Encouragement to Those Who Preach the Gospel

From: 9Marks Blog: Building Healthy Churches

I believe that if an angel were to wing his way from earth up to Heaven, and were to say that there was one poor, ragged boy, without father or mother, with no one to care for him and teach him the way of life; and if God were to ask who among them were willing to come down to this earth and live here for fifty years and lead that one to Jesus Christ, every angel in Heaven would volunteer to go. Even Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, would say, "Let me leave my high and lofty position, and let me have the luxury of leading one soul to Jesus Christ." There is no greater honor than to be the instrument in God's hands of leading one person out of the kingdom of Satan into the glorious light of Heaven.

-- Dwight L. Moody

Going to be a Huge Crowd!!

“Even as we slog through the trials, persecutions, irritations, temptations, distractions, apathy, and just plain weariness of this world, the gospel points us to heaven where our King Jesus — the Lamb of God who was crucified in our place and raised gloriously from the dead — now sits interceding for us. Not only so, but it calls us forward to that final day when heaven will be filled with the roaring noise of millions upon millions of forgiven voices hailing him as crucified Savior and risen King.”  

— Greg Gilbert
What is the Gospel?

Biting the Hand that Feeds Me

by Max Lucado

 

Your goodness can’t win God’s love. Nor can your badness lose it.  But you can resist it. We tend to do so honestly. Having been rejected so often, we fear God may reject us as well. Rejections have left us skittish and jumpy. Like my dog Salty. He sleeps next to me on the couch as I write. He’s a cranky cuss, but I like him. We’ve aged together over the last fifteen years, and he seems worse for the wear. He’s a wiry canine by nature; shave his salt-and-pepper mop, and he’d pass for a bulimic Chihuahua. He didn’t have much to start with; now the seasons have taken his energy, teeth, hearing, and all but eighteen inches’ worth of eyesight.

 

Toss him a dog treat, and he just stares at the floor through cloudy cataracts. (Or, in his case, dogaracts?) He’s nervous and edgy, quick to growl and slow to trust. As I reach out to pet him, he yanks back. Still, I pet the old coot. I know he can’t see, and I can only wonder how dark his world has become.

We are a lot like Salty. I have a feeling that most people who defy and deny God do so more out of fear than conviction. For all our chest pumping and braggadocio, we are anxious folk—can’t see a step into the future, can’t hear the one who owns us. No wonder we try to gum the hand that feeds us.

But God reaches and touches. He speaks through the immensity of the Russian plain and the density of the Amazon rain forest. Through a physician’s touch in Africa, a bowl of rice in India. Through a Japanese bow or a South American abraço. He’s even been known to touch people through paragraphs like the ones you are reading. If he is touching you, let him.

Mark it down: God loves you with an unearthly love. You can’t win it by being winsome. You can’t lose it by being a loser. But you can be blind enough to resist it.

Don’t. For heaven’s sake, don’t. For your sake, don’t.

“Take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18–19 MSG)

Staggering

“Forgiveness transcends finite human reason.  The mere thought that one’s entire sin account can be utterly eradicated is staggering.  Yet it is quite clear that the forgiveness of sins strikes at the very core of human need and experience.  It speaks of guilt gone, remorse removed, depression disappearing and emptiness of life eradicated.  What power there is in forgiveness!  And it all comes abundantly from the gracious hand of God.”

Lewis A. Drummond, quoted in The Voice from the Cross

Forgiveness is a post from: Ray Ortlund

What is Permitted?

"The truth is, of course, 

that the curtness of the 

Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." 

  -G.K. Chesterton

Grace Is As Dangerous As Ever

By Michael Spencer:

The last few weeks of my men’s morning Bible study has been about “Texts That Will Get You In Trouble,” and we spent two sessions on John 8, and Jesus’ words to the woman caught in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Read Leviticus 20:10 and the other older testament indictments of adultery and sexual sin. There’s no doubt about the woman’s sin or the stated penalty.

