15“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

“If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” These are very hard words, but truth  often comes mingled with a punch in the head. It’s really quite in-your-face this declaration of John’s. There’s a serious warning here; “Do not love the world or the things in the world, but if you do, it will prove that the love of God is not actually in you at all, or not much.” That’s heavy John. Let’s press in a little more. Are you a worldling, the guy or gal who is very much in love with the world while pretending not to be or actually thinking you are not? Do you go to church looking just right, using words like “nice” and “fine,” all the while comparing yourself to the person next to you, quietly (in your heart) criticizing the pastor, finding fault with the music, wishing you were a deacon so things would go better for the church? Are you the guy who goes to Husker Auto to buy a big truck when your five year old big truck is just too old because you just need something new, you just need a change? Are you the guy who actually thinks he’d be much happier if he just lived in a more expensive house in a slightly more upscale neighborhood, and people thought more highly of him? Are you the Christian guy having sex with your girlfriend? Are you the Christian gal having sex with your boyfriend, because you love each other, and your definition of love is better than God’s?

If you are a lover of the world, a lover of the things of the world, John is telling you that you don’t have the love of the Father in you. If the love of the Father is not in you then you also don’t have any real love for the Father. Maybe you’re not even a Christian and all this time you have been fooling yourself.   

I looked out of my office window the other day and witnessed a group of 20-30 guys doing some punishing intervals on the track. It was 90 degrees and those guys were hurting, and not a little weakened, when along came a young female athlete clad in typical track wear, essentially a bikini, and she ran past every one of those guys, no more than 5 feet from any of them. She could have been on the other side of the track. I thought to myself, “If you are a Christian, if you loved the Father, you wouldn’t dress like that, and you would not run past 30 overheated males on the track and invite them to break commandments.” 

16 “For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world.” John helps us out here by giving us a clearer description of what “in the world” means. “Desires of the flesh” – what are your appetites like? What are your appetites for? Are you all about personal pleasure with no problem excluding others from those pleasures? The world is filled with folks like that; “Give me what I want and I will be happy.” “Give me another helping, though I’m fifty pounds overweight.” “If she only had sex with me more often, then my life would be great.”

“Desires of the eyes”- “I like the look of that car, home, vacation spot, dress, shoes, etc . . ., so I think I’ll buy it.” Much blessing can travel through the eyes and make its way into the heart, but there is also impostor light that rivets the eye’s attention but does it no good. The latter is what John is talking about, the kind of stuff that weans the Christian’s affections away from God and into idolatry.

“Pride in possessions” – this is sad, funny and true; in the mid-nineties we owned a 1984 Volvo 240 DL Turbo station wagon, in elegant silver with a beautiful blue interior. Whenever I would walk past it I would practically fawn over it, thinking, “you are so beautiful so me,” and one day God thought to rearrange my affections. It was 1996 on the 24^th of December when I went to the store with my 1½ year old Talia in the back seat, and trying to stop on some black ice at Van Dorn and S.44^th , instead glided into the path of a car that caught the left side of the front bumper and pulled the car around 180 degrees, significantly rearranging its facial features, and writing it off. I do not doubt this was God’s doing, working through the agency of a foolish man who should have replaced the tires months previously, who should have stayed home, and above all, should not have been engaging in a little ongoing, modern day idol worship. . .with his car. That Volvo and I will not be reuniting in heaven one day, and as it passed away, so eventually did my desires for it, but it took God wrenching it from me for that to happen. How sad that we must often experience a painful wrenching before we come to our senses, not unlike the Prodigal Son.   

17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

Does it make sense to pursue or hold tightly to things that are “passing away”? There is so much in this life that will not make it through the screening room of heaven. Like the sensors at airport security, there will be items in our lives that we will be told to remove, and we won’t be able to pick them up on the other side. I think most of us know this, but do we live with a consistency in this knowing? How we need reminding. This has practical implications for fighting against indwelling sin and getting us to take more seriously the toxins of life that beckon us downward, and on the positive side, to pursue holiness. I recall author Randy Alcorn once remarking about how foolish it would have been for a wealthy Confederate landowner to hold tightly to all of his Confederate money if he knew that in a few short days the Union Army would have final victory and a currency would now be used that would render your currency useless. So it is with us when we hold to things that are passing away; they won’t make it to the other side so why hold to them as though they will?! I imagine God saying to too many of us on that Day, “You can’t come in here with that.” I think there will be a lot of stunned looks.  

