He has played His hand ... Grace is not a hidden agenda.

We live in a time, in a religious atmosphere, where Christianity is often presented as something that needs to be appropriated by the individual. It's offered to you, but you have to do something, believe something, show some kind of earnestness, some kind of seriousness before it can really be yours. We take this so much for granted in our Western way of thinking, that it's hard to imagine that this is precisely how Martin Luther did not view the gospel. It was not something that was appropriated by the individual after assessing it's value. It was something that was given ... to the unacceptable, to the unworthy, even to those who didn't particularly want it. Now that is very different. 

I like the text this morning ... "The Lord has bared His Holy arm before all the nations. All the ends of earth shall see the salvation of God." Translation: He's played His hand. He's let it out in the open. It has become accessible, available, real.  Grace is not a hidden agenda. At Christmas we return again to that fundamental of the Christian faith.  

God has shown Himself.  God has expressed Himself. He's taken the mystery out of Himself, but for a very particular reason. Why does He show us what He shows us in Jesus? Why does He speak in the word so that our ears can detect what he says?  For this reason ... for our salvation.  God doesn't come in Christ Jesus, in the word of the gospel, to answer our religious questions, or to demonstrate Himself to us in the sense that He has to prove anything to us. He comes to do something for us. And to put a finer point on it, to do something 'to us'. He comes to give us salvation. 

God didn't wait for our assessment before He came into the world in the baby Jesus.  No, He came because He chose to come. He came even though He wasn't wanted. "He came to his own people and his own people didn't receive him. (John 1)"  He's not waiting for us to decide something or to change our lives and get ourselves straight or right with God. He comes to us in the midst of our tangledness, our lostness, our confusion, our sin, our hurts, our hopes, our dreams, and He takes a hold of us right there in the middle of it. That's the gospel!  He doesn't wait for us to make a decision. He makes the decision for us. This is a really challenging way of thinking about the faith for people today. Because we've all decided, one way or another, many of us, that somehow, "Well…that’s all well and good but we have to have the final say ... somehow." 

But today we are here to proclaim God with us ... Emanuel. Not because we've asked for Him. Not because we're particularly happy that He is around. But because in His grace, and His mercy, He has chosen to be with us. 

Your sin is forgiven for Jesus sake. If you heard it ... it happened. It's as simple as that. "But I have to do something…don’t I ?" And what's the answer?  "No". That's why the Christian community, early on, called this message, "Good News" ... of great joy! For everybody! Born for you, this day in the city of David, is a Savior. God has expressed Himself ... like a mother gives milk to a child. Like a parent takes a child in a warm embrace.  It's right there. Immediate. Present.  "This is my body, for you. This is my blood, for you." Don't try to take it inside and spiritualize it. Don't try to bring it inside and write theology about it. Don't try to take it inward and figure it out. Just taste it. Let it be what it is. God for you. Pressing and impressing Himself on you, with His forgiveness and mercy, promising you life and hope. 

So grace is not a hidden agenda. The gospel is not a spiritual idea for us to internalize and have to kinda figure out. It comes utterly from outside of us. Asking nothing from us. But given solely by His grace, to us, that our confidence may be in God's grace. And, as Luther said, "In God's grace ... alone."    Amen.

-- Pastor Mark Anderson


From the First London Confession of Faith (1646)

XXIV.

Faith is ordinarily begotten by the preaching of the gospel, or word of Christ, without respect to any power or agency in the creature; but it being wholly passive, and dead in trespasses and sins, doth believe and is converted by no less power than that which raised Christ from the dead.

XXV.

The preaching of the gospel to the conversion of sinners, is absolutely free; no way requiring as absolutely necessary, any qualifications, preparations, or terrors of the law, or preceding ministry of the law, but only and alone the naked soul, a sinner and ungodly, to receive Christ crucified, dead and buried, and risen again; who is made a prince and a Savior for such sinners as through the gospel shall be brought to believe on Him.

The Kingdom must come to us

We cannot go to the kingdom; it must come to us. When we feel the desire to be restored to God, it is natural that we should think of returning to God, and we hope that, after a long journey, we may reach the kingdom. We resolve not to be discouraged by the steepness and length of the road, by its rugged heights and dangerous paths. Prayer, good works, piety ... these we imagine to be the road to God. But we cannot thus go to the kingdom; it must come to us. The door is before the narrow way, and the door is very nigh unto us—even Jesus Christ crucified for sinners.

Adolph Saphir
The Lord's Prayer

The church does not make the gospel effective

Certainly, we will seek to do all that we do with excellence.  However, we refuse to give room to the myth that our church is in the business of making the gospel effective.  Rather, we are committed to the exact opposite.  The church does not make the gospel effective, but the gospel makes the church effective.

