Christ's blood a better word

"But you have come...to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."
Hebrews 12:22, 24

In Genesis 4, Cain and Abel, brothers, and sons of Adam and Eve, are found giving offerings to God as an act of worship. Abel brings a better offering than Cain, and this makes Cain jealous. He's angry, and as v.5 tells us, "his face fell". God sees this, asks Cain why he's so angry and teaches him, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door" (v.6). God, in effect, takes Cain aside and re-centers him on what is important. But Cain's heart is hard and he won't be deterred. So he takes his brother into conversation, where he rises against him and kills him. How did this all start? It all started with Abel offering a better offering to God (an offering that worshiped God truly) than Cain did (who apparently only looked at the offering as a course and ritual, but not as worship).
At this point God comes to Cain, holds him accountable, and says, "Your brothers blood is crying to me from the ground" (v.10), after which God punishes Cain by promising him that the ground will no longer yield good fruit for him. The very ground upon which Cain spilled his brothers blood will no longer yield strength for him as he farms and tills it, and it's because Cain first refused to let his offering be an act of worship but instead an act of ritual, which (we all know) always leads us to approach it irreverently.

I want you to notice something in the text--God tells Cain that his brother's blood cries out to Him from the ground, and this is immediately followed by Cain's punishment. In a sense, the hole that Cain left in his original offering (which came from the ground) is filled in with his brother's blood (which is on the ground), and now Cain is "not accepted", as God said back in v.6. The point is that the offering made by the humans serves to be "the word" spoken on behalf of the humans, to the holy God who is their Creator and Sustainer. Obviously, the people can speak plainly to God (as we see in the text), but the offering is designated as a word which is something more--truly, it's being offered is meant to be an act of worship, because this God can't be approached as though He's just another human. He's not. So people are to give offerings, to atone for their lack of measuring up to this God. Cain and Abel both know this, but Abel understands this, whereas Cain doesn't. And now, as Cain has jealously murdered his own brother in jealousy that he loves God more, the blood speaks on behalf of Cain, to God.
And truly that's not all--the blood also speaks to Cain on behalf of God, which we see in God citing Abel's blood and then immediately punishing Cain for the sin. Truly, Abel's blood acts as the mediator between God and man, both ways: to God, it speaks man's total depravity and spiritual deadness which leads to cold-blooded murder; to humans, it speaks God's displeasure with man's lack of trust in Him which leads to these heinous acts, followed up by curse and punishment, for the sake of man knowing that there is a problem so that he'll repent (which, in the Old Testament, rarely happens).

At least this appears to be the stance taken by the writer of Hebrews, who we see in 12:24 citing that Abel's blood apparently "speaks a word". But to whom does this word speak? If you read throughout the book of Hebrews, you'll see the writer entirely devoted to unpacking for the reader the goodness of the new covenant inaugurated by Christ--the sinless and spotless Lamb--shedding His blood to make a final sacrifice (truly, a final OFFERING) to God, which "purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God" (9:14) and "perfects for all time those being sanctified" (10:14). The work of Old Testament offerings and sacrifices, while they atoned for the people's sins against God, never actually changed their hearts (9:9-10), and so only served as dead reminders of sins (10:3). There's no change--there's no transformation--and there's certainly no sense of "I need to make this offering, because I'm a sinner and I need forgiveness from God whom I've sinned against." So it's always done ritualistically, just like Cain, and in the end, Abel's blood still is speaking on behalf of us to God, and in so doing speaks on behalf of God to us.

But when Christ came and offered a final sacrifice to God, it was completely different, because it works to actually purify hearts, change hearts, and implant the Word and Spirit of God INTO the hearts of the people who trust in it (8:8-12, cf Jeremiah 31:31-34). Also note that PEOPLE (in their sins) don't make this sacrifice/offering--God makes it on behalf of the people. So what's man's job? Just trust in it to be sufficient to do all it was meant to do. Christ the spotless Lamb and perfect Son of God has become a perfect and faithful High Priest, because His sacrifice is final and binding--those who trust in it show their grafting into the Vine (John 15). Truly, as the Hebrews writer says in 12:24, His blood, poured out onto the ground like Abel's, speaks a better word on our behalf to God, because our trusting in it is done with a pure conscience and clear heart (or else it's not trusting in it).
But it also speaks a better word on God's behalf to us, because, since it puts an end to the spiritual depravity of those whom it was made FOR, and springs forth life where there is none (see Ezekiel 37, John 3), it brings about sonship (see Romans 8, Galatians 4). There's no possibility of our offering a less-than-quality sacrifice, like Cain, because GOD offered the sacrifice--Christ.

This all being the case--Christ being the new offering and new sacrifice and new "word" spoken to God and to us--we listen more intently to God's question to Cain, which is now posed to us: "If you do well, will you not be accepted?" What does God mean?--accepted by WHOM? Obviously Himself. He's the one to whom the offering is offered--but in Christ He's the One who has MADE the offering as well. Our job? Trust in it. Stop trying to pull ourselves up to God, because we'll only end up like Cain: jealous of those who understand the gift of God's grace, out of control of our emotional response, and eventually found with blood on our hands. Christ's blood speaks a much better word than that. May we trust in its work to do all it was meant to do: To "purify our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God."

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.

