the power of negative examples

 

Fret not yourself because of evildoers;

be not envious of wrongdoers!

For they will soon fade like the grass

and wither like the green herb.

Psalm 37:1-2

Contrasting righteousness with wickedness gives us warning and encouragement. Observing the end of wicked living has power to call us to God. It does not matter how long or how happy the lives of the wicked seem to be. The truth is that they will give account of themselves before a holy God, and in the end their lives will be as fading and as short as a field of grass that flourishes for a short summer but then browns and is cut down. All throughout this thirty-seventh psalm, king David contrasts the rewards of trusting God in righteousness with the bleak judgment outcomes that come to those who live for wickedness.

The psalm begins with two negative commands... not a popular way to preach today. There is power in these warnings however that we should understand. We should not worry about the apparent success of evil doers. That seeming happiness is short-lived. We should not envy the lives of those who do wrong. Their glib attempts at happiness will wither over time. God will punish the evil and reward the good. And those who disobey Him will fade away and wither like dying plants.

Sin leads to death. So evil will make only decay. It is the reason that entropy, sickness, and death are part of life on planet earth. And nobody escapes this reality.

But there is a better experience. The hope of God's reward for trusting Him is the only way out of the declining future that is life. We must believe God, reject evil, choose good, and find life. God has promised we can dwell safely (Psalm 37:3), have the desires of our heart by delighting in Him (Psalm 37:4), know His justice (Psalm 37:6), inherit what evil doers forfeit (Psalm 37:8), find peace (Psalm 37:11), know abundance in lean times (Psalm 37:19), and find joy in giving back to others with the blessings that we gain from God (Psalm 37:21). I will take abundant hope over a withering loss every day! And I'll do it by heeding negative examples for the better.

covenant

 

And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

Exodus 34:27

On a mountain

Stone tablets in hand

Moses received the Law

A covenant was made between God and man

In accordance

With God's Words

Israel was to keep the Law

A covenant to be kept between God and man

The Words of God

Were the covenant made

No human addendums stipulated

A covenant made only by God for God and man

And in the words

From God's own heart

The truth and holiness revealed

A covenant holy between God and man

me...Pharisee

 

He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?"

Matthew 15:3

Which has more weight: what God says or what I want? Which is the most important: God's revealed Law or my personal spirituality applications? Those questions are at the heart of Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees. It is God's revealed truth that has the only weight. It is God's Word, and not any one thing I want, that is most important.

The Pharisees are easy targets of my ridicule when reading the gospels because after all, they were so obviously missing what Jesus was saying. But hold on... am I really any better? If I take pride in my perceived righteous actions, I am no better. If I want to be noticed for my good behavior, sound doctrine, and public persona, I've become as dangerous to the gospel as those who hated Jesus enough to seek His execution. I've become a grace killer.

Lord,

Forgive my self-righteous thinking. I am so prone to break Your Law for the sake of my beloved tradition. I can make an idol of my self-righteousness. I want to be a man saved by grace and who despises my own filthy works. Keep the Pharisees away from the gospel in my heart! I will pray for You to be merciful to me, a sinner. Oh, keep me humbly in need of You, Lord Jesus.

Amen

shepherding from the gospel

 

how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Acts 20:20-21

Paul is doing a personal reminder to the Ephesian elders of his commitment to always be preaching the gospel. It was a pattern that marked his ministry to Ephesus from his arrival there. It still set the agenda for him. Paul was all about that wonderful gospel!

As we read his charge to the Ephesian elders to shepherd the flock, to guard it from false teaching, and to keep it from attack, we must remember the gospel is the motive and the standard for shepherding. Without the gospel there is no flock over which Jesus is the Chief Shepherd. Without the gospel there is no way to know what is true from what is false. Without repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ there is no way to correct our doctrine or practices. The gospel is the center of what pastors are all about.

So I am reminded to keep the gospel at the center. It is where I live. It is what I teach first and foremost. It is what I must model with my life to the flock. It means I repent when I sin against God or against people. It means I turn in faith to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. It means I willingly share that to the precious people God has placed with me and for whom I will give an account to Christ.

Wait. Trust. Hope.

 

Our soul waits for the Lord;

he is our help and our shield.

For our heart is glad in him,

because we trust in his holy name.

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,

even as we hope in you.

Psalm 33:20-22

Trusting God is what faith is all about. It is putting our commitment to the Lord into the hardest test of its seriousness. To trust God is to believe Him with real life effort in real life situations. Three words are used in this psalm's ending to convey what it means for us to do so: Wait... Trust... Hope.