The Pharisees’ motives aren’t really the important fact here. Their use of the law is the focus. Even more important is “What is God like?” Does God have moral commands for human beings? Are we created in such a way that adultery is more than just a behavior consenting adults engage in; it is a violation of the sexual and marriage bonds that God considers sacred because they reflect God’s covenant love. How does God’s justice relate to his moral standards, and how do those living in community before God experience and demonstrate God’s law and God’s justice?

Often, interpreters focus on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees for not having the man present, or the double standard inherent in holding a woman more responsible for sexual sins. In fact, while these concerns may be valid, they are not the focus of this story.

This is an incident where Jesus’ understanding of God and his purposes are contrasted with the understanding of the Pharisees, who functioned as a renewal movement seeking to bring about the salvation of Israel by zealous attention to the keeping of the law. Like so many other incidents at this point in Jesus’ life, this one is meant to publicly discredit Jesus as a dangerous liberal who rejects the Law and covenant obedience.

Jesus brings the focus away from the particular sin of the woman in violation of the covenant law, and puts the focus on the universal fact that God is in covenant with a sinful people who constantly depend on his mercy. God has been working to bring about redemption in a sinful world from the beginning. The universal sinfulness of the human race has been the backdrop of all God has done in his covenant, both for Israel and for the world.

Listen to Yahweh in the book of Deuteronomy:

Deut. 9:4 “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. 5 Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Deut. 9:6 “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. 7 Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.

God never gave the Pharisees permission to think that the covenant depended on anything but God’s gracious involvement with people who, as individuals and as a nation, deserved his wrath and justice like the rest of the world.

This explains why Jesus takes the “small circle” of the woman’s adultery and turns it into the “large circle” of “let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” He isn’t minimizing adultery or saying God does not desire that we honor the law. He is saying that God is not on the side of religious zealots putting themselves in the place of God as if they were somehow deputized to play God. For Jesus, the mark of those who are in the covenant is their gratitude for God’s mercies to include sinners of all kinds within the boundaries of “his people.”

The second part of the text is Jesus’ conversation with the woman, a conversation that focuses on the word condemnation. There is the inadequate and flawed human condemnation of the woman, and there is the justified and appropriate divine condemnation of a guilty adulteress.

Those who would have singled out this woman’s sin have dispersed. None of us can stand in the place of God in the condemnation of another person unless we have been divinely authorized to do so (and the Pharisees were not given that position.)

Jesus, however, was different. He had the authority of his heavenly Father. He has the authority to judge. He is righteous. He is the author of the law. He has the power, the right, the insight and the ability to condemn an adulteress. In fact, if he does not do so, he must answer the legitimate question “why not?”

“Neither do I condemn you. Now go, and sin no more.”

When the quality of God’s mercy in the Gospel no longer amazes you, you will begin to justify the dilution of amazing grace into religious grace, or moral grace, or grace in response to something.

Real grace is simply inexplicable, inappropriate, out of the box, out of bounds, offensive, excessive, too much, given to the wrong people and all those things.

When God’s grace meets us, Jesus has to order away the accusers of our conscience. Satan. Religion. Parents. Church members. Culture. Morality. Legalism. Civility. The oughts. The shoulds. The of course we know thats. The I’d like to but I just can’ts.

Jesus orders them away so he can tell us that grace is doing what only grace can do, and we must go and live in the reverberation of forgiveness. We must live with the reality of grace when it makes no sense at all, can’t be explained and won’t be commodified or turned into some form of medicine.

You may not know that this story is a bit of a homeless story, banging around various manuscripts of the New Testament with no real home. It comes to rest in John 8, but it’s not part of the original. It’s a story that the Jewish leaders of early Christianity wouldn’t have liked, and recovering Pharisees would probably have been happy to lose it.

But it persisted, and is in our New Testament, I believe, because at the heart of true Christian experience is this inexplicable, annoyingly inappropriate, wondrously superlative experience of Jesus saying, “I don’t condemn you. Go and live your life.”

He says it to the divorced. To the expelled. To the unemployed. He says it to criminals. To perverts. To the damaged and the worthless. He says it to cutters, to whores, to greedy businessmen, to unfaithful husbands, to porn addicts and thieves. He says it to the lazy, the unholy, the confused and even the religious. He says it to you and to me.

