Knowing God (cont)

Remember from my last post, I am attempting to answer two questions. The first is how am I doing as a small group leader? The second is an enabling question; What is the purpose of a small group? The answer to the second question is taken from the Engage and Equip blog which is authored by the senior pastor of the Highpoint Church in Madison WI. If you remember the five purposes and practices of small groups are:

• Community
• Spiritual Growth
• Prayer
• Missions
• Serve

Spiritual Growth

Today’s discussion concerns Spiritual Growth. In discussing why we need community, I briefly summarized what and who we are up against. If we don’t grow spiritually, we cannot hope to overcome the devil and his temptations. We have to learn to submit to Christ which is the first step in becoming like Him.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to  his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue ^jwith knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness ^lwith brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:3-8

As Christ followers we have to learn to relinquish what, in his his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes as works of the flesh.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

These works of the flesh need to be supplanted by the fruit of the Spirit.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 

Galatians 5:22-23

Spiritual growth is a lifelong process that depends upon our study and application of God’s word. As we seek spiritual growth, we should pray to God and ask for wisdom concerning the areas He desires us to grow in. We can ask God to increase our faith and knowledge of Him. God desires for us to grow spiritually, and He has given us all we need to experience spiritual growth. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we can overcome sin and steadily become more like our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. As we grow spiritually, we come know God more intimately.

The late Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book,The Cost of Discipleship, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity with Christ.” Discipleship is essential to Spiritual Growth! That is why Jesus commanded us to “make disciples” (Matthew 28: 19)

Blameless

Yesterday, I wrote about God’s standard for judgement. The title of yesterday’s post, Condemned, was indicative of our condition when standing before God’s judgement throne. Based on our behavior, we can be nothing but condemned!

As you know, I am reading through Psalms. Today was Psalm 18. As I was reading, I was thinking about David’s life. It seems from his early life that he was an unlikely warrior. When we first meet David, he is described as “ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance”. We aren’t told how old David was, just that he was the youngest son of Jesse. In the next chapter, chapter 17. Before David goes to face Goliath, we see that the armor he is given is too big and cumbersome. So, he faces Goliath dressed in shepherd’s garb. It just doesn’t seem to me that he would mature into a great warrior.

Not only was David a great warrior but a great king! He also had his dark side! David, king of Israel, was also a murderer. He was also an adulterer! In spite of all of that, He was a man after God’s own heart!

Now back to Psalm 18.

The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness.
According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me.
For I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God.
For all his ordinances were before me, and I did not put away His statutes from me.
I was also blameless with Him,
And I kept myself from iniquity.
Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness.
According to the cleanness of my hands in His sight.

Psalm 18:20-24

Granted, this psalm was written before David ascended to the throne; before his two great public sins. Yet we know that God loved David throughout his life. Why? David confessed his sins before God. He was truly sorry for his sin. His repentance was sincere! This is important because it happened about one thousand years before Christ’s birth, which marked the beginning of the new covenant.

Let’s go forward in time about eleven hundred years and look at the epistle of John.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9

Although He instituted a new covenant, God did not change. He always forgives the sin of those who love Him and who He loves. That is how we, who deserve to be condemned, are held blameless before His throne!

Good Grace

“Do you consider yourself a good person?” That is the way street evangelist, Ray Comfort, begins his conversation with people he meets. The usual response is, “Yes, I think so.” Now the trap is set! Ray then goes on to prove that the person who considers himself of herself a good person is a liar, a thief, an adulterer and a murderer. All of this is done by asking a few questions and then holding up the mirror of the Bible to the answers he receives.

This morning’s reading is Psalm 14 which starts off with a familiar sentence: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’.” I wonder why this Psalm begins with that statement? I have an idea or two, but that is not the topic of this morning’s devotional.

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good, not even one.

Psalm 14:3

When I read that verse I immediately thought of Mark 10:8, where Jesus responds to the rich young man who precedes a question with “Good teacher”. The response? “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” In looking up the location I found several other instances. Romans 3:10-12, Psalm 53:1-3, and Ecclesiastes 7:20. God’s word makes it clear that no person is good! That is odd considering after the sixth day of creation God looked at all He had made and saw that it was very good.

If no one is good, how can anyone survive the coming judgement? It is only by the grace of God that we can be saved from His wrath. God’s grace is extended to everyone but accepted by only a few. Those few are the ones who placed their faith in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for His good grace!

