Meadowbrooke Church

Jesus & The Four Warnings

"A City on a Hill"

When I was a child, I remember the sense of security I had while Ronald Reagan served as our president.  I also remember his farewell address to our nation and the great sense of loss that I felt knowing that he would no longer be serving as our nation’s president.  John Winthrop preached in 1630 upon arriving in Massachusetts; in his sermon Winthrop declared his fellow pilgrims: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”  He also said of their future in Massachusetts:
Beloved there is now set before us life and good, Death and evil, in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his Ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land we go to possess. 
 
John Winthrop’s sermon had a profound impact upon President Reagan for he placed that line about Winthrop’s hope and expectation that one day that land he and the pilgrims discovered, “...will be as a city upon a hill.”  I still remember President Reagan’s farewell address to our nation; I was in eighth grade at Neshaminy Junior High when I heard it.  Reagan’s address is just over 20 minutes long, and although we do not have the time to listen to it, I would like to share with you his concluding remarks that I believe have affected our nation more than some of you may realize:
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.
 
And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.
 
We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.
There is a phrase introduced to our nation from another campaign that I was going to use for the title of this sermon... a phrase I have heard many Christians say or embrace that I have chosen not to use.  I know that when some use the phrase, it has been and continues to be used out of a hope and desire for America’s good. However, I have instead chosen the phrase: “America is a shining city on hill” used by a president I still admire and respect. 
 
Jesus is Eternally the Same (vv. 7-9)
What I dislike about a sermon series like “Christians Say the Darndest Things” is that today you will receive an exposition on Hebrews 13:7-14 without the benefit of seeing the wounder of chapters 1:1-13:6.  We are skipping right to the end without gazing at the Christ who is, “the heir of all things, through whom God also made the world.”  Right out of the gate in the book of Hebrews, we discover a Jesus who is, “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact representation of His nature.”  In Hebrews we discover a Jesus who, “upholds all things by the word of His power.”  The Jesus of Hebrews 13:8 is the same Jesus who, “When he had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:1-3).   
 
Because Jesus is, “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact representation of His nature” (1:3), He is the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9).  Jesus is the great “I AM” (John 8:48-59) because He is equal with the Father as the eternal Son (John 5:15-23).  Jesus is He who was and is “the Light of mankind” because He is the Word who was in the beginning with God through Whom “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:1-4).  This same Jesus became flesh through the miraculous conception in Mary’s womb while still a virgin, He was born and lived among mankind yet without sin, and He lived for the purpose of dying for sinners like you and me on a cross.  This same Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb, and on the third day... He defeated sin and death by rising from the grave.  For this reason, this same Jesus is highly exalted and upon Him is, “the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11).
 
Jesus is the same yesterday in that when God the Father spoke creation into existence, it was Jesus the Son who completed it: “for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:15-16). The reason why the earth remains in orbit and every atom and molecule remains in place is because the One who is also the same today is responsible for holding, “all things together” (Col. 1:17). 
 
Jesus is the same yesterday in that He was the One before Whom Abraham bowed (see Gen. 18:1-22).  Jesus is the same yesterday in that He is the One who wrestled with Jacob (see Gen. 32:22-33). Jesus is the same yesterday in that He appeared before Joshua as the captain of the Lord’s army, and it was before Him that Joshua removed his sandals and worshiped (Josh. 5:13-15). Jesus is the same yesterday in that He was the One who was seen by King Nebuchadnezzar in the furnace as He kept Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from perishing in blazing fire of the furnace (see Dan. 3:8-30).  Jesus is the same yesterday.
Listen, the same Jesus who provided Peter, John, and James the miraculous catch of fish that compelled Peter to fall to his knees and respond: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8), is still the same today! The same Jesus cured lepers, made the lame walk, the blind see, and the dead rise... is still the same today!  The same Jesus who died for sinners and rose from the grave is still the same today!  The same Jesus who commanded us to make disciples (Matt. 18:19-20) and promised, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judah, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8), is still the same today! And listen, the same Jesus who promised that He would come back in the same way that He ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9), is the same Jesus yesterday, today, and forever!   
 
The point is that if you get Jesus wrong, or if you miss Him, or if you choose any person, thing, or ideology over Him... you will get everything else wrong! The message of Hebrews is that Jesus is a treasure that no other treasure can compare.  This is why we are told in verse 8 to, “Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their way of life, imitate their faith.”  Those who truly spoke the word of God to you are those who did not get Jesus wrong! 
 
Jesus is the same yesterday.
 
Everything in this World is Consistently Unsatisfactory (vv. 10-11)
Because Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever... His life, death, and resurrection provide for us a more permanent solution to our sin problem.  What this means is that Jesus’ cross is a better altar unlike ones used under the Old Covenant.  The carcasses of the animals slaughtered on the Day of Atonement during Passover were taken out of the city to be burned; if they were thrown into a pile with the city and burned, they would have defiled the city.  Not so with Jesus, for while living, he was led outside of the city to become a curse for us on the cross we deserved (Gal. 3:10-14), and by dying for our sins outside the gate, His blood is what makes us holy. 
 
What is the point?  Here is the point: There is no person, there is no religion outside of Christianity, and there is no government that can do (if you are not a Christian) or has done (if you are a Christian) what Jesus alone can do.  Paul Washer put it this way in his sermon preached to pastors some time ago answering the question as to how Jesus’ death on a cross for a few hours on a tree to save a multitude of men from an eternity in hell:
“Because that one Man is worth more of them put together. You take mountains and mole hills, crickets and clouds. You take everything. Every planet, every star, every form of beauty. Everything that sings, everything that brings delight, and you put it all on the scale, and you put Christ on the other side and HE outweighs them all, HE outweighs them ALL! Brethren, this is the one we chase after!”[1]
 
Compared to Christ, everything in this world is not only temporary but unsatisfactory.  Jesus is the living water, and all the promises of this world together cannot compare.  They are all broken and cannot deliver what they promise to deliver!  The Old Covenant only provided a temporary solution to the sin problem of the Hebrew people; the work of the priests required them to remain standing for the need of a sin covering was ongoing.  This is why just three chapters prior, we are reminded in Hebrews 10:1 of the following: “For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the form of those things itself, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually every year, make those who approach perfect.”  Then in Hebrews 10:11-13, we are told of the only one qualified to address our sin problem: “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies are made a footstool for His feet.” (Heb. 10:11–13)
 
So, why is it that we are chasing after the shiny things of this world that cannot deliver what only Jesus is able to provide?  Christian, if you have the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, why are you looking for something different?  Why would you long for anything else when you have He who is the “Bright Morning Star” (Rev. 22:16)?
 
Jesus is the same today.
 
If You Have Jesus, You are Waiting for Something Greater (vv. 12-14)
These next verses serve as the crescendo of the entire epistle, and they begin with the word “Therefore” and if the author of Hebrews was texting you Hebrews 13:7-14, you would see “THEREFORE” in all caps because it is a very big THEREFORE!  In other words, in light of all that has been said from the very first sentence of this epistle to verse 11, “Jesus also suffered outside the gate, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood” (v. 12).  What was accomplished on His cross for our sins outside the gate on Golgotha’s hill has done infinitely more than anything else you have chased after thinking that person, or thing, or ideology would bring you purpose, peace of mind, or pleasure.  They cannot give you what only God is able to deliver! 
 
Dear Christian, Jesus sanctified you by dying for you, his corpse was in that tomb for three days, and the proof that Jesus sanctified you is in the fact that He marched out of that tomb three days later!  Who or what can give you what Jesus has provided?  If you are a Christian, Ephesians 1:7-8 is about you: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”   
 
What Jesus provided on the altar of the cross is only available for those who receive it, and those who receive it will never be the same because of Him.  The evidence that you have received what Jesus has made available to you is a desire to follow Him.  To any and all who wish to know Him, must follow Him, for Jesus said: “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul” (Matt. 16:24–26)? 
 
What we read in Hebrews 13:13 is no different: “So then...”  So what?  In light of the fact that Jesus is, “the same yesterday and today, and forever” (v. 7), and what has been provided on the altar of His cross for our sins (v. 10)... “let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (v. 13).  The only reason anyone would do that is if they understood Jesus to be infinitely more precious and valuable than any person, any thing, any ideology, any city, or nation of this world. 
 
We chase after Jesus because in Him is life is and because He is life, He alone is the “Light of mankind” (John 1:4).  We chase after Jesus because He is, “the Light of the world” and the one who chases after Him, “will not walk in the darkness but will have the Light of life” (John 8:12).  Because we chase after Him and not the shiny trinkets of this world, He said of His Church: “You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.... Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 16). 
 
If you are a Christian, you are the light of the world because you have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God!  He is the Alpha and Omega and He is the first and the last (Rev. 1:8, 17).  It is before Him that the nations will stand in judgment and a day is coming when it will be from Him that earth and heaven will recoil in response to His holy and majestic presence!  If you are a Christian, you belong to Him and because you belong to Him, you have no reason to fear Him who the tribes of the earth will mourn when He comes again (see Matt. 24:30).
 
This may shock some of you and it may offend others of you, but you really need to hear this: America is not a shinning city on a hill!  Here is what the Bible says about America and the nations that surround her: “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales” (Isa. 40:15). 
 
Because we follow Jesus, we chase after another shinning city, we chase after His city... a city, “which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).  Because Jesus is the same yesterday and today, and forever, we live as foreigners, aliens, and strangers even in the United States of America.  America cannot be our shinning city on a hill because we are promised something infinitely greater: “For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking a city which is to come” (Heb. 13:14).  Here is what Revelation 21:23-27 says about the city we really belong to:
And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
 
If America is a shinning city on a hill, it is nothing more than a tiny piece of glitter in comparison to the city we really belong to, and what makes the city we are seeking, that is to come, infinitely more beautiful is the Jesus who outweighs them all.  He is the same yesterday and today, and forever!
 
[1] Shepherds’ Conference 2016 | General Session 9 - Paul Washer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkqVZm9-7jc)

“Living My Truth...”

“My truth...”  “Speaking my truth...” “Your truth...” I have read a number of articles to try and learn what is meant by “My truth.”  There are a number of suggestions such as:
“The way I see things may be different than the way you see things.”
 
“Be true to yourself.”
 
“A pretentious substitute for a non-negotiable personal opinion.”
 
“The way I see and understand something may be different than the way you see
and perceive it.” 
 
“I know some stuff, and it’s likely that may change over time.”
 
In a recent trailer for a show on Hulu titled, Faces of Music, one of the cast members stated what I think is the current understanding of “Your truth” with the following words: “It is not about right or wrong, it’s about your truth.”   
 
Maybe there is no real definition of what “Your truth” really means and maybe that is the point.  The reality is that we live in a day and age when truth is determined by one’s experiences and feelings which is nothing new, just a different dress.  So, is there such a thing as “your truth?”  The good news is that the Bible does address the question of truth.
 
