Everyone Lives By Faith

To live requires faith. It is impossible to function without it. If you like you can substitute the word trust. Without faith, we would be paranoid, frozen in inaction. Just about ever facet of our lives involves trust. We have faith in products and services we use, that they will perform as advertised.  We wouldn’t drive a car if we didn’t have faith that it was safe. The examples are endless so I’ll stop here. Our faith, however, is not without thought. Before I drive this car, I want to know, how good is the manufacturer’s reputation? Is my faith in their products reasonable based on what is known?

Faith in God – Based on What I Know

Christian faith is not blind faith or perhaps I should say mature Christian faith is not blind faith. Mature faith ask tough questions. Mature faith works through tough times when that faith is shaken. In spite of the confident public image some Christian’s put forward, especially those in Christian vocation, everyone has periods of doubt. When you are being paid as a Christian leader, career survival demands you keep those doubts to yourself, but that is a topic for another time.

Faith relationships, as any relationship, must be nurtured. It takes time, energy, study and commitment. The Christian church has not endured and grown because millions of people turned off their brains and mindlessly wandered through life ignoring all the bad things that happen.

I became a Christian because I was brought up in it. I remain a Christian because my personal experience and study convinces me that it is true.

Apart from Christ himself, the man who had the most influence in spreading Christianity was the Apostle Paul and he wrote.

1Co 15:16-20 ASV
(16)  For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised:
(17)  and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
(18)  Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
(19)  If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
(20)  But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep.

The subjects around religion can be endless, but the central and defining issue for Christianity is, as Paul puts it in these 5 verses. Did Jesus come out of the grave? I believe the overwhelming evidence says yes.

This verse come from Jesus teaching we call, the “Sermon on The Mount.” Verses 3-11 we call the “Beatitudes.” We are fortunate enough in our area to have 2 Christian radio stations. One plays contemporary music the other plays southern gospel. I listen to CJRI, the southern gospel station. Each morning at 9:00 am is a message by Dr. David Jeremiah. This morning he spoke on this particular Beatitude. It occurred to me that this was particularly good timing. What better message could we have right after Easter? It was God’s mercy that compelled Jesus to the Cross. It is His mercy that overlooks our weakness and extends His love.

In practical terms, how do we extend mercy? Jesus gave us some examples. A lawyer ask the question, “Who is my neighbour?” This was Jesus answer.

Luk 10:30-37

30. Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion,
34. came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’
36. Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?”
37. He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

I just got off the phone with my brother. We are both at the age where the life we have lived is more than the life in front of us. Also because we are brother, we know each other too well for pretense.  We are both Christians and there is no room for idealism. A Christian is simply someone who has come to recognize how imperfect they are, and how badly they need the forgiveness Jesus offers. Just because we are no longer what we used to be is no reason to believe we have arrived.

Getting past your past is a life long process and it does not come without a great deal of struggle. The Church is the body of Christ, we need each other and we need to be honest with each other. Pretending to be more righteous than we really are is not helpful to ourselves or each other.  Neither do I have the right to feel superior because my struggles are not the same as yours. Sin is sin, there are no degrees.

Today is Easter it is time to celebrate that we can can be and are forgiven. It is also time to recommit ourselves to do better to live out our faith better before a world that doesn’t give much thought to Jesus Christ. I commit to doing better, not so I can boast, but because I care, and those I care about can see that living with Jesus is much better than living without Him. The better I can live what I believe, the more they can see Him and the difference He makes. There is nothing about me that is attractive, the better I hide behind Jesus, the better it is for everyone.

HAPPY EASTER

The question some ask is why didn’t God just forgive Adam. The short answer is that He did. However, the dilemma is how does God do that and remain true to Himself? If He just forgives Adam outright, then He violates His command “for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”

We may not appreciate the dilemma because we regularly have to backtrack on
things we may have said in the past. It is a consequence of being fallible.

Num 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor the son of man, that
he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will
he not make it good?

God, however, is not. He does not and can not contradict Himself. His justice can not be set aside, even by Him. God, however, is not only a God of Justice, He is a God of Mercy. He therefore is constrained to extend mercy without violating His Justice. To fully understand the seriousness of God’s justice requires some understanding of the Old Testament Law. In the interest of keeping this blog to a reasonable length, let me just say it is serious stuff.

