better words to build up

Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense,

but a man of understanding remains silent.

Proverbs 11:12

I’ve been guilty of it: a quipped joke at the expense of another person. In an attempt to get a laugh, win over someone else, or just make myself feel like others might like me, I’ve regrettably belittled another person that God wonderfully and powerfully created in His image. It is easy to do this if you forget we are all created by God to reflect His glory. Couple that with a wicked sense of sarcasm and wounding words can easily roll off my tongue.

The simple truth of this proverb is that the wisdom of God does not do this. It is not rude, insulting, selfishly ridiculing, or disrespectful of people that God has called us to love with His gospel. When you truly treat other people with respect, it is part of truly respecting our Creator. Simply lashing out is not what God does. Neither should I. Even if I think it is good for a cheap laugh. Even if I think they are acting foolishly.

My prayer is that God will help me to wisely keep silent rather than damage with sarcasm. Better yet, I hope God might actually share words of hope and encouragement instead! My hope is to see that obedience in this matter would draw me into a deeper appreciation of God and what He does. O Lord, help me guard my words, fill my heart and my responses with Your grace as I love my neighbor as You have called me to do.

Amen

wisdom’s stronghold

The way of the LORD is a stronghold to the blameless,

but destruction to evildoers.

Proverbs 10:29

For those who love God, repent from their sinful ways, and find forgiveness in Jesus, following Christ is a strong way to live. They find perspective over everything. They find faith beyond their capacity. God provides when things seem desperate and impossible otherwise. They face the future with hope, serve Him willingly in the present, and have all the wrongs of their past forgiven and freed. The way of the Lord is their stronghold… a place of safety, support, and strategic living.

Yet the God Whose ways provided that stronghold for those who trust Him will simultaneously frustrate those who reject Him. This is the truth being contrasted in this little proverb: The same God is both stronghold to the blameless AND the destruction of the wicked. And that truth is timeless… still applicable to our times today.

The wicked are undone by their insistence in rejecting “the way of the LORD”. They try to make their own way. They don’t find forgiveness, but stew in the bitterness and strife of depravity, just finding more and more negativity and meaningless to their lives. They trust in what falters… temporary strength, worldly force, and the whims of the cultural clownish crowd. They may even briefly appear to prosper and convince themselves they are happy in their smug selfishness, but God will not be mocked. Their way ends ALWAYS in ruin. Evildoers will experience the crumbling of their sand castles. God’s stronghold holds strong for eternity!

O Lord,

Keep my safe in Your stronghold. May Your wisdom guide me to be blameless in the saving work of Jesus, the knowledge of Your ways, and the light of Your Word as Your Holy Spirit leads me to obey Your ways.

Amen

robust theology

…he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

1 Timothy 6:15b-16

Paul prays a very robust theology here. It is worth examining to remind ourselves of just how great God truly is. I know I really need to pray like this! There are seven theological truths Paul spontaneously prays here:

1) God is both good and sovereign. He is the “blessed and only sovereign”. We can trust all that He does is for His glory and ultimately our good.

2) God rules over all. Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. The context of the prayer is the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ in His future advent (1 Timothy 6:14) and He rules and will once again physically reign.

3) God alone offers eternal life. He has “immortality” and is our only hope for eternity.

4) God is holy. He dwells in “unapproachable light”. We are privileged to enter His presence through prayer by the work of Jesus.

5) God is unseen. He has revealed visions of Himself and His glory, but cannot be in the presence of sinful humanity. Jesus is thus the only mediator between this awesome holy God and us.

6) God deserves honor. We should have our HIGHEST respect, honor, and obedience for God and His Word above everything else.

7) God will eternally rule. He alone deserves to control the universe in every aspect… past, present, and future. We will forever know this.

Wisdom’s Invitation

Leave your simple ways, and live,

and walk in the way of insight.

Proverbs 9:6

Beside her seven pillared home

Lady Wisdom extends her hands

inviting all to understand

a feast at her table to eat

to all people she offers a seat

so that the simple need no more roam

The Woman Folly is whorishly loud

offering nothing, she seduces

but her way to ruin reduces

in her house or on the street

she sashays to a seductive beat

winning over the stupid, sinful, and proud

Lady Wisdom offers the only way to live

infinite resources within her holy dwelling

pointing to her Creator most compelling

her hands outstretched offer a true embrace

all who love her find great grace

real life and light is hers to give

Turn from Folly seen everywhere

and find shelter in Wisdom’s invitation

peace for your soul and eternal salvation

Lady Wisdom is God’s gift of grace

she cries out to all of the human race

“Come and find freedom in my care!”

modeling repentance

O LORD, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this.

Ezra 9:15

Ezra modeled for the people he led just how to confess sin. There were those men among the returning Jewish exiles from Persia who began inter-marrying with gentiles in Jerusalem. This was just the sort of disregard for the covenant that Ezra knew had gotten the Jews exiled in the first place. Ezra recognizes the guilt of this before the people and his candor (even though Ezra personally was not guilty of intermarriage), led the nation back to repentance. The book ends with people publicly weeping in repentance and officials that are guilty of this sin being identified.

