the point of salvation--Psalm 9:13-14

Be gracious to me o Lord!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death,
That I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation.
Psalm 9:13-14

Salvation itself is an interesting concept, and one that is often thought upon with disdain. The very nature of being saved is such that before the act of saving, one was unsaved. Most of the world doesn't want to accept the idea that there is such a thing as 'unsaved', and if our concept of things and the way the world is doesn't begin with the God of the Bible, then the idea of being 'unsaved' is one that can easily be looked upon with scoffing. "Saved from what?" one may ask, "Everything seems fine to me...what do I need to be saved from?"

But the interesting part of this conversation is that we are wont to ask the original question to see what response we get: "What is the chief end of man?" Since humanity knows that it's here to do something and to be something, this is invariably the question (in one form or another) that each and every person wrestles with eventually. Children grow up with the paradigm that a) mom and dad are in charge, b) I'm their child, and c) this is the world I know. It's not very complicated. But eventually those children become young men and women and they begin struggling with "what's the point of all of it?" and "what's my purpose?" or "what's OUR purpose?" Again, "What is the chief end of man?"

The Bible assumes that there is a God in Heaven who has created all things and gives life and breath to all things (Isaiah 40:28, 46:8-11; Acts 17:25-25). That's why the Bible's first words are "In the beginning, God." It wants the reader to know that before you read anything proceeding, know that everything starts with God.
We live in a day where everyone wants 'proof' if they are to believe in or invest in something. And this is a fair argument--"you want me to believe in something or invest in it, show me why and assure me it's real."
But the fact of the matter is that even if there isn't complete proof, if someone wants to believe in something, they'll take it on faith and continue on without absolute assurance. That's why people buy stocks (unsure the market will always be stable), buy houses when they get a new job (unsure they'll keep the job definitely), follow their sports team with championship aspirations (knowing that their team has roughly a 30:1 shot of winning it all), and cut the clock close in the morning getting ready "because I have plenty of time" (unaware of whether or not traffic will allow them to make it on time, sure that they'll curse the other drivers and the city planners for their poor job of building highways in the city if they're late). Truly, people will make all sorts of decisions and act on absolutes without there being any assurance that this is the best move. The reason they did it is because they wanted to. And this is good and acceptable. Everyone does it, and there isn't anything wrong with it.

The problem comes when the idea of faith in a God we can't literally see is scoffed at and dismissed because there isn't any proof. Again, who said there has to be proof of it in order for it to be acceptable? People accept things without proof all the time and don't give it a second thought, so why can't we accept God without giving it a second thought?
Let's be honest--it's because we truly don't want to. Interestingly, God's Bible even speaks to that: Romans 8:7--"the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God"; James 4:4--"friendship with the world is enmity with God."
"If God is real, why would He put us in a world like this knowing that most will become friends with it, if friendship with it is enmity with Him?" If you ask this question, you have to understand that these passages of Scripture were written 2000 years ago, and the initial problem that opened up "good and evil" and "right and wrong" is recorded as happening MUCH longer ago than that. Originally man was called to simply live in the world where God is sovereign and mans job is to enjoy perfect peace with Him and His creation. This was lost when man rebelled in sin. Now this world is in constant rebellion, and man's enmity with the idea of God unwittingly proves the Bible true in this regard. When James writes that friendship with the world is enmity with God, he writes this with full knowledge that the reason the world is LIKE this is that man is in rebellion from God--the world wasn't created with evil in it, but the world inherited evil when man rebelled.