Psalm 9:11-12--God's mindfulness of "the afflicted"

Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
For He who avenges blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.
Psalm 9:11-12

How insignificant are the words of a person to another person. Even as you sit and read this (and thank you for reading), you should know there isn't anything I can say that is going to truly bring about satisfying and lasting change in your life. "Satisfying" to us are many of the words spoken by people over the years and it certainly is true that many of the classics of literature have 'swept us away' from time to time. Perhaps it's the same with a Christian classic as well. But the satisfaction that comes from it only lasts for a short time, doesn't it? It may be satisfying, but it isn't lasting. This is the truth for many of the words that have 'shaped' us and 'changed' us--we may say the transformation and help that's come from them is no less than "lasting", but in reality, it was nothing more than a moment of satisfaction which we were able to carry over into many moments. Because we feel satisfied for the brief moment--swept away--we know that it's still possible to get to this place. Still knowing it's possible to be swept away, we move on with the hope that life isn't as dreary or meaningless as we thought it was before we read or heard the 'transformative' words. This is why we move on to the next great book or the next great artist, or what have you: Because the satisfying experience was just a satisfying experience--it didn't last. This type of existence may certainly bring about contentment for many, but others are constantly wondering the question, "Is this all there is?"

It's at this place that we read David's words in Psalm 9:11-12. "Sing praises to the Lord...tell...the people his deeds! For he...is mindful of them(the 'oppressed' in v9, 'those who seek him' in v10); he does not forget the cry of the afflicted."

I want you to consider something that maybe you wouldn't consider upon first reading this: Is it possible that 'the afflicted' are none other than those who have sought the Lord? Seeking the Lord is certainly the call of humanity, and it should never be forgotten that there is no greater task for man than to "fear God and keep His commandments" because "this is the whole duty of mankind" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Yet, why does David write this psalm the way he does?--with "those who seek Him" and "the oppressed" and "afflicted" seemingly all synonymous with each other?

We're reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew 5:3 and 6, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." We're also reminded of the promise in Jeremiah 29:12-13 speaking of the days of the Messiah-King, "You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."

How do both of these passages work together, according to my putting them together? It's in this way: Jesus says in the first passage that you are blessed when you are 'poor in spirit' and when you 'hunger and thirst for righteousness'. Why is this? It's because it's in THIS place that you will cry out for the Living God to restore to you "the joy of his salvation" (Psalm 51:12). Only when you truly believe you have nowhere else to go will you turn to the Living God and cry out to Him. Then Jeremiah tells us that when you DO turn to Him, you'll find Him. You will seek Him with your whole heart and with your whole self in humble submission to His goodness and sovereignty, and you will find Him. "He is not far from any of us" are Paul's words in Acts 17:27.

But isn't it possible that even those who are leaning on worldly pleasures could turn to God? Is it possible for the rich man with everything anyone could ever want to turn to God? Sure, it's possible. "In that day (also the day of the Messiah) all who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved" (Joel 2:32). But if we've learned anything from Jesus' dealing with the rich young ruler, we've seen that it's "easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle" than for a rich man to enter Heaven. Why is this? It's because those who lean on the world already have their reward--and having their reward, they can't see the need for anything else. Not seeing the need for anything, they're enslaved to that which isn't ever truly satisfying. "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin", and "a slave can't serve two masters--he'll either hate one and love the other or hate the other and love the first". Being enslaved to the sinful and idolatrous never-satisfying pleasures of the world, it's next to impossible for them to turn to God. Truly, in and of themselves, it is impossible. "With man it is impossible--but with God, all things are possible."

Being among those who cry out to God--the afflicted, the oppressed--we've cried out to Him because He, in the Holy Spirit, has opened our eyes to the bankruptcy and counterfeit that is this broken world we live in. Because we sense it and realize it, we've turned to Him the Creator because to us it makes sense that all of the problems in the world begin and end with simple rebellion from God, like the Bible says. Turning to Him, Jesus' righteousness is counted to us, we're justified even as sinners and given His Holy Spirit, and given eyes for God's Kingdom. Now that we have eyes for His Kingdom, we just want to go home. It's because we want to go home that we're considered, in the world's eyes, afflicted and oppressed.

Those two words are only used to describe those who don't have what "normal" people have or get to enjoy what "normal" people enjoy.

But we who are in Christ Jesus--even if we're afflicted and oppressed compared to the rest of the world--find our identity in the finished work of Christ Jesus, whereby His blood is poured out for us and His flesh is broken for us. He's risen again, that we would have the eternal life that starts right now. Of course, this eternal life is not eternal this world; the eternal life is eternal knowing the Father and His Son Jesus Christ (John 17:3). For those in love with this world, there is something so illogical and non-sensical: They love their life and the world they live in, but they know that something's wrong with it--they love it, but they don't. What hope is there, and how is it that "the problem with this world" is even begun to be dealt with?

It's only dealt with in Christ. The only way for any real or lasting change and real and lasting transformation is if the Creator defies that which is natural to us. This is exactly what happened with Jesus' resurrection: A man who was killed rose from the dead. Therefore, that which appears to be problematic and hopeless apparently has an end to it. If Jesus rose from the dead, what else can He do?

And yet, the bigger question is this: Why DID Jesus die on the cross in the first place? He rose from the dead, but why did He die? It was for sins--it was because humanity, created in God's image for God's glory underneath God's sovereignty, increasingly becomes less and less godly as time goes by, and it's all a result of sin. Jesus died to set right that which is wrong, and what is most basically wrong is man's guilty rebellion from God.

In this way, the only way you get to the resurrection is if you go through the sin that put Jesus on the cross in the first place. God promises that He is going to renew all things one day. "I make all things new," and it starts with Jesus' resurrection. But you don't get there until you own up to the fact that it was your sin that put Jesus on the cross in the first place. You don't get the resurrection until you "take up your cross". And in this way, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11).

THIS is what it means to be "afflicted" or "oppressed"--not that we are actually worse off than anyone else. No, we are in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. But considered by the world, we are afflicted and oppressed. We 'believe in all that God stuff'. We are those who 'seriously believe Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead'. We are among those that 'seriously think God is going to judge our sins one day...really believe that sin against God is the issue'. We're those people.

