Sin Is Ugly

John Piper: Cancer is a Parable About Sin

All human suffering, especially the suffering of the Son of God, is meant to portray to dull souls the unimaginable moral ugliness of sin and the unimaginable offensiveness of sin to God.

That’s why there is suffering in the world according to Romans 8:20. God subjected the creation to futility, not because it wanted to be subjected, but because of him who subjected it, in hope for that new day. So God brought down calamities galore, and diseases galore, and death everywhere in order to make plain: Sin is ugly.

The Parable in All Our Pain

All human beings hate suffering. Very few human beings hate sin. We’re not getting the connection. It is a parable.

Cancer is a parable.
Leukemia is a parable.
Arthritis is a parable.
Ebola is a parable.
Tsunamis are parables of the ugliness of sin.

Piper: “God brought down calamities and diseases and death in order to make plain: Sin is ugly.”Tweet

Sin is ugly. It should be killed daily. I die every day, because Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily” (Luke 9:23). And crosses are for dying.

The Ugly Offense of Our Iniquity

Sin is so ugly and so offensive, the only remedy was the death of an infinitely worthy divine substitute.

Sin is so ugly and so offensive, all human death — billions and billions of deaths — are owing to one sin.

Sin is so ugly and so offensive, everlasting conscience torment is a just and proper response.

Sin is so ugly and so offensive, it justifies the slaughter of the Canaanites — men, women, and children — after 400 years so that their iniquity could be full.

Sin is so ugly and so offensive, Jesus describes it in a parable as the unpayable debt of 10,000 times 20 years’ wages.

Sin is so ugly and so offensive, that God ordained 1,500 years of law covenant, so that every mouth would be stopped, and all the world would be accountable to God, and know that no one is justified by works of the law, because you can’t do any — 1,500 years to learn that lesson (Romans 3:19–20).

To the Death

Conflict with this ugly and offensive reality, therefore, is not a peaceful affair. It is not a pretty affair. Neither on Golgotha, nor in the kitchen, nor the bedroom, nor in front of the television.

If we are faithful every time we meet this quivering power, we meet it with a sword. No truce. No compromise. No prisoners. To the death.

---

This clip comes from John Piper’s recent message, “Make War: The Pastor and His People in the Battle Against Sin,” which was given during the 2015 Desiring God Conference for Pastors. You can access all the audio and video from the conference free of charge.

Piper: “Sin is so ugly and so offensive, the only remedy was the death of an infinitely worthy divine substitute.”

Yet Not What I Will

Jon Bloom post:  Not My Will Be Done

“Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36)

Darkness had descended on Jerusalem. Its residents had finished their Passover meals. The lamb and unleavened bread had been consumed; the sandals, staffs, and belts put away (Exodus 12:1–11).

In Caiaphas’s house, a conference was underway with some members of the Sanhedrin, some officers of the temple guard, and one of Jesus’s closest friends. In the secluded hillside olive garden of Gethsemane, just outside the city’s eastern wall opposite the temple, Jesus sat with his other eleven closest friends. The eleven friends could not stay awake. Jesus could not sleep.

The Great Passover Unveiled

Earlier that evening, Jesus had shared with his disciples the most marvelous Passover meal of all time, though his disciples only recognized this in retrospect. Jesus had “earnestly desired” to eat it with them (Luke 22:15). For the Great Passover, the one for which the Passover in Egypt was a type and shadow, was about to take place.

The angel of death was coming to claim the Firstborn Son (Colossians 1:15). The worst plague of God’s judgment was about to fall. But this Firstborn Son, being all and in all (Colossians 3:11), was also the Passover Lamb who would be slain to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29; Revelation 5:6). The eternally obedient Firstborn Son, the spotless Lamb of God, would take on himself all the sin of the sons and daughters of disobedience (Ephesians 5:6), his blood would cover them, they would receive his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21), and they would forever be shielded from the death angel’s blow (John 11:26).