Heb 9:22 According to the law, nearly everything is cleansed with blood,
and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.

Heb 10:1-4
1. the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near.
2. Or else wouldn’t they have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins?
3. But in those sacrifices there is yearly reminder of sins.
4. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

The laws and sacrificial system of the Old Testament, as explained by the writer of Hebrews, was never designed by God to satisfy His judicial requirements. It was put in place to teach us how serious sin is and how impossible it is for us to meet those requirements. It was God’s intention from the moment of Adam’s sin that Christ would come to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Only Jesus Christ was able to live in perfect compliance to God’s judicial commands, because He himself was God. The horror of Good Friday is God’s historical demonstration of how seriously God takes His Justice

My Moral Compass

A good deal of my professional life involves sales. A sale done well is a win-win transaction. Both the salesperson and consumer walk away feeling good about the transaction. The sales professional understands the dynamics of the sales process. One of the fundamental principles of sales is that people buy on emotion then justify it logically. Of course there’s always the exception to the rule, but the vast majority of purchases are concluded because the customer felt good about the transaction. Such is the power of emotion.

I make this point so that we can understand it is not what we think about sin that drives our behaviour, it’s how we feel about sin that will determine the choices we make. Our emotional response to our own behaviour as well as those around us is the indicator of our moral compass.

Moral Deadening OR How to Boil a Living Frog

It is a puzzle to me why God allows His creation to continue on a path that rejects Him. But the fact, both scriptural and experiential, that is exactly what He does. Most have heard how to boil a living frog. I’ve never done this so I don’t know if it is in fact true. The account says if you throw a frog into hot water, it will jump out. That seems a sensible response. However, if you put a frog in temperate water it will stay there and you can gradually raise the temperature of the water until the frog is cooked (so the story goes).

Our moral sensibilities are dulled the same way. Those of us who have lived more than 2 decades are acutely aware of the dulling of our cultural moral thermometer. Paul speaks to this in 1 Tim 4:1-2

1 Timothy 4:1-21

1. But the Spirit says expressly that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons,
2. through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron;

Training Christian Character

For all of our talk about feelings, generally speaking, we don’t understand them very well at all. A friend of mine, who was a psychologist, had a poster in his office that said, “Emotions are not like faucets you can’t turn them off and on.” That is true. However, emotions can be trained. Like all training, it occurs over time.

Matthew records this teaching of Jesus.

Mat 5:29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna.

We know that this statement of Jesus is not referring to the literal eye but it is a metaphor about what we allow into our minds and take up residency . Now look at the verses in Matthew that precede vs 29.

Mat 5:27-28 WEB (R)

27. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery;’
28. but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

The condemnation of Jesus here is not in the act of looking, nor is it even for having a normal male hormonal reaction. The condemnation comes for act of lusting. Lusting is the activity of ruminating about the woman and planning or imagining having sex with her. Over the years I’ve known men who never grew up. They go out of their way to look at attractive younger women and act like they were still adolescences. Most men and all of my male friends look with wonderment and some disdain at such immature behaviour. Our emotional reaction is quite different from those immature men. It is not that we don’t recognize (and appreciate) the attractiveness of these women, but as we have matured we have trained our emotions to behave accordingly.

The process from immaturity to maturity is this. I recognize the inappropriateness of my emotion and tell it to smarten-up. Over time my emotion starts to listen to my brain and act accordingly. This process is accomplished by putting good things into my brain, good books, good music, good friends, and avoiding the bad things like movies and television shows that model the behaviour I want to avoid.

The information I habitually put into my brain and consciously or unconsciously say this is enjoyable, will determine my emotion responses. Now the question for we who call ourselves Christians, does our emotional reaction to sin match that of God’s

Regardless of our emotional reaction to sin, in order to understand the Christian faith one has to understand how God views of sin.

God’s View of Sin

So let’s go back to the very beginning of the Bible into the Garden of Eden.

Gen 2:16-17 WEB (R)

16. Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17. but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”

So here is the command from God. You can have everything in the Garden except the fruit from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Now let us fast forward to Eve,

Gen 3:4-7 WEB(R)

4. The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t surely die,
5. for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate.
7. The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

Now the act of eating some fruit is not such a big deal. What’s wrong with that? Now let’s take a modern day prohibition. Athlete, you may compete, as long as you don’t take steroids. Why not?  Apart from the cheating aspect, we now know prolonged use can kill you. I suspect that if we were to have brain storming session to list some idea’s that seemed good at the time, but later proved to have serious negative consequences we could compile a significant list.