The Unknown but Knowable God
Permit me to begin with a story. About 600 hundred years before Paul ever set foot in Athans, there was a plague that came upon Athens that none of their gods could answer or fix.  The leaders of that city learned of a man who was a prophet of what they called the “unknown God.”  They summoned a representative of this unknown god from Crete, and he instructed them what was needed for the plague to be lifted.  This representative requested two flock of sheep be brought — one white flock and one black flock.  He prayed to this unknown God and asked that all the sheep that he caused to lay down to graze, would be sacrificed to this god on a new stone alter.  Well, there were sheep that did lay down to graze, so they were sacrificed on alters to the unknown God and the plague was lifted as a result. 
 
This unknown god was worshiped and then forgotten over time until two of Athens’ elders found one of the altars and refurbished it.  One of the things they had done to this altar was that they etched into it an inscription that read: “TO THE UNKOWN GOD.”  This was the altar the Apostle discovered while walking through Athens.  This was the only God the Athens had no idols for whom they did not create or know.  This is the God who, according to the Bible, “…has planted eternity in the human heart” (Eccl. 3:11b; NLT).
 
What the altar to “THE UNKOWN GOD” teaches us is that we grope around for something to make sense of our world and to discover something more than what is visibly before us.  The reality is that each of us is born spiritually blind just as the Bible states: “...the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).  It is not all that different with our society’s pursuit of truth. 
 
This whole business about speaking your truth or standing in your truth reminds me of the six blind people who heard about a strange animal, called an elephant, that had been brought into their village.  Because none of them were aware of an elephant’s shape or form they thought they would inspect the creature by touching it. One of the blind men grabbed the elephant’s trunk and said, “This elephant is like a big snake.”  Another blind man felt the elephant’s ear, and said the elephant seemed like the shape of a fan.  Another who felt the elephant’s leg, said, “this creature is a pillar like the trunk of a tree.”  The blind man who placed his hand upon the side of the elephant said it is like a wall that breathes. The blind man who felt its tail, described the elephant as being like a rope.  The blind man who felt its tusk, stated that the elephant is like a spear. 
 
People trying to figure out what truth is or what their purpose is in life are like those blind men. There may have been some truth to what they felt but could not understand what they were touching unless they understood that what was before them was much greater than individual experiences.  We live in a world full of blind men groping in the darkness trying to make sense of it without considering the Creator who made it all.   
 
God is Too Big to Be Manipulated (vv. 22-25)
There was a god to be worshiped for just about every occasion in Athens.  We are told that Paul’s spirit, “...was being provoked within him as he observed that the city was full of idols” (v. 16).  It is important to point out that his spirit was provoked, but it was not because he thought those who worshiped those idols knew better.  The provocation that he felt was not unlike the kind of provocation you might feel if a family was asleep in a house on fire, the provocation you would feel in your spirit would be the recognition that you had a moral obligation to do all that you could to wake the family up and get them out of the house before it was too late. 
 
What we can learn from Paul in the way he addressed the Athens is that he used their culture as a bridge to introduce them to the God they did not know who was too big to be manipulated like the gods they created.  By bringing the gospel to Athens, Paul shared how there was only one true God who was knowable only because He has made Himself known.  He alone “made the world and everything that is in it…” and He, “…does not dwell in temples made by human hands…”(vv. 24-25).  The God who made everything is not served by human hands like the hundreds of idols that filled Athans.  What Paul meant is that the God they thought was unknowable did not need to be cleaned up, polished, or fixed, because as Creator... He cannot be manipulated. As Creator and since He made everything, God is in need of nothing. Not only does the One true God need nothing, but He also cannot be treated as an idol because unlike the idols people create, He alone, “gives to all people life and breath and all things.”  What this means is that God does not adjust or yield to what we think truth is.  Because He is the Creator, by default... we are the creature; manipulating God is as impossible as it is for a statue to manipulate the artist who made it.
 
Apart from God, we are blind and what spiritually blind people are able to see are the shadows of spiritual truth.  People genuinely know that both good and evil exist.  The Greek Mythology of the Athenians proves this as do the stories we read and watch.  I believe that all humans, although spiritually blind, are able to see and sense the reality of the existence of God and his truth.  The Athenians groped in the darkness in pursuit of truth while their only hope was the gospel of Jesus Christ that allows us to know the truth of who God is and how to live in the world He created. 
 
Our Purpose Is Too Significant to Be Ignored (vv. 26-29)
When God created mankind, He created us with a deficiency that could only be met by Him.  Why else would the Apostle write that God created men and women, “if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us” (v. 27).  God has created in us a deep longing for Him because He has made us in His image.  In verse 28, Paul said to the Athens: “for in Him we live and move and exist...”  Think about that statement for a moment.  Our living and moving and very existence is found and experienced in God.  In other words, our purpose in life is found in Him.  Every study out there that has been done about the importance of finding your purpose in life reveals how important having purpose is. 
 
We humans are like the farmer who was seen by his neighbor shooting at his barn. As the neighbor got closer to the farmer’s barn, he noticed the many targets panted onto the side of his barn, and at the center of every single target was a bullet hole put there by the farmer’s gun.  The neighbor commented to the farmer: “Wow! You are an amazing marksman, your ability to hit the bullseye from that distance is impressive!  What is your secret, and can you teach me?”  To which the farmer replied: “It is really not that hard, for I first shoot my hole and then I draw the target around it.”  To live life like the Athens or to make up truth as you go without any consideration of who God really is, is to shoot for what we think is important and then draw the meaning of life around it. We shoot for security and then draw the meaning of life around it.  We shoot for relationships and then draw the meaning of life around it.  We shoot for what we think truth should be and then draw the meaning of life around it.  When we do that, we are like the blind person groping around in the darkness only to left with a creation out of our own imagination!  
 
Because the people Paul was speaking to probably had little understanding of the Hebrew Bible, he used the pagan poets of the day to illustrate the truth of God.  So Paul told these guys: see, even those whom you respect have said: “for in Him we live and move and exist...” Which was a statement probably taken from the same guy who 600 years ago introduced the Athenians to the unknown God.
 
The point is that we are not the creator, we are the created.  We live and move and have our being in Him because He is the One who fashioned us, not out of necessity, but out of love.  The most loving thing God could have ever done for you and me is that He created us that we might find our joy in the One in Whom we “live, and move and exist...” (v. 28).  Paul then quoted one of their poets to show that although such poets groped in the darkness, God was not far from them: “for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His descendants.’”  Paul did not stop there: “Therefore, since we are the descendants of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, and image formed by human skill and thought” (v. 29).  In other words, God is not what we make of Him, but instead our purpose, joy, and satisfaction ultimately can only be found in and through Him. 
 
Conclusion
God, the Creator, the Ancient of Day, the One who has and is “declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done” (Isa. 46:9-10) has invited you and I to know Him and to enjoy Him on a level far above the rest of creation, and He did it through His Son, Jesus Christ!  Jesus Christ, the all-sufficient payment who was sacrificed for our sins to reconcile us to God the Father.  What Paul said in conclusion to those gathered on Mars Hill is the equivalent of a mic drop: “So having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent, because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).
 
God did not nor is He currently overlooking sin in the same way a negligent parent overlooks the bad behavior of their child.  No! God has and is currently overlooking the sins of people since that salvation is still available to sinners, that the offer of redemption and reconciliation through Jesus Christ is still offered to sinners everywhere. To suggest truth is what you make it is ignorant, to grope for this religion and that religion is to grope in ignorance.  Here is what Jesus said about groping in the dark:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.... And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed. (John 3:16-17, 19-20)
 
Today is the day to quit groping in the dark and to take hold of the same Jesus who has declared: “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life” (John 8:12).  He is Him who said: “I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:17b-18).
 
When the people heard this, some believed, but most were dismissive.  Think about the message of the cross for a moment.  For those of us who consider the gospel to be the power of God because we have experienced it as such, ours is a hope that sounds like it was torn right from the pages of mythology.  God got a young virgin girl pregnant by His Holy Spirit so that the child of her womb would be both a god and a man to defeat the forces of evil, fix all the ills of our world, then rule as a King on earth and the way that he would do this is to first allow His god/man child to die the most painful and humiliating death possible.  No wonder the word of the cross sounds so foolish to most people.
 
Yet it is through the message of the cross concerning the historic facts that Jesus both died for our sins and rose for the forgiveness of sin, as outrageous as it may sound, that God is rescuing sin-cursed humans from His just wrath.  Paul had shared the greatest news in the universe with the Athenians, and some, like those in our day, dismissed it as foolish.
 
Truth is truth! Whatever you think “your truth” is, if it is not shaped and informed by the God for Whom, “we live and move and exist...” (v. 28a) is to grope in the darkness of our sin and ignorance. 
 
When it comes to those who do not know Jesus, they are still groping in the darkness of their sin and ignorance.  You cannot expect people who do not know Jesus to do anything but grope in the darkness, but you can point them to the light of who Jesus is! 
For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be Put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? But how are they to preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
 
You, dear Christian, are that preacher God has sent into your home, your neighborhood, into the circle of your friendships, your work, and into your world!  The apostle Paul had beautiful feet.  How beautiful are your feet?  God has called you to bring the light of Jesus into the darkness of your world.  That, my dear friend, is your truth.

“I’m Offended...”

What is it about our tribe that we need to make sure it is clear that we are right and everyone else is wrong?  What I mean by “our tribe” is Bible believing, church going, evangelicals who say that we agree with Jesus on everything that He said being right and true.  Just so that there is no misunderstanding about what I mean by the word “our,” I want to be clear that I am including myself in my question about “our tribe.”
 
Let me begin by acknowledging and confessing some things that I know to be true about myself. I have some very strong convictions about some things.  I hold to certain convictions that I hold to that if my heart and mind are left unchecked, I can come off sounding like an arrogant, know-it-all jerk.  There are certain convictions that are good for all people and there are convictions that are good for you.  When it comes to convictions, I believe there are three categories every person has:
There are convictions that I have that I believe we need to have.
There are convictions that I have that I believe you should
There are convictions that I have that I believe are good for me to have.   
 
Convictions that are of “primary” importance are convictions that are so important that to reject those convictions or ignore them is detrimental to biblical orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice).  Some examples of “primary convictions” include: The origin of the universe, the inerrancy of the Bible as Holy Scripture, the person and work of Jesus Christ (his virgin birth, his suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection), the second coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and the teaching that God is One and yet three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) while existing as one God (aka the Trinity). 
 
Secondary issues I hold with an open hand because being wrong on such things does not affect my faith and salvation, nor do they have eternal consequences.  Some secondary issues are really important, and you should hold to some level of conviction regarding them. Secondary convictions may be over topics and matters the Bible does address such as the timing of Jesus’ second coming, leadership roles for men and women in the church, and even the age of the universe. 
 
Then there are those convictions we have that come out of a third category primarily related to issues of conscience that the Bible is not as clear about.  In Paul’s day it was over the use and consumption of discounted meat that came from animals sacrificed to idols.  I heard a quote referenced by Tara Leigh Cobble that I really like and believe to be great advice: “Don’t shout where scripture whispers and don’t whisper where scripture shouts.” 
 
