Follow Up on Last Sunday's Message

I received this from Nate Kugler this week and thought it was really good and I wanted to pass it on to all of you:

As a PS to your message, you said ‘Heart work’ is God’s work but we have an important role.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?  But we have the mind of Christ.  (1 Cor. 2:16)

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1 Cor. 3:16)

Keeping this in mind that we have the mind of Christ and that the Holy Spirit lives permanently in us,

1. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passions.

2. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness,

3. but preset yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to live and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.  But put on  the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.  (Rom. 13:14)

But it is impossible to live the Christian life in my own strength.

It is common for people to seek to gain salvation through good works.  It is also common for Christians to seek to gain favor with God through good works.

However we read in Col. 2:6, 7 that just as you have accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to live in obedience to him.  Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him, so you will grow in faith, strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught.   Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all he has done.  (NLT)

We received Christ by faith and so we need to live the Christian life by faith depending on having the mind of Christ and remembering that the Holy Spirit dwells permanently in us.

I can do all things through him [Christ] who strengthens me.  (Phil. 4:13)

Put into action God’s saving work in your lives, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.  For God is working in you giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.  (Phil. 2:12b, 13 NLT)

So if I am

        not letting sin reign in me

        not presenting myself as an instrument of unrighteousness

        but presenting myself as an instrument of righteousness

        putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and

        making no provision for the flesh

I do so because I have the mind of Christ and

the Holy Spirit dwells permanently in me

and it is God who is at work in me

        giving me the desire to obey him and

        giving me the power to be able to do what pleases him.

So I am thankful for what he has done, and give him the praise instead of wanting God to love me more because I am such a good person.

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Worshiping as God desires

In Deuteronomy 12, Moses makes it very clear that the way we worship is to be determined by God and not according to "what is right in our own eyes". It is also clear in that chapter that we are not to pollute our worship by incorporating practices from other religions that God sees as an abomination. Although we would never do that deliberately, that can occur in some ways that are very subtle at first.

This chapter seems to address many in our culture today who tend to choose a church based on "what's in it for me" or try to find a church that "meets my needs" or one that operates according to my preferences. We must work hard to make sure that our worship conforms to God's Word and not what we want it to be.

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What God does and what I must do

In Deuteronomy 1, we see the balance between what God does and what I must do. As I read through that chapter, I noted all the things God had done for His people. He had set the land before them (vv. 8, 21); He had given the land to them (vv. 20, 25, 36, 39); He went before the people, fought for them, carried them and showed them the way (vv. 30-33). But in order to actually possess the land the people had to do their part. They had to actually enter and take possession of the land (v. 8). But because the people looked around at their circumstances instead of keeping their eyes on God, the got scared and rebelled against what God had command them to do. 

It seems to me that God still operates like that today. He had done everything that is required for us to be able to be saved and live a life of obedience to Him. But we still have to do our part and actually live like that.

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Job - Religion to Relationship

To me the book of Job is not primarily about suffering. It is more about how Job moves from being very religious to having a relationship with God. That journey is summarized near the end of the book:

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;(Job 42:5 ESV)

I want to be able to say that in my life. I want to go from just hearing about God to seeing Him with my spiritual eyes. 

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How being self-focused clouds our ideas about God.

In Job 32, Elihu speaks for the first time in the book. What strikes me about his words is how self-focused he is. The words "I" and "me" dominate his words. And twice he even admits that what he is about to speak is "my opinion". Even though he is young, he is impressed with his own wisdom. While it is true that Job's three friends who have already spoken often had wrong ideas about God, Elihu certainly doesn't do any better. 

What I take away from this section of Job is that knowing God is a matter of humility that recognizes that God is so big and so awesome that my little human mind can't ever totally figure Him out. There are always going to be things about God that remain a mystery just because He is God and I am not. That doesn't mean, however, that I can't know God quite intimately because He has revealed so much about Himself in His Word. But to do that I have to get my focus of of myself.

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Be careful with how we view our circumstances.

In Job 29:1-5, Job looks at his circumstances and concludes, wrongly, that God is no longer with him. Our present conditions - good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, easy or hard - are a very poor barometer of God's love and concern for us. 

God had allowed Satan to test Job because God knew that this process was going to result in Job's relationship with God being take to a whole new level. The pain Job was experiencing was for his own good, but he just couldn't see that yet.

We are prone to making the same mistake Job made and making wrong assumptions about how God feels about us based on our circumstances. God is often using the trials in our lives to draw us closer to Him and to develop our character, but we usually don't see that in the midst of our trials.

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Sometimes fewer words are better

In Job 25, Bildad's words are few and for a change, what he says is actually true. God is sovereign and holy and no man is capable of being righteous before God based on what he does. Man is indeed a maggot. But what Bibldad fails to see is God's mercy that is extended to man through His Son, Jesus. This seems to be a common mistake that Job's friends make. They understand that God is holy and righteous and that man is not. But they never seem to comprehends God's grace and mercy.

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Seeing beyond this world.

The biggest difference between Job and his friends is that Job had the hope that he would one day see his Redeemer face-to-face - in the flesh. His friends, on the other hand, didn't seem to be able to see life beyond the few short years that man has on earth. Because their sole focus was on what they see with their physical eyes, they had no hope. And that really clouded their view of God and of life.