Concluding thought; the ESV Study Bible says, “the love of the Father implants a desire to break with idolization of the world.” (I would like to add that the love for the Father also has that expelling power. A love for God is always the greatest power against competing enticements) Lest we think that we aren’t at all idolatrous, that we are indeed free from idolatry, ask what sort of tear it would be in your life if someone or something, whether good or bad, were taken from you? How would you react? Could you say (would you want to say?) “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” (Job 1:21) or would your life unravel in light of the disproportionate love and affection and time that you have given to that someone or something?

How tightly you are holding onto something or someone is easily seen in your reaction to its/their removal. I think many of us are far more into idol worship than we think we are. Hey, the Huskers play on Saturday.

That’s it for now. On to the rest of chapter 2.

By way of introduction, let me quote from the ESV Study Bible which reads, the book “calls the readers back to the three basics of Christian life; true doctrine, obedient living, and fervent devotion.” The notes continue with, “He (John) urges readers to refine their theological understanding, sharpen their ethical rigor, and heighten their devotional intensity. That is, they must grow in faith, obedience and love.” p.2426 Two pages later we read, “The main theme is tests by which we can know if we are in Christ – beliefs and attitudes that authenticate one’s claims to be a Christian. Under that umbrella, subordinate themes appear: Christology (doctrine about the person and work of Christ); walking in the light; love; and the need to reject fallen, worldly culture. These topics weave in and out of the book.” p.2428

So let’s jump right in. We have before us a short chapter of just eleven verses, but they are verses that carry a lot of weight. John takes the first three to state that “he was an eyewitness to the physical and historical reality of of Jesus’ life on earth” and that he desires to proclaim to his readers what he heard and saw himself. In verse 4 he writes, “ . . .we are writing these things to you so that our joy may be complete.” Note he is not doing this good thing out of mere duty. I say this because there are many people who believe that the less personal joy/delight/satisfaction is in an act, the more noble it is. That’s nonsense, and John would agree! On the contrary, John takes great joy in preparing to give them this letter, and it is no begrudging duty at all. Would that more Christians would serve others and seek their own joy in the process.

Verse 5: “This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Light does several things; it allows us to see more clearly so that we don’t stumble and mangle ourselves; it helps us through windy paths where our vision is blocked; it allows us to see beauty with greater clarity. Imagine looking at the Sistine Chapel by a 25 watt light bulb. Not too impressive. But bring up the lights and Voila!! Light also shows up the ugliness that the dark conceals. For example, years ago I was in a cheap hotel and woke up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. When I turned the lights on in the bathroom, it was crawling with cockroaches who promptly scattered! It was gross seeing them in that clear light, but not an issue at all as I lay in bed sleeping. Light reveals the ugliness of sin, and as Christians, we are in God and are therefore in a position to have our lives “lit up” so to speak by His very presence within us at all times, and when that is happening we see more clearly His beauty and supremacy and grow to love His ways with His people, while at the same time growing to see more clearly the real ugliness of our own sin and sin in the world.

Another quality of light is that it gives heat. Imagine being in subzero temperatures for several hours  and coming into a home that had a 500 watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Imagine the pleasure of taking your mitts off and holding your cold hands up to the lamp.“God is light,” and it is right for us to react to that light by taking pleasure in that light, and there’s something wrong with us if we don’t. The Christian who takes no pleasure in God does not know or believe that “God is light.”    

Verse 6 – “If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Recall that verse 5 teaches us that “in Him (God) there is no darkness at all,” so it makes sense that John should call people liars who merely pretend that things are good between them and God while they “walk in darkness,” a more polite way to say, “they are flagrantly sinning and don’t much care.” John returns to this theme a short while later writing, “If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”v.11 That’s a heavy charge to call God a liar by the way you live your life, unconfessing and unrepentant, and thereby saying, “I have not sinned.”

Verse 7 – “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Live like a Christian, happily submitted to God, loving Him with all your mind, strength and soul, and you will find that because that vertical dimension /relationship is authentic and good, you will have real and significant relationships with fellow Christian’s. This declaration serves as a test to see just how authentic our relationship with Christ is. John is saying this; “show me a person who is not in relationship with fellow believers and I will show you someone who does not know God very well.”