So could we at least accept that man doesn't want to believe in God? Maybe we should take it further though--many people DO want to believe in God, but have problems believing in God the way the Bible depicts Him. They say, "I'd love to believe in Him, I just have problems with the God of the Bible. He seems angry, bitter, jealous, narcissistic, selfish, etc. I struggle with believing in a god like that." But friend, who do you know that isn't like that themself? Isn't everyone like this, at least to an extent? "Well yes, and that's the problem with the world." And when you say this, you're close to understanding the Bible, because the Bible asserts that the world is like this based on nothing but rebellion from God, whereas GOD is like this based on the fact that He's God and He can be. It's not unwarranted anger, bitterness, jealousy, narcissism, or selfishness if He has a reason to be angry (His whole creation hates Him), a reason to be bitter (He gives them reason all the time to turn to Him and listen to Him and they won't), a reason to be jealous (every human trusts in humanity's gifting to solve the world's problems, when God Himself GAVE them the ability to solve these problems), a reason to be narcissistic (there's nothing in creation BETTER than God Himself because, being created, it's all insignificant and futile compared to He), or a reason to be selfish (it's HIS creation and no one else's).

All arguments against God's existence are stopped by God's sovereignty, because every argument is based on human understanding, and God has even said in the Bible that the things of God seem like foolishness to the world in its understanding(1 Corinthians 1:22, 2:14). When someone argues against God, they prove the Scripture true with their arguing against Him, because the Scripture said they would. Seems like God appears to be sovereign still, even if no one wants Him to be!
If this is the state of humanity, then we can see easily why there would be the need for "salvation". If man is created by God, uses the life God has given him to rebel from God and not believe in God, then dies without any clue of what will happen after he dies, then the only thing that would appear to be certain is that nothing is certain, other than that we might find out we were wrong in our thinking He wasn't real. And if we were, we'll fall into His hands and be judged as those who continually failed to accept His Lordship, followed by the appropriate punishment given by the Judge of all things who always judges rightly (Genesis 18:25, Deuteronomy 32:4). Thus what man needs is salvation.

So David in the Psalm 9 passage prays humbly, "Be gracious to me, O Lord!" He knows that IF this God is THE God, then David himself hasn't given Him the appropriate attention and acknowledgment in his own life up until this point. Thus his prayer to God starts with a plea for grace from God--grace is pardon and forgiveness based on simply goodness in the grace-giver. David humbly prays for this first and foremost. He doesn't assume that the problems in his life (which appear to be many looking at the rest of this Psalm) are God's fault for giving him a burdensome lot--rather he assumes that the problems are probably there because he himself has fallen into them by virtue of not watching his own step. So he asks for grace from the Ultimate Grace-giver.
He then asks for the Lord to "see (his) affliction from those who hate (him)" and then addresses this God as "you who lift me up from the gates of death." In much the same way as in the previous statement, David doesn't address God as "you who lowered me to the gates of death" before asking for God to lift him back up--rather, he seems to assume that God's role in David's predicament is that of being the One who is strong and able to lift him up from the gates of death. To David, it's not God's fault--but God can save him. And since he's bringing his concern to Him, he knows it.

Then from here David gives the incentive for WHY God should save him from his predicament: "that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation." David is surely not trying to sell God on helping him...or even buy God for that matter...by saying "I'll worship You if You help me!" David knows that God knows the deepest parts of all hearts (Psalm 139:2, Prov. 21:2, Ezek. 11:5) and bargaining with Him doesn't work because bargaining only works between equal sides who know the same amount about each other and would be pushed to a truce of equal faith in each other. Instead, David simply states the incentive as a proclamation and praise. Not "save me and I'll praise you..." but "save me SO THAT I'll praise you." "I'll recount all your praises...I'll rejoice in your salvation."

Notice the succession of what happens here-->David prays that God save him from his danger, and David will rejoice in the saving that God will perform.

This is the point of salvation anyways, according to the Bible. The point of God saving anyone is Him getting the glory. Ephesians 2:8-10--"For by grace you've been saved through faith...it is the gift of God...for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." The point of saving is to be realigned with the God that we've fallen out of alignment with. This is not burdensome (1 John 5:3)--it's freeing, liberating, and life-giving (Isaiah 12:3-6, John 10:10). This is because humanity only truly flourishes when humanity knows its proper place in correlation with God's proper place--when this is realigned and set right, flourishing is inevitable (Daniel 11:32).

