Believers Armed and Dangerous

¹⁵ “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ¹⁶ You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matt. 7:15-20)

This passage used to really stress me out.  Until fairly recently, I read this thinking Jesus Himself was telling me my main job in the body of Christ was recruitment.  Surely we need new souls hearing about Jesus, more people learning of the joy of the gospel message, more people turning their lives over to Christ.  I thought that must be the “fruit” Jesus was talking about: “Bad people drag others to hell with them.  Christians should bring converts with them to heaven,” I thought.

At times the guilt and stress I felt over this passage dragged my Christian life, participation, and even my relationship with Christ down.  Finally, a friend pointed out the fruit Jesus is talking about in the believer are the fruit of the Spirit, and the guilt and stress cleared. 

Jesus is saying here we need to spend time with Him and in His Word to grow stronger in the fruit listed in Gal. 5:22-23:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Gal 5:22-23)

As we yield more of our lives to God’s Spirit,  grow in grace through prayer, Bible study, and Christian fellowship; we grow in the fruit of the Spirit.  Our love, joy, peace, and, so on grow in us as we become more like Jesus.  And as that happens,  evangelism becomes so much more natural.  When we are filled to overflowing with the joy of our relationship with Him.  We can’t help but share that joy with others.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished the final week of a five session class on Christian apologetics.  That final week, we talked about the deity of Christ, the incarnation, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Just before class a friend asked me how I was.  I smiled and said, “I get to talk to people about Jesus for an hour and a half.  What’s better than that?”  What is better than that? 

How many people have I seen come to Christ through my sharing?  I’ve never really sat down and thought about it, but I’m sure (not counting church events) I could count them on both hands and still have a couple of fingers left.  And, I’ve been a Christian for 46 years.

Why is this important?

How many people have I shared  God’s truth with?  More times than I can count. 

At my previous church I taught a Bible class.  When each class was finished, I would sometimes write something on the board to stimulate the class that filled the room next.  Once I wrote “It is not our job to save people.”  They were a little shocked, and I heard about it the following week. There is a lot of truth in that, though.  It is our job to share, to inform, not necessarily to cut notches in our Bibles.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷ So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Cor. 3:6-7)

Sometimes we’re plangers, sometimes we’re waterers.  Some of us tell someone of Jesus for the first time.  Some of us add to that act by sharing more.  It’s God who does the work to bring someone to His Son. True, He usually uses us to do that.

Some of us are evangelists.  I am so fascinated by these folks who seem to be able to start a discussion about the Lord and have a stranger repeating the Sinner’s Prayer a few minutes later.  It’s their gift and God blesses it.  I don’t have that gift.

Isn’t it just like God, though, to present us with the opportunity to share, gives us the words to say, touches the heart of the lost person, then gives us the reward.  We serve an awesome God.

¹² Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (1 Tim. 6:12)

This past week, I’ve been in a sometimes heated discussion with a cultist on Facebook.  He called my end of the discussion a part of the “Christian war culture on Facebook.”

As I went back over our discussion today, I think he was right in how he viewed my remarks.  I’m not always kind or gentle with my “opponents.”    The tragedy is my life verse speaks against this very thing, being combative with those who disagree:

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, (1 Peter 3:15)

Christians are told we should put on the full armor of God as a defense against the evil day (Eph. 6:13-20).  Sounds like we should be ready to be combative, doesn’t it? Interesting the only offensive weapon is in verse 17, “. . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  When we fight with anger or self-righteousness, we turn many away from the message.  And that’s what we’re here for, to spread the message of Christ.

Disagreements need not be combative.  The people we deal with are often lost but are still people for whom Christ died.  We should treat them as such. We are all equally valuable in God’s eyes and should be in our own eyes.

When Jesus fought against Satan himself during His temptation, He didn’t use divine powers but used Scripture to fight.  Scripture is a powerful weapon against the lies we face.  Sometimes we think “If I could just bring down fire and brimstone out of heaven as God did on Sodom and Gomorrah:  Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. (Gen. 19:24)  But, that’s not for us to do. 

As Christians, our position is plain.  We are to share the Truth in love.

How important and how powerful is Scripture?  I sometimes forget and rely on language and logic to win arguments, but again, God has not asked me to win arguments but to share the truth.  That truth, God’s Word, is so powerful that when Jesus began His ministry, He didn’t bring down thunder and lightning from heaven.  He didn’t wave His hand and thousands fell at His feet.  He read Scripture (Luke 4:16-21).