What is my point? Simply this, just because we don’t see an action has harmful, doesn’t mean it isn’t. What‘s the harm of a little white lie, or keeping the money when I’ve been given too much change, or simply giving the facts that make you look good or taking credit for something someone else did or and you fill in the blank.

Gen 3:17 WEB (R) To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

A perfect creation was cast into chaos because of sin. If we can’t make the connection between moral action and what this planet is going through, then watch the crucifixion scene in “Passion of the Christ.” That’s how serious God takes sin.

“The message of this book does not grow out of these times but it is appropriate to them. It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.”

Holiness Defined

For most Christian’s holy is a very common word. The problem is that for most of us, it is a word that we don’t understand very well. Go into the original languages isn’t very helpful either. The word is used in Greek (ἅγος hagos) is defined as; (an awful thing) sacred (physically pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially consecrated).

Lev 11:44  For I am Yahweh your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy:

1Pe 1:13-16 WEB (R)

13. Therefore, prepare your minds for action, be sober and set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ–
14. as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in your ignorance,
15. but just as He who called you is holy, you yourselves also be holy in all of your behavior;
16. because it is written, “You shall be holy; for I am holy.”

Holiness is one of the attributes of God. It was infused in His creation at the beginning. Sin corrupted that holiness but that does not mean God’s requirement for holiness has been diminished.

The Emotion of Language

Let’s talk a little of a language and words. It would be a mistake to understand language and words has merely tools to communicate intellectual information. Language and words communicate emotion. It is only through emotion that some thoughts can truly be understood. Holiness is such a word. Pure holiness can only be found in God. The Bible records the number of instances where people encounter the God’s Holiness. Notice their reaction.

Moses at burning bush:

Exo 3:1-6

1. Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb.
2. The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3. Moses said, “I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”
4. When Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” He said, “Here I am.”
5. He said, “Don’t come close. Take your sandals off of your feet, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.”
6.  Moreover he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look at God.

Moses Coming Down off the mountain after receiving the 10 commandments

Exo 34:29-30

29. It happened, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mountain, that Moses didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.
30. When Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come near him.

Jesus and the Mount of Transfiguration:

Mat 17:1-6

1. After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain by themselves.
2. He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as the light.
3. Behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them talking with him.
4. Peter answered, and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to me here. If you want, let’s make three tents here: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
5. While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. Behold, a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
6. When the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces, and were very afraid.

No generations of Christians have ever been as bombarded with an assault on our moral thermometer as this generation has. The information age can also be understood as the misinformation age. Remember, information is not just facts, it is also emotion. While God has gone to extraordinary lengths so we may enter into relationship with Him, we must not cross the line of presumption. God is not one of us, we are His creation. He is the transcended God, high and lifted up. No power in heaven or on earth can approach His. Just because we cannot understand or comprehend Him, does not justify us trying to bring God down to our level.

Rev 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

When we fully apprehend His holiness there is not only the intellectual comprehension but also the physical reaction.

Rev 4:10-11 WEB (R)

10. the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives forever and ever, and throw their crowns before the throne, saying,
11. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, the Holy One, to receive the glory, the honor, and the power, for you created all things, and because of your desire they existed, and were created!”

The events of Easter demonstrate how seriously God takes His holiness. God’s holiness is a standard we could never hope to, even for an instance, attain. Therefore God had to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. The death of His Son is the most dramatic proof how seriously the requirement for holiness is. If God takes it so seriously, the question that confronts us is, how seriously do we take holiness? How much of our time, energy, daily decisions and prayer is dedicated to the pursuit of demonstrable holiness in our lives.

Rom 12:1-2 WEB (R)

1. Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
2. Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.

