Category: Bible, Bible Study, Jesus, Christianity

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The love beyond all loves

Isaiah Chapter 43

(God is talking to Israel here, but Gentiles are grafted into Israel through Jesus Christ)

I really needed encouragement today, and God provided as I was reading his word. I hope this will give someone else encouragement as well.

FEAR NOT, FOR I HAVE REDEEMED YOU (verse 1)
Who redeems us? Do we redeem ourselves through our own works? NOPE. “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)
Can other people save us? NOPE. “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him–the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough, that he should live on forever and not see decay.” (Psalm 49:7-9)
Sounds like we’re up the creek, unless God himself is willing to do the deed. “But God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself.” (Psalm 49:15)

That is the best possible news! But I know what a horrible, wicked, ugly person I really am. Why would God be willing to redeem ME?

I HAVE SUMMONED YOU BY NAME, YOU ARE MINE (verse 1)
What is this telling me? Only that God knows me and you each personally, to him we are not just a blur in an ocean full of faces. He knows us each by name and says we belong to him. God in his omniscience knows every last detail about me — the good (not much) and the bad (tons). Yet he says I belong to him. I am his possession and he owns me spirit, soul, and body. People generally love the things that belong to them, so wouldn’t God love them even moreso?

YOU ARE PRECIOUS AND HONORED IN MY SIGHT (verse 4)
God is with us through all the hard trials of our lives, through flood and through fire (verse 2). Although in punishment God’s people were sent into exile, he never forsook them, never forgot them. It was all part of his long plan of redemption. He reminds Israel (and us) again in verse 3, “For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy one of Israel, your savior.” He’s trying to get it through our skulls that he alone is our savior, he wants to do it and he will do it. Ultimately in Jesus Christ he HAS done it. But why???

BECAUSE I LOVE YOU (verse 4)
Well, I know I am not lovable by nature, so God must have made a conscious choice to give me his love, anyway. That means his love is unconditional. We don’t earn the love he gives us, it is not dependent upon our performance or our natural charms. God won’t love you any better if you were a more holy person, or if you were prettier or smarter or stronger. He loves you completely, with everything he has to give, because it is his will to do so and he’s never going to take it away even if you screw up 100 times a day like I do. I don’t know about you, but that is a huge burden off my shoulders.

GOD IS MAKING A POINT AND WANTS US TO PAY ATTENTION
“I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.” (verse 11) Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” We don’t save ourselves, God alone saves us, and he does that through Jesus (for details read the Gospels).

GOD NOT ONLY FORGIVES OUR SINS, HE FORGETS THEM
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (verse 25)
We don’t deserve anything from God except his wrath and an eternity separated from him and everything good. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way,” (Isaiah 53:6), but God himself takes care of our sin problem. He paid a debt he did not owe in order to save us from a debt we could never repay. “The Lord has laid on him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6).

Why on earth would God save us? Because he loves us. Why does he love us? Because he made the choice to do so. Not only that, but God loves us with all of Himself, he holds nothing back. He gave us everything that he had to give. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son [Jesus], that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17). Jesus gave us everything he had to give us when he laid down his life to save us from the eternal death we bought for ourselves.

God doesn’t just love you, he loves you with all of himself. A love so big, so wide, so deep, so high, that our little human selves can’t even begin to comprehend it. But it is amazing! If you are a Christian, be encouraged and uplifted by remembering what God has done for you. If you do not yet belong to Christ, all you have to do is ask him in and all this forgiveness, new life, love, and joy can be yours right now.

“…if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, ‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile — the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for ‘Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved’. ” (Romans 10:9-13)

Thank you, Jesus! Please come for us soon.

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The Pope was Wrong

Pope Francis was speaking in Singapore recently and made a remark that’s gone viral. He said: Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio. I interpret this to literally mean “All religions are ways to arrive at God.” Google Translate interprets it as “All religions are a path to God.

There are two big problems with this: 1) People can’t ever find God on their own, and 2) It was either Christ doing the job, or no one.