-- Don Willeman,
    Founding pastor of Christ Redeemer Church in Hanover, NH
    from, "A Gospel Driven Vision For All Of Life"

The real issue is whether we understand His welcome

Audio:  < 2 min.

So at the end of the service the pastor walked to her and simply asked, "Would you like to know the forgiveness that is in Jesus Christ, and the help that He can give you."   

And her eyes once fallen now fell even deeper, toward the floor, filled with tears.  And to the question, "Would you like to know Jesus, His forgiveness and help.", she said,  "I am not worthy." 

To which the pastor said, "The issue is not whether you are worthy, but whether you are welcome."   

What Jesus is doing in this particular passage is reminding us of what the real issue is.  In terms of His offer of His help and forgiveness to others, He is making it very clear ... the issue is not whether we are worthy, but whether we understand His welcome. 

If we don't understand that, something will wither in us too.  So that the welcome that God expects to extend through us, not only doesn't echo, but we don't even feel it any more ... if we don't understand that the issue is not worthiness, but welcome.

-- Bryan Chapell
Sermon, Nov. 3, 2013, at Grace Presbyterian Church  

Humility = Overlooking our own righteousness

 Remember this...  

All the sighing, mourning, sobbing, and complaining in the world, does not so undeniably evidence a man to be humble, as his overlooking his own righteousness, and living really and purely upon the righteousness of Christ.

--Thomas Brooks

Have you missed the point of Christianity?

If I thought family was there to make me strong,
if I thought friends could be there when family was shattered,

if I could give you a thousand verses for the reasons
God wants to make those elements part of our faith,

I would be right.

But 

since those gifts are not the Giver, 
they will cripple me if I use them to actually walk.

Until I am aware that my soul can be well and whole in my Jesus
without those earthly blessings,

until I learn that I am not broken without them,
that God will actually come through for me
and hear my prayers when I am utterly alone,

then I've missed the point of Christianity.

God's words to His children pierce through the pages of Deuteronomy.
He says He didn't love them
because they were "more in number than any of the peoples,"
because they were "fewest of all peoples."

He says He fed them in the wilderness,
because otherwise they might proclaim in their hearts,
"My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth."

He says "it is not because of your righteousness
that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess,
for you are a stubborn people."

And it all comes home to me.

I have been guilty of assuming that life goes well for me
when I have God's gifts around me.

With those gifts for support, I become arrogant,
because I've never known isolation.

I assume that so many of the blessings of walking with God 
have something to do with my power to surround myself with His creations.

I forget.

He can take those things away at any moment.

The question is, will I fall then?
Or will He answer my prayers when I am in truth,
as thoroughly alone as Israel
eating manna that came out of nowhere in the wilderness?

--Kellie
a reformatted excerpt from her blog post, read her complete post: here

Beware of Serving God

We do not glorify God by providing his needs, but by praying that he would provide ours - and trusting him to answer. 

Here we are at the heart of the good news of Christian Hedonism.  God’s insistence that we ask him to give us help so that he gets glory forces on us the startling fact that we must beware of serving God and take special care to let him serve us, lest we rob him of his glory. 

This sounds very strange. Most of us think serving God is a totally positive thing; we have not considered that serving God may be an insult to him.  

...There is a way to serve God that would belittle him as needy of our service. “The Son of Man came not to be served” (Mark 10:45). He aims to be the servant. He aims to get the glory as Giver.

--John Piper
Desiring God, page 168

"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,
does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, 
as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath
and everything." (Acts 17:24–25)

Your faith is too small. Your pleasure is too small.

Well I did it again this past weekend.  I listened to two sermons.  And I again see an opportunity for discernment of the Good News by juxtaposing them.  But it's not all smooth sailing.  The two sermons differ quite a bit, and even conflict in ways that I hope sharpen your powers of discernment.  Each perhaps gives some insight into a weakness or two of the other.  But it's my hope that ultimately, by comparing the two, it's the gospel that you will be able to see more clearly.  What do you come away with?

Each sermon has been distilled to almost exactly 5 minutes of audio.

Part of our gathering might have something to do with our desire for faith. And that would be OK.  But again, what is it we're actually asking for?  Well, Amy was pretty sure she knew what a lot of people were asking for when it came to faith: I want something to help me.  I want some advantage from belief.  I want it to do something for me.  And I think this plays right into our deep insecurity, doesn't it?  Because isn't that, in fact, what some of us think?  If God is good for anything, it ought to be to give some advantage to people who believe in Him.  Well there was a time when I thought that way too.  And the more I showed my seriousness, and my willingness to commit, that the more likely it would be that God would give me more faith.  And I'd get the benefits of all that work.  Well, somewhere along the way, I was dis-abused of this false idea.  And faith became something quite different.

