Monthly Archive for July, 2009

God Helps Those Who Help Themselves – Not

Published on 7/31/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Deut. 32:36 The LORD will judge his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is left, slave or free.

He will have compassion on his servants when their strength is gone. gone. not that he’ll help them just before it’s gone. gone.

If Jesus came and helped Lazarus when he was *almost* dead, then Lazarus could have gotten a little credit for having a little life in himself that Jesus could help along.

Nope. He was dead.

Colossians 2:13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,

You weren’t a a little bit alive and God healed you. If you’ve been saved, you were saved, not helped. And if you haven’t been saved, then you’re dead, not just sick. I usually don’t play the Binary Christian that sees everything in black and white, but in this context it fits.

He will give His servants compassion when He sees their strength is gone.

Jesus was about 25 miles away when he heard that Lazarus was sick. He could have easily made that trip in two days, but when he would have arrived, Lazarus would have STILL already been dead for 2 days. On the one hand, Jesus knew to rush would be hopeless. On the other hand, Jesus knew to delay would show the disciples, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and the rest so much more.

God really is the hope for the hopeless. He thought that was important to tell us. Important enough that he painfully let His friend die and other friends cry their eyes out. Can you believe that He would let so much pain happen to people He loved, to show His glory?!

I can. I can only imagine that nobody ever felt the joy and amazement that Mary and Martha felt that day that Lazarus got unwrapped. I can only imagine how much Peter must have trembled after seeing this Guy boss storms around and make food come out of nowhere for thousands.

God is the hopeless seeker, the hopeless blaster, and the hope bringer. He is an expert at compassion and power mixed, and He brings it whenever His servants run out.

The One Thing They Really Wanted

Published on 7/30/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment

Here is a test of some commentary on Joel. We’ll see how this works…

Lazarus of No Rank: Loved by Jesus

Published on 7/21/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

John 11.3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

Something has to be said about Lazarus being loved by Jesus, a friend of Jesus, and NOT one of the disciples. Considering that the 12 are mentioned in several places and arguing about who would be the greatest and who would get to sit next to Jesus, here is a guy that is close to Jesus, but isn’t literally following Him and isn’t one of the 12.

I remember a guy asking me one time if I wanted to be one of the 12 or one of the 5000 that followed Jesus around. Now that I look back on the context of that, I see there was some pride in there. It was Jesus that called the 12 to be a part of the 12, but to Jesus, the rest weren’t second class. Those were the 12 for one reason, and the rest were the rest for different reasons.

Here is Lazarus, loved friend of Jesus, who lives with his sisters in Bethany and doesn’t travel around to Gallilee etc. I think that says something to the pride of boasting “I’ll follow Jesus anywhere.” because Lazarus was friends with Jesus just where he was.

Let us put off the boasting of who we follow or who saved us. Let us boast only in God. When a boy pees in his pants at school, he doesn’t boast in what a good mom he picked when she brings him a clean pair. Neither should we boast in what a great God we picked when we were saved, but rejoice in Him that loves us, regardless of our rank or position in His kingdom.

Book Review: Holy Roller

Published on 7/17/2009 in Bookstore, Short Quotes and Urbia. 2 Comments

Holy Roller has a lot of great stories of drug addicts, prostitutes, and thieves being miraculously healed in South Dallas, Texas. A man describes his calling in chapter 1: “Wherever there is a lot of depravity, sickness, and disease, there is a great harvest. I noticed there were a lot of churches in South Dallas, but there was no harvest.”

There are great tales of people’s lives being changed and being freed from the corrupt greed and adultery present in the Black Pentecostal movement. Lots of times where the Holy Spirit worked outside of somebody’s theological box, be it Petecostals or Lutherans or Catholics. There is a section in the middle that gets a little too autobiographical and tells of the authors sexual identity confusion, but as I am currently only halfway through the book I’m trusting that the story will get back to the South Dallas revival pretty soon. (I hope so, that was a much stronger, more compelling section of the book.)

This book is not a safe mall read. I started the book sitting at the mall eating Subway and at one point I was too disgusted to eat and at another I was crying like a baby. Holding back a hard core Holy and Reverent sob at the grace of God.

It’s a good book, and if you’re near me I’ll loan it in a week or so after I finish it. If not, check out the first chapter at B&N then click this link to buy it from amazon :)

For some reason, I am having great difficulty inserting a picture here, so all you get is a text link.

Holy Roller: Finding Redemption and the Holy Ghost in a Forgotten Texas Church

The Earth and Its Events are Full of God’s Glory

Published on 7/14/2009 in Bible Study. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

John 11.4 “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

As always, Jesus sees more to the situation than anyone else. He sees that Lazarus died for the glory of God, just like the storm came up in the middle of the night while the disciples were alone in the boat, and the little girl died, and all the people got hungry, and the bride and groom ran out of wine.