And we are glad to be called "those people". Because we've seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are being "transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Corinthians 3:18). THIS is the reality--THIS is the truth.

We know that God is mindful of us, because we, being the very people of God, are among those for whom He has mindfully crushed His Son Jesus on the cross. Christ's work is for US. Since He didn't abandon us on the cross, He surely won't abandon us anywhere else either. If He was there for us in our time of need, He'll always be there for us in our time of need. He does not forget our cries--He remembers them and hears them. More, He answers them. In the Holy Spirit, He is transforming us so that our requests and cries are evermore holy and conformed to His will. It's not enough just to say, "God didn't answer that prayer because it wasn't His will"--we know rather that if He doesn't answer our prayers, it's because He has far greater and far better than what we can imagine at the time.

This is why Jesus simply told His disciples to pray, "Your will be done," like He himself prayed in Gethsemane. This is a prayer that will never not be answered. This can never fail.

The question among us Christians is this: Do we want His will to be done? Do we want Him to have His way? It's not very complicated--do we want it or do we not? It will suffice to ask the question, see the answer as it quickly rises, and then throw ourselves on the cross and expect God to supply all that's needed from there on out, as He always does.

For "the afflicted", the prayer is always that He who has what we need would simply be merciful. As a beggar, are you trying to be a chooser? Afflicted beggars like you and me don't ask anything other than that God be merciful and give us what we need for today, for His own glory. This is prayer that can't not be answered. This is the cry of the afflicted--and He'll never forget it.

speaking of what God's done

I was reading a periodical yesterday that's sent out to many of the churches that comprise the "family" of churches in the "movement" that my church was originally born out of. The movement is historically known as the Restoration Movement, and, in a nutshell, it rose out of many people in the mid-1800s wanting to do away with creeds, denominationalism, and divisions arising from doctrinal disagreements. It also had a lot to do with their seeing the need to baptize by immersion as accords with Scripture, contrary to the many at the time who had moved away from faith-based baptism. Why it's called the "Restoration Movement" is because the original men and women who brought the movement about desired to restore the Church to the New Testament model of church life and day-to-day discipleship. To them, the New Testament was enough without creeds, and elders running the churches was enough without hands-off leaders being "in charge" of churches from some office in a big city disconnected from the churches themselves. I praise God for these people, because even though I disagree with much of their conclusions regarding certain ideologies that I believe were misguided, I DO still believe their hearts were in the right place and I agree mostly with the core ideas--"Let's let the Scriptures guide the Church, let's be autonomous (self-governing as the churches in Acts were), and let's exalt Christ above all things," seems to be what they were about. Sounds good to me! Praise God, that's what I'M all about!: Christ's work, the Bible, and the Church. Let's do it--thus I'm preaching in a Restoration church, because I'm on board.

Yet (and perhaps it's been this way for a long time and I've just now realized it because I've just now started keeping up with it) recently I've noticed a stream of "scholarship" in much of the publications that are put out by Restoration churches and Christians. Getting back to what I started with, I was reading one yesterday and I noticed something that was unsettling. Almost every article spent more time speaking about what Christians are doing wrong than speaking about what Christ has accomplished on the cross and out of the grave. In a sense, they spoke more about what we do bad, instead of what Christ has done good. Of course, we need to speak of what is truth, and if it's all sin and corruption, we need to speak of it. All you need to do is turn to an Old Testament prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah or one of the smaller Prophet books like Malachi and Zechariah to see that sin needs to be spoken to. That's granted and I certainly can't discount the need to speak to it--I speak to sin every week as I preach and teach.

And yet when I look through New Testament teaching, I see something that's somewhat of a slant. The aforementioned publications I'm speaking of get sent out to different churches, and in a sense are LETTERS written by church leaders to encourage other churches, just like Paul's letters were in the New Testament, so the comparison is fair. If I'm attacking the fact that these writers attack other people's sins with almost every paragraph, I know it needs to be said that Paul spoke of sin and corruption as well, which you can see clearly if you look through Romans 14, large chunks of 1 Corinthians, specifically chs. 3, 5, 6, 9, and 14, and we could go on with the rest of his letters, including the ones to the churches AND the ones to the individual young pastors.
Also both John and Peter spoke to specific sins, as you can see if you look at 2 Peter 2, large chunks of 1 John (including the beginning of ch 2, which seems to have John saying this whole letter is written so you won't sin), a part of 3 John, and chs 2 and 3 of Revelation, where Jesus tells the churches what his beef with them is.

Of course, we wouldn't even need to say anything about the four Gospels which each have Jesus not shrinking from calling people out as sinners and holding the inwardly (and outwardly) pious accountable where they were wrong, as is evidenced especially in the middle sections of Luke and John.
What's my point in bringing all of this up? I want to make it known that I know it's important to hold people accountable for their sins, and the Scriptures seem to make it clear all over the place (see Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 2 Thessalonians 3 at the end among others). The reason for this necessity to speak truth with each other as Christians is so that we will "grow up in every way in...Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 4:15), and be "competent, equipped for every good work"..."that the Father has prepared for us to do" (2 Timothy 3:17, Ephesians 2:10).

However, let me be clear...and if you're reading this, you obviously care at least a little about what I have to say, and if you do, PLEASE hear me right now: what's MORE important for Christians to know and understand is what Christ has DONE, not what we and our world are DOING. Let me be more clear if that's a confusing statement--no one ever became a Christian by hearing a preacher point out everyone else's faults and the fact that the world has problems. They only became a Christian because a preacher preaches Christ and His finished work IN LIGHT of the world and all it's problems.