And today, He speaks to His disciples.  And they, like we, want some advantage from Jesus.  So they say to Him, "Lord, how about a little more faith."  Plug us into the power source.  Give us more faith.  At just at that point in the text, we can say some things about what Jesus is doing.  And of course what He's doing is He's exposing them.  And of course what the scenario here portrays in the text among the disciples is ... well if even a tiny bit of faith can do these huge, amazing things, then there really must not be much faith in us at all.  And that's what Jesus is trying to point out.

Well that poses a problem for me because I thought that faith is supposed to be that empowering thing, that trusting thing, that makes it possible for me to be all that I can be.  No, that's not what the bible talks about as faith.  That's what religion talks about as faith.  The power source to overcome the obstacles of life.  But remember some months ago we talked here about the paradigm of the christian faith is not from lower to higher, from immoral to moral.  It is from death to life.

Years ago a very wise person said to me words that were oh so true.  And have always been a great help.  "Never forget that you are a dying man preaching to dying people."  Don't ever forget it.  Because they are going to want you to pretend you are a living man who is there to make them live even better than they are now.  And that's the false gospel of glory.

The faith that we are talking about is not the message that says, "If you only had more, think of what you could do."  "You need to get your christian act together."  "You need to read the bible more."  "Pray more, spend more time around the church."  "It's all you!"  That's not our message.  The faith that Jesus speaks of.  That faith that is *in* Jesus, is precisely that.  It is trust, (faith means trust), it trust that the promises of God, for us, will be fulfilled, in His time, for His sake, for Christ's sake.

Faith and love don't require a list of do's and don'ts.  You see, Jesus was on to these guys, these young men of his, his followers.  And He's on to us too.  How many of us need lists, so to speak, to do something decent once in a while, the right thing.  If when left to our own devices we'd just as soon blow it off and forget about it.

So, God has not left us to ourselves in the Gospel.  In Jesus Christ, God who fully understands our inwardly turned ways, our profound self interest, our lack of love and trust and faith, has taken it upon Himself, thereby ensuring that God's word of 'yes' is greater that our word of 'no'.  That this faith, this confidence, does not have to reside inside ourselves, where we start questioning it, and spinning it, and distorting it.  But that it is given to us externally in these words of promise, and so there our inner doubts and our inner failures, and our inner uncertainties are met by the certainty of God's promise... The body of Christ, the blood of Christ, given and shed for you, which cannot be compared to any word of faithfulness on our part, where God is concerned.

This is what the bible says ... to our world ... "your pleasure is too small."  That's what the bible says.  Do you understand this as a believer?  You need to understand this.  If you are anchored in God, if you have tasted the joy of salvation, the world can't touch you.  You have tasted eternal pleasure.  You have tasted the joy of obedience.  There is nothing more pleasurable than holiness.   And if we are not, in other words, finding pleasure and delight and happiness (pervasive happiness), [not in a kind of smile on your face way, but deep abiding happiness that winds its way through the path of life, in other words that navigates the valleys and the peaks of life and is always cemented in God.]  Then we are cued up to understand why heaven will not be boring. 

This eternal life, has begun now.  You and I aren't waiting for pleasure to kick in.  Do you see this?  We have seen the eternal way of pleasure, of joy, begin now.  That's why the bible looks at this world and says to it, "Your joy is too small."  Show me joy that lasts forever, and you will have my attention.  But God never promised us, did He, that we would be safe and secure in a worldly sense.  Right?  Outside of Christ.  The only security and comfort and confidence we have in this world is at the right hand of God. 

So this way of life has begun now.  You have security and pleasure now.  As you go about your life... working, raising children, going through the small parts of your day that are seemingly inglorious, you are living the life of pleasure.  It's not the people in the club, who are leading the life of pleasure.  It's not the people who have way more vacation time than you do who are leading the good life.  It's you! 

But lastly, how do we get there?  I want to suggest to you that there is only one answer to the problem of pleasure in an ultimate sense and it is Jesus Christ.  He is the way to pleasure.  How?  How do we take control of our lives?  ... Jesus Christ, slain and ascended.  How is it that we become transcendently happy?  ... We enter into this world, by the grace of God, taking up our cross.  In Jesus Christ, in repenting of all your sin, turning your life over to Christ, trusting in His death on that cross and His resurrection from the grave, it is in Him, it is by that work, that we become truly happy, and truly holy.  We want as much as we can get, more that we can handle, of pleasure.  And where do we find it? ... We find it in doing the will of Christ.