“For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Rom 14:7-9 NIV)

This is where I get into that confusing zone of God’s sovereignty. How many things does God allow to happen and how many things does He MAKE happen. I have no idea, but the fact remains that everything we do is not just for ourselves and does not just concern ourselves. We live to the Lord and we die to the Lord. I know many times that I have been distracted during my Bible study time, only to meet some event in the day that I should have been spiritually prepared for and wasn’t. I know many other times that whatever great Bible study I had / or prayer time, or whatever time with God was a direct prep and teach time for the thing that happened during the day.

(Or the next several days. I was memorizing James 1 days before we flew across the Atlantic on an 8 hour flight and David was about 14 months old and threw up for the last 6 of those hours. It was quite a trial, and all I could think about was “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”)

So Lazarus didn’t MEAN to get sick and die, but it happened for God’s glory. I don’t want to say that God made it happen, because that takes me into areas that I just don’t have evidence to make a conclusion about. But either way, like so many other things, Jesus turned a circumstance into an arrow to God’s glory.

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
(Is 6:3 NIV)

If the whole EARTH is full of His glory, how much more so would be every event, circumstance, situation. May God give us eyes to see that in the midst of our daily activities!

Jesus Takes us Fully Knowing Him VERY Seriously

Published on 7/11/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

John 11.5-6
11:5 (Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 11:6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he remained in the place where he was for two more days.

John reminds us that Jesus loved them, before he drops the big SO bomb on us. Jesus was more concerned that the Father’s glory be made fully known than He was about Lazarus dying or Mary and Martha’s sadness.

Psa. 63:3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

It is more important to Jesus that we know Him and His strength fully than not know the fullness of who He is and be mediocre and happy. Martha knew all of the right stuff theologically. She was on the right side of the religious debate about resurrection, but she did not know that the resurrection was A MAN and not necessarily an event. She had her doctrine and theology right, that Lazarus would be raised from the dead and the resurrection was real; SHE EVEN believed that Jesus was powerful and wise and could have healed Lazarus when he was alive and sick.

Jesus wanted her and everyone else to know that He wasn’t just the Giver of Health, He is the Giver of Life.

That’s why He waited 2 days to show up. His two day wait was like Elijah’s buckets of water on the stone altar (1 Kings 18). Throughout the scriptures God takes a hopeless situation and allows it (or deliberately makes it) UTTERLY hopeless so that He may have the full glory. Why then to do strain so hard at making things comfortable, nice, and easy?! Why do we complain so much and share ‘prayer requests’ like a litany of things to mourn?

Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds and see that if DEATH ITSELF happens on a terrible schedule “for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

Three Verses that Revealed my Contradictions

Published on 7/6/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

So the question yesterday that a guy at Sunday School asked was about Matthew 5.27-30, where Jesus talks about ripping out eyes and chopping off hands if they lead you to sin. He asked if we should take that seriously or not. I love the way he asked that question, because you can only answer YES if the question is “Should we take what Jesus said seriously?”

Ok, so that leads to some discussion, and then I realized this: I think of every other command or teaching in the sermon on the mount as literal and right and what people should do, except for these 3 verses.

what?! How can that be? How can we have pick-and-choose discipleship?

I hear people say, “Jesus is obviously exaggerating because poking out your eye wouldn’t change your heart. It wouldn’t stop you from lusting on the inside.”

It wouldn’t? Isn’t is through hardship that we learn to be closer to God? If I sat down and gouged out my eyeball, it seems like that would be an event that would stick with me for a while. And if I associated it with lust, then next time wouldn’t I absolutely cower in fear? If I chopped my hand off, would I not consider the consequences of sin whenever I reached to commit the sin, and there was nothing there?! I know I sound a little absurd, but I want to get out of this mode of applying 21st century ‘reason’ to the words of Jesus.

We don’t say that Jesus is exaggerating to make a point about other extreme things He taught. I just wonder if maybe we want to keep our eyes and our hands a little too much. We’d rather literally pay off a debt or forgive an enemy, but don’t *really* ask us to chop off our hands. hmmmm

It’s Hard to Learn that Mercy Wins Over Judgment

Published on 7/2/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

John 10.37-38 ESV “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Jesus can see that it is too much of a stumbling block for these guys to see who He is, so He almost appeals to their supposed faith in God. They are saying He has a demon and Jesus is saying, “If you aren’t going to believe me, at least believe that the things that are happening (blind see, lame walk, lepers healed, good news preached to the poor) are from God. If you won’t believe that I’m from God, at least believe that My works are!
In some amazing way, Jesus all at once is lowering the criteria and making it easier to come to the Father, just by believing in these works. At the same time though, He raises the bar and makes it more difficult to come to Him, because He states that He is equal to the Father. That forces us to change inside. You can’t just do motions and activities on the outside and reconcile those two things.
The people want to shout that Jesus is the King and make Him their ruler, but the acts of mercy and compassion to Gentiles and ROMANS don’t fit with them. The Pharisees really do want to see the Messiah come (as they understand the Messiah) but they don’t want people healed on the Sabbath because that breaks their laws and keeps the Messiah away.
Jesus forces their hand and ours to see double. He IS equal to God, and His works are FROM God, even if they are done on the Sabbath, even if they are done to Romans, even if they are done to unclean women that ‘steal’ the healing.