“the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” This is really, really good news. John is not looking for perfectionism. He knows we (including himself) are, left to our own devices, radically unclean, so unclean that apart from Christ coming into us and purging us of sin and the penalty of our sin, we could go nowhere but to hell. John knows this and is reminding Christians that no sin can take them to hell because of the precious blood of Christ, which, in God’s eyes (and only His eyes matter) has cleansed them and bought them freedom, eternal freedom, and now, an ongoing cleansing, as they continue with their lives. This has big implications for everyday life; it means that last night’s sin does not need to sit there and fester on your conscience. It can be confessed and turned away from and cleaned up by Christ who is as alive and able now as He was then. It means that no one needs to live hopelessly in the fog banks of “God could never clean that up in me and give me a fresh start.” To think that way is a sin of unbelief. Give that to God too and He will cleanse you. Every day with Christ can mark a fresh start. Notice that John says “all sin,” not, “only some sin, but not that big one you are carrying. That cannot be cleaned up.”

In verse 8 John repeats a theme seen in verses 6 and 11, saying that “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” While there are not too many people who would admit they have no sin, there are scores of people who by their lack of confession and repentance (changing one’s mind and turning away) do in fact proclaim, if only to themselves, that they have no sin. John calls them liars and so do I.

The marquee verse, number 9 now marches in; “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Note this is the second time John is telling us  that we can be cleansed of all unrighteousness. This is important to note because as then and now, there are scores of professing Christians who think that there can be no healing, no cleansing for them. John wrote this for them because he knew that in them and in many of us, there is an inclination to unbelief in the promises of God. No sordid sin, no deep darkness is beyond the healing power of Christ to forgive and cleanse.

Note the words that start the sentence; “I we confess our sins”. . . .” “God is faithful and just to forgive  us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” Don’t keep your sin to yourself. He knows. Go to Him and barf it out before Him and make it your life pattern. Tell Him and turn away from it and walk in a new direction.

Make confession horizontal as well. While every sin is first and foremost sin against God, it also lands on people, and often, part of that confession must go to the person against whom you have sinned. Do you have a third party confessor? All confession must be before God, but it is also good to have a close friend to whom you can tell any and everything, someone who will listen to you and not judge you, but give you wise counsel and intercede on your behalf before God.

That’s it for now. Next up is 1 John 2.

What a glorious section of the Bible to study! Let’s make a few observations. The three servants in this account are not mere servants, but bondservants. These were people who chose to remain with their master after their seven year period of service was over, obviously because at some level they understood that to be under this master’s care, working for him and living closely with him was good for them. These were not servants who were forced to remain with their master.

 
Note the amount of money entrusted to each of them. A talent was an amount of money equivalent to twenty year’s wages for a laborer, in today’s terms, around $600,000 dollars. The first servant was therefore entrusted with about $3 million dollars, the second, 1.2 million, and the third a “mere” $600,000. This is important because at first glance you might think that they were not responsible for much. Five talents does not sound like a big deal, but it is.

The first two fellows take their master’s money and in the time that he is absent, use that money in ways that bring a great return. They were obviously not lazy but diligent to use the money as best they knew how. Upon returning, both men have doubled their master’s original amount, and the master is very pleased. “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”(v.21) Note that in verse 15 the text reads that he gave “to each according to his ability,” which helps explain why he is just as pleased with the man who returned two talents with the original two he was given, as he was with the servant who earned five talents with the five he was given. This is important for us to come to grips with; God wants us to use what he has entrusted us with, and not to be comparing ourselves with other Christians who have been entrusted with differing abilities. God has not made me to lead a radio ministry, but he has made me to lead several small groups in Lincoln. Billy Graham was led to lead a worldwide ministry but not to lead several small groups in Lincoln.

Note that although we do not know how long the master was gone, it is still an impressive thing that the first two guys doubled their money, in other words worked very hard with what they were entrusted with as opposed to working fifteen hour weeks.

This is a most excellent parable for a number of reasons, but especially because of verse 21. “His master said to him, ‘Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’” Imagine one day standing before Almighty God, having Him look you straight in the eye, and saying to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . Enter into the joy of your master.” There cannot be a more glorious sound. Remember when your dad praised  you for something you did, and just how good that felt? Multiply that satisfaction by infinity and you get the picture. And to be welcomed into that world where the greatest earthly joys will be multiplied into an infinite “joy of your master!?” It’s almost inconceivable. 

As a significant aside, note that the master calls $3 million and $1.2 million respectively, “little.” This is because as the person of God in this parable, he owns literally everything in the universe. It puts into the realm of the incomprehensible the next line, “I will set you over much.” If God calls $3 million dollars “little,” what in the world qualifies as “much” by His defining?!