In Acts 1:8, right before Jesus ascends and leaves His disciples, He tells them, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." And then He left them.
But did you catch what He said? "You will be my witnesses." The reason this is significant is because I hope you see that Jesus wants His disciples to go and witness FROM Him, TO everyone else. That's what it means to "witness" in any context: to share information with others about what you've seen/heard/felt. Jesus clearly wants His disciples to share what has been accomplished by Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven. Luke tells us at the very end the first part of the story he wrote (his Gospel being the first part, and Acts being the second part), that Jesus told His disciples that "repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning with Jerusalem," and He concluded, "You are witnesses of these things" (Luke 24:47-48). Then he picks up with the Acts 1 passage we just looked at IMMEDIATELY after that.

Interestingly, if you read throughout the rest of the Book of Acts, you see that what Jesus told His disciples to do is EXACTLY what they did. "Be my witnesses to the ends of the earth...proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins..." They did it.
You can see it if you look at the sermons of Acts: 2:14-41 is Peter's Pentecost sermon, and he tells them, "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." (v 23) Then he says, "This Jesus, God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses." (v 32) When the people ask what they are to do with Peter's message, he says, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ." (v 38).
Moving onto Peter's sermon at Solomon's portico in 3:11-26, in v 15 he tells them, "you killed the Author of Life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses." Then (v 19), "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out..."
In 4:8-12, Peter and John are speaking to the council in Jerusalem regarding their healing of a man who was lame, and they say, "by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead--by Him this man is standing before you well" (v 10).
I won't keep going, but suffice it to say that EVERY sermon throughout the rest of the book of Acts, including the rest of Peter's, Stephens huge sermon, and all of Paul's emphasize the work of Christ whether it's His work on the Cross, out of the grave, in their (the preacher's) own individual lives, or all of the above in most cases. (Let it be known, the only exception to this is when Paul talks to the people in Athens in 17:22-31; he doesn't preach Christ to them...rather, he preaches to them ONE GOD (most of these people don't believe in one God, but a team of little 'specialist' gods), and he tells them that this God is bringing forth a judgment. He bridges the gap with their unbelief, and we can assume that if he would have stayed in Athens, the next meeting would have been spent preaching Christ.)

Anyways, like I said I'm not going to go through the rest of the sermons in Acts, but if you'd like to, you'll find them in 7:2-53 (Stephen), 10:34-43 (Peter preaching to Cornelius and Gentiles), 13:13-41 (Paul and Barnabas at Antioch-Pisidia), 15:7-11 (Peter at the Jerusalem council), 20:18-35 (Paul to the Ephesian elders), 21:37-22:21 (Paul in the Temple), 24:10-21 (Paul before the ruler Felix), and 26:2-29 (Paul before Herod Agrippa).

Now I know that just by starting off this blog post calling out fellow brothers and sisters who are wrongfully spending all of their time telling everyone else what they're doing wrong, I'M doing the very thing I'm preaching against. I'll concede that. But what I want you to know is this: God is our Creator, we've rebelled and continue to rebel from Him, and now we're spiritually dead. Jesus Christ went to the cross to atone for sins for all time and to absorb the righteous wrath of God to secure salvation for those who would put their trust in His finished work from first to last (John 3:16, Romans 10:9), who make up a "multitude no man can number" (Revelation 7:9). He then rose from the dead, so that as these sinners come to Him, they would die to sin and be reborn into new life (John 3:5-6, Romans 6:1-4, Galatians 2:20) that lasts eternally and is characterized by the ever-present knowledge that Christ is with them for all of time.

As part of the Restoration Movement, how can we possibly give our time and our energies to anything BUT preaching Christ? The Movement started out of desiring to restore the New Testament Church--and when I read through the New Testament, it seems like all I see is Christ saturated on every page: what He DID, who He IS, what He's DOING, what the Cross means, what salvation in His name is, etc. Yet why aren't men preaching it? I suppose it's because we (myself included) find it easier to point the finger at other people's sins, which like I said, is important--if we've learned anything from Scripture, that's it. But that's not ALL THERE IS, and it's not even MOST of what's in the Scripture. The Bible is about Jesus and what He's accomplished on the cross, conquering sin, and rising from the dead, conquering death. It's that simple.
What do we tell those people we write to and preach to? Very simply what we just said about Christ's work, followed by a "turn to Him, trust in Him, call on Him, and run to Him."
Otherwise, we're Pharisees and I'd hate to hear what Jesus' words to us one day will be.

Psalm 9:9-10: The God who takes in the oppressed

The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of struggle.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, o Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.

In Joel 2, there's a prophesy looking forward to the day when God pours out His Spirit, upon the Messiah's coming. In verse 28 God says that He'll pour out His Spirit "on all flesh", and a few verses down (32) has Him saying, "and it shall come to pass that all who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." If you take this prophesy along with many of the other similar passages from the Old Testament Prophets such as Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 11 and 36, and much of Isaiah (to name a few of the many) you can easily see that this is referring to the days when the Messiah is going to come.
Of course, we know in hindsight that these days are among us, because Christ Jesus IS the Messiah, and He HAS come. God HAS poured out His Spirit on all flesh already. The temptation would be to ask, "So then why are there so few Christians?", but the answer to this is easy: Just because He's poured out His Spirit, that doesn't mean ALL people are going to receive the Spirit INTO their hearts. That's why the Joel passage says, "In that day, all who call on my name will be saved." Apparently not everyone will, but any that will will be saved.