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How to Know God

One of the things we see consistently in the book of Job is that Job and his friends make the mistake of determining what they think they know about God strictly from their own personal experiences. We should not be quick to condemn, however, since we often do the same thing. We cannot truly know God apart from His revelation of Himself that is found in His Word. We have to evaluate our experiences in light of God's Word, not the other way around.

Whenever I hear someone begin with "The God I know..." or "The Jesus I know..." my antennae immediately go up, because it is likely the person is about to make some statement about God that is based on personal experience and not the Bible. 

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Knowing God vs. Knowing About God

It is really interesting to watch Job's journey as the book of Job progresses. At first we see he knows a lot about God and for the most part that understanding is pretty accurate. He certainly has a much more accurate picture of God than his friends, for sure. He understands God's sovereignty and accepts that the struggles he is experiencing are under God's control. Yet at this point Job still lacks a relationship with God.

We need to be careful not to get caught in the trap that Job experienced early in the book of Job. We need to move beyond just knowing about God to really knowing Him and having an intimate relationship with Him. What are some of the ways that you do that in your life?

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The Theology of Job

In reading the book of Job, we need to be careful not to use it alone as a source for our theology. Job, like many places in the Bible, merely records the conversation between Job and his "friends" without commenting for most of the book on the accuracy of their theology. In some places, they exhibit an accurate understanding of God, but their main premise that Job is being punished by God because of his sin, is totally wrong. 

To me, Job is a book about Job's journey from knowing about God to really knowing God. And while God uses others in that journey, they don't always get it right when it comes to God's purpose in Job's suffering. Job eventually understands that and then God uses him to minister to those "friends".

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Can we be too religious?

In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces seven woes on the scribes and Pharisees. Not only were these religious leaders called hypocrites by Jesus, but their religiosity had blinded them to the fact that they were actually preventing people from coming to God rather than helping people enter into a relationship with God. Their religious exterior covered up the pride that they had on the inside.

The problem with religion is that it is primarily concerned with externals. Unfortunately we have a tendency to drift toward religion because it is usually easier to clean up our lives on the outside and appear righteous than to allow God to transform our lives from the inside out. That requires dying to self and yielding our lives to the control of Jesus and that is much harder to do than most of us would like to admit.

Let's make sure that we don't become so religious that we shut God out of our lives and the lives of others.

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Why Jesus spoke in parables

One of the things I love about the Bible is that I can read a passage that I've read many times before and find something new that I hadn't seen previously. Such was the case with Matthew 13 - especially verse 18. 

“Hear then the parable of the sower: (Matthew 13:18 ESV)

In that verse, the word "then" is key. It reveals that Jesus is using the parable of the sower to show how His teaching using parables fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah that He just quoted. This parable explains why when it comes to spiritual things some people "get it" and some don't. Only those with a heart that genuinely desires God will get and hold onto spiritual truth. That is why the Bible is nonsense to some and indispensable to others.

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Knowing God

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.(Matthew 11:27 ESV)

It is possible to know about the Father apart from the Son. But it is not possible to really know the Father except through Jesus.

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The cost of following Jesus

In Matthew 8:18-22 Jesus' words seem a bit harsh. 

Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

But the point He is making there is clear. Following Jesus is not always easy. It often requires us to chose to leave other things behind - even good things like family. 

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Praying "us"

It's interesting that Jesus' model prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 uses plural pronouns ("our", "us" and "we"). I'd love to hear your thoughts about why that is significant.

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Using Scripture Profitably

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4), He responds to Satan using Scripture. But Satan also tries to use Scripture to tempt Jesus by taking a verse out of context. This shows why it is so important to have a good handle on the Bible as a whole and not just a few favorite verses here and there. That's why it is so crucial to have a plan to read systematically through the Bible on a regular basis.

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A genealogy that shows God's mercy and grace

It is really unusual to see women listed in Bible genealogies. And in his genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of his gospel, it is interesting that out of all the women who bore the men listed there, Matthew chose to mention the 5 that he does:

• Tamar - a woman who was impregnated by her father-in-law

• Rahab - a prostitute

• Ruth - a Moabite

• Bathsheba - an adultress

• Mary - a young teenage girl

What a great picture of God's mercy and grace. Through these women god produced the Savior that they needed to save them from their sins.

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Waiting patiently for the Lord

I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
(Psalm 40:1 ESV)

I'm not sure that I do a very good job of waiting patiently for the Lord. I have a tendency to be really impatient with God. I want Him to do His work immediately. I wonder how many times I cry out to God and he hears my cry but I've already moved on before I even take time to wait for Him to answer. Anyone else struggle with this?

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Some closing thoughts on 2 Chronicles

As I wrapped up reading through 2 Chronicles over the last 6 weeks, I came away with a couple of overall thoughts:

1. There are consequences to our actions. When the people of Judah had good kings who encouraged the people to follow God, the nation and the people prospered. When the kings were evil and led the people away from God, they were often attacked and conquered by the surrounding countries. Although the consequences for our actions may not always be seen immediately, we do reap what we sow.

2. God is faithful. Even when the people rebelled against Him, God was faithful to keep His covenant promises. He insured that Judah would continue to exist as a people because He had promised that the Messiah would come from the line of David. Man can never overcome God's plans and promises.

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