So a big lesson here is to be faithful and work hard, a lesson lost on the third servant. This fellow does not buy and sell and trade but instead buries his master’s money and does nothing with it. He does nothing to advance his master’s kingdom, and at his master’s return is called, “wicked and slothful” in verse 26, is forced to give up the talent he was given, and is forcibly ejected from the master’s presence, in fact condemned to hell, showing that his bondservant status was not real. His allegiance to his master was all pretense. This observation is further reinforced by the fact that he did not know his master and was not in relationship with him as the other two were. He says in verse 24, ”I knew you to be a hard man . . . , though as a “hard man” the master gave him the equivalent of $600,000 to manage. The accusation of “hard man” is further discredited by his words to the other two servants; “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” That’s massive generosity, not “hardness.”      

In conclusion, let us press on to know God and be happy and willing servants who utilize whatever He chooses to entrust us with to further advance His kingdom in every way we know how.

We are focusing once more on humility, the character quality that does not much mark the typical Christian, as it did not much mark the disciples who asked this question. We know that they were coming to Christ not because they really wanted to know what marked heavenly greatness, but because they were so full of themselves that they wanted Jesus to confirm them in their self-exaltation. Luke 9:46, 47 sheds light on their motivation; “An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by His side . . .” “Jesus, I’d like to ask you this rhetorical question. ‘Who among us is the greatest?’ It’s me, right?”

Jesus sees through them though and in His mercy does not cuff them upside the head but instead teaches them the marks of true greatness by calling a child over to them and redefining the term. I wonder if Jesus called the child over by name as He put him in the midst of them. What do we know about the best qualities of a child? What do we love about them? What is it to “become like children”? A child does not presume to know it all. A child lives happily and freely under authority. A child does not lead the leader, but follows. A child is teachable and therefore malleable. Among other things a child is marked by innocence, dependence, unselfconscious laughter, trust, moral cleanness, humility. You can bet that as that little boy listened, he was not jumping around drawing attention to himself, but instead was hanging on every word that came out of Jesus’ mouth, gazing into His face. In his little heart, nothing else mattered. Who knows if Christ did not reveal more of Himself to that little boy than He did to the disciples in that brief interchange, such that he sat there transfixed in the presence of glory. My bet is that if his mom or dad had asked him, “Junior, what was the best part of your day,” he would have responded without hesitation, “When Jesus called me over, took me in His arms and spoke to his friends about how being great relates to being like a child.”  

Jesus pointed out the boy’s humility and made much of it, telling us that humility is true greatness from God’s perspective, the only perspective that matters. How this flies in the face of every human being who has ever lived! How terribly unnatural to the self-loving, self-exalting, pride-parading core in each of us. It’s so unnatural to man that Peter enjoins us to be clothed in it. (1 Peter 5:5) 

Having spent some time examining the link between true greatness and childlike qualities, chief among them being humility, let’s take a few moments now to consider the man who Jesus identifies as the greatest man who ever lived, John the Baptist. When I consider John, I see a man of courage and conviction, before I see a man of profound humility, but humble he was, and therefore highly exalted by Christ.  

Matthew 11:11 “Truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Jesus praises John the Baptist as the greatest person who has ever lived. Now why would He say that? Isn’t that going just a little too far? What do we know about John? From Luke 3:16 we know that John, when asked whether he was the Christ, replied, “He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” Jesus’ feet would have been really dirty in light of all of His travels down dust-caked roads, and yet John maintains that he was unworthy to even stoop down to untie Christ’s sandals, let alone touch His feet. That’s a profound expression of humility. He also said of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John 3:30  He took that seriously, and it cost him his life, but John knew and embraced his station in life so fully that he was free to live and talk as he did. John’s greatness was due to his humility, and according to Jesus, it was so noteworthy that “there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.”

I think it’s important to interject here, in light of how poorly understood and downgraded humility is these days, that John was a man, a real man, a man unafraid of tyrannical authority and not given to political correctness. He was no soft pansy. For example, Luke 3:18 records that he reproved Herod for sleeping with Herodias, his brother Phillip’s wife. You don’t see John sliding a note under the castle wall at night that read, “Dear King Herod, it’s probably not a good idea to be sleeping with your brother Phillip’s wife. I don’t think God is pleased with you. Signed, Anonymous.” No, no. John was so in Herod’s face about this sin that Herod had him imprisoned and would have gladly and quickly  beheaded him had he not been so afraid of an uprising in response. I make this point so that we do not fall into the error of equating humility with  spinelessness or a lack of conviction or courage. Remember, it is John’s humility that Jesus lauds as true greatness.