In the New Testament, Paul quotes this prophesy from Joel in Romans 10:13, in the middle of his famous section on how Christ's work has opened up salvation for all people, and not just Jews. V 12-- "For there is no distinction, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him." Paul then cites Joel in v 13 saying, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
The word used to describe this is Gospel. The Gospel, in Paul's letter to the Romans, refers to the fact that since all people have turned from God and sought their own glory apart from God's will after which God has turned them over to their own sin since they didn't want anything to do with Him (1:18-25), and since ALL people are guilty and depraved (3:9-20)...EVEN STILL...Christ Jesus, the perfect and spotless Lamb of God has taken away the sin of the world, by absorbing the holy and righteous wrath of God, so that anyone who has faith in His work is justified apart from THEIR works (3:25-26, 28). Very simply, as a free gift, God has taken His anger over sin out on Jesus, so that anyone who desires to live before the presence of their Creator is free from condemnation if they just believe in who Christ is and what Christ has done. It's a glorious Gospel!

Of course, very often, preachers of the Gospel (myself included) get so caught up in preaching this Gospel of freedom from sins in Jesus' name that we never step out on the limbs of this tree to show what this means for us practically TODAY. Truly the New Testament is ALL about Christ's work, and there's no possibility that "Jesus dying on the cross for my sin" is an insufficient message to preach, but as I was reading Psalm 9, I was challenged to take it a step deeper INTO this Gospel we proclaim, to answer a question: What does this MEAN for us today? It means so much I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface, but I'll try.

1. First, it means that we can approach God's throne. Before Christ completed salvation on the cross, no one could stand in the presence of the Almighty God, and I would be below reproach if I didn't say that we STILL can't contain the glory of God's presence completely. But the book of Hebrews does tell us that through what Jesus accomplished, something HAS certainly changed. According to Heb 1:3, God has revealed Himself through Jesus, who is "the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of His nature". Colossians 1:19 says that in Christ "the FULLNESS of God was pleased to dwell." Even though God's glory can't be beheld by human eyes and human hearts or human thoughts, His glory is in CHRIST, and we have seen Christ. God has come to be among us. Hebrews then goes on in chapters 3 and 4 to compare Jesus to both Moses and Joshua (from the Old Testament), showing that Jesus is GREATER than both of them, and that He is a "great High Priest" (4:14), by whom we can "approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy in our time of need" (4:16). To understand this you have to know that in the Old Testament, the Temple had a room called the Most Holy Place where the High Priest for that year would go into once a year to offer sacrifices to God on behalf of himself and the people. This room was where God's presence dwelt on Earth. And the place in the room where sacrifices were offered was called "the Mercy Seat". Hebrews is saying because of what Jesus has done, we can approach the Mercy Seat OURSELVES, whereas we couldn't earlier because of unholiness in sin. Jesus is the NEW and BETTER High Priest, and not only that--He went into the Most Holy place and offered His own blood as the sacrifice, "thus securing eternal redemption" (9:12). Now "we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus...and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith..." (10:19, 21-22a).
To sum up, we can approach God's throne because of what Christ Jesus has done through His work on the cross of offering a final sacrifice for sins. This means very simply that if you are seeking God's mercy and presence, YOU CAN HAVE IT, by coming through Jesus.

2. Secondly, if you have brought the wounds on yourself, you can't expect God to lick your wounds for you, without telling you what He thinks you need to hear first. Like I have already said, because of what Jesus has done, we can approach God's throne. But one thing remains the same with us as it was with the Israelites in the Old Testament who relied on sacrifices made by high priests: It's still our sin that separates us from God. Sin is still the issue for us as we come to the throne of mercy.
Now many will bring up texts such as Romans 8:1 ("there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"), and 1 John 2:1 ("if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous") to argue that sin isn't an issue among us anymore. But the problem with an argument like that is that apparently you didn't read the previous chapter of Romans before you quoted 8:1, which has Paul speaking of how he STILL struggles with sin; nor did you consider the FIRST part of the 1 John 2:1 passage which says, "I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone DOES sin..." which assumes that they WILL sin, but John writes to the believers in hopes that they won't. My point is this: In Christ, we don't have condemnation, as He is our final sacrifice for all time and therefore we can approach God's throne in confidence and faith. However, your and my problems, as we approach God is the fact that He's holy and we're sinful, and we need to come to grips with that if we're going to turn to Him.
Because of this, you need to understand that as you come to God's throne to "receive mercy", He may not always tell you what you want to hear--but that shouldn't be the reason you're coming to Him anyways. I'm convinced that this is much of the reason for the lack of spiritual fervor among Christians as well as the reason many "Christians" "fall away" after being "saved": They approached God expecting that He would operate on them on their terms which is NOT how God is to be approached. He is to be approached with sincere and humble contriteness at the fact that He's God and you're not, He knows everything and you don't, and He knows what's best for you and you don't (see Job 40:3-5, 42:1-6; Psalm 51:16-17; Isaiah 6:1-5; Luke 18:9-14, 21:41-44; and James 4:6-10). You have sinful, self-serving, and world-glorifying motives and eyes you're looking at God through, and if you assume that He's going to give you what you WANT, most of the time you will be sorely disappointed.
On the other hand, if you assume He's going to give you what you NEED, regardless of what you think that is, you will NEVER be disappointed.
The fact that you're sinful when you approach Him doesn't negate the fact that He invites you to come to Him, which is why Jesus invites "all who are burden and heavy-laden" (Matthew 11:28) to come to Him. But since 'what you want' is the problem, the only posture before God's throne is the posture of reverence and humility, whether it's on your knees or on your face.

