Let God be God

Excerpt from Don Carson post: Genesis 13; Matthew 12; Nehemiah 2; Acts 12

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The lesson of these radically different experiences is one that we must learn again and again: God’s servants do not have the same gifts, the same tasks, the same success, or the same degree of divine intervention. It is partly a matter of gifts and calling; it is partly a matter of where we fit into God’s unfolding redemptive purposes. Has he placed us in times of declension, for example, or of revival; of persecution, or of major advance? Let God be God; let all his servants be faithful.

Love So Amazing

Jon Bloom post: Love Is Not a Verb

Two weeks ago, I encouraged us all to make a 2014 resolve to “pursue love” (1 Corinthians 13:5). Based on the following statements by Jesus, I would say that love is the most important thing to pursue this year.

The greatest commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-39)

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

However, we must be clear on what love actually is or else we will find ourselves lost in the pursuit of it and lose our resolve.

Love Is Not a Verb

John Mayer’s catchy song captures the way many people end up defining love: “Love Is a Verb.” The problem is that’s not true. Love is not a verb.

Now, I know what Mayer’s getting at. He means that lip-only love isn’t love. Love is displayed by action. That is true. The Apostle John agrees when he says, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

But it’s still a massive and potentially dangerous oversimplification. If we reduce love to a verb, we will miss love completely. Making love a verb will likely make us Pharisees. Because just like you can talk loving without really loving, you can act loving without really loving. That’s what Paul meant when he said, “if I give away all I have and deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). We can look like we’re fulfilling 1 John 3:18 and still not love.

To understand love correctly, we must see that love is a noun that necessarily produces verbs.

Love So Amazing, So Divine

Let’s turn to the “Apostle of Love” for help with this:

• “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
• “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
• “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16)

“God is love”: By saying this, the Apostle John is pointing us to the origin of love. In the previous verse he wrote, “love is from God” (1 John 4:7). True love is a part of and comes from the most beautiful, most valuable, most satisfying Treasure that exists: God.

“God so loved the world, that”: “That” is a very important word in this sentence. It was God’s love (noun) for his Trinitarian glory and for the Bride he determined to purchase for his Son that moved him to send (verb) his Son to the cross.

“By this we know love”: True love is revealed in Jesus’s death on the cross. He laid his life down for us “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2) in glorifying his Father (John 17:1), receiving glory from his Father (John 17:5), and the full eternal joy of his redeemed Bride (John 15:11). That’s what love looks like.

The most helpful single sentence definition of love I have found is from chapter four of John Piper’s book, Desiring God: “Love is the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others” (119).

Love is not the action of meeting others’ needs; it is the motive of the action. True love cherishes God supremely as the supreme Treasure and therefore wants others to also cherish the supreme Treasure and be eternally happy.

God is love, and love is from God. Therefore, loving others is doing whatever it takes for them to have as much of God as they can.

Demands My Soul, My Life, My All

This has huge implications. It means that true love can’t exist apart from God.

Anything that looks like love that we do for others — being patient, kind, not boastful or irritable or resentful, giving away our possessions, even martyrdom (1 Corinthians 13:4-5, 3)—that isn’t done for God’s glory and with a desire that others may taste and see that God is good (Psalm 34:8) is not true love. Godless love is a hollow shell, a love that has lost its soul. Godless love is sin (Romans 14:23).

It makes you catch your breath, doesn’t it? How often is your “love” sin? O how wonderful is the precious gospel! Jesus fulfilled the greatest commandments for us sinful lovers! There is therefore now no condemnation for us if we are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

But, if you’re like me and see the frequent hollow sinfulness of your love in light of Biblical love, you’ll realize that this whole “pursuing love” thing is a much deeper issue than we first thought.

And the remedy is far more than us trying to do more verbs. We need a deeper transformation, a profound reordering of our souls’ affections. And this only happens by looking at the glory of the great noun until we delight in him more than anything else.

So that’s where pursuing love begins: look at the noun. Dive into the greatest commandment before getting consumed in the second. In the long run, because of the verbs it will produce, this is the most loving thing we can do this year.

Where to Start

Essential: Read deeply and slowly the New Testament this year.

Suggestions: Read God Is the Gospel, Desiring God, The Pleasures of God, and Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, God’s Passion for His Glory.