It’s how he changes lives, and it’s as dangerous as ever.

Baptism

Dangerous, Uncomfortable, Peaceful or Joyful

By Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

Jesus was a relatively new figure on the religious landscape. There were rumors surrounding Him – His birth, His teaching, His power – but by far, the big draw was still John the Baptist. John, with his wild beard and locust-popping habits. John, the fearless who called the Pharisees to task. John, the eccentric.

But John had caused a different kind of ripple. The previous day, Jesus had approached the Jordan River. John stopped what he was doing to make a mysterious but powerful declaration: “Behold! the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” It left his disciples wondering.

Then, when the same thing happened the next day, two of those disciples wanted to inquire further:

“Again the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look! The Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this and followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and noticed them following Him, He asked them, ‘What are you looking for?’” (John 1:35-38).

Valid question. Here were two men who were followers of John. Jesus comes walking up, and suddenly he’s got two hangers-on. So what were they looking for?

Their answer seems to say, “We don’t know,” for at first glance the didn’t even give an answer. They turn to each other. Then, instead of answering the question, they ask another question to Jesus: “Teacher, where are you staying?”

Now that’s a good question. It’s not because it redirected the question of Jesus, buying them some time to think of a better answer. It’s a good one because of the word “staying.”

The word is the same word we find in John 15:4, this time spoken by Jesus: “Abide in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it abides on the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.”

That’s what the men asked: “Where are You abiding?” Where are You remaining? Where are You dwelling? Where are You going to be, because that’s where we want to go. To be with You. To remain with You. To abide with You.”

That’s the question I want to ask: “Jesus, where are you abiding? Because that’s where I want to abide. I want to dwell with You. To fellowship with You. You are my prize, so wherever You are, be it dangerous or uncomfortable or peaceful or joyful, that’s where I want to abide.

But there’s one other detail in the Scripture that pushes the idea. John goes on to record that the two men did indeed go with Jesus. And they “stayed with Him that day.” Then John records the actual time they were there, as if to say, “And can you believe it? When we looked up the whole day was gone!”

That’s what abiding is like. It’s being so caught up in the being that you lose track of time. May it be so.

Close the Door

"It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when he told us to seek the secret place and to close the door.”

     C.S. Lewis

Barbarians and Rhinos

"...most groups of animals have unique names or designations when they dwell together. With insects most of us know that bees are called swarms, and ants are called colonies... But my favorite of all is the group designation for rhinos.

You see, rhinos can run thirty miles an hour, which is pretty fast when you consider how much weight they’re pulling. Just one problem with this phenomenon. Rhinos can see only thirty feet in front of them. Can you imagine something that large moving in concert as a group, plowing ahead at thirty miles an hour with no idea what’s at thirty-one feet?

You would think that they would be far too timid to pick up full steam, that their inability to see far enough ahead would paralyze them to immobility. But with that horn pointing the way, rhinos run forward full steam ahead without apprehension, which leads us to their name. Rhinos moving together at full speed are known as a crash. Even when they’re just hanging around enjoying the watershed, they’re called a crash because of their potential.

You’ve got to love that. I think that’s what the Church is supposed to be. That’s what happens when we become barbarians and shake free of domestication and civility. The church becomes a crash. We become an unstoppable force. We don’t have to pretend we know the future. Who cares that we can see only thirty feet ahead? Whatever’s at thirty-one feet needs to care that we’re coming and better get out of the way. We need to move together as God’s people, a barbarian tribe, and become the human version of the rhino crash.

The future is uncertain, but we need to move toward it with confidence. We need to stop wasting our time and stop being afraid of what we cannot see and do not know. We need to move forward full force because of what we do know. We may not be able to see what’s at thirty-one feet, but we don’t have to be blind to what’s right in front of us. There’s a world that desperately needs God, a world filled with loneliness, hopelessness, and fear. We have somehow become deaf to a cry that reaches heaven coming from the souls of men. But God hears."

                          - Erwin McManus, The Barbarian Way