It's interesting that we find David writing in the Psalm 9 passage that the Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, for a few reasons. First, David knows that God is a stronghold in oppression, whether the oppression is David's fault or if it's someone else's. Some of David's problems were there in spite of his innocence, but others were there because he brought them on himself. Still, David knew He could approach God regardless of which scenario was true for the moment. And yet the second reason it's interesting David writes this is the fact that because Christ hadn't offered the sacrifice on the cross yet, people really couldn't approach the throne of mercy, yet. Is this a contradiction?
I don't think so. We see in Exodus 34 (deep into the Old Testament) that "The Lord (is) a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin..." (34:6-7a). Truly we know that as David approached the Lord with contriteness and sincerity in his heart, the Lord met him there (David was the one who wrote the Psalm 51 passage referenced earlier that speaks of a broken heart and a contrite spirit being the sacrifice God desires...and he wrote that song after committing adultery, causing his mistress to commit it, and then killing her husband).

So aren't we still at a contradiction though? No, because if we continue to look into the Exodus 34 passage, we see that verse 7 continues from God's gracious characteristics, "...but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity if the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation."
To the natural mind which is contrary to God (see 1 Corinthians 2), these things seem like contradictions. But they're not, and David's story is a perfect example why--here was a man (a respected and revered KING) who was very sinful before God and others, and yet every time he got himself up a creek without a paddle, he would turn back with a broken and sorry heart to receive mercy from God. And yet the same God who would give him mercy and grace is the same God who caused David's life to fall into shambles because of his sin. Seriously, if you read of King David's family life after he commits the adultery with Bathsheba and kills her husband, you'll see that it was a complete wreck for the rest of his life, the likes you've only seen on Jerry Springer. Why? Because even though God would offer forgiveness where forgiveness is sought, the effects of the sin still linger among the sinner and his/her friends/family...and this is NOT God's fault, but the fault of the one who sinned in the first place.
So when Psalm 9 speaks of the Lord being a stronghold for the oppressed, it's TRUE, whether Jesus died on the cross and rose again or not. Seek the Lord, He'll be found, and you'll be held.

But the only way for the sin to be completely defeated, once and for all, is through Christ's work of taking...not just the sins you've committed in the past and the sins of the present, but...ALL your sin, even from the future onto Himself and receiving the punishment due us from God on Himself, so that we CAN approach the throne of mercy and receive it from our great God who pours it out to those who seek it, bringing an END to the condemnation we so rightly deserve.

If the cross covers the atonement for the sin (which it does) to make us be able to approach God in times of trouble, what does the resurrection cover?
It's simple: At the resurrection, He who knew no sin but became sin until it crushed Him to death (Jesus, of course), DEFEATS death by rising up into new and eternal life. The sin which was on Him is taken into death, but it's not taken into His Resurrection.
Practically, this means that as we approach God as wretched and pitiable sinners, we come to Jesus' work and our sin is forgiven and blotted out; but since we are in Christ Jesus now--Him who is RISEN FROM THE DEAD, WE are to be risen from the dead, without sin, too. Romans 8:13 says, "If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live..." (skipping to vv 15-16) "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."

Of course this leads us back to the Joel passage from earlier--"in those days I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh". The difference between mercy in the old covenant and mercy in the new covenant is two-fold: 1) no more sacrifices need to be made for sins because Christ has given the final one, and 2) God's Spirit is IN us if we trust in the first point, to cause us to move on and live APART from sin under the righteous reign of Christ Jesus.
The point: You receive mercy and acceptance at God's throne, and then in the Spirit, you live in acceptance and thankfulness at whatever His will is for your life from there on out, because the answer to all of your prayers is Jesus anyways.

May we learn that Jesus doesn't just take care of sin, but that He takes care of us. May we receive mercy as we are taken in by God, and may we learn to stand in the grace that is given through Christ Jesus.

God Unchanging--Psalm 9:5-8

You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish;
You have blotted out their name forever and ever.
The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;
Their cities you rooted out;
The very memory of them has perished
But the Lord sits enthroned forever;
He has established his throne for justice,
And he judges the world with righteousness;
He judges the people's with uprightness.

Last week I wrestled with the previous section (9:3-4), dealing with the righteous judgment of God. Today, I want to deal with the same thing, with perhaps another couple of insights, obviously going off of these few verses above.

First off, we need to be honest about Who it is we're dealing with here: GOD. Often times when I've spoken of God or even sang songs of worship to God, I've been guilty of simply singing or talking as if God were just another person, at the same level as me, with a background, a birthday, dreams and visions, feelings that can be hurt, etc.
But this isn't the God we see in the Bible. The God we see in the Bible is a God who is "from all eternity" (Psalm 93:2), is "the eternal King" (Jeremiah 10:10), is "immortal" (Romans 10:23), exists "from everlasting to everlasting" (Psalm 90:2), and is "the first and the last" (Isaiah 48:12). He is the Creator of all things (Genesis 1-2), He doesn't learn anything new from anyone (Isaiah 40:14), He "never changes" (James 1:17), and not only FROM and THROUGH Him exists all things, but TO Him exists all things (Romans 11:36).
If we're going to speak of God's character, we need to at least be Biblical, instead of speculating about what we think God is like (like we've all done), lest we make mistakes and sell Him short, which we will invariably do if we try to describe who God is in our own terms. Furthermore, why speculate?--He's revealed Himself clearly in Scripture. That's why I bring up all of those passages: Even if there's a distance between us and the pages we're reading (which there always is), we can't say God doesn't clearly show Himself to us in language we can understand. Furthermore, He's revealed Himself expressly through Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:2-3). The reason we don't go to the Scriptures to be taught by God about who He Himself is is because that would mean a) turning off all of our "noise" and listening to Him, b) being invited in to think the deep thoughts of God whereas our world and society continually pushes for a shallower level of shallowness, and c) humbling ourselves to do that which we know we can't do in and of ourselves. Nevertheless, He's revealed Himself.