One final observation; note the second half of Matthew 11:11 reads, “Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” This greatest of all human beings, this humble John the Baptist does not even make Junior Varsity when compared to “the least in the kingdom of heaven.” Why? Because in heaven there is absolute holiness, zero sin, and all who live there are perfect, fully clothed  through and through in the righteousness of their Redeemer, Jesus Christ, against which all earthly greatness shrinks to the microscopic.

That’s something to look forward to.

When Collins interviewed people who worked for these leaders, he says they ‘continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings; and so forth’ to describe them.” Taken from C.J Mahaney: Humility, True Greatness, p.18

God has a lot to say about humility, about the excellence of having it, and the folly of being bereft of it. The text I’d like to begin with is Philippians 2:3-11 “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Consider that Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit were perfectly happy in their union, and did not need anyone nor anything to help make their day, and yet Jesus condescended to come to earth, to this cesspool of pain and degradation, pour His glory into the teeny weeny casing of a human body, live here for thirty three years, minister relentlessly for three of those years, endure opposition from almost every quarter, and die a criminal’s death for people who really deserve to die as He did. Jesus is fully God and yet made Himself fully man. Think of this; Jesus “upholds the universe by the word of His power,” (Hebrews 1:3) meaning He towers over everything that He has made. He owns it all! It’s all His! And yet “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”(Matthew 20:28) The greatest example of humility we have is Christ, and He therefore is the most compelling reason for us to strive after humility in our own lives.

I wonder if Christ is most clearly seen in us when we exhibit this rare jewel, and I wonder if when people do not see much of Christ in us, it is precisely because deep humility is absent, and the weeds of self-promotion, self-exaltation, and the desire to be made much of, are growing unabated deep in the heart.

Would it not be a sweet thing though to have others say of us at our funeral, “s/he was such a humble person. Humble and therefore free from so much of the clamoring that too many of us poor humans claw after.”

Jonathan Edwards once wrote, “The pleasures of humility are really the most refined, inward, and exquisite delights in the world.” March 2, 1723 diary entry found in the Memoir of Jonathan Edwards.

Are you enjoying those pleasures today?

It’s pleasing to God. It therefore makes a lot of sense to pursue what pleases Him, and conversely, does not make a lot of sense to do what really ticks Him off.

He commands it. For example Jesus at the end of Matthew 5 says, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Peter writes, “but as He who calls you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” 1 Peter 1:15,16, citing Leviticus 11:44.

It’s a better way to live. Better in the sense that to run after more shortsightedly self-serving pursuits means living ultimately on dead end streets. For example, the person who is continually clamoring after something, whether more money, more accolades, more sex, a better job, more power etc . . . will find himself always seeking and never finding satisfaction. He becomes like the dump truck driver who hauls his truck up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, and dumps his load of God-free striving, convinced that he merely needs to bring enough loads, and the canyon of desire will finally be full. It’s not going to happen! The Grand Canyon, representing the human heart, is far too big to fill with stuff, and can only be filled by the One who made it, God.

To live a life of holiness is also good for you. For example, lets’ say you are given over to sexual darkness and indulge in sex with anyone. One day the bullet will leave the chamber, and your game of Russian Roulette will be over, whether it’s HIV or chlamydia, or genital herpes etc . . . or perhaps it will come later as you enter old age and realize nobody loves you, nobody wants to be with you, and you have become incapable of connecting with anyone anyway.

Through righteous living, a lot of secondary blessings flow. For example, be a one woman man and enjoy the blessings of a great love life. Work hard at your job, and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. Be honest in everything and enjoy the pleasures of a clean conscience. Lead well in your marriage and avoid costly counseling. The list of secondary blessings is huge. 