"How could a loving God be so selfish and so concerned with His own glory?" many may ask. But the question is a simple one to answer--it's possible in and of the fact that He is in fact the Sovereign God of all things. According to the Bible, God will be glorified whether humanity worships Him or not (Luke 19:40, Romans 9:22-23). All things exist for His glory, and if this seems selfish, it's only because the beholder envisions selfishness in people who are selfish without merit. As we've seen already, it's impossible for God's selfishness to be without merit. He's either God who deserves glory, or He's not God. You should decide.

And the fruit of the salvation the Lord brings about through the work of His holy and glorious Son Jesus is such that He will get glory from those who trust in His holy and glorious Son Jesus. He is glorified by His creation already without saving anyone. But He's MORE glorified when He puts the song of His glory into His people's hearts.

I pray that this is the song that's on your heart. What are you going to trust in? Mankind's faulty and schizophrenic way of understanding and thinking about things? Or will you trust in the One the Scripture says all things are created from, to, and through (Romans 11:36)? I'd rather take my chances with a God who's never been proven faulty than with a human race that's proven faulty every second of every day. What about you?

Knowing the Father in Christ

"No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."
--Matthew 11:27

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
--John 14:6-7

Knowing God the Father is at once the hardest and the easiest thing in the world. Hardest, because we only get to Him through Jesus, and easiest because Jesus has done all the work and calls us to just simply trust Him. Why is it that the Gospel seems to be at the same time the most difficult and the easiest thing there is?
The Reformers believed that the Bible claimed a stance that all men, in and of themselves, are spiritually dead. Passages they would cite to support this thinking include:

-Ezekiel 37--Ezekiel is called to prophetically preach God's Word to a field of bones and through it God shows Ezekiel that in the days of the Savior-Messiah He's going to raise many dead to life;
-Romans 3:9,5:12--Paul first writes that all people are under sin (slaves to it) and then that death spread to all men through this sin;
-Genesis 2:17--God tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die". Adam and Eve ate, and they didn't physically die, but since God never lies--Hebrews 6:18, James 1:17--they DID die in God's eyes. And as Romans said, this death spread to all men);
-Romans 6:23--Paul says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Since Jesus says knowing the Father is eternal life (John 17:3), and we know the Father now (John 14:7, above), then the eternal life we have is in the present, so this must mean that the death is in the present as well. And finally,
-Ephesians 2:5--Paul writes to Christians that they, being saved and risen with Christ Jesus, were initially saved and "made alive together with Christ" while they were "still dead in their trespasses" (to Paul, a Christian is converted into a Christian from the initial point of being dead).

This isn't the most popular part of the Gospel--who likes being told that they're DEAD? But the Bible seems to make pretty clear that outside of those who have Christ, there is only death.

Instead, most preachers and Christians in general will be content to preach to non-believers "God loves you" or "Let me tell you about God's love", and most of them are well-meaning and well-intentioned--they want people to come to the knowledge of the Living God. But if you look throughout the sermons in Acts, you never read anyone telling people that Christ died for them (as though Christ died for even those who will never turn to faith), nor do you ever read anyone preaching that God loves them. This isn't to say the Bible never says these things--it does: John 3:16--"for God so LOVED the world...", 1 Timothy 2:4--"God desires all people to come to the knowledge of the truth...". But to the early Christians, the message wasn't "God's love" or "How much God loves you". The message was Christ and Him crucified, to the glory of the Father. Everything else was a branch-off of that message. If God's love was preached, it was His love revealed through Christ's work which was the primary agenda. Christ was always the primary agenda. The spiritually dead world with its secular misunderstandings of love doesn't need to hear that God loves them because they'll put this message up next to Glee's or Jersey Shore's or the latest Nicholas Sparks movie's understanding of love and since TV and movies' understanding of love is sexier and more visually stimulating, it'll win every time. What they need to hear is that Christ went to the cross to secure salvation for anyone who would believe and trust in Him. You can't misconstrue "Humanity's rebelled from God, and Christ substitutes Himself for for many who will put their trust in Him." That's the glory of the Gospel--its simplicity.