1. People have different takes on what the pope meant here, but even in the most generous light he is dead wrong. The generous view is that all religions are about people trying to reach God, the implication being if you try hard enough you’ll get there. Some religions may be closer to the mark than others but they still miss it.

There aren’t many religions in this world. There have only ever been two and they are diametrically opposed to one another. The first, which comes in many flavors, is Works. You achieve your goal – Heaven, Jannah, The Celestial Kingdom, Nirvana, Utopia, Reincarnation, etc., based on how you live your life and the things you do. It’s all about you.The second religion is Christianity – all our best works are filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) because of our sin and nothing we can do can make us clean. We have all bought Hell for ourselves but God, in the form of Jesus Christ, came to earth, lived a blameless life, died on a cross to pay for our sins and was resurrected from the dead. All who call upon his name will be saved. It’s what Jesus did that counts.

2. If there was any other route to salvation, Jesus would not have died. The very night he was betrayed, he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. According to Matthew’s gospel, in verse 26:39, he prayed:

“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”

A little later, in 26:42, he prayed:

“My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may Your will be done.”

Jesus is asking here if there is any other way for mankind to be saved apart from Him dying on the cross. The first time he prays, he’s asking for God to provide another way. The second time he is being obedient to whatever God wants him to do. God did not provide another way and so a few hours later Jesus was nailed to the cross. 

Do you see what this means? THERE WAS NO OTHER WAY. If there was, would God the Father have allowed His beloved son to be beaten, tortured, humiliated, and hung to die on a Roman cross? Why would Jesus have to die if you can get to Heaven by being a good Mormon, or Hindu, or Muslim, or Sikh, or whatever, and following the rules of your preferred religion? We can’t be a good anything because we’re all sinners. We need to be rescued. We need a savior. There is no other way. And no one can save us but God himself, which he did in the form of Jesus Christ.

Whatever his intentions may have been, the Pope’s statement could end up leading many people on the path to Hell, an eternity of being separated from God. He had an opportunity to share the true Gospel and he blew it. 

You have an opportunity right now to have your eternity secured. Romans 10:13 says “All who call upon the name of the Lord [Jesus] will be saved.” That’s it. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to God the Father apart from Christ. (John 14:6) All you have to do is believe, and call upon the name of Jesus. He already did all the work. You just have to either accept or reject Him.

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How I came to Christ

I never thought my “testimony” (the story of how I came to be a follower of Jesus Christ) was worth telling because it seems so boring. I wasn’t saved out of years of drug abuse or violence or anything like that. But, I’ve been listening today to people’s testimonies on the Watchman River YouTube channel (@WatchmanRiver) and they are all so varied and beautiful, each in their own way. Maybe my story will be useful to somebody out there.

I grew up in a nominally Christian family; that is, if you asked them my parents would have told you they were Christians. And they might have been; they each had exposure to the gospel as children and raised us kids with good moral values. But for their generation in America, being a Christian was equal with being a good person, whatever that means. We were not a churchgoing family. I asked my Mom once why we didn’t go and she said, “only religious fanatics go to church every Sunday.” I said, “but we don’t even go at Easter or Christmas” and then she changed the subject. So I grew up with basically nothing from my parents . . . Except . . .

…Except I was given a children’s Bible, the old Golden Books version, which told Bible stories from Genesis to Revelation, and also a book of stories about Jesus called “My Good Shepherd Bible Story Book.”

As far as learning anything from them goes, I was left to my own devices. I skipped around the Children’s Bible, reading stories that looked most interesting, but I pored over every page of the Good Shepherd book. It was through the pages of that book that I first encountered Jesus and, even though I really knew nothing at all about God or the faith, I knew that I wanted Him. I was captivated and drawn to him by the time I was nine years old. Did that make me a Christian yet? I’m not sure but I certainly thought I was.

Other things planted seeds in me along the way, like stories with strong Christian themes (the Narnia books and others), and even music. Not “Christian” music per se, but music that had something in it that was beautiful, that planted in me a desire for something beyond itself. It’s hard to explain, but CS Lewis does a pretty good job when he talks about joy. For me it was mostly Bach and the Moody Blues, but I’ve learned over the years that God can and does use just about anything to reach people. He knows how we are wired and what it takes to get to someone’s heart of hearts.