Hate and Deceit

When reading Proverbs 26, your first impression is that it is all about fools. Almost every verse has something to say about fools.

Like snow in summer and like rain in harvest
So honor is not fitting for a fool.

Proverbs 26:1

So it goes through verse 12. Verses 13 through 16 are about the sluggard. The remainder of the chapter is about gossips. but aren’t sluggards and gossips also fools? To answer that we need the biblical definition of a fool is: “In scripture, fool is often used for a wicked or depraved person; one who acts contrary to sound wisdom in his moral deportment; one who follows his own inclinations, who prefers trifling and temporary pleasures to the service of God and eternal happiness.” I think that to fully understand that definition you need to break it down and examine each clause. I believe the clause that best describes members of our society is: “one who follows his own inclinations”. That brings to mind proverbs 14:12: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it is the way of death.”

I think the greatest fool is described below:

He who hates disguises it with his lips, but he lays up deceit in his heart.
When he speaks graciously, do not believe him, for there are seven abominations in his heart.
Though his hatred covers itself with guile, his wickedness will be revealed before the assembly.

Proverbs 26:24 – 26

Transphobic, homophobic and racist. These are the words of hate that are used quite frequently these days. The odd thing is that the real hater is calling the object of his hate these names. Usually it is the person that calls out as sin transexual, homosexual and racist behaviors who is the one being called out as a hater. In reality, calling out these behaviors as sin is one of the most loving things a person can do, It is an attempt to spare the person eternal damnation!

Read Proverbs 26:24-26 again! Written over three thousand years ago, it is just as relevant today as it was then. So we tolerate that which is detestable to God so we son’t be called a name. Remember, according to the proverb, the name caller “will be revealed before the assembly”.

What is Love?

I did it again! I focused on one verse rather than search for the theme of the Proverb.

He who covers a transgression seeks love,

but he who repeats a matter separates intimate friends.

Proverbs 17:9

Reading Proverbs 17:9 made my mind to move immediately to 1 Corinthians.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous, love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek it’s own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things. Love never fails …

1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 8

Notice the apostle Paul does not mention what love feels like. He lists actions! In our culture we put so much emphasis on the feeling of love and never consider the actions that display love. I make this challenge; the next time you say, “I love you!”, examine yourself to see if all the love actions apply. If even one is missing, is it love?

HAPPY RESURRECTION DAY!

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:16

What is Truth

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Either you believe that the Bible is the word of God or not. If you believe it, then by definition the Bible is truth and the above quote by Jesus is too. If you don’t believe it, the Bible is still true; you just don’t have a spiritual anchor.

“I believe that the Bible is true; so I am OK, right?” Not necessarily! Do you know the truth?

You see, the truth of Jesus Christ is under attack. It always has been. You wouldn’t think that the attack would be coming from inside the church but it is. It always has!

In the first century, the attack was from a group of people known as the Gnostics. They believed that they had a special revelation and knowledge about our Savior that no one else had. Several of Paul’s epistles were written because of the Gnostic influence in the early church. The doctrine that was being disseminated sounded good but was totally anti Christ. So it seemed that after Paul had preached Christ and made many converts, the Gnostics attempted to add their own spin to the Gospel. They were somewhat successful at leading some away from the truth.

Are you being led away from the truth? One indication is what you believe about the Bible. Do you believe that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, inspired word of God? Another indication is whether or not you know, read and study your Bible. Even if you answered “yes” to both of the indicators, you still could be being led away from the truth; although it is not as likely. What does the man in the pulpit of your church think about the Bible? Does he preach the Gospel or does he preach messages with references to Gospel passages? Do the messages that reference Scripture use the meaning of Scripture that you would get by reading that passage in context or is the meaning changed to emphasize the point the preacher is trying to make?

St Nicholas’ Kirk (Photo credit: Nick in exsilio)

I attend a church where the pastor delivers messages with scriptural references. I am also reading at least one book that the pastor has highly recommended. What I am discovering is that my pastor is teaching from books other than the Bible. That isn’t necessarily wrong. It does however, send up a red flag. I need to be a “good Berean” and search the scriptures to verify what he is teaching. If “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correcting and for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work”, why then would a pastor need to teach from any other book. Just because it comes from the pulpit at your church, don’t believe blindly what the pastor says, check it out for yourself. Better yet, become so familiar with the truth that a half truth or a lie is repugnant on its face.