So in application, four quick things.  Number one, remember that you were made for happiness.  You're not supposed to grimly discharge your duty as a christian until you get booted up to heaven.  Right now you are made for happiness.  Number two, know that you will grow in happiness as you grow in holiness.  Happiness will not ultimately come outside of holiness.  So number three, kill sin.  Kill every sin you can find.  If you are killing sin, you are undertaking truly pleasant work.  Ask a friend, if you're single, ask a friend how you can grow in holiness.  If you're in a marriage, have a conversation and say, "how could I grow as a believer?"  "How could I care for you better as a husband or wife?"  And then lastly remember that it is in setting our eyes on Christ, and daily taking up our cross, that we will be most happy. 

[Let us pray...]  Heavenly Father, we are pulled by the world, the flesh, and the devil today.  ... Father I pray for myself and for this congregation, that we will resist that temptation ... and we will recognize that your gospel is far more powerful than the flesh, and than satan.  You have made us, as Paul said, more than conquerors through Christ.  So we can conquer any setting, any trial, any sin, any challenge.

What glorifies Him most

“I am the vine; you are the branches.
Whoever abides in me and I in him,
he it is that bears much fruit,
for apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15:5)

Suppose you are totally paralyzed and can do nothing for yourself but talk. And suppose a strong and reliable friend promised to live with you and do whatever you needed done. How could you glorify your friend if a stranger came to see you? 

Would you glorify his generosity and strength by trying to get out of bed and carry him? No! You would say, “Friend, please come lift me up, and would you put a pillow behind me so I can look at my guest? And would you please put my glasses on for me?”  And so your visitor would learn from your requests that you are helpless and that your friend is strong and kind. You glorify your friend by needing him and asking him for help and counting on him. 

In John 15:5, Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” So we really are paralyzed. Without Christ, we are capable of no good. As Paul says in Romans 7:18, “Nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” 

But Jesus, as our strong and reliable friend — “I have called you friends” (John 15:15) — promises to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

--John Piper

Two preachers, one Gospel

I've listened to two sermons since Sunday.  And below is a two minute segment from each.  In length they differ by a mere second or two.  And yet perhaps you can see how they are different from each other in other ways.  Two pastors, both devoted to the call of the great commission and feeding Christ's sheep, both addressing the issue of us being too filled up with ourselves.  What do you come away with?


 Audio (2 min)

Now I've been speaking to believers this morning. I want to say, in closing, a word to any unbelievers in our midst. And I want to say straight up... that God wants to fill you with His glory and greatness. Did you hear me? My dear unbelieving friends, are you listening to me... God wants to fill you with His glory and greatness. But there's a problem right now. The problem is there's no room for Him because you're all filled up with yourself. In fact that's why you worship yourself ... because you're filled up with yourself. And naturally, given that that's whom you're beholding, that's who you worship.

Now I was once filled up with myself, so I'm not looking at you over my spectacles, wagging the finger. We're sinners. We need a savior, but if you want to be filled up with God, you've got to repent of this gross self idolatry. You've got to stop being filled up with yourself. Empty yourself, as the Lord Jesus Christ did, and let God fill you with His glory, with His greatness, with His power, with His dominion. Let Him fill you with His holiness, with His justice, with His love. Let Him fill you with salvation. He'll do it. He'll do it.

-------------------------


 Audio (2 min)

And so, the great reversal that Jesus speaks of finally comes to rest in the glorious gospel.  Because the greatest reversal of all is that He takes people like you and like me, the lukewarm folks tepidly existing in the middle, and He exchanges our sin for His righteousness.  He takes upon himself the brokenness of our lives, and on the cross He dies for our sin and He gives us the merits of His love and mercy and goodness and forgiveness.  That's the great exchange that matters. 

So we must end where we always must end in the proclaiming of God's word.  We must always point out how it exposes us for what we are.  And we see that the way of God is not really our way.  But that is precisely why He came in His Son.  Because, (as we stood in the threshold here of worship this morning and confessed), we are in bondage to this way of being in the world.  We cannot *not* do it.  I'm stuck in me.  And I confess that.  And then the glorious word comes ... In the name of Christ a great exchange has taken place.   He's taken that old broken you that's so full of yourself you can't see straight, and He said, "I'll take that one, you take Jesus." And everything that is His is now yours.

The great exchange of the gospel is that God has given Himself completely to us in Christ.  Holding nothing back.  Exchanging our broken lives and broken world for the promise of a new life, and a new world, and a new creation.