So the Firstborn of many brothers (Romans 8:29), the Great Passover Lamb, had taken bread and wine and said to the first eleven of those brothers, “This is my body . . . This is my blood . . .” (Mark 14:22–25). And in doing so, the old Passover was subsumed into the new Passover.

From that moment on, the new Passover meal would be eaten in remembrance of Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:23–26) and how he delivered all his brothers and sisters out of the slavery of sin and death and led them into the promised eternal kingdom of the beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).

Nine Unfathomable Words

But now, among the olive trees, Jesus was praying. Many times he had prayed in “desolate places” (Luke 5:16). Yet never had he known desolation like this.

In this familiar garden of prayer, Jesus looked deeply into the Father’s Cup he was about to drink and was terrified. Everything in his human flesh wanted to flee the impending physical torture of crucifixion. And his Holy Spirit groaned with ineffable dread at the far greater impending spiritual torture of being forsaken by his Father.

Such was his distress over this “baptism” (Luke 12:50), the very thing he had come into the world to accomplish (John 12:27), that Jesus cried out, “Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36).

Yet not what I will, but what you will. Nine words. Nine unfathomable words.

God, having longed, and even pled, to be delivered from God’s will, expressed in these nine simple words a humble faith in and submission to God’s will that was more beautiful than all the glory in the created heavens and earth combined. Mystery upon Trinitarian mystery: God did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but became obedient to God’s will, even if it meant God dying an incomprehensibly horrifying death on a Roman cross (Philippians 2:6, 8). God wanted God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, even though in that dark moment, God wished in body and soul that God’s will could be done another way.

Obedience in Suffering

And in that moment, another mystery came into view. God the Son, perfectly obedient to God the Father from all eternity, “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Never has another human felt such an intense desire to be spared the will of God. And never has any human exercised such humble, obedient faith in the Father’s will. “And being made perfect” — having exercised perfectly obedient trust in his Father in all possible dimensions — “he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:9).

As the Son learned this perfect and preeminently humble obedience as he yielded to the Father’s will, the first drops of his bloody agony seeped out of his pores (Luke 22:44).

Barely a kilometer away, in the high priest’s courtyard, his treacherous disciple prepared to lead a small, torch-bearing contingent of soldiers and servants to a familiar garden of prayer.

Your Will Be Done

No one understands better than God how difficult it can be for a human to embrace the will of God. And no human has suffered more in embracing the will of God the Father than God the Son. When Jesus calls us to follow him, whatever the cost, he is not calling us to do something he is either unwilling to do or has never done himself.

“No human has suffered more in embracing the will of God the Father than God the Son.”Tweet

That is why we look to Jesus as the “author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). He is our great high priest who understands, far better than we do, what it’s like to willingly and faithfully endure the sometimes excruciating, momentarily painful will of God for the sake of the eternal joy set before us (Hebrews 4:15; 12:2). And now he always lives to intercede for us so that we will make it through the pain to the eternal joy (Hebrews 7:25).

So this Maundy Thursday, we join God the Son in praying to God the Father, “Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10). And if we find that, in body and soul, we wish God’s will for us could be done in a way different from what God’s will appears to be, we may wholeheartedly pray with Jesus, “Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me.” But only if we will also pray with Jesus these nine gloriously humble words, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Because God’s will for us, however painful now, will result in joy inexpressible and full of glory and the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:8).

Peace

The Remedy for a Disquieted Soul

BY STEVEN DILLA

Today: The Remedy for a Disquieted Soul: a Holy Week reflection and prayer guide to prepare our hearts and minds for Easter. Curated by Steven Dilla.

John 20.19On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

The Farewell Discourse and Final Prayer of Jesus (an excerpt) | by Don Carson

It is vital to recognize that the peace Jesus gives is not a kind of placid tranquility which avoids all conflict. Jesus himself is heading for the cross; yet he speaks of his peace. 