This sermon is not about secondary or tertiary level convictions, but it is about what God primarily wants for your life.  What is it that God wants for your life?  We are told in the verses leading up to James 1:19. Here are some of the verses that clue us into what God wants for your life:
God wants your faith to endure: “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (Jas. 1:2–4)
 
God wants you to live wisely: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (Jas. 1:5)
 
God wants you to walk humbly: “Now the brother or sister of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position; but the rich person is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away.” (Jas. 1:9–10)
 
God wants you to pursue Him in holiness: “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” (Jas. 1:12)
 
Listen to What God Wants to Teach You (vv. 19-21)
What does it mean to be offended?  Based on the English dictionary, to be offended is to be insulted, hurt, or upset.  If I understand the Christian life and how it is that God brings change in our lives, it seems to me that for God to accomplish what He needs to in my life, He must insult my assumptions, wound my ego, and upset the trajectory of my life.  Jesus said, “And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed” (John 3:19-20).  Jesus said that for a person to be “born again” light must invade and overcome spiritual darkness; for that to happen, God must insult, hurt, and upset a person’s life so that they can go from spiritual death to spiritual life!   
 
In James 1:18, we are told: “In the exercise of His will He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” The word of truth includes the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it is also all of God’s written Word. We know this because of the way verses 22-27 describe how God uses His word to change and shape the lives of His people.  Spiritual life and new birth cannot happen apart from the good news of Jesus Christ; in Romans 1:16, Paul wrote of the gospel: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  What is the gospel?  It is this: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
 
What James states in verse 19 is primarily how it is that God uses His word in the lives of His people to live and finish well.  Why does God want this for your life?  Well, again, in verse 18, God used His word (the gospel) so that we can become born again, “so that we would be a kind of a first fruits among His creatures” (v. 18).  Here is the thing about first fruits: The Israelites were commanded to give God the first fruits of their crops which was the best of their crops.  If you are a Christian, you are God’s first fruits, which means you are of great value to Him, and what He wants for you is to thrive as His child!  How one thrives as a child of God begins with James 1:19!  Be “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger...”
 
What does it mean to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger”?  Be quick to listen to what God has to say... period. Be slow to speak your mind... because God has already spoken.  Because God has spoken, and your opinions and perspective do not carry the same weight... be slow to anger by swallowing your pride.  What He has said is what ultimately matters!
 
What God wants for you is so much more than the time you have remaining with your vapor-like mortal life; this is why James wrote four chapters later: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away” (Jas. 4:13–14). What does He want for you?  Salvation, for you to stand in His wisdom, for you to walk in Christ’s humility, for His word and the Spirit to produce holiness in you! 
 
God uses His word to form and shape His people through the power of His Holy Spirit.  To listen to His word intently will mean that you must let God’s word challenge your assumptions about who He is, how you live your life, and the world you live in.  This is why we must be both slow to speak and slow to anger.  What does that mean?  Well, if you do not like what God’s word says because of what you would like God’s word to say, you must yield your life, heart, and soul to it.  When the word of God confronts you, when it challenges your assumptions, and when it calls you to action, your best course of action is to yield knowing that God wants to accomplish His good will in and through your life for your joy and His glory.  This is how you address, “...all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness” in your life.  This will not happen in your life if you are passive about His word.
 
Learn to Apply What God Wants for You (vv. 22-24)
How can you become “quick to hear”?  How do you become “slow to speak”?  You do so by apply God’s word to your life.  You do so by humbly yielding to the authority of God’s word over your life (v. 21).  You do so by becoming a “doer” of the word, and not just a “hearer” of the word.  Now you may be asking: “But I thought James 1:19 just told us to be quick to listen to God’s word?”  James does say that, for that is where we must begin, but listening to the word of God does us no good if we are not going to do what it says by applying it to our lives. 
 
Being quick to listen to God’s word is both important and necessary, but to listen to it only is like the person, “...who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.” Mirrors are good, but looking into a mirror in the morning will not fix your hair, brush your teeth, or fix whatever needs fixing before you head out the door in the morning.  The point of a mirror is to show you what you need to do.  When you read your Bible, it is telling you what to do, but if your response to reading it is only to read it, then you are like the fool who agrees with what the mirror reveals but does nothing about what he sees. 
 
To be quick to listen is to be slow to speak because you are more concerned about doing something about what you heard from God’s word!  This is why James does not end with verse 24, but continues to verses 25-27,
But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does. If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (Jas. 1:25–27)
 
One pastor said of James’ epistle: “He doesn’t want to know the words you heard on Sunday unless they resulted in action on Monday. If anyone thinks he is religious, his Christianity must be practical (1:26). Vertical worship must have horizontal expression. Your faith must be seen in your conversation, your compassion, and your conduct.”[1] 
 
What is the word of God?  The word of God is, “living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).  What is the word of God?  The word of God is, “inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
 
So, dear Christian, what are you going to do with what you have heard?  What are going to do with the word of God every time you hear it?  God wants to use it along with the power of His Holy Spirit for your endurance, to grow you in living your life wisely, to humble you for the purpose of forming in you a Christ-like character, and to move you towards the kind of holiness He saved you for and is calling you towards. 
 
Conclusion
Now, listen carefully.  You should care deeply about the primary things the Bible addresses and you should care about what others believe about such things like who God is, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the inspiration and authority of God’s word, and what the Bible says about why Jesus came and what it means to follow Him.  We should and must care about all that the Bible teaches and we should care about whether people have heard about the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
We should care enough about what the word of God says that we desire and are willing to humble ourselves for the purpose of yielding our lives to what it says.  We should care about being doers of God’s holy word in all that we say and do.  But... and this is a big “BUT”... When it comes to matters of conscience concerning what you think about third tiered matters that rightly have pricked your conscience, but the Spirit of God has not done the same in my life... what matters is what God has said about it, not so much what Keith Miller or anyone else has said about it. 
Now in saying that, it is good and charitable to listen more and talk less when we are discussing matters of conscience.  What I mean is that instead of assuming the worst about a person’s convictions it would be good to listen to why and how that person has arrived with his/her convictions.  It is also wise and charitable to recognize some of your convictions are good for you, but the Spirit of God may not have moved in a similar way in your brother/sister in Christ who loves the same Jesus as you do.  Just because someone does not agree with you does not mean that person is against you. 
 
Permit me to share with you two sets of God’s word that ought to guide every conversation you have about your convictions or the convictions of another brother or sister in Christ:
“Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor. 13:4–7)
 
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let’s follow the Spirit as well. Let’s not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.” (Gal. 5:22–26)
 
At the end of the day, who cares what you think about Donald Trump, what you think of Joe Biden, what you think about this thing or that thing.  What you think about who said what or what network is better than the other network.  At the end of the day your opinions are just that... opinions.  What matters is what has God said about it and what you are going to do with what He has said. 
 
In closing, let me share something with you that God said that you really should apply to your second and third tier convictions before you feel the desire or need to share those convictions with others:
“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, free of hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:13–18)
 
[1] Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2019), 1340.

"Forgive and Forget..."

What does it mean to “Forgive and forget” after you have been wronged by someone?  To forgive and forget is to stop blaming someone for something they did and to stop thinking about it.  Maybe you have heard someone say to you: “I forgive you, but I can’t forget...”  What does that really mean?  Can a person forgive and at the same time hold onto the memory of the wrong suffered? 
 
The Bible makes a big deal about forgiving a wrong suffered.  Just in case you are unfamiliar with what the Bible says about forgiving others, let me share a few scripture passages with you:
“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you for your offenses.” (Mark 11:25)
 
“So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so must you do also.” (Col. 3:12–13)
 
Included in Jesus’ prayer that He modeled for all Christians is the expectation to forgive others: “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:9–13).  Of the seven petitions included in the Lord’s Prayer is the need to forgive those who have sinned against us.  But, just in case there is any confusion as to how serious Jesus is about His followers forgiving others, He followed up his prayer with these haunting words: “For if you forgive other people for their offences, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses” (Matt. 6:14-15). 
 
What Does it Mean to Forgive?
So, what does it mean to forgive and does forgiving a wrong suffered require that you forget it? Peter asked Jesus a question not all that different: “Lord, how many times shall my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? Up to seven times?”  In other words, when am I off the hook for having to forgive a person who is a repeat offender?  When is enough... enough?  It is believed that the rabbis in Jesus’ day taught that forgiveness should be limited to three instances of premeditated sin.  If this is true, Peter asked his question about forgiving seven times thinking that seven times was more than generous with a willingness to forgive.
 
Jesus’ answer was not what Peter expected: “Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times.’”  Jesus did not mean 77 times, or 490 times, but an unlimited number of times.  How many times should I forgive the one who sins against me?  As many times as necessary.  Jesus’ answer to Peter’s question leaves us with more questions:
Are we supposed to forgive everyone for every offense against us?
Are we to forgive even when the person who sinned against us is not sorry?
Does Jesus want us to let others take advantage of us?
 
To answer these questions, we need to turn our attention to the parable Jesus told about forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-35. 
 
The Slave Had an Impossible Debt that Could Not be Paid
To further elaborate on His point to Peter, Jesus told a parable to illustrate why forgiving as much as necessary makes more sense than three times or even seven times.  Before we consider the parable, you should note that just before His parable, Jesus explained the process that we are to take when addressing the sins we suffer from others (see Matt. 18:15-20).  If someone sins against us, Jesus told us to go and show that person their fault in private. If we go and that person does not listen, then Jesus said we are to take one or two witnesses in an effort to address that person’s sin.  Ultimately, Jesus said that if a person repeatedly refuses to listen when you try to address their sin, that we are to treat that person as an unbeliever.  So, it is important to understand that Jesus’ parable is not about ignoring the sins of others.
 
According to Jesus’ story, there was a king who wanted to settle accounts.  As the king was seeking to settle accounts, a man was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents, which was the equivalent of about 160,000 years of wages.   If we were the man in Jesus’ story, our debt today would be in the billions of dollars.  Jesus’ point was that it was impossible for the man to pay off his debt.  Nothing the man could do would ever be enough to pay what he owed. So, the king demanded the man be sold into slavery along with his wife and children.  The only recourse the man had was to beg for mercy that his life and the lives of his wife and children be spared: “So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything’” (v. 26). We are not told how the slave accumulated his impossible debt, but the fact that it was astronomically high reveals that he deserved justice instead of mercy.  Yet, it was mercy that the master gave the slave: “And the master of the slave felt compassion, and he released him and forgave him the debt” (v. 27). 
 
For the king to forgive the slave of his astronomical debt, the king had to take upon himself the great loss the slave’s debt caused.  The King showed great mercy towards his slave; mercy is when you do not give a person what they actually deserve. 
 