When I was a teenager I spent a summer with my oldest brother and his family and went to church with them. One day at Sunday School the teacher said that you can’t just feel like a Christian, or think you are one. You have to say it, you have to actually make a commitment to Christ. If you haven’t said it, you haven’t done it. I was a little offended by that, because I felt like a Christian. But when I went back home I mulled it over in my head for a few weeks. Then, one hot and sunny August afternoon, I was going about my day, then suddenly decided to go ahead and do the deed. I went up to my bedroom, knelt down, and prayed something—I have no idea what I said—and officially gave my life to Jesus. Then I got up and continued going about my day.

I was a typical American happy-go-lucky teenager when I knelt down that day, no particular sins weighing on my heart at the time. I was about as clueless and frankly as shallow as a person can be. I don’t know what I was expecting after that; I don’t think I was thinking about much of anything at the time besides Shaun Cassidy and the dread of starting a new school in a couple of weeks. But, even so, that was the day I came alive and God began the long, slow, agonizing process of growing me up.

That was many, many years ago and today I don’t know how much growing up I’ve actually done. But my life has taken many twists and turns I never expected that August. I had little concept of sin and its consequences then. I have a very good concept of it now. Through the experiences I’ve had and the choices I’ve made, I have learned exactly who and what I am both without Christ and with Him. In my own nature I have broken every single commandment in either thought, word, or deed. It’s the truth and I have spent many long, painful nights having to face the absolute worst aspects of myself. But in Christ I know what true love is, and giving, and what it means to care about others and listen to them, and the value of praying for others. Anything good in me is all Him, it is not from my own nature.

I know the hell that I have been saved from. I know what I would be and where I would be for all eternity if I had not been saved by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ on that cross nearly 2,000 years ago. God himself came to earth, entering into his own creation and uniting with it, becoming the man Jesus and living a perfect, sinless life. Then, of his own free will, he laid down that life to save mine and yours. He took all our sins upon himself. He was nailed to a cross, his blood and life poured out on our behalf. He paid the full penalty for my sin and for yours. He died, and was buried. But, being sinless, death could not hold Him. On the third day he rose from the grave into new life, eternal, incorruptible.

Everyone who believes in Christ and lets him be the Lord of their life is born again. Our wicked nature and all our sins were crucified on that cross and died with him. If we put our faith in him, then our spirits are immediately made new, and one day our bodies will follow suit and we, like him, will also rise from the dead with new bodies that are perfect, sinless, eternal, and incorruptible. And we will be with Him forever and ever and know perfect life, love, joy, and peace, and fellowship with Him and one another.

I know the sins I’ve committed and what an ugly person I am without Christ. But I am not weighed down by them, because I have been forgiven. God forgives sin, then he forgets it. The Bible says our sins are cast as far away from us as East is from West, and God will remember them no more. The knowledge, hard won over my long life, of what I am without Christ and what I am with him, only makes the salvation he gave me sweeter and more precious with every passing day. I wanted him at nine, I made a commitment to him at fifteen, and now at sixty I can truly say that Jesus is the love of my life and my best friend, as well as my Lord, my God, and my Redeemer. 

It’s been a wild ride, but so worth it. One minute with Jesus is better than a lifetime of earthly riches and pleasure. And that is a fact. And that is my boring testimony.

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free thinking just like everyone else

What is one of the main differences between all of us and Jesus of Nazareth? He sought to do the will of God the Father while we by nature want to do whatever we want, however we want, whenever we want. That includes not just the seven deadlies like greed, gluttony, sloth, etc., but the little choices we make every day that affect others. Not tipping the waitress who just brought us lunch. Going to the boss behind a coworker’s back, making an accusation against them to make us look better. A husband telling his wife how he wishes he had married his high-school girlfriend instead. A wife telling everyone what an idiot her husband is. A parent telling a child they will never amount to anything. Yammering at our friends for an hour about our day and never once asking them about theirs.