Similarly, the peace Jesus promises does not avoid trouble; it triumphs over it. Nor is this peace to be confused with aloofness that is indifferent to injustice, corruption, idolatry, or some other sin. It is not simply “feeling good” in some narcissistic way, nor is it some mystical sense of well-being detached from physical and spiritual realities.

The world wishes peace on people. Yet for all its wishing, the world cannot grant the gift of personal peace, but only wish it on someone. At most, it can achieve reconciliation between brothers or between nations; and even then the achievement often proves temporary. 

Christ, by contrast, bequeaths the gift of peace on all his followers, bestowing it as an essential part of the salvation he achieves for them. The cross wins peace with God. The forgiveness, restoration, and healing which flow from this primary peace constitute the only adequate basis for peace with others, and for personal peace within ourselves.

So much of our restlessness and bitterness springs from our possessiveness, our desire for preeminence, our lust for recognition. Our love for self is so strong that it turns to hatred for others who do not give us what we think is our due. 

There is no peace where such sins flourish. Jesus betrayed no possessiveness. He desired his Father’s glory and will, not personal preeminence and popular recognition. Far from loving his life, he gave it up for others—indeed, for others who did not begin to offer him what was his due. And so Jesus could speak of his peace.

Lenten Evening Prayer: The Daily Examen1. Opening prayer of invitation: become aware of God’s presence (2 minutes).
2. Review the day with gratitude (3 minutes).
3. Pay attention to your emotions (3 minutes).
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it (5 minutes).
5. Closing prayer: look toward tomorrow (2 minutes).

Today’s ReadingsLeviticus 1 (0 – 2:37)John 20 (Listen – 4:17)

Holy Week Reflections
Part 1 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

Where are the Outcasts?

 Jonathan Parnell post: Jesus Turns the Tables

He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. (Mark 11:15)

This particular Monday may have felt like the proverbial Monday morning in the modern Western world — a time to reengage the grind and get back to work. Jesus, indeed, walked into Jerusalem to take care of business.

The meek and mild Jesus of progressive “tolerance” that so many of our contemporaries have come to prefer was nowhere to be found when he made a mess of the money-changers. There was nothing soft and tender on display when Jesus, in Jeremiah-like fashion, pronounced a resounding judgment on Israel.

In no uncertain terms, his rebuke fell on their worship.

Pigeons! Get Your Pigeons!

The Christian tradition in which I was raised regularly had visiting musical groups play concerts. As you can imagine, these groups would have their albums and other merchandise to promote on the circuit, but at our local church, they weren’t allowed to sell them — at least not in the church foyer where most attenders entered. The rationale came from Mark 11:15–19 when Jesus cleansed the temple. Jesus clearly didn’t like it when folks hawked their wares around the temple, and therefore we shouldn’t sell stuff around the sanctuary.

To be sure, the place of worship in first-century Judaism and the auditorium of a rural baptist church in America don’t exactly correspond, but true to Jesus’s words, my home church didn’t want the place of worship to be co-opted as a place of commerce. And that much is right.

So this is one temple problem going on in Jesus’s day. If you can imagine, the city would have been packed with pilgrims because of Passover. They would have come to the temple to offer sacrifices, and seizing an opportunity, pigeon-vendors set up shop. It might not have been too different from a sporting event today when sweaty salesmen walk the aisles and herald their popcorn — except these were sacrificial birds, their motive was sinister, and the prices were probably jacked even higher. “Pigeons! Get your pigeons!” they would have hollered.

Without doubt, this is a far cry from what the place of worship should have been, and Jesus wouldn’t have it. Turning heads by his claim of authority, Jesus spoke for God and turned over tables. And central to it all was what he quoted from the Old Testament, from Isaiah and Jeremiah:

“Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? [Isaiah 56:7–8] But you have made it a den of robbers [Jeremiah 7:11].”

Out of Sync

The co-op for commerce was a problem, but that wasn’t the only thing, or even the main thing, that Jesus was addressing. The real fiasco was how out of sync Israel’s worship was with the great end-times vision Isaiah had prophesied — the new age that Jesus had come to inaugurate.

