin.  We’d knock a few blocks off before we did any good.  Kinda counter-productive for helping, but funny to watch.