Why is this important?

If Christ relied on Scripture to stand against Satan himself and to show Himself to be the Messiah come to save men, who am I to step away from that example and use the logic and anger of man.

God has given us a mission here on earth, to share the gospel and to defend it when it is attacked.  When we step away from the pattern set by Jesus, we are hurting the cause.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, (John 17:20)

A friend of mine read this today at a men’s prayer group, and it struck me how Jesus prayed for us to continue to tell others what He’s told us.

I don’t think Jesus is just talking about sharing the gospel with the lost since He says “their word” and not “My Word.”  We are often confronted by people who need to hear an encouraging word from us or guidance of some sort.  What we share to encourage them or guide them comes from principles discovered in our study of God’s word.  We use our words to share the wisdom God has given us through our similar experiences to theirs.

I think there is still another facet to this.  God uses “our word” to guide us in raising our children.  Prov. 22:6 tells us to Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.  Much of that training comes from teaching our children God’s word, but it also comes from the wisdom we as parents learned through God teaching us through experience.

One reason Jesus came to earth as a man was to experience what we experience, our temptations, our trials, our pain, and our joys.  Jesus was as much a human being as you and I but still retained His divine nature.  As a man He learned through more than God’s Word:  Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Heb. 5:8)

Don’t we learn obedience through suffering, too?  Don’t trials teach us more about God and our relationship with Him?  Don’t we learn not to “touch the hot stove” once we’ve been burned?

Not everything God teaches us comes from His Word alone.  Much of it comes from others and where God has worked in their lives and taught them.

So, some of what we pass along from Jesus through the apostles through the ladder of Christians in time past up until we came to know Jesus came by word of mouth. 

When the church was young, they relied on the apostles to tell them the truth.  And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

Look at all the sources of learning just in that one verse.  We have the teachings of the apostles (the New Testament even though it didn’t exist at the time), fellowship of believers, and prayers (direct communication with God Himself).

Yes, no doubt witnessing was included in Jesus prayer in John 17.  We are to go into all the world and preach the good news, the truth that we can be cleansed of our sin through a simple yielding of ourselves to Christ.  But let’s not forget to build one another up as well.

Proverbs 27:17 says “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”  This isn’t talking only about sharing the word with others but discipling one another, working with one another, watching and learning from one another. 

Why is this important?

We have people in our lives that need to learn from us how to live as Christians.  Paul did this with Timothy and Titus.  He first taught them head knowledge through God’s Word and Paul’s past experiences.  Then he took them into the mission field with him to see how it’s done.  Only after that did he send them out alone to learn by doing.

It’s the same with us.  We too often think simple Bible teaching alone is enough to create an effective evangelist or a powerful Christian.  It’s not.  Experience adds to our arsenal when we share, counsel, or guide as believers. 

When my wife and I visited Colonial Williamsburg, we stopped at the cabinetmaker’s shop and saw men at different skill levels working together.  Those who were less experienced and less skilled were being taught the basics by those further along.  It was a wonder to see.  There was only one master cabinetmaker there, though.  He knew what was to be done and was ready to help the less experienced when needed.

We are all in different levels of our Christian experiences.  Some of us are apprentices.  Some are journeymen.  Still there is only one Master who sees the overall picture and is willing and able to help us.  He relies on the journeymen, though, to help the apprentices through knowledge and experience.

Many non-believers and even many believers think Christianity is simply a matter of faith.  I’ve given quite a number of blogs here on the evidences for the truth of Christianity.  But, still I hear many say “Religion is just a belief.  There is nothing reasonable about it.”  I think they’re wrong.

In Isa. 1:18, Isaiah asks people to reason with him.  In 1 Peter 3:15, we’re told to have a reason for what we believe and a defense for that belief.  Jude 3 tells us to earnestly contend for our faith.

There are certain words used in reasoning logically.  “So”, and “therefore,” are words that indicate a logical conclusion.  “Since” indicates a logical premise.  Let me give an old example:

Since every man is mortal

And Aristotle is a man

Therefore, Aristotle is mortal.

 “Since” is used in 196 verses of Scripture.  “Therefore” is used a whopping 798 times.  The Scriptures are certainly not without logical conclusions.

In Acts 17:17, we’re told Paul “reasoned” with the Jews in the synagogue at Athens.  The word for “reasoned” here means to hold an intelligent discourse, a debate.  A little further in that chapter, Paul stands in the Aeropagus in the midst of a number of Greek philosophers and logically walked through a series of arguments for the Christian Creator God using the evidence easily available to the Athenians.