I’ve written before that there are only two wills in the universe, “my will be done,” or “thy will be done.” The first one is what every religion there has ever been — save one — boils down to. Your reward, whether you believe in Heaven/Jannah/Nirvana/reincarnation/becoming the god of your own planet/enlightenment/eat drink and be merry for tomorrow ye die, whatever it is, you gain it through your own efforts. Each belief system has its own rules, but it all boils down to yourself, your choices, and how well you play the game.

The other will is God himself. Christ Jesus,

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and become obedient to death–even death on a cross! – Philippians 2:6-8

This wasn’t a cakewalk for Jesus. It really hit home for me reading through Matthew chapter 26 again. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples, after the Last Supper, and shortly before he is betrayed. It says,

He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Then, going a little further, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” – Matthew 26:38-39

I’ve always thought that Jesus said this because he knew what was coming and dreaded it. The trial, the mocking and beating, the dreadful scourging, and then being strung up naked on the cross to die in agonizing pain, slowly drowning in his own bodily fluids. That in itself is more than enough reason to plead the cup be taken away. But, reading what came just before it, I think what was even harder for him than that was feeling the weight of the sin of everyone in the world, from Adam to the last baby ever conceived, being placed upon him.

I know what the weight of my own sin feels like. If not for the blood of Christ cleansing me it would be unbearable. I also know that the sins of others close to me weigh heavy on my heart as well. Just seeing broken marriages and families, addictions, etc., and the pain they inflict, is also a heavy weight to carry. They cause me great sorrow. Don’t the destructive choices made by the people YOU love also cause you intense pain? Multiply that by however many billions of people have ever existed, and that was the sorrow that Jesus was feeling that night, the unimaginable heavy weight he was carrying.

He didn’t have to do it. He could have walked away at any moment and left us to rot in hell. None of us can honestly say we don’t deserve it. He had the freedom to just walk out of that garden and disappear, but he didn’t. Just a few verses later, when the soldiers come to arrest him and Peter makes a feeble attempt to protect him, it says:

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” – Matthew 26:52-53

A Roman legion at that time was about 6,000 men, so 12 legions = 72,000 fighting men. Jesus is saying he has endless resources at his disposal. But we see in these verses that he doesn’t just walk away, or destroy the people who want to destroy him, although he could easily do both. What he does do, is ask God the Father if there is another way. He’s suffering and not enjoying it one bit. “My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” …Don’t ever say that God has no idea what you’ve endured in your life. He knows better than anybody. He’s felt it, he’s LIVED IT. Literally he’s felt both your sins and the sins of the people who have hurt you.

Jesus next prays the same thing again, but with a slightly different tone, this time resigning himself to his task:

He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” – Matthew 26:42

We see in these passages a glimpse of the pain Jesus was feeling, the overwhelming sorrow, and his desire for it all to be taken away. And he could have walked away. But he did not hold his own wishes as being of upmost importance. He knew what God the Father wanted him to do, and he knew that we are all doomed to an eternity of bearing the punishment for our own sins unless He paid the price that none of us can pay. It was him or no one. Only a firstborn male lamb, perfect in all its ways, without spot or blemish, could be sacrificed to cover sin (Read Exodus Chapter 12). None of us are perfect, we are all stained with sin. Jesus alone was perfect in all his ways, without spot or blemish. He alone could pay what we never can.

And it was possible because Jesus did not live to please himself and exert his own will. He loves us with all his heart, he lived to submit his will to God, and by his obedience all the world can be saved. We are saved not by our own actions or will, but by His.

The best we can do in our lives is to accept what Jesus did for us on the cross, and let him be the Lord of our lives. That means beating our own will down with a stick, and saying to our Lord Jesus what he said to God the Father: “Not my will be done, Lord, but yours.”

That is the difference between Christianity and every other religious or philosophical system that has ever been or ever will be. It wasn’t easy for Jesus, and it isn’t easy for us. But it is so worth it. Our will always leads to misery and destruction. His will leads to eternal life, freedom, and joy.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved…for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” – Romans 10:9-13