Ezra’s prayer still stands as a good model of real repentance. These details are helpful as we confess our own sin:

1) Recognize the balance of the justice and the grace of God. Ezra holds these in a healthy tension by both adoring God’s justice and celebrating a remnant God has graciously restored to Jerusalem.

2) Recognize your guilt concerning sin. Although Ezra himself had not intermarried, the statement “we are guilty before You” is a statement of the responsibility of everyone to repent of a national sin and disgrace.

3) Accept the consequences. Ezra knew until this sin was confessed, forsaken, and turned from, the nation would not worship God in the temple they had restored.

4) Actions follows confession. The story in chapter 10 continues with a public repentance service that was followed by the identification of those guilty (especially leaders and priests). This shows that God’s Word was believed and taken seriously to be followed once again.

This helps me frame how to pray over societal sins. They aren’t other people’s sins. They are sins WE ALL must confess and weep over. I need to take some responsibility. We are guilty of racial injustice in this country. We are guilty of killing the unborn. We are guilty of denying justice. We are guilty of mistreating the poor. We are guilty of selfish destruction. We are guilty of worshiping a plethora of false gods. And God is also just and gracious with us so that we are not destroyed. How we need to plead His mercy and repent of our evil!

some will depart

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared…

1 Timothy 4:1-2

Here is a warning of what it expect when people desert the Christian faith. A couple of questions are answered here and in the immediate context. First question: Exactly what is “the faith” from which people depart? Immediately before this Spirit given prophetic warning Paul quotes an ancient creedal hymn in 1 Timothy 3:16 - the mystery of godliness: 

“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh,

vindicated by the Spirit,

seen by angels,

proclaimed among the nations,

believed on in the world,

taken up in glory.”

There are six characteristics of this orthodox declaration of the gospel:

1) Jesus came in the flesh.

2) The Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus.

3) Angels were part of His ministry… it was spiritual.

4) His gospel is to be proclaimed to the world.

5) Jesus must be believed on in the world for the world to be saved.

6) Jesus is now ascended into heaven.

Denial of these essentials is what it would mean to “depart from the faith” to what is false.

A second question from this text: To what do those who “depart the faith” wind up committing? There are four characteristics to consider:

1) They do still believe/“devote themselves” to another belief system. There is no such thing as “no faith”. Even atheism is a commitment and a statement of belief.

2) They are deceived. And that deception is demonic. So all alternate choices away from Christianity also have a “spiritual” origin.The spirit is Satanic.

3) They are indoctrinated. It takes false teaching to “deconvert”. It does not happen in a vacuum. Someone else’s teaching is being imbibed.

4) They are led by insincere liars. False teachers KNOW they are deliberately lying. They don’t care.

So when we see someone popularly “deconstruct” their Christian beliefs, know this: The apostles warned this would happen and it is called apostasy. Satan is behind it. It is tragic. And it should call us all the more to proclaim, hold fast, and love the gospel as the mystery of godliness is greater than the heinous heresy of apostasy. 

devious distractions

Let your eyes look directly forward,

and your gaze be straight before you.

Proverbs 4:25

Pay clear and focused attention to the wisdom God gives in His Word. Why is this direction given here in Proverbs? Because so many things in the world, both the outright wicked things, and the more devious diversions, can so quickly put us on the wrong path. We have broken, sin-bent hearts that are easily deceived and bent to doing what they desire, which is by nature sinful. Read Jeremiah 17:5-10 for God’s masterful primer on the dangerous default settings we are all born with and must work against carefully. Suffice it to say the common phrase today of “trust your heart” is not only very bad advice… it is a recipe for personal disaster. You have to instead set your attention to the path of God’s wisdom and anchor every step firmly forward in the direction wisdom leads.

There are a lot of diversions and distractions, many running parallel to that path. Even more so these days where self-driven opinions abound both in traditional media and in the nauseating echo chamber of social media. (By the way, the irony of me blogging this and posting it to a social media platform is not lost on me). We must only pay attention to the voices we hear clearly proclaiming the unedited, untwisted, un”spun”, crystal clear Word of God.

I believe many Christians are dangerously low on discernment these days precisely because they have trusted the voices of human beings rather than the Word of God. This is because the church is guilty of sinfully creating a “Christian” sub-culture that is more culture than Christian. A cult of celebrity personality, marketed curriculum, and apish sub-culture that is just worldliness wearing a cross on a gold chain has taken over much of the Christian world in the West. The gospel is often supplanted with emotionalism, politicalism, guru-ism, and materialism wrapped in a thin veneer of Pharisaical moralism. I’ve seen this develop over four and a half decades and it breaks my heart, even as tentacles of it still can wrap themselves around my heart.

O Lord,

Call us to the shining truth of You and Your Word’s wisdom. Revive our hearts as we gaze directly forward at You. Purge any idolatry from us so our gaze is straight on the path of wisdom that has us look ONLY upon You, Lord Jesus!

Amen