Meditating on God's Providences

Jonathan Parnell post:  Seven Details to See in Your Past 

The grace of Jesus Christ not only covers our past and sustains our present, but also creates for us a future.

In him our sins are forgiven and we are declared righteous. In him we are sanctified and progressively being transformed into his image. In him we are inseparable from the Father’s love and we can rest assured — no matter what distress may come — he is never letting us go. Past, present, and future.

Our tomorrow is profoundly secure, and one of the best ways to remember this today is to think about our yesterdays.

Why Think Back?

Some call it meditating on God’s providences — that spiritual exercise bound to sweeten our lives and lighten our burdens, as Puritan pastor John Flavel says. He writes,

There is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own lives, if you would sit down and record from the beginning hitherto what God has been to you, and done for you; what evidences and outbreakings of his mercy, faithfulness, and love there have been in all the conditions you have passed through. (The Mystery of Providence, 118)

Simply put, this time-tested pastor advises us to think back on God’s faithfulness in our lives, which deepens our experience of the now and fuels our faith for the future. But simply put doesn’t mean simply done. This isn’t easy, especially if we find ourselves in the midst of hardship. How can we possibly look backwards for God’s goodness when everything around us is so bleak?

It is difficult, but the pastoral wisdom of Flavel may help. He has written instructions for us on how to think on our past, and my aim here is to build off his advice. The exercise is to read your own history — to pinpoint where you are now and jump backwards, working your way back up to the present. And during this reading, there are some specifics for which we should be on the lookout.

In considering God’s past providence in our lives, here are seven details worth tracking.

1. See God’s care for you.
We should know, and feel, that God cares for us (1 Peter 5:7) — and looking back on our lives will bear this out even if those memories bring more nightmare than nostalgia. There is certain to be pain, and maybe even the tiniest thought still hurts, but look for the Father’s care. It is there. Look for how he brought you through when all hope seemed lost, when your trouble seemed insurmountable, when miserable circumstances seemed to suffocate your faith. He brought you through — is bringing you through.

2. See God’s wisdom for you.
Consider those instances when delightful results came by the most unlikely means. It’s those times when, in the moment, you never saw them turning out the way they did. They could have been different, and it all feels so fragile now. One decision or opportunity turned another way would have meant you missing out on blessings now. Sometimes it’s even the smallest things. We weren’t even sure what we were doing, but God knew and he got it right.

3. See God’s grace for you.
If God’s wisdom uses unlikely means for our good, his grace is that we would receive any good at all. We see, on one hand, how things could have turned out. And on the other hand, we see how they should have turned — and would have apart from God’s grace. We do not deserve the least of his mercies and he has withheld none. In fact, he will show us the boundlessness of his grace toward us for all eternity (Ephesians 2:7).

4. See God’s humility for you.
Think about answered prayer. Think about the wonder that God hears you, that his ear is always ready to bend down for you. He has never been too distracted that he can’t attend to your simplest plea, however imperfect it is. He listens to you — your praise, your complaints, your tears, your cynicism — all with marvelous patience.

5. See God’s goal in all your provisions.
See that God’s aim in providing for you has been your transformation, not your ease. The toils and snares through which he has brought you haven’t been for your earthly comfort so much as your eternal good. His goal is to make you like Jesus, and that he will do (Romans 8:29; Philippians 1:6).

6. See God’s goodness in comfortable stuff.
Comfort is not God’s goal, but that doesn’t mean we should begrudge it. Consider God’s goodness in things like a warm house in subzero temperatures, or a succulent meal when you’re hungry, or even the most seemingly non-spiritual things like Smartwool socks and dark-roast coffee. See them, as Flavel writes, “appointed to refresh you in your way to far better and great mercies than themselves. The best mercies are still reserved for last, and all these are introductive to better” (130).

7. See Jesus Christ as the way of God’s mercy to you.
Every detail of God’s goodness to you has come through the blood of Jesus. Look back on these providences and remember that you’ve earned none of them. They come by Jesus, or they don’t come at all. His cross is the most vivid demonstration of God’s love for us, and every little good we’ve seen has flowed from that glorious fountain. It did yesterday, and it will tomorrow.