And yet, as we saw earlier, this is the hardest thing in the world to come to the knowledge of. Why is this?
It's because of the spiritually dead state of humanity. It's because without the Holy Spirit's initiating power bringing someone to repentance and salvation (see Acts 5:31, 11:18; 1 Timothy 2:25-26), repentance and salvation is too far off and unattainable. It's because everyone thinks that God is like them, and being like us, He thinks like we do, acts like we do, hurts like we do, and gets brokenhearted like we do.
This just isn't true:
-Isaiah 55:9--for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts
-Daniel 4:34-35--all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"

God is not like you. And yet everyone thinks He is. That's why the preaching in churches in a city like Pittsburgh with a strong religious background is increasingly going downhill as churches keep closing--in the minds of nonbelievers AND believers alike the transcendence of God isn't any different than the transcendence of the college professor compared to his intern. God isn't high and lofty in our minds, because we think he's like us, just a little bit better. Man continues to increase in his own eyes, and God decreases.
Do you remember what words Satan the Serpent tempted Eve with in the Garden?--"God knows that when you eat of (the tree) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God..." (Gen. 3:5). The temptation that brought sin into the world was the temptation for man that he might be like God. Is this not still the case today? And what did Paul say in Romans 5?--that through THIS, death spread to all men.

Friends, ask yourselves the honest question--do you think God is like you? Do you think He's like anyone? Your answer to this question is perhaps the most important answer you'll ever give.
This is because if you believe what the Bible says--that He's higher and greater than we can imagine and that He's beyond us--you'll see clearly that you miss this mark.
In seeing this, you'll listen to the words of Jesus we saw earlier: "Only through me do you get to the Father...no one knows the Father except those the Son chooses to reveal Him to...if you know me, you know the Father."
At this point, you'll throw yourself on Christ and learn that you have to trust Him for everything from first to last.
In seeing this, you'll read through the Gospel narratives and begin noticing the differences between Jesus and all the other characters of the Bible--every other character of Scripture made grave mistakes with important decisions, but the grave mistakes only served to show the content of their hearts to begin with: they were rebellious, sinful, and self-worshiping. Jesus was different--Jesus was the Father with flesh on. Being the Holy and transcendent God of all things, there was no possibility of a mistake or little sin, because the starting point for sin is a rebellious heart and He didn't (and doesn't) have a rebellious heart. Instead He was perfect. Because of this He's a faithful High Priest, "able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25). He's secured "an eternal redemption" (9:12), to "purify our consciences from dead works" (9:14), to "perfect for all time those who are being sanctified" (10:14).

In this, you and I can know the Father. ONLY IN THIS can you and I know the Father. It's no coincidence that God the Father said in the Messianic-Prophetic book of Ezekiel that in the days when He pours out His Holy Spirit (the day of the Messiah), His people will "know that I'm the Lord". Why is this so important? It's because man's chief end is to fear God (Ecclesiastes 12:13), and the only way to fear Him is to know who He is. Thus in the days of Christ, His people will know who He is, and the nations will know who He is. Between Ezekiel 36 and 37, God repeats over and over again that the fruit of the pouring out of His Spirit will be that, in some variation, "people will know that I'm the Lord": 36:23, 36:36, 36:38, 37:13, 37:14, 37:28.

So who are those that know the Father? It's those that have the Holy Spirit. Who are those that have the Holy Spirit? It's those that trust Christ for their salvation from first to last. Who are those that trust in Christ? It's those who know that ONLY through Him can we be brought to the Father. What about you? Are you running from Him, hoping to escape His sovereign hand? On the other hand are you trying and trying and trying to trust Him and be obedient? The work of the Gospel is such that you can't do anything in salvation, save that you believe and repent of sin. What do you believe? And what do you need to repent of? I submit that the gravest of all sins we are to repent of is the sin of thinking God is like us and that He isn't higher and loftier than we can imagine. May we embrace the fact that God is beyond our initial capacity, and may we treasure both a) Christ for revealing Him and drawing us to Him through His finished work, and b) the Scriptures, for it is the revealed Word of God. The Gospel won't settle for anything less than this. Christians shouldn't settle for anything less either.