Just before this episode, Paul had been preaching in a synagogue in Berea.  The Bereans listened to Paul then checked to see if what he said was so.  They were called noble for this.

Throughout the New Testament we are told not to hold our faith blindly:

Do not despise prophecies, ²¹ but test everything; hold fast what is good. (1 Thess. 5:20-21)

Looks look at 1 Peter 3:15:

¹⁵ but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

The word translated “defense” is apologia and is a legal term.  It means to be able to defend your faith at the level of a legal defense in a court of law.  This presupposes there is enough reason behind such a defense to be victorious.

Historically, Christianity has been represented by some of the finest minds ever to put pen to paper.  Origen of Alexandria is a good example of a Christian genius.  He was so brilliant his bishop employed several scribes to follow him around and write down all that he had to say.  Fortunately (and maybe unfortunately) we have a lot of that today.

Origen wasn’t 100% in his theology, but he was extremely instrumental in bringing Christianity center stage in the theater of ideas.  Christianity was never reasonably assumed to be a blind faith.  Since Origen, such great minds as Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Francis, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and many others have stood firmly before critics and have prevailed.

Why is this important?

We as Christians have no reason to bow our heads in the presence of intellectual persecution.  There is good historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth being Who He said He was.  Eyewitnesses recorded His miracles.  Lives were changed then and now.

Over the years, I’ve had people approach me saying we can’t believe the gospels because they are biased.  After all, they were written by Christians.  I try to keep my composure and point out they would be more suspect if eyewitnesses had seen the miracles they recorded and did not become Christians.

We rightly hold a strong position in the marketplace of ideas.  Ours is not a blind faith but a faith founded on fact and reason.  Don’t let anyone try and convince you otherwise.

After several decades as a Christian, I still find it interesting how few people know what their spiritual gift is.  We see a number of spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament (Eph. 4:11-12; 1 Cor. 4-11, 28; Romans 12:6-8) and displayed in both the Old and New Testament.  God has given us spiritual gifts for a purpose, for the work of the ministry to grow the church:

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, (Eph. 4:11-12)

This passage contains one of the shorter lists of spiritual gifts in Scripture, but it tells us a lot about gifts in general.  God has gifted each of us with particular gifts to do the work of the ministry.

The issue at hand is that so many Christians have no clue what their primary spiritual gift is.  I say “primary” because we all have a primary gift but often can be given a gift temporarily to suit a particular moment or time period.  A couple of years ago, I was talking with a Jehovah’s Witness, and he asked me a question that came to me from out of left field.  Now I’ve been talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses for nearly 50 years.  There isn’t much I haven’t heard, but this one caught me flat-footed.  While I was still reeling from the blow, God just told me the response.  I stated the response to John, the JW, exactly word-for-word as God had told me.  Then it was John’s turn to reel.  That was a brief gift of knowledge (1 Cor. 12:8).

Another time I was talking to a realtor whose wife got the calling to smuggle Bibles into China even though neither he nor his wife spoke Chinese.  The calling was so strong that they bought several hundred Bibles in Chinese, shipped them to Hong Kong, flew there, and drove them to the border with Communist China.  The realtor’s wife spoke with the guard in Chinese; he identified himself as a Christian, and expressed how grateful he was for the Bibles.  She and her husband returned to the states, but she never again was able to speak Chinese.  God had given her a temporary gift of tongues.

More important than this is recognizing our primary gifts, the gifts we use every day.  How do we recognize those in ourselves?  I think the best way is to ask others what they think your gift is.

Early in my Christian life, I was sitting in an adult Sunday School class with a number of other people when the pastor joined us.  We were going through the book “Body Life” and were discussing this exact topic.  When there was a pause, the pastor stepped in and said “Sometimes we can tell what gift a particular person has by their habits.  For instance,” he said “I’ll bet when Mike and John study their Bibles, they have books and magazines all over the table.  They read commentaries, use Bible dictionaries, and ask questions of others.  They have the gift of teaching.”  I was stunned.  It was like he was reading my mail.  How did he know?  He knew because in the pre-computer age, this was how teachers had to study.  Now we use computers and Bible study programs.

I have friends who have the gift of giving, evangelism, teaching, helps, administration, and so on.  Most of those people know their gift.  It is a drive to do what they have been gifted to do.

God’s gift is often so great a desire it becomes obviously a gift from Him.

Why is this important?