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Can We Hear the Voice of God? (Part 9)

Why Is Scripture Authoritative?

Holy Scripture is God speaking. That simple but profound statement is why Christians believe that Scripture is our highest authority by which all other lesser authorities are tested. Practically, this means that lesser courts of reason, tradition, and culture are under the highest court of truth, which is divinely inspired Scripture.

By contrast, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches teach that Scripture is a part of the larger pool of revelation that the church uses in its teaching. The authority is not in the Bible itself, but in the teaching office of the church.

Others appeal to the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral:

Wesley believed that the living core if the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illuminated by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture [however] is primary, revealing the Word of God “so far as it is necessary for our salvation.

In practice, though, the Bible often becomes just one of four major sources of authority to be balanced. Thus, when contemporary critical theories of the Bible start to be taken seriously, the Bible is often judged by other authorities.

The central development of the Protestant Reformation was the return to Scripture as supreme authority. The reformers coined the slogan sola Scriptura (sometimes prima Scriptura) to summarize this conviction. Nothing judges Scripture. It judges everything else. As followers of Jesus, we take the same stance He did and receive the Bible alone as infallible, inerrant truth from God with full authority in our lives.

English: Mural of Protestant Reformation, Mourneview A mural of the key players in the Protestant Reformation – at the shops on Mourne Road in Lurgan’s Mourneview Estate. There was a loyalist paramilitary mural here originally. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Bible is a living book of God authoritatively speaking as a perfect Father to children He dearly loves. The Bible tells us to live Godly lives. For example, it commands us to “put away falsehood” and “speak the truth with our neighbor”, not as arbitrary rules of conduct but as church family members who are “members one of another.” It is a story of what is best in a loving family, a family we are invited to be a part of, a family leaving sin and dysfunction and growing to maturity and fulfillment. It is the story of the God of redemption rescuing us from rebellion, brokenness, sin and death. Its authority is that in these inspired words we find how to connect with the forgiving and transforming power of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

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Can We hear the Voice of God? (Part 8)

Can I Trust That My Bible is God’s Word

If you have a good modern translation of the Bible, the you have almost exact what the ancient authors wrote. It is amazing that people try to argue that we cannot trust the Bible because we do not have the original copies. It would never occur to those people to question the writings of Plato, Sophocles, Homer or Caesar Augustus, when we only have fewer than ten copies of each book, and those copies were made at least one thousand years after the author wrote the original.

English: A scroll of the Book of Isaiah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the situation was similar with the Hebrew Old Testament. Our oldest copies dated from about AD 900. We knew the extreme care the rabbis used to copy the sacred text before they destroyed the worn one. But still the copies we had were historically distant from the original (called autographa). But then in 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran. Suddenly we had copies of the Old Testament that were more than a thousand years older than the previous oldest copies.

A comparison of the Qumran manuscript of the Book of Isaiah with the Masoretic text from AD 900 showed the most minor variations, mostly spelling (like the American honor and the British honour) or stylistic changes like adding a conjunction. After comparing the texts that were a thousand years old and finding no significant differences, scholars came to the conclusion that the Old Testament books that we have are basically the same as the original manuscript.

In the case of the New Testament, we have 14,000 ancient copies, with fragments written no later than one hundred years after the original books and letters. This is so amazing because the books were copied onto such fragile materials as papyrus and those copies were not stored anywhere that would protect them from the elements, but in God’s providence they still survived.

Finally, Jesus Himself used copies and translations. He trusted them, so we should too. Because we have so many copies of scripture that are virtually the same, we have no reason not to trust that the texts we have are the same text that was originally authored.

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• Can We Hear the Voice of God (Part 4) (mcdministries.wordpress.com)
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Can We Hear the Voice of God? (Part 7)

Does Scripture Contain Errors and/or Contradictions?

We believe what the Bible teaches is true, so we come to the Bible with what J. I. Packer calls “an advance commitment to receive as truth from God all that Scripture is found on inspection actually teach.” This has been the universal affirmation of the church until the time of Enlightenment, when acceptance in the secular academy led some biblical scholars to base their conclusions on culturally misguided reason rather than on revelation and reality.