The Slave was Unaffected by the King’s Great Mercy
The mercy the slave received from his master should have changed him.  Because of the great debt that he had been forgiven he should have been a changed man, but he was not.  As soon as he experienced underserved pardon and freedom, we are told that the slave, “...went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe!”  What was owed to the slave was nothing compared to the debt he himself had been forgiven, yet he was unwilling to show any form of mercy to the one who owed him infinitely less.  The irony is that what was owed could have been paid back eventually; it was not unreasonable for the man who owed 100 denarii to promise to pay it back.  Yet even though the man was willing to pay every penny back, the servant who had been forgiven much chose to throw the man in prison until he paid back what was owed.  The paradox is that if you are in prison, then working off a debt is nearly impossible.
 
The great mercy the slave experienced with the cancelation of his impossible debt should have changed him, but it didn’t.  Jesus then concluded his parable with the following sobering words:
“So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their master all that had happened. Then summoning him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him.” (Matt. 18:31–34)
 
If Jesus’ story ended with verse 34, then it would only be a sad story about a slave who remained unaffected by the king’s great mercy.  However, that is not how the story ended.  The story ends with Jesus’ sobering words that serve as a warning to us all: “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (v. 35).
 
What Jesus Teaches Us About Forgiveness
It ought to be obvious who the characters are in Jesus’ parable, but in case you are not sure, we are the slave in the story who owed an impossible debt to the king.  The King is the holy God we have sinned against.  The One who made the canceling of our great debt possible is Jesus who suffered in our place for our redemption. 
 
So there are some lessons about forgiveness that I would like to highlight that I think you will find helpful from the life of Jesus that is true if you are a Christian and I want to show you those lessons from Revelation 5.
 
Our sins will no longer be held against us (Rev. 5:6)
In Revelation 5:6, Jesus is presented in heaven as the Lamb of God standing victoriously who had been slaughtered for the sins we committed.  Throughout the Old and New Testaments, Jesus is presented as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).  Jesus did not take part of your sins away; He addressed all of your sins upon the cross where He was slaughtered! 
 
The Lamb of God is standing in Revelation 5:6 because He did not stay dead!  He rose from the grave and stands as our advocate and sin-substitute! He is, “standing, as if slaughtered...” because He bears the marks of the cross as a perpetual reminder that what He accomplished on the cross was and is all that we need!  Because He will forever be known as the Lamb of God who stands as if slaughtered, there will never be a moment in eternity that His great sacrifice for our sins will ever be forgotten. 
 
Now, you may be saying to yourself: “But Pastor Keith, what about those verses in the Bible that say that God forgets our sins?”  Let’s look at some of those verses briefly:
 
“They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jer. 31:34)
 
“I, I alone, am the one who wipes out your wrongdoings for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.” (Isa. 43:25)
 
“For I will be merciful toward their wrongdoings, and their sins I will no longer remember.”” (Heb. 8:12)
 
The verses from Jeremiah and Isaiah are promises concerning the New Covenant that God said would come through Jesus.  The passage in Hebrews is a reference to that promise that only Jesus can make possible.  The Hebrew word used in both Jeremiah and Isaiah not only can mean “remember” but it can also mean “named.”  It is not that God forgets from His memory all our sins, it is much better than that!  Because Jesus was slaughtered for our sins, our sins will never be named for the purpose of being held against us.  Our guilt has been taken away, and Jesus bears the marks of the cross for all eternity as a testament to that reality! Now, against the backdrop of that truth, listen to Psalm 104:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our wrongdoings from us.”
 
God does not forget our sins as though He suffers from amnesia, but He has chosen to never hold our sins against us because they were placed upon Jesus in our place. 
 
Principle #1: If you chose to forgive, you chose to no longer hold the offense of that person against him/her.  
 
 
We are the recipients of God’s great mercy (Rev. 5:9-10)
In heaven, the heavenly chorus includes lyrics of a new song about Jesus: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:9–10). 
 
All our deserved hell Jesus endured to make the forgiveness of our sins possible and redemption a reality!  The way that He did it was with the shedding of His blood. In other words, He died for sinners like us.  In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we read that, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  Mercy is not getting what we deserved and what we deserved was condemnation, but praise God that He is a God who is rich in mercy, great in His love, and sufficient in His grace (see Eph. 2:4-9)! 
 
Here is what mercy cost Jesus according to Galatians 3:13-14, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree”—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13–14).
 
Principle #2: We who have received great mercy, are expected to extend mercy even when it is not deserved as citizens of Jesus’ kingdom. 
 
Reconciliation is impossible unless forgiveness is given, and it is received.
This is the final lesson on forgiveness from Revelation 5, and it seems obvious.  Jesus already made redemption and the forgiveness of sins possible for anyone who wants to receive it, but it is not complete for the sinner until it is received by the sinner.  The incalculable scores of angels, along with the 24 elders shout with a loud voice concerning Jesus: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing.”  In response, all of heaven affirms what is already true: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever” (v. 13).
 
Jesus offers forgiveness through what He already accomplished on the cross and through the empty tomb, but it must be received for reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of our sins to be possible. 
 
When it comes to Jesus’ parable about forgiveness, you alone have to choose to forgive those who have sinned against you, but once you do, you have also chosen to longer hold the offence against that person.  To forgive is an act of mercy that you chose to gift to that person.  However, there is a third principle:
 
Principle #3: Reconciliation cannot be possible unless the person forgiven is willing to receive your forgiveness.  All you can do is forgive those who have sinned against you and to no longer hold their sins against them.
 
If we truly understand what it means to be forgiven of our sins and what it cost Jesus, we will hold short accounts of wrongs suffered knowing that what Jesus suffered on the cross was and is sufficient for those who have sinned aginst us.  Amen.

“God is Leading Me...”

Have you ever had someone tell you that the motive behind their decision(s) was that “God was leading them?”  Did you ever wonder how it was that they knew God was leading them?  What if He is not leading you and you make that claim?  On some level, does that make you guilty of breaking the 9th Commandment?  In case you have forgotten what that commandment states, here it is: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” (Exod. 20:16).  Is it also possible that by using God’s name as an excuse for your choices in life, that you are also guilty of violating the 3rdcommandment, which states: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain” (Exod. 20:7). You need to understand that God is holy, and He is serious about how we treat His name and how we approach Him. 
 
So, how do you know what the will of God is and when is it okay to make the bold declaration that “God is leading you...”? Get some clue how to know God’s will from Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5–6).  But what do you do with all the factors that affect how we humans make decisions such as:
Cognitive biases: What happens when our decisions are shaped by our biases and affirmed by information and media that confirms our existing beliefs.
 
Emotional state: How we are feeling can have a tremendous effect on our ability to reason and make decisions.
 
Cultural factors: The culture you grew up in or the one that surrounds you today can affect your perception of truth and how you make decisions.
 
Situational factors: Your physical atmosphere, social environment, time constraints, and circumstances that have brought you to your decision all shape the decision-making process.
 
We have so many things competing for our hearts and it can be very difficult to discern what part of the decision-making process is God’s will and leading, and what part is our feelings and wants.  So, how can you decern what the will of God is for your life and choices? I believe Acts 20:17-38 is helpful in that it shows us five things Paul practiced that helped him understand what God’s will was for his life regardless of his feelings and the circumstances that surrounded him.
 
Paul was Concerned About What God’s Word Said About Everything (vv. 20-21, 27).
The reason why Paul spent over two years in Ephesus was for the same reason he completed three missionary journeys, and that was to declare, “...the whole purpose of God.” Paul declared the full counsel of God’s Word while in Ephesus.  Jesus commanded His followers: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations... teaching them to follow all that I commanded you...” (Matt. 28:19-20), and Paul took that command very seriously.  All that Paul had to offer and give to the Ephesians was the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures.
 
Listen, Paul did not just teach and preach the Bible, his life and choices were governed by the Word of God.  How does one get to the place where he or she is able to declare all that is beneficial from the Word of God without first being in the Word of God privately?  What is the goal of being in God’s word?  Paul answered that question in his epistle to the Philippians: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10-11).  You will not get to know Jesus if you are not listening to His voice through His word, and if you are not listening to His voice, you will not know His will.
 
Step #1 for knowing the will of God: What does the word of God say about it?
 
Paul Made Sure His Choices Lined Up with the Mission of God (vv. 17-19, 24)
What is the mission of God?  “For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name shall be great among the nations, and in every place frankincense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name shall be great among the nations,” Declares the Lord (Mal. 1:11)!  John piper wrote in his book, Let the Nations be Glad: “Missions exist because worship doesn’t” and he was right! Paul came to Ephesus because the Ephesians worshiped all kinds of idols, but they did not worship God because they did not know Jesus.  Paul entered Ephesus with a desire to serve the Lord “with all humility and with tears and trials” because his purpose in life was to make Jesus known first and foremost! 
 
Paul did not think he was better than the Ephesians, but because he had a great and accurate view of who God is, he was willing to die to self for the purpose of living for Jesus.  This is what he said in verse 24, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of God’s grace.”  For Paul, his mission would include bringing the gospel to the gentiles (see Acts 9:1-19).  For you, God’s mission may look different, but the one thing that it does have in common with Paul’s mission is to make Jesus known where He is not known. 
 
If you are a Christian, you have been called into the mission of God.  That does not mean that you must become a missionary, although it may.  What the mission of God means for you is simply this: God has called you to your world, which includes your family, neighborhood, work, and church to use your talents and gifts to reach the lost and partner with your local church to accomplish the mission Jesus gave His Church.  Wherever you find yourself, Jesus said of your redeemed life: “You are the salt of the earth.... you are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13-14).  You are Jesus’ ambassador in your home, in your neighborhood, among your friends, where you work, and as a part of a community of Jesus followers within His Church. 
 
Step #2 for knowing the will of God: Will my decision allow me to continue to participate in God’s mission? 
Paul Was Sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s Leading (vv. 22-23)
Paul was sensitive to the Holy Spirit for two primary reasons: His head and heart were affected by the time he spent in the Word of God, and he strived to walk in a manner worthy of his calling (Eph. 4:1).  The fruit of listening to God’s word and obedience to it, is the filling of the Holy Spirit. From the moment you are born again, you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-24; 16:7), you are sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14), and you are baptized by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5).  But with the filling of the Holy Spirit comes power and a sensitivity to His leading; this is what Paul wrote to the Ephesian Church and practiced:
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Eph. 4:30)
 
“And do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit...” (Eph. 5:18)
 
Jesus promised that to every true Christian who sets their hearts to follow Jesus in faith and trust will receive the Holy Spirit Whom He called, “The Helper” (John 14:16-17).  Jesus promised that the ministry of the Holy Spirit will be to, “guide you into all the truth...” (John 16:13).  This is exactly what Paul experienced throughout his lifetime even when others had a hard time understanding it (as we will see in Acts 21:7-14).  This is why he called the elders together before he left Ephesus to tell them how the Holy Spirit was leading him: “And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that chains and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:22–23). 
 
For Paul, the compulsion he had from the Holy Spirit did not mean that he understood or was aware what the total outcome would be for choosing to leave Ephesus, but the call was clear, and he had to go.  Paul also understood that he would not be able to come back: “And now behold, I know that all of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face” (v. 25).
 