All three of those words are a challenge for us to do, but by far the hardest is probably waiting. In the age of microwave meals, one click purchasing on-line with same day drone delivery, and Google instant answers to any questions we can imagine, waiting seems so passé! We want it now and we think because we want it now we need it now. But the process of waiting on the Lord is very biblical. It is meant to build faith and not frustrate it. It is meant to live on eternity's frame of reference and not our sin-cursed mortal time scale. We must be diligent to repent of our fickle impatience with God. We are promised His help and protection if we will wait for it.

We must also trust in Him. There is joy promised to those who will trust in God's holy name. This involves another level of repentance and obedience. We must reject self-will and our unholy insistence upon doing things the way we want. We have to find joy in God's work and power on our behalf and not our own efforts. We must trust.

Then hope can be firmly placed in God if we truly trust and wait for Him. The reward of such enduring hope is God's great, gracious, steadfast love. He will not leave us alone. He will help us. God will shield us. God will be the joy of our hearts. God's grace will shower down on us as we hope in Him. And all of this is known in Jesus, Who showed God's love, grace, and faithfulness to us through His life, death, and resurrection so that we might be able to come to God in this way.

hollow commitment

 

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

Exodus 24:3

It would seem to me that Israel's eager answer to Moses about keeping "all the words" of the Law was rather presumptuous. Did they really have any idea just what they were getting into? I can understand the eager desire to please God. But the commitment to do so seems almost too glib. Yet it could be that perhaps because I know what lies ahead for them, I am letting that knowledge flavor the way I hear the unison recitation of this heavy hitting one sentence response to the Law.

Initially Israel did obey. The Law was kept and commitment to God was enthusiastic. They collected material to build a tabernacle according to God's deliberate and exact design. They worshiped God Who appeared as a pillar of cloud and fire. They were fearful of the trembling at the foot of Sinai. They consecrated a priesthood and brought sacrifices to the altar to atone for sin.

It wasn't long after this early excitement that latent idolatry came roaring to the surface, shoving aside this commitment to obey the Law. The same people who vowed to "do every word" that God had spoken begged Aaron for an idol while Moses had delayed his stay back on the mountain. Even though they had heard the Law, they chose to worship an idol they had seen being made, and committed all sorts of immorality in the worship of a freshly minted golden calf. Knowing how quickly Israel forgot God makes these words promising obedience ring quite hollow.

Without the grace and power of Jesus, my words ring just as hollow. Jesus enables me to live according to God's Word because His righteousness is applied to me. My heart chases idols as badly as Israel did, and I need to trust in Jesus in order to be able to have any hope before God. Only Jesus can complete me so that I have more than a hollow commitment.

intentional kingdom conspiracy

 

He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

Matthew 13:33

This short little parable from Jesus is one of the quickest stories He told. And it can be difficult to understand. Parables as a rule make just one main point, and in the case of this one, it is made for us right at the end: all the flour is permeated with leaven (yeast). It seems Jesus is emphasizing the quiet, nearly indiscernible influence of the kingdom of God in the larger world.

This point is heightened by the unusual way the yeast is added to the flour. This is not a story about a recipe for bread making. The woman did not "add" the leaven to the dough like a step in a recipe. She "hid" it in about fifty pounds of flour (which is what three measures works out to from the text). I've never heard that aspect mentioned much, but it seems important to the short story. This isn't about baking bread or making dough. There is something strategically off-center going on with the hiding of the leaven in that much flour. Hiding yeast in flour is not a good idea unless you are going to be making LOT of bread and only bread. The flour can only really be used for bread once it is leavened.

In the story, the woman hid yeast in the flour until all of it was leavened. She "took" it and "hid" it... almost like an intentional conspiracy is at work here. The kingdom of God grows through intentionally leavening the flour. Like the metaphors of salt and light that Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount, leaven in this short parable emphasizes how just a little kingdom influence can by used by Christ to do a tremendous amount of gospel good in the world.

I believe the best gospel work is done by intentional conspiracy. Grant me that term, OK? We aren't public phoney-baloney Pharisees blowing trumpets to announce our good works. Instead, christians are like that desperate woman who secretly hid yeast in the flour so that it can only become bread! We are doing a kind of gospel espionage to the world system by preaching Christ and serving Him, caring for the neediest and loving people with His love. And that is an appealing picture of what Christ is doing in His kingdom.