The affirmation of the truthfulness of the Bible is inextricably tied to the character of God. He is a truthful God who does not lie! Therefore, because God is ultimately the author of scripture, it is perfect, unlike every other uninspired writing or utterance.

The Bible claims to be wholly true! We find such explicit statements in passages such as 2 Samuel 7:28, “O Lord God, You are God and Your words are true”; Psalm 19:7-10, which uses words such as perfect, sure, right, pure, true, and righteous; Psalm 119: 42-43, 142, 151, 160, 163, which uses the specific word truth or true; and John 17:17, “Your word is truth.” Second Timothy 3: 16 rightly says “All Scripture is breathed out by God.”

Unlike the Bible, however, those of us who read and study it are not inerrant in our understanding of it. The Bible itself gives us much cause for humility as we approach the Scriptures because:

• God’s thoughts are much loftier than ours;
• God has secrets that He has not revealed to anyone;
• sometimes we see the truth as if through a dirty and fogged window;
• we are prone to resist God’s truth because it forces us to repent, and sometimes we are simply hard-hearted;
• we know in part;
• some parts of the Bible are just hard to understand.

Therefore , if it appears that there is a contradiction in Scripture, we should first dig deeply into our Bible to see if what appears to be an error is, in fact, not an error once we have examined it more closely. In the end, it is perfectly acceptable to admit that we don’t have an answer for every question we may have, though in the future we may discover the answers.

A telling example of the Bible’s accuracy is in the transliteration of the names of foreign kings in the Old Testament as compared to contemporary extra-biblical records. The bible is accurate in every detail in the thirty-six instances of comparison, a total of 183 syllables. To see how amazing this is, Manetho’s ancient work on the dynasties of the Egyptian kings can be compared to extra-biblical records in 140 instances. He is right 49 times, only partially right twenty-eight times and in the other sixty-three instances not a single syllable is correct!

Those parts of the Old Testament that are most commonly rejected as error are also those sections that Jesus clearly taught. This includes creation, the literalness of Genesis 1 & 2, Cain and Able, Noah and the flood, Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot Isaac and Jacob, manna in the desert, and Jonah in the belly of the whale.

Because Scripture is God speaking to us because He wants us to understand, we also believe Scripture speaks accurately on ordinary language. The writers used ordinary language rather than technical terminology. There are figures of speech, summaries and approximations. When we study the Bible, we must take into account the author’s intent when we interpret the story.

This does not mean that there are no questions to explore. The Bible has kept scholars working for centuries and will for centuries more.

See Also: Can We Hear the Voice of God

Can We Hear the Voice of God? (Part 6)

This is a continuation of a series that I started over a year ago. If you read “Can We Hear the Voice of God” dated April 4, 2011 you can get an idea of what topics will be covered.

Why Were Some Books Not Accepted As Scripture?

In recent years, the so-called lost books of the Bible have enjoyed revived interest. For example, Dan Brown built much of the story line of his best-selling book, “The Da Vinci Code”, on the premise that the church selected the four canonical Gospels from eighty similar books. The others, it is said, were stamped out “a church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned non-believers, and forbidden that pagan reverence for the sacred feminine.

In fact, however, even by the most generous count there are fewer than thirty “gospels.” Only the canonical Gospels date from the first century. The earliest of the others was written more than one hundred years after Jesus lived. Most of them are dated at least two hundred years after Jesus.

Contrary to false accusation, not one of these “lost Gospels” was hidden by the church. The church fathers knew of these writings but simply decided not to consider them sacred scripture. There is no reason to be concerned about any lost gospels containing truth that we need about God. Anyone curious about their truthfulness should simply read them!

The Gospel of Thomas is one of the earlier and most widely affirmed of the Gnostic gospels. It is not a gospel in the sense of a narrative that tells the story of Jesus. Rather it consists of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, some of which clearly parallel sayings in the canonical gospels.

To be fair, there are a handful of other ancient books that have some good content. Books such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache were appreciated by the early church and are akin to some popular Christian books today that can provide some insight but do not rise to the level of scripture or fall to the level of heresy.

From the very earliest days, the church knew which books were God’s inspired word for them. They read them, studied them, obeyed them, lived them, and passed them on. We should do the same without adding anything to the scriptures. Proverbs 30:5-6 commands just this, saying, “Every word of God proves true; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar.”