These four reasons (there are more) for pursuing holiness and fighting against any and every impulse to sin are all valid and true, but there’s a best reason:

Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” This is Jesus talking.
God is the most valuable, beautiful, powerful, morally excellent individual who has ever been and ever will be, and to know Him better and to see more of Him is the Christian soul’s greatest longing, and when he tastes it he finds himself in the best of dreams. Jesus is here saying that through a pure heart and by implication, through a heart that is growing in purity, one gets to see more and more of the greatest prize in the universe, God Himself. It’s like saying to someone with exceedingly poor vision, “Put these glasses on and let me show you something,” as you lead them to the base of Mount Everest. Through these purifying glasses he begins to see things more clearly as they are, not as he supposed them to be, and as he sees, he is awestruck. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Jesus is saying that a pure heart will also affect positively our seeing of God when we see Him face to face. Not only do the lenses of pure heartedness allow more light in now so that we ooh and ahh now, they will also go with us into eternity, and we will see and therefore savor God more deeply then as well. This is a compelling argument for fighting to live a holy life now. On the other hand, every impulse to sin, whether coming from inside or outside us, has one main desire, to spray as much caustic vomit and feces upon the lens of our seeing, so that God seems to us . . . dull, and when God is dull to us, people see and smell that dullness, and God is belittled. And for so many in the church in America today God is an appendix; remove Him and nobody notices a thing.

Does anyone else in the Bible give a similarly compelling reason why it’s good for us to seek after holiness and to “live in a manner worthy of the Gospel?”

Psalm 11:7 “For the LORD is righteous; He loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold His face.” Jesus is paraphrased in the third part of that verse. It’s the upright who behold His face, and it’s the not-upright who do not because their lenses are caked in view-spoiling dirt and grime, as mentioned earlier. David the writer knew about this firsthand, and it was out of deep experience with his own sin, both as a man who labored under its heavy consequences, but also knew the gladness and loveliness of freedom through confession and repentance, that he also wrote, “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart!” Psalm 32:11 David understood that you cannot be maximally glad in sin and therefore outside of the LORD. He knew that you cannot rejoice in unrighteousness (v. 3, 4), and you cannot shout for joy and rise like a bird into the sky, free and happy and singing when you have lead weights of sin wrapped around your neck. It doesn’t work.

But to be maximally happy is to be maximally righteous, living out the reality of Christ taking your sins upon Himself, paying for them with His life on your behalf, and giving you His perfect righteousness, so that before God, you are judged righteous, and on that basis alone, worthy of eternal life with God in heaven. If this is yours in and through Christ, it seems entirely reasonable to see and savor as much of Him as possible right now, to feast on God, and to fight against sin wherever you find it, and give yourself over radically to the good deeds He has for you to walk in.

Sin is so evil, so hateful and malignant that God has gone to extreme steps to deal with it, either at the cross for all who believe in Him, or in hell for those who will not.

Why do we downplay the hardness, the fury, or the justice of God? For many reasons, one of which is that in a culture of itching ears, it is not thought to be marketable. Unpalatable truth is considered not  marketable so we bring in the saccharine sweet instead. Another reason is that in our fun-loving, entertainment oriented society, we are more concerned with keeping the people happy, as opposed to well-fed with truth. Another reason we stay away from the wrath of God is that deep down we don’t really think our sin issue is that bad. Deep down many of us think that hell is over the top, and God went overboard in killing His own Son to redeem us. We think this way because we have a low view of God, which feeds a low view of our sin, which feeds a high view of ourselves. One more reason we downgrade the just retribution of God against sin is that we do not have before us loud and clear the fact that every sin we think, speak or act is done first and foremost against God Himself, and only secondarily against our fellow man. When we sin unknowingly or even willfully, or are contemplating engagement with sin, what is often wholly absent or faint is the sense that what we are thinking, saying or doing is in violation of God Himself. We are more likely to ponder how our sin might hurt another person or possibly ourselves than how our sin is a vomiting on, urinating on, defecating on God Himself.

King David however got it right, and articulated the correct apprehension of his sin and the state of his heart when he stated, “Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.” (Psalm 51:4) Of course he knew that he had violated Bathsheba, killed her husband Uriah and several others, destroyed a marriage, brought the nation into contempt, dishonored his parents, dishonored his position as king, and smashed down at least eight of the ten commandments. He understood that he had  heaped great evil and pain on many people, including himself, but he understood more deeply and significantly that every one of those sins was done against God, and that eventually landed on him with crushing but liberating weight.

I wonder just how much we would be helped by God if we became increasingly gripped by the sheer weight of the fact that our sin is always sin done against Him.