Revelation of God in Christ

Tullian Tchividjian post:  Jesus, Our Rosetta Stone

Step back for a moment and contemplate God’s point of view. A spirit unbound by time and space, God had borrowed material objects now and then – a burning bush, a pillar of fire – to make an obvious point on planet Earth. Each time, God adopted the object in order to convey a message and then moved on. In Jesus, something new happened: God became one of the planet’s creatures, an event unparalleled, unheard-of, unique in the fullest sense of the word.

The God who fills the universe imploded to become a peasant baby who, like every infant who has ever lived, had to learn to walk and talk and dress himself. In the incarnation, God’s Son deliberately “handicapped” himself, exchanging omniscience for a brain that learned Aramaic phoneme by phoneme, omnipresence for two legs and an occasional donkey. Instead of overseeing a hundred billion galaxies at once, he looked out on a narrow alley in Nazareth, a pile of rocks in the Judean desert, or a crowded street of Jerusalem.

Because of Jesus we need never question God’s desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it. In person he reestablished the original link between God and human beings, between seen and unseen worlds.

In a fine analogy, H. Richard Niebuhr likened the revelation of God in Christ to the Rosetta stone. Before its discovery scholars could only guess at the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics. One unforgettable day they uncovered a dark stone that rendered the same text in three different languages. By comparing the translations side by side, they mastered hieroglyphics and could now see clearly into a world they had known only in a fog.

Niebuhr goes on to say that Jesus allows us to “reconstruct our faith.” We can trust God because we trust Jesus. If we doubt God, or find him incomprehensible, unknowable, the very best cure is to gaze steadily at Jesus, the Rosetta stone of faith.

Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God (135-39)

Your Plan Is Good

843 Acres post: Ended and Delayed Plans
BY BETHANY

M’Cheyne: Ez 6 (text | audio, 4:21 min)
Acts 6 (text | audio, 2:20 min)

Frustration: In 586 BC, the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and exiled most of the Israelites. About 50 years later, Cyrus of Persia brought an end to the Babylonian Empire. In 538 BC, he issued a decree that allowed the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. [1] Although more than 42,000 exiles returned, the locals (the Samaritans) tried to stop them from rebuilding. They told the emperor Artaxerxes that the city being rebuilt was rebellious and untrustworthy. [2] He believed them and stopped construction.

Delay: Nothing happened for fifteen years. [3] The people were back in Israel, but the temple—that is, the presence of the Lord—was in ruins.

Courage: The Lord then sent prophets—Haggai and Zechariah—to inspire them to build again. Once again, however, the Samaritans opposed them and wrote a letter to the new emperor Darius. This time, however, the plan backfired. Darius searched the imperial archives and found Cyrus’s original decree. He said, “Let the work on this house of God alone. Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. Moreover … the cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue.” [4]

Desire: “The best laid schemes of mice and men,” writes Robert Burns, “often go awry.” Here, both the plans of the Samaritans and the Jews went awry—the Samaritans’ plans were ended; the Jews’ plans were delayed. But the Lord ultimately prospered the plans of the Jews because they wanted what He wanted—that is, they wanted Him to dwell among them and He wanted that, too.

Prayer: Lord, Starts and stops happen in our lives and, when our “best laid plans” are frustrated, we confess that we often get discouraged and confused. Yet we know that your plan are good. If we knew everything today that you know, we would choose the same thing you do. Therefore, we ask you to shape our hearts. Make us desire what you desire. Then your promise will be true: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” [5] For your presence in our midst will be our greatest desire. Amen.

Everyone Wants to be Happy

New About video for desiringGod.org

Faithful in the Here and Now

Hugh Whelchel post:  The Magi and the Eternal Effect of our Work

Have you ever wondered what led the wise men to undertake their long, dangerous journey to Bethlehem? What led them to believe that the particular star they followed would lead them to a great king?

What most people know about the Magi comes from popular traditions and Christmas carols, few of which are supported by the biblical text. Matthew does not suggest the Magi were kings, he does not say they were three in number, nor is it likely they were from the Orient.

Who then were these Magi, and where did they originate? Craig Chester, past president of the Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy gives the following description of the Magi:

The group of Magi in question came "from the East." They might have been Zoroastrians, Medes, Persians, Arabs, or even Jews. They probably served as court advisors, making forecasts and predictions for their royal patrons based on their study of the stars, about which they were quite knowledgeable. Magi often wandered from court to court, and it was not unusual for them to cover great distances in order to attend the birth or crowning of a king, paying their respects and offering gifts. It is not surprising, therefore, that Matthew would mention them as validation of Jesus' kingship, or that Herod would regard their arrival as a very serious matter.