God also says of Himself in Isaiah 55:8-9, "My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

In looking at the clear Scriptural description of God's character, we see a few things very clearly:
-God is transcendent, meaning that even to compare ourselves with God by saying we're ants and God's a genius giant would be a as far under the truth as one edge of the universe is from the other, and then more. There's not even the right language to compare ourselves with God, because He's SO far beyond us in every way. To call Him "transcendent" will suffice for now.
-God is eternal, meaning there's no time when God hasn't existed. Clever skeptics have often asked the question, "Well if God created the universe, who created God?" hoping to elicit a dumbfounded response, and often times met with one. But the question is stupid--NO ONE created God, that's what makes Him God. TIME is His creation, as well as SPACE. There isn't a thing that you could possibly know about anything at any given time without it being a gift from the Living God to you, just by virtue of the fact that it exists in time and space, which exists under God's sovereignty. God is before the beginning of time and after the end of time, as well as being outside of space. He's eternal.
-God is eternally wise and all-knowing. He knows everything, plain and simple. There isn't a single thing that's a surprise to Him, as He perfectly knows the past and the future with perfect clarity. His understanding knows no end.
-God is infinitely powerful, meaning there's no possible way that He could not get what He wants. There's also no possible way that He couldn't fulfill a promise. Because, in power, He's so far above the every day operations of the universe (and is the one who brings them about), there's nothing that couldn't be destroyed at a given second if He wanted it to be. There's also an infinite amount of things to be imagined that He could just call into existence that don't exist right now.
-Finally, God is holy. This means that the measuring rod of morality (right and wrong)--something that EVERYONE has and uses on a daily..even hourly..level--is only perfectly upheld by God. There's nothing He could do that could ever be wrong, because since all things find their source and purpose in Him, including RIGHT AND WRONG, He must be transcendent over that, too! He could ONLY be right, but He could NEVER be wrong.

Why do I bring all of this up? 2 reasons: 1) I want you to worship Him, and 2) I want you to understand (as much as we're capable) that He is the LAW for all things. If He makes rules, and they're not followed, He has every right to flood the Earth and kill off everyone if He wants to. In the Bible, He did that one time.
But that was the ONLY time He did it. He promised immediately afterward that He never would do it again, and He hasn't. So what's God to do with the fact that people STILL turn from Him and sin against Him?

The answer is found in another of God's attributes:
-God is the supreme embodiment of love and graciousness. As Exodus 34:6-7a famously says, "The Lord (is) a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." Being a loving God who shows grace and gives forgiveness, He would seem to be presented with a dilemma--what is He to do with this world that He forgives OVER and OVER and OVER again and just doesn't seem like it wants to change? The answer is that, in love, He pours out His Son Jesus to death on the cross, and whoever believes that Jesus is who He said He was (God), is forgiven (as God promised in the Exodus passage), and is filled with the Holy Spirit, which is simply the embodiment of God's presence with us (John 16:7-14, Acts 2:37-38). Being both forgiven of sin and blessed with His presence IN us, we live a lifestyle of repentance from sin into holiness before the Lord, which simply means living with God's glory as our primary target in all of life and practice, which is what we were created for in the first place. What kind of a God is this that would bring salvation to a people rebellious and hostile to Him, and actually do EVERYTHING along the way? The answer is 'no god'. Only THE God can be all of the aforementioned characteristics and still be as loving as He is.

Arguably the two best books I've read on God's character, outside of the Bible are A.W. Tozer's "The Knowledge of the Holy" and R.C. Sproul's "The Holiness of God". You should read them both. You'll digest them and be set on fire. You'll also be humbled and brought to your knees before God's throne, which wenaturally don't want to be!

Being the Absolute LAW for all of life, we see a passage in Psalm 9 that would make perfect sense from God's perspective, but doesn't seem to make sense from humanity's perspective. It's clear that a god who judges things is railed against almost instantaneously by our society. Why is this? It's simple: No one thinks they're wrong, or that anyone, including a Deity, has a right to judge them. I don't. I've struggled with God calling me a sinner.
But anyone who's a Christian will say easily that even though they didn't like it at first, the more and more they've been given eyes to see the way things really are, regarding the world and their self and the relationship between the world and their self, the more they've realized it's true. The thing that makes me a believer in what the Bible says is the fact that the worldview of the Bible seems to be 100% true. All that it says about how God is made known in His creation, about how the way things are aren't the way things are supposed to be, about how there IS life after death, about how there is better for us in our lives if we'll just surrender to the God who is there, etc., it would seems, makes sense, and is true. It HAS to be true. Otherwise, what hope is there for anything, in a world that seems to be headed to disaster at 100 miles a minute?

Verses 7-8 say "the Lord sits enthroned forever; He has established His throne for justice, and He judges the world with righteousness; He judges the people with uprightness."
Can I just say that this is a relief? Our whole lives are shrouded in the fear of how others will judge us. From the moment we wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and begin to get ourselves ready for the day, we're already in thought over making ourselves presentable. When we begin to walk out the door to some gathering of whatever sort, we're filled with at LEAST a small sense of anxiety over being around all of the people, in the fear that they will notice something imperfect about us, so we make small talk to shield ourselves (and them) from having to share what's really on our hearts and what really sits on the throne of our hearts. In a sense, we're constantly anxious over the fact that we know no one judges perfectly. We know they're imperfect, so we worry about what they'll think of us; and we know WE'RE imperfect, and since WE judge others based on unfair criteria (by what we see, instead of hearing the whole story), we know we'll get the fair treatment in the vice-verse.
But this passage--praise God--tells us that God, on His throne, judges with a perfect righteousness, and could never waver or change His mind regarding what He thinks of someone. How is this possible?: He knows all things, so there's no possibility of Him judging based on what He sees, when He knows what's really going on in someone's heart of hearts.