Father help us today to believe more deeply that sin is always far more vertical in its aim than horizontal, and that it is far more evil than we can imagine. In light of this reality, increase our faith and let us understand Your wrath more as we see it poured out on Christ at the cross to save those who believe. Help us understand Your hatred for sin, what it cost You to save us from it, and the eternal  cost of sin in hell for all who have spurned your holiness. We too cry out, “I believe! Help my unbelief.”(Mark 9:24)

Matthew 17:14-21 “And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to Him and, kneeling before Him, said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.’ And Jesus answered, ‘O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.’ And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.’”

Mark 9:22-29 “And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, ‘If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.’ And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’ But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when He had entered the house, His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ And He said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’”

On May 4 a group of people will be gathering at the Berean Church in Lincoln, Nebraska to see what God will do with their little mustard seeds of faith. They will be coming together in the name of Jesus to stand before the massive mountain of unbelief that is global sex trafficking, and saying to it, “Move from here to there, from the increasingly mainstream, to the hell where you originate and rightfully belong.” The event is called, I’ve Got A Name, and its intent is to “create awareness, prayer and financial support to help eradicate sex trafficking, with an emphasis on protecting the daughters of Nepal.”

Last year the Lord started moving in the lives of several Christians in Lincoln, pressing upon them a vision for resisting world wide sex trafficking, specifically between the borders of Nepal and India. Every year an estimated 10,000 Nepalese girls are brought into India to work as sex slaves in brothels. Their average age is fourteen. These children live in a country where grinding poverty is a  way of life, and under the pretense of a good job in the big city, or because they are simply not wanted by their own parents, these children are sold and brought over the border and into the living nightmare of brothel life, where they are forced to give themselves, sometimes up to forty times a night. It is a darkness beyond comprehension, an evil of such malignancy that only God can bring hope and healing.

Our hope is that by bringing this into the light, God might raise up more workers and inspire them to pick up their spades and find their place at the base of this mountain. Tiny Hands International and Freedom Firm, two Christian, Lincoln-based organizations will share what they do and how people can get involved. I urge you to get involved. Years ago William Wilberforce stood before a similar mountain, and for twenty years kept digging and digging against unbelievable odds, yet by the grace of God twenty years later the ax began to be put to the root of the African slave trade.

We are not naïve, but we are hopeful that God will ignite a fire in the lives of many on May 4th, and thereby build increasing momentum to push back this hell of human sex trafficking. As noted in the texts above, mountain moving depends on having a mountain moving God, and when people have faith in Him, all things are possible. Let us exercise those faith muscles together on May 4th and see what God will do. Several years ago I read a sermon by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in which he had commented, “The demon’s in too deep,” referring to evil that was so embedded that it took persistent, relentless prayer to get it out, not the kind of “let’s-try-once-and-give-up-if-it doesn’t-work” faith that the disciples exhibited in Mark 9. This is what we have before us, demons that are in too deep, but are you perhaps a surgeon called to this battlefield? Are you willing to draw near to this horror with what God has equipped you? Will you pray? Will you give? Will you care?

May we draw our swords and our spades and our scalpels and meet as we hear the battle cry of our General, May 4th at 7pm at Berean Church. The program is scheduled to go until 8pm with time after to ask questions and  take action in the avenues God calls us to.

For more information on how to get involved, please call Denise at Tiny Hands International at (402) 310-9271 or email her at denise_THI@hotmail.com. More information about THI can be found at www.tinyhandsinternational.org

“And Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.’” Matthew 21:21

This week we continue with the question, “How does one go about being clean?” by looking at repentance and confession. To start, consider the sweetness of Psalm 45:7 which reads, “you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” Note the link between hating wickedness/loving righteousness and being someone who is really glad. I picture that person having little oil droplets of gladness drip from the hand of God as He holds it over his head. What a picture of pure and holy pleasure!

But will you be glad if you’re holding things in, like a closet full of skeletons? No. Will you love what is beautiful and holy and right? No. A big key therefore to being glad is being clean, and being clean involves living a life of confession and repentance. It’s like vomiting; if you’ve swallowed some poison, the way to get better is to throw it up. By confession, I mean coming before God and vomiting up before Him what you have done or said or thought, and when appropriate, going before the person against whom you have sinned, and coming clean with them. If you want to be really serious about your confession, it often means going before a third party and letting them in on it as well, becoming accountable to them, and having them intercede before God on your behalf.

By repentance I mean changing your mind, turning away from one path to follow another, forsaking paths of sin to walk in paths of righteousness. I think a big reason we see such unrighteous living among Christians today is that there is precious little confession and repentance going on, and this is owing to being so damn proud of ourselves that we cannot bear the thought of being humbled.