Sometimes the will of God is a call to leave what is stable and comfortable to a place of uncertainty and danger. Tony Merida, in his commentary on Acts, made the following observation: “The goal of life is not to have a long life but a full life, one lived to the glory of Jesus Christ. For some Christians such faithfulness will involve hardship, persecution, and even martyrdom. Paul’s example here shows how one can endure such experiences: We must value Jesus above everything, and we must rely on the Spirit.”[1]
 
Step #3 for knowing the will of God: Am I walking in step with the Holy Spirit and is He leading me in the decision-making process?  
 
Paul Understood God Was Greater than His Mission (vv. 32-34)
Paul understood two critically important things that are worth considering regarding the will of God: First, God loved the Ephesian Christians infinitely more than Paul ever could.  Second, God didn’t need Paul but chose to use him and would use others in his place after he left.  What was required of Paul and the elders of the Ephesian Church was to trust the God, “Who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number” (Job 5:8-9).
 
With Paul’s departure there would be dangers for the Ephesian Christians, so he warned the elders; he warned them that savage wolves would creep in among them with the intent to destroy them (see vv. 28-31).  Just because God was leading Paul into another season of life and ministry, did not mean that the ministry God used him to establish was safe.  However, for three years, Paul was preparing the elders and the church for the day when God would lead him elsewhere.  Paul also understood that God would provide the church what was needed in the wake of his departure, so he was confidently able to assure them: “And now I entrust you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (v. 32).  What they needed most, Paul gave them... and that was God and His Word. 
 
Step #4 for knowing the will of God: Understand and trust that God is infinitely bigger than you are and is capable of doing “great and unsearchable things...” without your involvement.
 
Paul Was Committed to Prayer (vv. 36-38)
Paul and the elders did not end with hugs and handshakes, but fervent prayer together as brothers committed to the same mission!  It is critically important to note that before there were any goodbyes, before the decision was official, before Paul got on the boat, he and the leaders of the church prayed.  Verses 36-38 are such a touching conclusion to Acts 20 as it is a reminder that there is no point in going anywhere if God is not leading you and although He may be leading you, it does not mean that it will be easy; consider these verses again: “When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they all began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they were accompanying him to the ship.”
 
This was not the first time Paul, and the elders, prayed about where God was leading, based on what we know of Paul’s life, prayer was the culture of his life.  Because it was the culture of his life, he was not getting on any boat before they prayed together!  Ephesians 6:18-19 gives us a glimpse into the prayer life of the apostle: “With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and every request for all the saints...” (Eph. 6:18).  Regarding his departure, Paul prayed all the time, with all persistence, for the glory of God and the good of Christ’s Church!  It is important to also understand that Paul did not pray alone but prayed with those his decision affected most. 
 
Step #5 for knowing the will of God: Bathe your life and choices with prayer with a willingness to die to what you want for the purpose of living for God and His mission for your life.
 
Conclusion
You should know that when you follow the will of God for your life, it may not always be easy, comfortable, or agreeable for those in your life and world.  It will be hard on both those who love you and agitating for those who do not share your love for God and Christ-centered world view.  The safest and most secure pathway forward is to follow Jesus.  When Paul arrived at Ptolemais, he stayed with Philip and while with him, a prophet by the name Agabus took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and said, “This is what the Holy Spirit says: ‘In this ways the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and hand him over to the Gentiles’” (Acts 21:7-11). 
 
When everyone in the house heard what Agabus said to Paul, they begged him not to go up to Jerusalem because they loved him.  Agabus did not say anything Paul did not already know, but it was painful for those who loved Paul to hear and accept.  Paul’s response was both tender and firm: “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13).  At this point Paul’s decision was affirmed by the Word of God, the mission of God for his life, the prompting and leading of the Holy Spirit, a confidence in God’s sovereignty and power, and a decision bathed in prayer, so he was sure of what God’s will was for his life and he could not be persuaded.  Those who loved Paul saw this: “And since he would not be persuaded, we became quiet, remarking, ‘The will of the Lord be done!’” (v. 14).
 
So, before you declare that “God is leading you” to take that new job, enter into a relationship or marriage, or to move from anywhere to anywhere be sure to check what you are considering against the same five checkpoints we see in Paul’s life:
 
What does the Word of God say about your decision? If God’s word speaks against it, then it is not God’s will for your life.
 
Will my decision allow me to continue to participate in God’s mission? If your decision will further remove you from God’s mission and His people, then it may not be the will of God for your life.
 
Are you sure the Holy Spirit is leading you? If you are not living in obedience to God, your perspective of what God’s will for your life may be severely perverted.
 
Do you really believe that God can do “great and unsearchable things...” without your involvement but wants to use you anyway and that He is about His glory for your good?
 
Did you pray with open hands before God almighty concerning His will for your life related to whatever is before you?
 
Paul’s decision to leave Ephesus ultimately resulted in his martyrdom in Rome, but if he did not leave, he would not have written Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus... and those glorious epistles would not have been included in our Bibles as holy Scripture.  
 
[1] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2017), 315.

“It’s Okay to Be Angry with God"

Introduction (Bruce Almighty movie clip)
It is possible that you are here today and are wondering how and why it is that a good God would allow some of the hard things you were forced to experience so far.  Maybe you have said or identify with Bruce’s description of his own experience with God: “God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather burn off my feelers and watch me squirm.”
 
If God is good, and if he is infinitely and perfectly sovereign… how and why does He allow so much suffering in the world?  How is it that He allows so much evil when he is the measure of all that is holy and good?  There seems to be a great divide between the God we read about in our Bibles and the world we live in.  What are we supposed to do with the confusion, disappointment, anger, evil, and suffering God has allowed into our lives?  Is it okay to be angry with God when we suffer?  I plan to answer the above questions, but we must start with the nature and character of God as He revealed Himself to Moses after 40 years in the desert as a fugitive of Egypt after he murdered one of Pharoah’s guards. 
 
Moses’ Encounter with a Holy God
Here is what you need to know about what led up to Moses’ experience with the burning bush.  God made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and then to Jacob that their children would become His people; the promise was threefold and included the promise of land, the increase of their people, and that their people would eventually be a blessing to the nations.  However, God also promised that they would spend years in a land where they would be afflicted (see Gen. 15:13; Exod. 12:40-41).
 
When Moses was born, the Hebrew people had spent centuries living in Egypt.  The Hebrew people were first welcomed as honored guests under Joseph (one of the sons of Jacob) who was second to Pharaoh, but as the years past, so did the memory of Joseph.  The Hebrews eventually became the slaves of another Pharaoh; he was so threatened by the birth rate of the Hebrews, that he implemented infanticide as the law of the land and wrote into law that every Hebrew son born was to be thrown into the Nile.  Moses’ mother refused to murder her baby, so she kept his birth a secret until she could not do so any longer; she put baby Moses in a basket covered with tar and pitch, put him in it, and floated it down the Nile where Pharaoh’s daughter eventually found the basket with baby Moses whom she raised as her own. 
 
Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house, but he was also aware of his roots as a Hebrew man.  We know that Moses had a temper, and on two occasions, it cost him much.  On one such occasion, after seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, Moses killed the Egyptian and buried his body in the sand (see Exod. 2:11-12). When Moses learned that others knew that he killed the Egyptian, he fled and hid in the land of Midian.  Moses spent the next 40 years of his life in Median, got married, and worked for his father-in-law Jethro.
 
What We Learn About God Through Moses’ Encounter
Before we can answer where or not it is okay to be angry with God, we need to consider the God who found Moses in Midian; against the backdrop of Joseph’s 13 years of suffering, the generations of slavery the Hebrews suffered in Egypt, and Moses’ 40 years in Midian. 
 
God is Holy: He is not like us.
Moses approached the burning bush not only because it was weird, but because God called to him, “from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses! Moses!” Moses’ response was simple: “Here I am.”  Notice that as Moses got closer to the burning bush, God said to him, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  What made the ground holy?  The presence of God made it holy.  As R.C. Sproul wrote in his timeless and classic book, The Holiness of God: “God alone is holy in Himself.  Only God can sanctify something else. Only God can give the touch that changes it from the commonplace to something special, different, and apart.”[1] 
 
Now, just so that you are aware, it is not only Moses, a mere mortal human, who must remove his sandals in the presence of holiness.  The seraphim whose sole purpose is worship above the throne of God are not exempt from the kind of respect and reverence that was expected of Moses in the presence of the Holy One. Isaiah was invited into the throne room of Almighty God, and this is what he saw:
In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim were standing above Him, each having six wings: with two each covered his face, and with two each covered his feet, and with two each flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. (Isa. 6:1–4)
 
The great Seraphim must cover their face and their feet in the presence of a Holy God even though they have not been stained by sin, but because they, like us, are creatures and God is the Creator.  Isaiah’s response before the Holy One was appropriate: “Woe to me, for I am ruined!”  Moses’ response was not only to remove his sandals, but to hide his face, “for he was afraid to look at God” (v. 6).  Why?  Because God is holy, and we are not.  God is not like us.
 
God is Omniscient: He sees the big picture.
When we come to verse 6, God let Moses who it was that was speaking to him: “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  And just as God was intimately acquainted with the lives of Moses’ forefathers, He was aware of the suffering of Moses’ kinsmen in Egypt: “I have certainly seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their outcry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings” (v. 7). 
 
When the Hebrews entered into Egypt, they were the size of a small clan, but after hundreds of years in Egypt, they had become the size of a small nation.  When Moses fled to Midian, he was a 40-year-old used to royalty; the Moses who stood before the burning bush was any eighty-year-old shepherd.  What the Hebrews did not understand, and what Moses could not have fathomed was that God was using the ugly, the hard, and the pain for something far greater than they could have imagined.  God was aware of their suffering all along, and now in that moment was the right time to, “rescue them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from the land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey...” (v. 8) just as He promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries before. 
 
So, God said to Moses: “And now come, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt” (v. 10).  To which, Moses appropriately responded: “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?”  All that the Hebrews could see was their slavery and suffering; all that Moses could see was his failures and incompetence.  What God saw was that He alone can use the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong (see 1 Cor. 1:26-31).  What God saw was that His timing was infinitely better because He saw the big picture. 
 
God is Faithful: He keeps His promises.
Remember that the Hebrew slaves in Egypt were surrounded by an Egyptian culture that worshiped Egyptian gods who were not gods, but demons (see Deut. 32:17).  Moses questioned what name he was to give to the Hebrew slaves if they were to ask Who it was that sent Moses to deliver them (v. 13). Here is God’s answer: “And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (v. 14).  Then God continued: “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is the name for all generations to use to call upon Me” (v. 15). In other words, God told Moses: “You tell them that Yahweh sent you!”
 
At the heart of God’s answer are four facts about His nature for why the Israelites should believe the He could and would deliver them:
Yahweh is self-existent and not dependent. God was unlike the Egyptian gods who were created by their own culture.  Yahweh is the Elohim over elohims.  The great I AM was bigger than the plight of the Israelites as He is greater than any trouble in our own lives.
 