Jesus quotes a portion of that vision from Isaiah 56: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”

The context of Isaiah 56 tells us more. According to Isaiah’s vision, eunuchs would keep God’s covenant (Isaiah 56:4), and foreigners would join themselves to him (Isaiah 56:6), and the outcasts would be gathered with his people (Isaiah 56:8). But Jesus approached a temple pulsing with buying and selling. The court of the Gentiles, the place designed all along for foreigners to congregate, for the nations to seek the Lord, was overrun with opportunists trying to turn a profit. And the Jewish leaders had let this happen.

Their economic drive, and their false security in the temple as an emblem of blessing (Jeremiah 7:3–11), had crowded out space for the nations to draw near, and therefore Jesus was driving them out. The great sadness of this scene wasn’t so much the rows of product and price-gouging, but that all this left no room for the Gentiles and outcasts to come to God. This place of worship should have prefigured the hope of God’s restored creation — a day when “all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob’” (Isaiah 2:2–3).

In other words, the ultimate vision of God’s people in God’s place would look a little more motley than it did when Jesus stepped foot into Jerusalem. And because their worship was so far removed from this vision, Jesus had enough. The worship of God’s people was so out of line with God’s purposes that zeal consumed God’s messiah. It had to stop.

What About Us?

And here is the lesson for us on this Monday of Holy Week, or really, here is the question.

How well does our worship prefigure the prophetic vision of the new creation? Do our relational investments and our corporate gatherings reflect, even in a small way, the heart of a God who gathers the outcasts?

This question is no more relevant than on Easter, when our churches try especially to look their finest. When we assemble for worship this weekend, no one will set up tables to exchange currency. No one will lead in their oxen in hopes of getting rich. No one will tote a cage of high-priced pigeons. But our decorations may be elaborate. Our attire may be elegant. Our music may be world class. We may put exuberant energy into these things, and make it an impressive spectacle, but if Jesus were to come, if he were to step into our churches this Sunday, he’d be looking for the rabble. Where are the misfits, the socially marginalized, the outcasts?

There is plenty of life in the veins of Easter to propel us beyond our comforts, our cliques, and our Sunday best, and send us powerfully out in the pursuit of the least.

---

This Holy Monday meditation is the second installment in the Desiring God 2015 Holy Week daily devotional series. Also in this series: The Savior’s Tears of Sovereign Mercy (Palm Sunday).

Remember How God ...

Steven Lee post: We Complain Because We Forget

I am stunned every time I read the story of the Exodus. How can the people of Israel complain like they do? How could they be so ignorant, so stupid, so forgetful?

The God of the universe had just tossed around the most powerful man on the face of the earth like a toddler with a rag doll. God didn’t just humble Pharaoh; he broke his spirit and revealed Pharaoh’s impotence. A slave people and their God left him and his nation in shambles. This display of power sent vibrations throughout the world, inspiring fear and awe.

The Deadly Disease of Spiritual Amnesia

Yet Israel’s response to this spectacular deliverance from Egypt is not mainly praise, worship, and whole-hearted trust. Instead, Israel responds with grumbling— complaining, murmuring, quarreling. “No water, Moses! Where’s the beef, Moses? I have blisters on my feet, Moses. Who died and made you boss? Are we there yet, Moses?” Spiritual amnesia set in quickly and covered the eyes of Israel’s hearts. So soon had they forgotten God’s gracious and miraculous deliverance?

This spiritual amnesia — forgetting God’s deliverance and provision — is a deadly disease. The people of Israel, on the heels of unthinkable miracles, with their pockets full of Egyptian jewelry, grumble at their less-than-five-star accommodations in the desert. This wasn’t just headache-induced grumbling or low-blood-sugar complaining. This was faithlessness. It is the heart that says, “I know better than God. If only he would follow my plan.”