It’s about the Relationship

Easter is a celebration of relationships; it celebrates the possibility of our relationship to God because of what God has done to make it possible.
That is the essence of Christianity. At its core it is about having a relationship with God. Yes, Christianity is a religion with doctrines, creeds, and religious practice, but all of those are insignificant or at least they should be, when placed alongside the fundamental importance of right relationship with God.
I have 2 children, a boy and a girl or more accurately at this stage, a man and a woman. My relationship with them is the same but different. Every parent knows exactly what I mean. The detail of how each individual relationship plays out is insignificant as long as the relationship, established on love and respect, exists.
What is important to God is that we have an ongoing relationship of love and respect. How the various denominations reflect that relationship is insignificant. As individuals and individual groups, we are all in a transition to perfect maturity. As an Anglican I understand, of course, the closer we get to that perfect maturity, the more Anglican like everybody will become (very subtle humour).
There is a direct relationship between truth and a strong healthy relationship. We cannot expect to have a strong relationship with anyone, let alone God, if we don’t know them as an individual. If your wife is 5’ 2” with short blond hair and you describe her as 5’ 11’ with long black hair, a reasonable assumption is that you don’t have a very good relationship with your wife. Should this continue, a reasonable expectation is that she will not be your wife for much longer. Complete knowledge of another person is not possible, but what we do know should be true and that knowledge should be increasing.
Those same principles remain true in our relationship to God. We are not at liberty to believe anything we want.

The Dynamics of the Divine Human Relationship

While it is true that the principles of strong relationships remain the same whether it is a human of a divine relationship, without question the dynamics are different. I do not, cannot and should not relate to God the same way I relate to a fellow human being. So the question is, how do I relate to God and how do I enter into and maintain a right relationship with Him? Easter when rightly understood helps us in answering that question.

What Easter Tells Us

Easter tells us 4 very important things about God and how to have a relationship with Him.

1. God takes Holiness seriously
2. God takes Sin seriously
3. God takes His Justice seriously
4. God takes Us seriously

Tomorrows post: God Takes Holiness Seriously

9. Further, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge. Yes, he pondered, sought out, and set in order many proverbs.
10. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words, and that which was written blamelessly, words of truth.
11. The words of the wise are like goads; and like nails well fastened are words from the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.
12. Furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13. This is the end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.
14. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it is good, or whether it is evil.

Will man ever build a computer that will exceed man’s intelligence? The ability God has put in man’s brain is beyond our present understanding. The more we understand of the brain’s functionality we become aware there is much more to learn. I have no doubt that we can build a computer which will be able to process data faster than we can, but we will never build one that is more intelligent.

This man wanted to go with Jesus. Who could blame him.  It was a natural response after what Jesus had done for him.  However, that is not what Jesus permitted. This man who had received was now given the responsibility to give. His job was to “declare.” …That would be accomplished in 2 ways.

1. A change in lifestyle and
2. An explanation why the change had occurred.

So it must be for us. How and why we live as we do must be the subject of our conversation.

Act 1:8  But you shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you. And you shall be witnesses to Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

This situation has come about, in part, resulting from our emphasis on winning the lost. Proselytizing, although it has become a dirty word today, has been mandated to the church by Jesus himself. The problem is that we have simply not understood how Jesus meant for us “be a witness.” In part I suspect the problem stems from our tendency to compartmentalize our lives. A necessity for successful living in Canada in the 20th and 21st century.

In the time of Christ the distinction between work and regular family life was not so clearly defined. Family survival was a shared responsibility by all family members. Children were raised to participate and prepare for greater responsibility as they grew older. Education was understood to be primarily the responsibility of parents, mostly the father. Male children, as they grew older, spent more and more with father as he went about the task of providing for the family.

Today school and work take family members away from the family for a significant part of the day. We get up in the morning and go off to school or work. We come home usually at different times and try to get some family time. We are forces to live by schedules. In the past we scheduled time to focus on visiting on behalf of the church, give out tract, go on short term mission trips,  attend meetings to plan outreach programs. As life demands more of us exhaustion demands we schedule something out. In the information age, which is primarily agnostic, Christians have lost their sense of urgency on winning the lost. That does not mean they consider witnessing unimportant, it is just not as urgent as many other things in their lives.

Just because something is important doesn’t mean I have to address it right now. I have a very important report that has to be submitted. If it is due tomorrow, it is both urgent and important. If it is due in 3 weeks, it is important but not urgent. The real problem, however, is that we need to redefine how we witness. It needs to be as easy as breathing and not something that requires I schedule it into an already too busy lifestyle.