Yahweh is creator and sustainer. Who wrote the Law of Thermodynamics?  Who governs the laws of gravity? Who grants the Sun permission to get up in the morning?  Who gave the song for the birds to sing?  Who owns the cattle on a thousand hills?  Who brings men into power, raises nations into prominence and then brings them to naught?  Is it not the great I AM who keeps His covenant promises. 
 
Yahweh is unchanging. Yahweh is the great I AM whose personality does not change. He does not suffer from a multi-personality disorder.  He does not change with the ideas of his devotees.  He is unmovable because He does not change. Because Yahweh is unchanging, He is constant unlike the gods of the Egyptians or whatever idol we may have set up in our own heart.
 
Yahweh is eternal. Because He is the great I AM, Yahweh will never have a beginning nor will he ever have an end.  Even though the fool has said there is no God, Yahweh is absolute reality with nothing before or after Him. The great I AM does not sleep, slumber, slack off, or slip into a daydream stupor.
 
What God told Moses is this: “Moses, you tell My people that the Covenant Keeper who promised their forefathers that He would make them into a great nation, would give them land as a nation, and would make them a blessing to the nations... you tell them the Faithful and Living One sent you!”  God keeps His promises because He alone is faithful even when we are not.
 
Conclusion
So, the question you may still be asking is whether it is or is not okay to be angry with God?  Is it okay to be angry with He who is Holy and infinitely unlike us creatures?  Is it okay to be angry with the One who sees and knows all things perfectly?  Is it okay to be angry with the One who keeps His covenant promises because He is faithful while we are faithless time and time again?  Is it okay to be angry with Yahweh who is Almighty God? 
 
As you know, God did use Moses to lead the Hebrews out of the bondage of slavery from Egypt, and He did it miraculously and profoundly.  Yet, even after God delivered them, Moses found himself shepherding and leading a people who demonstrated over and over again just how faithless they really were.  After their grievous sin of idolatry with the golden calf, Moses pleaded with God for mercy for His people who sinned, and God granted it.  In Exodus 33:17-34:9 we are given a glimpse into Moses’ heart as a shepherd absolutely in love with Yahweh, and in that exchange asked to see God.  God told Moses that he could not see His face and live, but this is what God did say He would do: “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion to whom I will show compassion” (Exod. 33:19).
 
When God did pass, He hid Moses in the cleft of a rock, and allowed His goodness to pass by him and when it did, Moses heard God proclaim of His goodness: “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Exod. 34:6–7).  So, what does God’s goodness include?  It includes His mercy, patience, faithfulness, truth, and grace.  But it also includes His justice and wrath in response to sin. 
 
So, again I ask you: “Is it okay to be angry with the God who is Holy and infinitely unlike us creatures?  Is it okay to be angry with the God who sees and knows all things perfectly?  Is it okay to be angry with a holy God who is faithful while we are faithless time and time again?  Is it okay to be angry with Yahweh who is Almighty God?”  Let me reframe the question for you: If God is infinitely good and we are the ones who need to improve upon being good, do we have any right to be angry with God? 
Now, think about the effects anger has on a relationship.  When you are angry with someone because you believe you have been wronged by that person, it interferes with communication.  Anger towards a friend or a member of your family often drives a wedge between you and that person.  Anger typically results in the one offended distancing himself/herself from the person who wronged them. 
 
If there is no need for God to improve, especially in being good, then to suggest that it is okay to be angry with Him is to suggest that it is okay to accuse Him of wrongdoing.  Psalm 145 is a great Psalm to visit while suffering or confused why God would allow you to suffer; verses 8-9 say the following: “The Lord is gracious and compassionate; slow to anger and great in mercy.  The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.”  Again in Psalm 145:17-18, “The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and kind in all His works.  The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” 
 
I have head Christians and Pastors console the suffering and confused: “It is okay to be angry with God.”  To which I ask, “How is it okay to be angry with He who is infinitely holy, how is it okay to be angry with Him who sees all while my vision is limited, how is it okay to be angry with the Almighty whose faithfulness has been proven time and time again while my faithfulness has been found wanting more than I count?”
 
Listen dear friend, not only are we not given permission in all of Scripture to be angry with God, but we also have no right to be angry with Him.  Here is what is permitted and even expected by God: We can be confused, frustrated, and even hurt emotionally.  If God is infinitely good, which He is, then we can run to Him with our confusion, we can run to Him with our frustration, and we can run to Him with our wounded and bleeding hearts knowing that even though we can’t see His goodness in and through our pain, we can trust that He is still good and will turn it around in His way and in His time for His glory and our good!  
 
After Moses experienced the goodness of God when His glory passed by while he was in the cleft of the rock, Moses responded on behalf of the sins of Israel: “If in any way I have found favor in Your sight, Lord, please may the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our wrongdoing and our sin, and take us as Your own possession” (Exod. 34:9).
 
Dear brothers and sisters, if your faith and trust is in Jesus as proof of God’s infinite goodness, then my plea to you is not to run from Him in anger but to him with all your pain, confusion, and frustration.  Run to the God of Romans 8:28-32,
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
 
[1] Sproul, R.C., The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers; 1998), 39.

“He/She is in a Better Place.”

I have officiated dozens of funerals over the years as a pastor, which means that I was involved in the planning of the service, the delivery of a sermon, and some form of committal service involving the burial of the deceased’s body or placement of the ashes of those bodies that were cremated.  The first funeral I officiated was that of my 47-year-old father and since I have been responsible for burying people of all ages as young as grade school to the oldest who was 101 years old.  I have been asked to memorialize people from all walks of life, many of whom loved and walked with Jesus as fellow Christians and some who were not Christian.  The one thing that every one of the funerals and memorial services I officiated have in common is that every family and friend of the diseased who asked me to officiate the service of their loved one believed and articulated their belief that he/she was in a better place. 
 
Just as the old spiritual is true: “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”  So, it is true that we will grope for reasons to believe that our loved ones are in a better place regardless of what they believed or even how they lived.  Most people do not want death for anyone they love, and when death does come, we want heaven for those we love. 
 
After officiating so many funerals, I had come to the place in my experience as a pastor that I believed that I had experienced just about everything there was to experience related to funerals and grieving family member.  I am old enough and have seen enough to know better.  I remember Ian White’s family who reached out to Northwest Baptist Church (the first church I served as the Lead Pastor in Colorado).  Ian was not a Christian, nor was his family; he was found dead on the front steps of his apartment and was 34 years old.  I remember their response when I sat down with them to plan Ian’s memorial service and their request after I asked if they would like a song or two for those present to sing in honor of Ian’s life.  I expected something like Amazing Grace, but Ian’s family wanted everyone to sing Free Birdby Lynyrd Skynyrd.  
 
I remember a woman who started attending the church I planted in Colorado and the grief she carried with her with the death of her husband.  I still remember the Sunday she wanted me to know that her dead husband was with her.  In that moment I thought she meant his spirit or memory, but no... I discovered what she meant when she opened her purse to show me the urn that contained the ashes of her deceased husband. She brought the urn with her every Sunday she came, and I believe that she even sat her husband’s urn on the chair next to her.  I guess for this woman, the better place for her husband was in her purse.  
 
How do you know if a person who has died is really in a better place?  What evidence does one have to make such a claim? 
 
 
What Happens After We Die?
One of the things I say at every funeral is that when we die, we will experience the immediate judgment we are warned about throughout the Bible.  In Hebrews 9:27-28, we have one such warning: “And just as it is destined for people to die once, and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”  But what kind of judgment are we destined to face? 
 
To begin, you need to know that there are two types of judgment every human will face, the first has to do with where our disembodied soul must go, which is temporary.  The second judgment we will all face is permanent.  For the Christian, the day that you die will be the moment you will be in the presence of Jesus just as we are promised in the Bible: “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—but we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6-8).  
 
Jesus told a parable in the Gospel of Luke about a rich man who lived a life of luxury while ignoring the poor man by the name of Lazarus (not to be confused with Jesus’ friend who Jesus raised to life in John 11:1ff.).  In Jesus’ parable, both men died; Lazarus’ soul went to where Abraham’s soul dwelled while the rich man’s soul went to Hades where he suffered torment.  Of Hades, the rich man begged for a drop of water to ease his torment because, his words: “I am in agony in this flame” (see Luke 16:19-31).  Before Jesus told His parable about the rich man and Lazarus, He said this about money: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13).  The rich man was not in hell because he ignored Lazarus, he was in hell because he loved his money more than God.  Had he loved God, he would not have been able to ignore Lazarus. 
 
Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about love or heaven, and he did so for a reason.  He spoke so much about hell because he came, “…to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).  The reason why Jesus described the distance between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in heaven as a “great chasm” is because hell is the place where those are sent who, “will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:9).  Jesus described the place the rich man went to immediately after he died in the following ways: A place of torture (Matt. 18:34), a place where the wicked are cut to pieces (Matt. 24:51), and a place of scourging (Luke 12:47-48), a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12; 13:42; 24:51; Luke 13:20), and a place of outer darkness (Matt. 22:13; 25:30).   
 
Just as there is a new heaven and earth that is promised to the Christian, at the same time there will exist the lake of fire where the devil and his demons will be cast into forever.  The lake of fire is described as a place where, “...their worm will not die and their fire will not be extinguished; and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind” (Isa. 66:24b).  In Revelation 20:11-15 we are told of a second judgment that we all will face:
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.... Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
 
There are only one of two outcomes every person will face the moment of death: eternal life with Jesus that will eventually include a physical resurrection and life on a new and resurrected earth, or eternal death apart from Jesus that will eventually result in eternity in the lake of fire.  Neither the lake of fire nor a resurrected life with Jesus on a new earth are temporary, but eternal. 
 
So, the question we need to answer is if it is true that every person who dies is in a better place? 
 
Jesus Is the Hope of a Better Place
There are scores of Bible passages we could have looked at today to discover whether it is true or not that all people eventually go to a better place after they die, but I thought we could settle on Revelation 1:12-18.  For me, this is one of the most hopeful and encouraging passages in all the Bible!  In verses 12-16, we are given certain details about Jesus to clue us into who He really is.  There is a lot packed into these verses that we simply do not have the time to examine, but there are some things that I must show you in order to address the topic of this sermon.
 
Jesus is a Better High Priest
First, Jesus is a better priest. Every year, on the Day of Atonement, a high priest would go into the temple in Jerusalem to enter a place called the “Holies of Holies” to bring a sin offering into the presence of God on behalf of Israel.  The high priest would do it with a rope around him just in case he died, and his corpse had to be pulled out due to any sin not yet addressed in his own life before entering.  The High Priest wore a long robe and was fitted with a type of belt or sash that was laced with gold.  Once a year, every year, the High Priest would act as a representative and advocate for all of Israel. 
 
As you know, Jesus died on a cross as “the Lamb of God” for our sins; when John turned to see the voice that was speaking, He saw Jesus dressed as a High Priest because the sacrifice He made was sufficient to cover all our sins for all time, once and for all.  For this reason, Hebrews describes Jesus in the following way: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things having come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands, that is, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all time, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11-12).
 