A life bereft of confession and repentance however is something false and hidden and ultimately unhappy. Consider David who for at least nine months tried to cover up his adultery with Bathsheba (arguably rape) and his murder of her husband Uriah, and yet said of this experience, “. . . when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your (God’s) hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” Psalm 32:3,4. It was as though God was crushing him. It was as though David was living his life in an oven. But David turned the corner into freedom when he “acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” (v.5) Freedom through confession and repentance is so beautiful, and the enslavement of their lack is so rotten and rotting.

Years ago I needed to go to Calgary, and while there I took the opportunity to visit a former girlfriend and her husband and children in Edmonton. The reason for the northern detour was simple; to confess and repent fully. As teenagers we had given ourselves to some of the license that is to be reserved and preserved in the holy bonds of matrimony, and later in my twenties when I surrendered to Christ at the cross, a conviction for these past sins began to gnaw at me, and I felt regret for what I had done. I had confessed this to God and turned away from the licentious behavior that had characterized my previous life, yet there was still this unclosed door, confession to her, and asking her forgiveness. When our visit was near its end and I went back to the car, I told her how sorry I was that I had done what I had done and been what I had been, and asked for her forgiveness. She looked at me with disbelief and said there were no apologies necessary.

What followed as I made my way back to Calgary in the middle of the night was so unique that I cannot say it has ever happened again. As I drove, my heart soared as I experienced what was simply ecstasy, over two hours of it. My heart had been made free because I took my confession and repentance all the way to its end. I recall parking the car on a farmer’s lane, getting out and sitting on the hood, leaning against the windshield in the black night, my whole being radiant with joy. I did not expect that kind of holy embrace, but looking back now I see what kind of weight those particular sins had exerted on me, evidenced by the bliss I now knew having taken that backpack off fully after >twenty years.  

    
David experienced something similar, and finished off his great song with these words. May they be what we long and labor for as well.

“Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.” (v.11)

I wrote this musing several weeks ago after spending some time with my friend enjoying coffee, conversation and prayer. I felt cleaner for having been with him, and as a result I’ve been thinking, should not that experience mark us as we interact with Christ and anyone Christian? In Luke 5:12,13 we read the following account;

“While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus he fell on his face and begged him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him saying, ‘ I will. Be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him.” Do we have the kind of longing to be clean that this guy had? Do we fall on our faces and beg Jesus because we are so desperate to be clean? Not much. The reason for this is that we’re under the illusion that we are pretty clean just as we are. O that we could see our inner leprosy, our deep down inner corruption more like this guy saw his outward, diseased state. For this to happen we have to be close to the light of the Word, and not as though under a twenty five watt light bulb hanging thirty feet off the ground, but as  under a two hundred and fifty watt heat lamp hanging but three feet away. When we expose ourselves that way to God’s counsel, we begin to see much more clearly, and that kind of light also gives heat.

A friend of mine told me the other day that he was getting back into the word more deeply, and in the same conversation relayed how much envy and jealousy and anger he had been feeling toward some co-workers, emotions that he did not think were in the system, or at least not much. The Bible brings light and thus exposes those dark places in the soul, and without the Holy Spirit working through it, we remain dumb and often completely oblivious to reality. We can remain well hidden even to ourselves, which is why the Psalmist wrote, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.” Psalm 19:12 

   
But having found the leprosy within us and wanting like our fellow leper, to be clean, what can we do?

Ephesians 5:25 and 26 helps us out; “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” Though this is primarily about the role of the husband in marriage, by extension, it tells us how the Living Word ought to be working in us, transforming us and making us more like Christ. “Washing in the water of the Word” brings us into desire levels for personal holiness that we would otherwise not have. It also reveals us for who we really are deep down, and that’s often unpleasant. Consider the word as fast flowing, cleansing water and you have a chicken turd on your arm in full view. You know it’s there and people close to you suspect it even though you wear long sleeve shirts. Imagine being profoundly concerned with the chicken turd, when unbeknownst to you, and hidden by the turd, was a  malignant melanoma, that left undetected would result in your early demise. You deal with the turd and low and behold there’s something far more serious underneath! My friend experienced this in thinking that lascivious sexual thoughts were the real biggie in his life, but as the water of the word did its cleansing, he began to see that he had bigger issues with anger and envy and jealousy underneath, which are rivers that flow from the great Lake of Pride.     

There is more to be said, but this must suffice.