If you don’t know your spiritual gift, ask a mature Christian who knows you well.  Look at the things that drive you.  Do you want to help, does disorganization bother you?  Do you get upset when someone teaches something you know is in error?

There are lots of “spiritual gift tests” online.  Take a few of those and see if there is a commonality in the results.

Without all of us knowing and exercising our spiritual gifts, we are not fulfilling God’s desire to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.  So, do some research.  Find your function in the body of Christ. 

I had a friend tell me the other day he believed in the preexistence of the soul.  This doctrine teaches all souls existed prior to being born in a human body.  Some believe our souls existed from eternity past just as God has.  Others believe our souls were created but created prior to our birth. 

It’s not a Christian doctrine because the Bible doesn’t teach it.  I believe the doctrine of preexistence of the soul comes from a misunderstanding of God’s foreknowledge.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1:5)

Passages like this seem to imply preexistence of the soul, but, again, the reader must read into the passage their preconceived belief.  One of the most basic rules in biblical interpretation is to compare a passage with the entirety of the Bible.  The Bible is the best commentary on itself.

Maybe it would be good here to briefly discuss the omniscience of God.  God knows all things past present and future. 

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. (Ps. 147:5)

He also knows all things that might come to pass if conditions were different:

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. (Luke 10:13)

Since God knows all things past, present, and future; and even what might happen, it’s to be understood that He knows us before we were born.  We didn’t exist yet, but in God’s mind He knew us.  God exists in the eternal now. 

Let me go back to an analogy I’ve used before.  God’s foreknowledge is like a father who has watched a video of his daughter’s fifth birthday party so many times he knows every move, every word spoken, every leaf moved by the breeze.

God’s foreknowledge is like that.  He knows for certain what will happen in the future just as the father knows what will happen before he slides the DVD into his player.  In God’s case, the DVD is all of history past, present, and future.  As it plays out, there is nothing God does not know or expect.  When He says He knew us before He formed us in our mother’s womb, the response is “of course He did.  He knows all.”

We become living souls upon our birth or creation:

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:7)

The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him, (Zech 12:1)

Why is this important?

⁵ Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified  (2 Cor. 13:5)

We need to make sure our faith is as pure and as accurate as possible.  Looking at counterfeit doctrine should only strengthen what we already know to be true.  Knowing the genuine faith protects us from being fooled and from drifting from the Truth.  It is our job as Christians to test everything no matter what, the strange doctrines we hear from others and even the familiar doctrines we hold ourselves.  Our God is a God of truth. 

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard.  (Heb. 2:1-3)

Grateful for that One Day

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? ² For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. ³ Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. ⁴ Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another (Romans 7:1-4a)

My father was an angry and abusive man.  I went to bed each night hoping not to do anything the next day that would anger him.  If he wasn’t hurting my brother, sister, and me physically, he was hurting us emotionally.

When I was 15, it was late at night.  I lay in bed trying to sleep when the doorbell rang.  I heard my mother cry out when she saw who it was.  It was Ira, my father’s emergency contact.

Ira came into my room and told me, “You’re going to need to be grown up for this, Mike.  Your father has died.”  I almost cried out “Really??”  I was so happy, but I couldn’t show it.  It would have hurt my mother who was unaware of the worst of the abuse.  That one day changed my life.  All the rules, all the threats, all the failures were gone.  Because of one event, one day, I was free.

Even though my father was the way he was, I learned a lot from him that helped me through life: my work ethic, the drive of a father to provide for his family, those sorts of things.  God’s Law was instructive as well.  It showed the ancient Jews how to live, how to please God, and that they could not do it by just works of righteousness.

God’s Law is holy.  I need to make that point before I continue.  It was man that failed to keep the Law because man is imperfect.  Our flesh stood in the way.  Like my father’s rules, the Law came with rules impossible to obey perfectly.  It was frustrating and painful for the Jews who were under the Law just as it was for me.

The passage above speaks of how one event would change her life, the day the woman’s husband died and set her free from the law that kept her from marrying again.  Paul uses this excellent example to show how in one day, Jesus’ death set God’s people free from the law of sin and death:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. ³ For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  (Rom. 8:2-4)

What a wonderful day that was for us.  On another single day, October 16^th, 1975, I gave my life to Christ and was set free once more.  It was a much greater freedom, freedom from the law of sin and death.

We’re all under the Law if we don’t surrender to Christ.  There’s no getting out of it.  Either we must live a sinless life to satisfy God, or accept the free gift of eternal life through Christ.  God requires one or the other.