Jesus is the Only Sufficient Savior
What follows in verses 14-17 are characteristics which reveal why Jesus is sufficient to redeem and save sinners such as us.  First, His hair is white like wool and as bright as snow because He is profoundly and divinely wise.  Yes, Jesus is fully man, but He is also fully God; Jesus is the Son and at the same time He is the ancient of Days with all the wisdom of eternity (see Dan. 7:9-14). Second, Jesus’ eyes were “like a flame of fire” which speak of His ability to see and know all things as God can only do.  Third, His feet were like burnished bronze to symbolize His omnipotent strength to judge the nations, crush Satan, and triumph over death as the author and giver of life.  Forth, Jesus holds the seven stars that serve as the seven messengers to the churches of which He holds in the palm of His hand; the point is that Jesus is also divinely sovereign.  Fifth, out of the mouth of the Savior comes a sharp two-edged sword symbolizing His right to Judge as King of kings and Lord of lords.  Sixth, the face of Jesus shines like a powerful sun because of His holiness, majesty, and absolute beauty as One worthy of our worship because He is God. 
 
Jesus is presented in Revelation 1:14-16 in the way that He is because of what Adam lost in the garden due to his sin and rebellion; Jesus is the only One qualified to redeem what was lost, for He is the second and greater Adam who is fully man and fully God in one Person.  Simply put, because of Adam’s sin, we are sinners under a curse that God alone is able to sufficiently and completely reverse; Jesus was qualified to do just that!
 
Jesus is the Great I AM
The One titled the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Rev. 5:5), the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8), the Pioneer and Perfecter of our Faith (Heb. 12:1-2), and the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16), is “the first and the last.”   Where else have we seen that kind of language: “I am the first and the last”?  I will tell you!  We see it in a host of passages, but Isaiah 44:6 will suffice: “This is what the Lord says, He who is the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of armies: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.’”  Because He is the “first and the last” He conquered death because, as the Living One, “...it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).
 
When John saw Jesus, he fell at His feet like a dead man, but Jesus declared to him: “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore...” John had no reason to fear because Jesus stood as a greater High Priest on John’s behalf, He was the sufficient savior John spent a lifetime following, and Jesus was the only One qualified to pay the penalty for John’s sin by becoming a curse in his place.  John not only believed this, but trusted that Jesus was all that he needed, and that is why he had not need to fear.  
 
Conclusion
This Jesus is the “Almighty” and the “Alpha and Omega” (Rev. 1:8; 22:12-13).  He is the “Author of Life” (Acts 3:15).  He is the Bread from Heaven (John 6:32), the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and the Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16).  He is the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4) and He is the Deliverer (Rom. 11:26).  He is the Good Shepherd of the 23rd Psalm (John 10:11).  He is the rightful Heir of All Things (Heb. 1:1-2).  Jesus is the Holy and Righteous One (Acts 3:14), the Horn of our Salvation (Luke 1:69), and the Great I Am (John 8:58-59).  He is the Light of the World (John 8:12), the Gate for the Sheep (John 10:7), the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25), and He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)! 
 
If all who die eventually go to a better place when there exists a very real hell designed by God for the punishment of sinners, then why did Jesus who is the “first and the last” willingly take on flesh to become like us for the purpose of dying for us to redeem sinners like us? 
 
If some don’t go to a better place, but most “morally good” people do, then why did Jesus say in conclusion to His sermon on the mount: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). 
 
If religious people end up going to a better place, then why did Jesus warn us of the following possibility? “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:22-23).
 
If there is another way to a better place other than through and with Jesus, then why in the world did He so confidently and boldly declare the following:
“If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, this is the one who will save it. For what good does it do a person if he gains the whole world, but loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and the holy angels.” (Luke 9:23-26)
 
There is a judgment we must all face.  The verdict from the moment of conception is this: “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and judgment for our guilt: “The wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our lord.”

“All Dogs Go to Heaven”

What I mean by the statement, “All dogs go to heaven”, is really a question I have been asked numerous times by both young and old: “Will my pet go to heaven when it dies?”  I want to do my best to answer that question, but I want you to know that my answer will also address a much broader question related to what God’s ultimate plan is for his creation.  We know what His plan is for humanity, but do you know if God’s plan of redemption includes animals? 
 
Let me begin by stating some things that could not be any clearer from the Bible and then we will dive into Psalm 8.  So, here is what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt:
The Bible assures us that God is the giver of every good thing (James 1:17); what this means is that God is not the taker of every good thing. When Nathan was five years old, we got him a kitten because we believed that he would enjoy having a cat.  You have given gifts to your children out of your love for them as well.  Here is what Jesus said about what we do for our children: “If you, despite being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him” (Matt. 7:10–11)!
 
God is so good that there is no room for improvement for Him to be better. I already mentioned James 1:17 but listen to what the verse actually states: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”  In Psalm 106, we are told to “give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy is everlasting” (v. 1). According to Psalm 145, God is “righteous in all His ways, and kind in all His works” (v. 17).  Because there is no room for improvement, God is not trying to get it right in the way He exercises His goodness.
 
However, we live in a reality where the curse of sin is inseparable from our human experience and sorrow and sighing are like the compounds that come out of the curse that suck the joy out of life.  You may even feel like Bruce from the movie Bruce Almighty in the way he described God: “God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm.”
 
So, let’s walk through Psalm 8 together with the hope that there is enough in these verses to help us gain a fuller appreciation of what God is doing with this sin-cursed world. 
 
A Good God Created a Grand Creation
I love the way the Bible begins: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters” (Gen. 1:1–2). The earth was a “formless and desolate emptiness” until God spoke.  He did not speak out of any need, for He was perfectly content within the fellowship of Himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  God was not lonely or bored, nor was He obligated to speak and create.  No, God created because He wanted to, and He wanted to create because He was motivated by love. Out of love, God desired to share that which nothing else could top or compare, which was Himself.  God was motivated by love to share Himself with us. 
 
Our solar system is estimated to be about 12 trillion miles wide. The diameter of our sun is estimated to be 109 times the size of our earth, and if you were to drive from the Sun to Pluto, it would take an estimated 6,000 years to complete the trip.  If that were not enough, you should know that our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains thousands of solar systems like ours.  On our little planet, in our vast galaxy, lives just over 8 billion people.  The renown astronomer, Carl Sagan, died believing that there was no compelling evidence for the existence of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, and said of our earth and the universe: “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.” 
 
David, in Psalm 8, answers Carl Sagan’s question, and if only Sagan could have opened his eyes to see what David saw: “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth, You who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!”  If you are wondering if the universe is too big if life on earth is all there is, the answer is a resounding “NO!”  The universe is the size that it is because it is testifying to the majesty and splendor of the One who spoke all of it into existence. 
 
The God who spoke all things into existence out of the overflow of His love and goodness is not only knowable but created us with purpose! 
 
A Grand God Created Mankind in His Image with Purpose
There is only one creature of all the creatures created that was created in the image of God, and that creature is all of humanity.  On the sixth day, after God created the animal kingdom and everything else, He created Adam and Eve: “Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth” (Gen. 1:26). 
 
To Adam and Eve, God gave them the responsibility to manage His creation as His image bearers.  Humans were commissioned and commanded to care for creation and at the same time add to creation by filling the earth with humans like themselves.  We are not a part of the animal kingdom; we stand above the animal kingdom as stewards of what Almighty God created!  King David marveled over this magnificent reality in his psalm: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place; what is man that You think of him, And a son of man that You are concerned about him” (Ps. 8:3–4)?  David does not stop there, for what he says in the following verses ought to be enough to answer what place your pet has in the universe: “You have him rule over the works of Your hands; You have put everything under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the animals of the field, The birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas” (vv. 6–8).
Adam and Eve were commanded to manage the Garden, to be fruitful and multiply, and not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  As you know, they ate the forbidden fruit from that one tree, and by eating the fruit they brought a curse upon God’s creation.  As a result, all of creation was cursed as the Scriptures testify: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned...” (Rom. 5:12).
 
There is only one creature who bears the image of God, and that creature is mankind.  As image bearers of the living God, we were created to live forever.   There is a part of us that lives on after death known as our soul which is also referred to as our spirit (not to be confused with the Holy Spirit).[1]  Unlike the rest of creation, humans have a soul that only God is able to destroy.  So, when it comes to death, our soul lives on even after our body dies, but death for the Christian is not the end as we are assured from the Bible:
For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed, in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, since in fact after putting it on, we will not be found naked. For indeed, we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. (2 Cor. 5:1–4)
 
So, when your pet dies, there is no immaterial part of them that lives on because they do not bare the image of God and therefore do not have a soul.  What this means is that when your pet does eventually die, regardless of the behavior, there is no eternal punishment or eternal life waiting for them... they simply cease to exist.  The only creature that is born and lives in active rebellion towards God are humans.  Unlike the animal kingdom, sin is now a part of our nature.
 
A Good and Gracious God Has Provided Redemption Through a Second and Perfect Adam
Now, remember what I said at the beginning of my sermon: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights...” (Jas. 1:17).  God is a good God who is the giver of every good thing, not the taker of every good thing!  After Adam and Eve sinned, they were promised a Descendant who would reverse the curse of sin.   A second and more perfect Adam was promised who would come to reverse the curse of sin: “For if by the offense of the one, death reigned through the one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17). 
 
The second and more perfect Adam was also promised to David who wrote Psalm 8!  God assured David, “When your days are finished and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:12–13).  What will this second and more perfect Adam do? According to Jeremiah 23:5-6, He will “reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land....”  Oh, and the Name by which the Son of David will also be called will be, “The Lord Our Righteousness.” 
 
In Isaiah we are promised that when He reigns as King, “He will judge between the nations, and will mediate for many peoples; and they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning knives.  Nation will not lift up a sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Isa. 2:4).  The second Adam would, be born of a virgin as fully human and fully diving: “...a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”  When the second Adam comes to reign as King, His reign will bring the kind of peace only God is capable of restoring:
...the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and fattened steer will be together; and a little boy will lead them.  Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.... They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6-7, 9)
 
When it was announced by the angels to the shepherds that the promised King was born, it was declared to them: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11). Jesus, as the second and better Adam, humbled Himself by, “taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men.... He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7-8).  He was born to live the perfect life we could not live to die the death we all deserved.
 
There is only One who is qualified to reverse the curse of sin, and it was and is Jesus!  In Revelation 21:5, we are told that through His death and triumphant victory over death, that He is making all things new! This is what we all want and what all of creation is longing for!  We long for a day without the dark cloud of the curse of sin.  This is why Paul wrote,
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the eagerly awaiting creation waits for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21)
 
When Jesus entered into Jerusalem the week before He was to be crucified for the sins of mankind, the children in the temple area shouted something that irritated the chief priests and scribes.  As Jesus entered into Jerusalem, the children shouted: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (see Matt. 21:15-16).  The chief priests and scribes said to Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”  What were the children saying?  They were celebrating the promised second Adam, the “righteous Branch of David”, and the One who is to be called “The Lord our Righteousness” (see Jer. 23:5-6).  Guess how Jesus answered the irritated religious leaders who were concerned about what the children were saying?  He answered them by quoting Psalm 8:2, here is what He said: “Yes. Have you never read [chief priests and scribes], ‘From the mouths of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise for Yourself’?”
 