The Magi were important, powerful people of their day. The mention of their visit to Jerusalem was Matthew's way of securing the testimony of top scientific authorities to authenticate the royal birth of Jesus.

There are many references in ancient literature to Magi visiting kings and emperors. For example, Tiridates, king of Armenia, led a procession of Magi to pay homage to Nero in Rome in AD 66. Josephus records that Magi also visited Herod in about 10 B.C. A visit by the Magi to pay homage to a newborn king would not have appeared unusual to the original readers of Matthew's gospel.

It would not, however, have gone unnoticed. In fact, Matthew 2:3 says that not only was Herod disturbed but also "all Jerusalem with him." The Magi were such important individuals; they probably traveled with a large entourage that included soldiers, even a small army for protection. So it should not be surprising that Herod and the citizens of Jerusalem were troubled when they arrived.

What Led the Magi to Jerusalem?

The Magi must have seen an unmistakably clear astronomical/astrological message to urge them on such a long, dangerous journey. In Matthew 2:2, the Magi indicated that they saw something in the night sky that was so significant it convinced them to make the trip of more than a thousand miles to Jerusalem to look for this new king.

How could seeing "signs in the sky" inform the Magi that a king of the Jews had been born?

The answer may take us back more than 500 years to the work of one of God's faithful servants during the Babylonian exile. We read that King Nebuchadnezzar assigned Daniel to the high office of "chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers, and diviners" (Daniel 5:11). In other words, Daniel was appointed chief of the Magi.

The Magi of the first century would have most certainly studied the writing of Daniel and possibly other Jewish writings with which Daniel would have been associated, such as the book of Isaiah. This connection between Daniel and Magi may help to explain why the Magi in question 600 years later expected a Jewish king to arrive in Judea near the end of the first century.

In fact, there is evidence that Daniel's prophecy of the coming of a powerful Jewish king was well known to many in the ancient world in the first century. Both the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus wrote about a widely held belief based on ancient writings among the Jews of a great world ruler that would be from Judea. It is likely therefore that the Magi followed the star based on their study of Daniel's writings.

Because Daniel was faithful in his work, God used him to bring the news of the birth of Christ to both his fellow Israelites and even the some of the most powerful, knowledgeable, and influential Gentiles of the day.

For the Good of the City

In Jeremiah 29, we find part of Jeremiah's letter to the exiles in Babylon: "seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:7).

These exiles, including Daniel, had seen the destruction of their homeland, the death of their family members, and the demolishing of their holiest place of worship. It must have been hard to work for the good of a city that had destroyed his homeland, yet Daniel obeyed God's call and became "chief of the Magi" and an adviser to the king.

In a way, we too are in "exile," for we live in a fallen, sinful world and look forward to when Christ will return and restore it. But rather than sit passively, we actively engage in the world because God calls us to "work in the peace and prosperity of the city" here and now.

With Christmas passed and the business year about to start again it is good to be reminded about the effect of our work. God calls us to be faithful in the here and now, even when we can't always see the result of what we do. We have no idea how God will use it.

Take the story of Edward Kimball, a Sunday school teacher. Concerned for the spiritual wellbeing of his pupils, he never gave up, even though the task of teaching a group of rowdy boys could be mundane and difficult.

It turns out that through Kimball's teaching, evangelist D. L. Moody came to Christ. In his lifetime, Moody led thousands to Christ, including Wilbur Chapman. Chapman himself became an evangelist who converted the famous preacher Billy Sunday. During his many evangelistic meetings, Sunday led Mordecai Ham to accept the gospel. And who did Ham reach? His preaching led to the conversion of Billy Graham, who preached to more people than any other individual and led untold thousands to Christ.

Today, few people remember Edward Kimball. Yet because of his faithfulness and tenacity, God used his efforts to set off an incredible chain of events that saved millions.

The story of the star of Bethlehem and the Magi does not start in Matthew 2. It extends hundreds of years back to the Babylonian exile where Daniel faithfully answered God's call to work and engage in the culture—even in the most difficult of times. If we are faithful in this same call, who knows how God will use what we do today to further his kingdom tomorrow.