I often tell my friends I’m not a Christian for the reward at the end of this life.  Heaven is a wonderful benefit, but I would be a Christian even if the reward wasn’t there.  I’m a Christian because of this life God has forgiven me.  I’m grateful for those two days, the day 2,000 years ago when Jesus died for me and the day 46 years ago when I took advantage of His free offer of eternal life.  Those two days gave me a life filled with joy and blessings, family and friends that mean the world to me, but most of all a relationship with the very One Who set me free.

Why is this important?

If you’re a child of God, there was that one day when everything changed for you, too.  It’s a day for which you will be forever grateful.  Sadly, I sometimes forget that.  When I catch myself dwelling in self-pity, I recount the sins in my past and present remembering that God has forgiven, and I’m grateful once again.

“Gratitude” should be at the center of our Christian life.  Talk show host and author, Dennis Prager has said gratitude is the key to happiness.  I think he’s right.  If we want to be happy, we must be grateful for that one day that changed our world and on the One Who died to give us life .

²⁸ Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, (Heb. 12:28)

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Rom. 8:2)

This verse in Romans speaks of two laws, the Mosaic Law, “the law of sin and death” and the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”  The Mosaic Law itself is holy.  Paul wasn’t saying it wasn’t.  It is man’s disobedience to the laws, statutes, and ordinances which bring sin and, therefore, death.  Our sin nature causes us to resist the Law.  If sin wasn’t attractive, we wouldn’t do it.  So, we rebel rather than obey.

The Mosaic Law wasn’t given to make life miserable for the Jews.  God wasn’t on a power trip.  Sin is anything we do which does not align with God’s nature.  The Mosaic Law gives us an idea of God’s nature and how impossible it is for man to align with it on his own.

The Mosaic Law provided several lessons.  Among these was the lesson that man can’t make perfection on his own no matter how hard he tries.  A second lesson is that we now know the character of God more clearly, what it means to be holy, and “we ain’t it.”  The Greek word for “guardian” in Galatians 3:24 means a sort of nanny or tutor, a guardian who is also an educator.  So, while the Law watched over God’s people, it also was meant to educate them in the ways of God.

²⁴ So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Gal 3:24-26)

I need to mention the Holy Spirit’s role at this point.  In the Old Testament times, the believer was not always filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit would come and go as it did with Samson:

 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. (Judges 16:20 see also Ps. 51:11)

Today, as Christians, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit in us.

¹³ In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Eph. 1:13-14)

So, two thousand years ago, Jesus came to earth in the form of a man and changed things.  No longer does man have to follow a set of specific rules and sacrifices.  No longer can man say “I can do this on my own” either.  Now God has provided the perfect sacrifice that covers the sins of all humanity.  The Holy Spirit enters into the Christian as our Teacher and Guardian to guide us in our walk with God.

Why is this important?

This is important because many Christians are still living under the law of sin and death.  We think the things we do for God somehow add to our favor with God or somehow make up for our sins: kind of a quid pro quo.  Many of us believe we are just going to make it to heaven by the skin of our teeth, and a little time working in the church nursery, dropping something extra in the offering on Sunday, or helping an old lady across the street will gain favor with God, and He’ll forget our sin.  It doesn’t work that way.

Our God is a God of grace.  He forgave us the moment we gave our lives over to Him.  Our sins still upset the relationship with have with Him, but He is quick to forgive when we confess our sins.

So, live a gracious life.  Seek to obey rather than sacrifice.  It will improve your life and your relationship with God and others.

²² And Samuel said,

       “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

       Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams  (1 Sam 15:22)

Fear Not

for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Tim. 1:7)

Fear is not a Christian trait.  Fear, not hatred, is the opposite of love, and we serve a God of love.

We have people all over the New Testament who were afraid, but whenever one of God’s people is frightened, God or one of His messengers tells that person to not be afraid.    When Joseph was confused about Mary being pregnant, he was about to divorce her quietly, but an angel told him not to be afraid:

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. (Matt 1:20)

When the angel appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus, they were afraid, but the angel told them not to be frightened:

⁹ And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. ¹⁰ And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  (Luke 2:9-10)

When Jesus walked on water beside the disciples’ boat, they were terrified, but Jesus Himself told them not to be afraid:

²⁶ But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. ²⁷ But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Matt. 14:26-27)

Even when Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after His resurrection, they were afraid, but Jesus showed them there was no reason to be so:

³⁶ As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” ³⁷ But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. ³⁸ And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹ See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:36-39)

Why is this important?