Do you realize what Jesus said to the chief priests and scribes? He was essentially saying that although Adam made a mess of creation through his sin in the Garden, there was a “Son of Man” who was made a little lower than the angels and God when He willingly took on human flesh to become fully human while remaining fully God at the same time!  Jesus did this for the purpose of redeeming mankind through His cross for our sins, and by doing so, made redemption possible for all creation, and this is the point of Psalm 5, “Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty!”  Do you hear Philippians 2 in Psalm 8?
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:8-11)
 
Now, against the backdrop of Philippians 2:8-11, listen what Psalm 8:7-8 promises: “You have him rule over the works of Your hands; You have put everything under his feet, All sheep and oxen, And also the animals of the field, The birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.”  All of creation, including your pets, are eagerly awaiting for the completion of our redemption because when it happens to us, creation will enjoy the good and faithful reign of the second Adam over them as well, and when He comes to do that, He will make all things new and it is what He will restore that all of creation is longing for:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
 
And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”
 
On the Day Revelation 21 becomes our reality, all that was lost, will be restored and it will be even better than the Eden the first Adam lost!  I am not sure if that means He will restore and make new your pet that was lost to the curse, but I do know that it will be better!  The glory we will be crowned with will be the glory of King Jesus when, “There will no longer be any curse...” (Rev. 22:3).  We will “obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isa. 51:11)!  The great hope of our future is not who is in office as our president, but the King who is coming to restore all that was lost through the first Adam.  Christian, because you belong to the second Adam, you can declare with David: “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!”
 
[1] Soul and spirit are used synonymously in the Bible (e.g. Acts 7:54-60; Matt. 10:28).

"God Wants Me to Be Happy"

All people want to be happy.  I have spent a lot of time with people as a pastor, and the majority of couples and individuals who met with me over the years did so because they longed to be happy.  It is also true that the motivation for couples seeking marriage or divorce, the desire for a new job or the determination to quit a job, what led to substance abuse or a willingness to break an addiction is all the same: the desire to be happy. In fact, there have been people who claimed to be Christians who sought marriage, divorce, drugs, freedom from addiction, debt, and freedom from debt out of the belief that God wanted them to be happy.
 
How about you?  Do you believe God wants you to be happy?  Do you believe that the ends justify the means to achieve and experience the happiness you believe God wants for you?  Maybe you are asking any one of the following questions: 
“I am unhappy where I live, if I have the means to do so, can I move so that I can be happier?”
 
“I am tired of driving the same old car, should I buy a new one that will make me happier?”
 
“I feel unfulfilled where I work, can I look for a new job that will fill my day with a little more joy?”
 
“I feel ignored and taken for granted in my marriage, my spouse does not meet my needs, I am unhappy, our children are miserable because we are miserable...  something needs to change so that we can be happy.” 
 
So here is what I want to do with the time we have left.  I want to show you from the Bible three things:
God expects you to seek happiness.
God commands you to pursue your joy.
Finding your joy/happiness is possible.
 
By answering the above three questions, I hope that you will have a clear and biblical understanding as to whether God wants you to be happy. 
 
God Expects You to Seek Happiness (vv. 1-5)
Let me begin by stating that in Psalm 95 alone, the word joy is repeated three times in the first two verses: “sing for joy...”, “shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation”, “shout joyfully to Him in songs with instruments.”  But Psalm 95 is not the only place where such language is used; consider the language from the Bible:
“Delight yourself...” (Ps. 37:4)
“Rejoice...” (Phil. 4:4)
“Rejoice always...” (1 Thess. 5:16)
“Let us rejoice and be glad...” (Ps. 118:24)
 
But where is it that God expects us to find our joy?  Again, consider the same above verses:
“Delight yourself in the Lord...” (Ps. 37:4)
“Rejoice in the Lord always...” (Phil. 4:4)
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess. 5:16-18)
“This is the day which the Lord has made, let’s us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Ps. 118:24)
 
Is our happiness only to be found in God?  What about verses like Ecclesiastes 9:9, does it not tell us to enjoy life while we have it? “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your futile life which He has given you under the sun, all the days of your futility; for this is your reward in life and in your work which you have labored under the sun.” Yes and no.  Consider the first two verses of Psalm 19 and what it says about creation: “The heavens tell of the glory of God; and their expanse declares the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” The heavens are what God created, and like your wife whom you love, like the life you enjoy, and everything else... it all points to the glory of the Creator! 
 
The reason why Psalm 95 begins with these words: “Come, let’s sing for joy to the Lord, let’s shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.  Let’s come before His presence with a song of thanksgiving, let’s shout joyfully to Him in songs with instruments” is because He is the giver of all good things!  Why should we worship Yahweh?  Because Psalm 95:3-5 is true of only Him: “For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are also His. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and His hands formed the dry land.”  This is why, of the Ten Commandments, Jesus summed up the first four: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37; see also Deut. 6:5; Exod. 20:1-11). 
 
Listen, God expects us to seek our joy, but not ultimately in His good gifts but in the giver who gave those good gifts... namely God Himself.  In fact C.S. Lewis rightfully observed from reading his Bible that, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”[1] 
 
God Commands You to Pursue Your Joy (vv. 6-7)
Psalm 95 begins with an imperative, which is a command: “Come, let’s sing for joy...”  Why does He command us to pursue our joy?  Because we exist for something greater than the good gifts of His creation.  We exist because of Him and for Him! The second imperative in Psalm 95 begins with verse 6, “Come, let’s worship and bow down, let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.”  Why are we commanded to bow before God?  Because “He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand” (v. 7).
The command to pursue our joy is not that we find it in anything, but in the One who made all things.  He is God, and by definition there is nothing and no one that is greater than He is.  To look for or expect our happiness or joy to be primarily found in anything or anyone else will not only leave you empty and disappointed, but is to worship the gift over the Giver!  To worship the gift over the Giver is to expect from the gift the thing that only the Giver, God, can provide.   
 
C.S. Lewis wrote in his book, Reflections on the Psalms, something that I have found helpful, so I will share it with you:
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.
 
Do you hear what C.S. Lewis is saying?  We praise what we value and care about and our delight is not complete until our delight is expressed. If it is true, that there is no greater beauty, reality, or person than the God who created all that is beautiful and good, true worship cannot be experienced unless it is directed at Him.  This is why the Westminster Catechism is right to begin with these words: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”  But even on this point, C.S. Lewis made the following observation that helps us get a little closer to answering the question as to what kind of happiness God wants for us; here is what Lewis wrote: “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. To fully enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”  John Piper took it one step further by swapping out the word “and” in the Westminster Catechism of Faith with the word “by”: “The chief end of man is to glorify God byenjoying Him forever.”
 
God does expect us to seek our happiness, and He does command us to pursue our joy, but a happiness and a joy that is rooted in Him.  If our happiness and joy is sought in anything other than God, it will not satisfy.  However, if the pursuit of our happiness and joy is sought in Him, there will be a joy and happiness that will be rooted in a contentment in Him. This is how and why James 1:2-3 is only true for those who find their joy in Jesus Christ: “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
 
Finding Your Joy/Happiness is Possible (vv. 8-10)
So, does God want you to be happy?  Yes, He wants you to be happy in Him!  Does that mean that He wants you to leave your marriage because it does not make you happy?  No!  Does that mean you should leave your job because it does not make you happy?  No.  Does that mean you should get a new car because it does not make you happy? No, not necessarily.  Why?  Because your happiness and joy cannot ultimately be found in anything or anyone except the God who is your Maker.
When we come to Psalm 95:8, there is a shift from the command to find your joy in God to Israel’s rebellion while they were in the wilderness, and more specifically, the Psalm refers to something that happened in Exodus 17:1-7 not long after God saved Israel from Pharoh and his army by parting the Red Sea.  While in Egypt, Israel witnessed their God and Maker do mighty deeds that should have left little room to doubt His goodness and love for His people.  Even though they had no reason to doubt God’s faithfulness to them, they still struggled to believe His faithfulness to them, so they complained: “So the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water so that we may drink” (Exod. 17:2)!  Moses’ response gives us a glimpse into 40 years of Israel in the wilderness: “Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 
 
Throughout Israel’s existence, they were known for complaining and faithlessness towards God.  Even after 40 years in the wilderness, God said of His people: “‘Be appalled at this, you heavens, And shudder, be very desolate,’ declares the Lord. ‘For My people have committed two evils: They have abandoned Me, the fountain of living waters, to carve out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that do not hold water’” (Jer. 2:12-13).  The great evil that Israel was guilty of was that She traded God for idols that could not satisfy.  Consider another example from Isaiah 55:1-3 when God invited His people to turn away from the things that could not satisfy what they really needed:
You there! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost. “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. “Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David.
 
So what happened in Exodus 17?  Moses immediately brought Israel’s complaint before God out of a fear that they might eventually stone him to death.  Moses asked, “What am I to do with this people?” (v. 4).  Listen to the way God responded to Israel’s lack of faith and sin: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel” (17:5-6).   In other words, God said to Moses: “Moses, take your staff that ought to be used to strike Israel for their sins, and take your rod and strike the rock I will be standing on so that Israel will not die of thirst.”
 
In 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, the apostle Paul said that the rock Moses struck was a picture and example of what God would do to satisfy the thirst of all who desire to be satisfied.  The rod of God’s judgment for our sin came down upon Jesus as the rock of our salvation!  Paul said of the rock Moses struck: “for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ” (v. 4).  Now, listen to what Jesus said in John 7:37-38, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
 
Psalm 95 begins with these words: “Come, let’s sing for joy to the Lord, let’s shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.”  Jesus is the “rock of our salvation”!  Again, Psalm 95 continues, “Come, let’s worship and bow down, let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker” (v. 6).  Of Jesus, the Bible testifies, “...for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16).  Because the rod of God’s holy wrath came upon Jesus in our place, we are told:
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:8-11)
 
The Psalmist then reminds us that not only is God our Maker, but that He is our God, “and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.  Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the wilderness...” (v. 7).  Can you not hear the words of Jesus in Psalm 95:7, did He not say: “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.... I am the good shepherd, and I know My own, and My own know Me.... And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice; and they will become one flock, with one shepherd” (John 10:11, 14, 16).
 
Conclusion
Is joy and happiness possible for you?  The answer is Yes!  But it will not come from your car, through your job, or from any other person, but your Maker and the Great Shepherd of His sheep... namely Jesus!  If you are seeking your happiness and joy in anything other than Jesus, then C.S. Lewis’ words serve as a fitting conclusion to this sermon: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
 
God wants you to be happy and He wants you to experience joy, but it is a happiness and a joy that can only be found in Him.  The joy and happiness that can only be found in God is the kind of joy and happiness that does not dissolve through suffering but sustains the sufferer because of the One from Whom true happiness and joy comes from.  Amen.
 
 
[1] C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harvest, 1964), p. 93.