Why We Complain

And yet that’s my heart and yours. “Where’s the dinner, honey? Leftovers again? Where’s the protein? Is that all you got done today? Can you change the dirty diaper? What’s this sticky stuff on the chair?” I can be just like the people of Israel. “I know you’ve forgiven all my sins at the cross, rescued me from eternal conscious torment, and given me everlasting joy in your presence, but all we have for dinner is Ramen or Cheerios.”

Grumbling, whining, and thanklessness are not ultimately the heart’s responses to circumstances, but to God. Israel grumbled at their enslavement, grumbled when Moses came on the scene, and still grumbled as they wandered safely in the wilderness. Their complaining wasn’t rooted in their scenery, but their heart.

The same is true for you. A heart of gratitude and thankfulness isn’t dependent on your bank statement, doctor’s diagnosis, or the praise you receive for a job well done. Thanklessness and grumbling — regardless of your situation, even your suffering — reflect your heart. They are sin. Spiritual amnesia is a deadly disease that threatens your faith and your joy more than any cancer. It penetrates to the core and rots your heart from within.

“Grumbling and complaining are not ultimately the heart’s responses to circumstances, but to God.”Tweet

Chemotherapy of the Soul

How can we guard ourselves from this spiritual forgetfulness? How can we root out the cancer that threatens our joy and faith? Very simply the antidote is to remember. Remember God’s gracious deliverance and redemption. Establish it in your memory. Memorialize it. Paint it on the walls of your house. Journal it and reread it each morning.

God gives us this pattern in the Exodus. Israel has just been given their menu for the next forty years: manna from heaven. Gather six days, a double portion on the last, and rest on the Sabbath. But then God commands Moses to take an omer of manna (about two quarts) and keep it in a jar as a reminder of God’s faithfulness (Exodus 16:32–33).

There are two miracles here. The obvious is that God fed a couple million people with manna from heaven for forty years. No gluten allergies, no low-carb diet, and no lack of vital nutrients. God sustains his people miraculously to teach them he can and will provide their daily bread — everything they need.

The second is that the manna in the jar did not spoil as it normally would (Exodus 16:20). God kept the manna from spoiling to remind Israel that he not only keeps manna from spoiling, but that he will keep his people alive, even in the wilderness. This jar of white flakes was to be an enduring reminder that God provides. He provides in the Exodus from Egypt, and he provides in the desert wasteland.

We Must Remember

God is saying the same thing to you. If you’re inclined to grumble, to be thankless, or to complain about our circumstances, God graciously reminds us that we must remember his gracious redemption and provision.

Take a moment and look back on God’s fingerprints all over your life:

• Remember how God has protected you from making shipwreck of your life.
• Remember how God graciously let you grow up in a godly family.
• Remember how God awakened you to the ugliness of your sin.
• Remember how you walked away from that terrible car crash.
• Remember how your wife, sister, or mom survived breast cancer.
• Remember how you had mentors and key friends guide you in your faith.
• Remember how he sustained you during that season of unemployment.
• Remember how God miraculously healed you.
• Remember that impossible prayer request that God answered.
• Remember how you had no money and an envelope just showed up in the mail with exactly the amount you needed.
• Remember how the gospel came alive as it never had before.
• Remember God.

The antidote to spiritual amnesia is making every effort to recall and remember God’s gracious deliverance. The fact that you — a sinner who was an enemy of God — are now a beloved child is a miracle. Don’t let that wonder ever fade.Remember.

Let this act of remembering awaken in you joy in God and a deep sense of gratitude that God loves you, knows you, and keeps you.

All Kinds of Artistic Craftsmanship

30 Then Moses said to the Israelites, "See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 31 and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts-- 32 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 33 to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. 34 And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. 35 He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers--all of them master craftsmen and designers.

Exodus 35

Be Steadfast

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

1 Cor 15: 57-58

With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.

1 Cor 15: 58 [Message]