Those were all pretty scary events.  Imagine an angel showing up at your home.  I don’t care if he was coming to tell me he was from Publisher’s Clearinghouse with a check, I’d still be terrified by his presence.

The message from these passages for us should be fear is not a trait of God’s people.  For those who do not know Christ, there is much to fear.  But, for those of us who are children of God, there is nothing for us to be afraid of.  I think the best example of this is when the women went to the tomb.  There were two parties there, the soldiers and the women: the lost and the people of God.  What the angel said fascinates me:

⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. (Matt. 26:5-6)

He didn’t tell the terrified soldiers not to be afraid; he said that to the women, to God’s people. 

We let a late check, a late flight, or a dark period frighten us just as the disciples did, but like 1 Thessalonians says, we should not be terrified of the dark.  We are children of the Light.

⁵ For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. (1 Thess 5:5)

As Christians we carry slogans sometimes: “One Way,” “What Would Jesus Do.”  Maybe it would be s good time for us to adopt a new one: “Fear Not.”

Over the years I’ve noticed how many of the verses I’ve highlighted in my Bible are the third chapter and sixteenth verse of a book, the “3:16s”.  I know the chapter and verse divisions of the English Bibles are man made, so the 3:16s are either a coincidence or maybe it’s just that all the verses of the Bible are interesting.  They’re all inspired (2 Tim. 3:16).  They all lead to Christ (John 3:16).  Gal. 3:16 tells us the Bible is the best commentary on itself.  You get the point.

So, because the 3:16s are interesting to me, I will throw a 3:16 into the mix once in awhile like today:

2 Peter 3:16   ^“as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”

I chose to start with 2 Peter 3:16 because there’s a lot of stuff in this single verse and should be a good passage to start off this theme.

The verse is speaking of Paul’s letters, and there are several points Peter wants us to see.  He tells us sometimes Paul’s letters are difficult to understand.  That is an understatement.  Most of us have struggled with some of the passages in Paul’s epistles.  That said, the most interesting thing to me is Peter knows passages that are not easily understood are easily misunderstood and easily twisted to conform to one’s beliefs.

Let’s look at Peter’s first group, the ignorant.  The Greek word for “ignorant” here is amatheis.  It means “unschooled” or “unlearned.”  The sincere but ignorant Bible student can twist Scripture in a genuine attempt to understand it.  After all, we have 66 books made up of 1,189 chapters (31,142 verse)s in the English Standard Version.  That’s a lot to take in.  As a result, passages can be taken out of context or twisted to fit into a preconceived notion of the reader.  That’s not a good thing.

It is just that they are unlearned and don’t know any better.  What is needed is some instruction from a more mature Christian who is able to interpret the Word of God and show the students how to study the Bible themselves.

Now on to the “unstable” preachers: The Greek word is asteriktoi.   This is the only place it appears in the New Testament.  It means unstable in the sense of having no foundation – “unpropped” is the closest translation to the word.  “Nothing is holding it up.”

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once said “Jesus said, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ so, be still and know that you are god.’”  Lots of stuff wrong with that statement.  Jesus didn’t say it.  It is the beginning of Psalm 46:10.  God said it and didn’t mean we are gods.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had no foundation.  He was “unpropped,” but he used what he had heard and tried to apply it to his own beliefs.  This is called an appeal to authority.  By trying to drag the Bible into his deception, he could imply Jesus (the Authority) endorsed what the Yogi was saying.

This is the sort of thing we see in the cults as well.  The Mormons point to Ezek. 37:19 as support for the inspiration of the Book of Mormon:

 say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand.

Because Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, the Mormons teach the stick of Joseph is referring to Joseph’s Book of Mormon as a second testament along with the stick of Judah (the Bible).  If you read the context, this verse has nothing to do with any other faith.  It’s just a blind baseless claim no more reliable than that of the Marharishi.

My last point on 2 Peter 3:16 is that it points to Paul’s writings as Scripture.  Peter, the head of the apostles, points to Paul’s epistles as they were still being written and calls them Scripture.  So, there was no doubt in the early church God was again inspiring writings, and those writings were coming from the apostles.

Why is this important?

How we handle Scripture is extremely important.  Scripture “does stuff” as my pastor says.  It gets inside of us and changes us.  It instructs us.  It is our standard for truth.  It is the antiseptic for the infection of evil in us and in the world.  We need to be careful how we handle it and generous in how we share it.