There's a passage in Isaiah 11 that speaks of when Jesus--God-with-us--will come to the Earth to pay the ransom for sin so that humans can be covenanted with God, and it attributes this same characteristic from the previous passage to Him (vv 3-4): "He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth..." Who are the poor? Not just those with little money. Everyone is the poor this passage refers to; because compared to Him and His glory He shares with the Father as the Sovereign Lord of all things, everyone is bankrupt. And since His holiness and perfection is beyond all comparison and couldn't even begin to be put into words (see Isaiah 6), the standard of His judgment will be righteousness perfected, just like the God David refers to in Psalm 9 (because Jesus IS that God).

Let me suggest that the reason it's a relief knowing that God judges in righteousness is due to the fact that since He knows all things that are in our hearts and minds, IF He accepts us and draws us to Himself as we are IN SPITE OF knowing the very core of our being, it MUST mean that He loves us. And yet we all know that "love" never means telling people what they want to hear or leaving people in their problems if their problems are killing them--we all know "love" means calling a spade a spade if it's a spade, in the name of HELPING the person who needs to change. They may rail against it at first, but if they stand up to overcome the obstacle, they ALWAYS know in the end that the person who told them the truth is their TRUE friend, compared to the ones who never wanted to confront them with their issue. This is God's character: He tells us what we need to hear, because He loves us. We've missed His standard of holiness, and instead of leaving us in our broken state to rot for eternity, He tells us the truth.

But that's not all: He causes us to change and be brought back into the light of truth. "In that day, you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free," are Jesus' words for His disciples. We all know truth stings at first, but if it breaks chains in the end, it was necessary. As God judges in righteousness, from the throne that sits for FOREVER, knowing our hearts from bottom to top, we can trust that He's NEVER wrong, and that's liberating. It's liberating when the hard truth we're hearing from Him is THE truth, because even though it hurts, IT'S THE TRUTH, and that's all we want in the end. And He EMPOWERS us to walk in light of this revealed truth.

I've spoken before about how society's rebelliousness towards God's judgment is misguided, but I'm going to touch on it again.
Many people say that they have trouble believing in a god who judges and tells people when they're wrong or are in sin. They say that a god who has standards is a bad god. But this is a faulty logic on many levels, and I'll list three reasons why:
1. Every single person sits on their own throne of judgment. There's not a person alive who doesn't judge others every single day. From walking on the sidewalk in downtown Pittsburgh and seeing a group of "rough looking" guys standing on the sidewalk ahead of me, I cross to the other side to miss them. Why? Because I'm using judgments based on what I've known in the past, but not necessarily based on the truth. I'm ASSUMING that those guys might jump me or cause problems, based on what? Probably TV more than anything. You've done things like this. Everyone does. Is the answer to just put ourselves in harms way at all times? No--the answer is to admit that we judge ALL the time.
2. If we could design a GOD-like figure, we would assign it standards by which to judge, too. Everyone, in their heart of hearts, knows that it's a bad god who lets everything pass in the name of "freedom". It would be a bad high school principal who lets his students do whatever they want, in the name of freedom and choice. He HAS to exercise rules, authority, and judgments, because if he doesn't anarchy will ensue. This is due to the fact that we don't really have any idea what we're capable of. Many murderers started off just like you. And God has standards because He's good and understands we will turn everything to crap left up to ourselves.
3. The reason why He tells you you're a sinner is because He wants better for you and is willing to come all the way down to your level for the sake of changing your heart and bringing you into that which you were created to be/have/experience. Life is a constant movement out of things we don't find satisfying into things we think are more worth it anyways, and the idea of a God telling you there's more and better is only congruent with our lives already. We change all the time anyways--He just tells us what is better to change into, and actually brings about the change necessary to get there.

In Sproul's "The Holiness of God", one of his main points is that there are far fewer people who don't believe in God than there are people who say they don't but really just don't LIKE God, so they say they don't believe in Him. I've heard that the two points of atheism are: a) I don't believe in God, b) and I hate him...ironic, huh? Why is it such a distressing thing to think of a God who transcends us, is better than us, and sits in the seat of judgment OVER us? It's because our whole lives are a house of cards we've built using perishable things, which is why any time you encounter someone who's better than you at what you're good at, it's devastating. It suddenly negates and tears apart your whole life right before your eyes, and you don't feel better until you go away from this transcendent person, back into your life where you're the go-to-person in this field, and get the house of cards built back up. But a fierce wind comes through, blows the house down again, and you're back to rebuilding.
It's the same way with your relationship to this God of the Bible: You live your life in the framework of no-god-ness, because you don't WANT God to be real, and any time the conversation of His being real comes up, you get defensive because your house of cards is being blown over yet again (maybe it is right now...I commend you for still reading).

But you need to know that even though God tells you His righteous requirements that you've MISSED, He's good for what He says. As I read recently in a Bryan Chapell book, "What God requires, He provides, and what He provides, He perfects." Don't fight it anymore--whatever it is that's causing you to rail against Him, just take a second to ponder on the fact that He MUST be loving if you've missed His righteous requirement and you're still here. He is. He loves you, and even though you sit in His hand right now and it's the the most fearful place in the world, it's also the most freeing place. He will help you live up to His standards. You're living up to someone's standards already in every part of your life, but they're not righteous and you're never promised grace from anyone (including yourself). But with God, you ARE promised grace and forgiveness. So seek HIS standard, knowing that a) they're the best standards, b) He sets them because He loves you and knows what's best for you, and c) He'll help you.

Call out to Jesus who is your hope for salvation. He won't abandon you and He won't leave you in the dust. Instead, He CAME to the dust and WENT to the cross, because the holy God of the universe loves you enough to give His Son for the sake of drawing you to Himself. His throne is forever, His righteousness is righteous, and His hands are good. Trust Him today.