Author: GlennDavis

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Disappointment, His Appointment

On Responding to Disappointment

My suffering was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to your decrees.

Psalm 119:71 NLT

Our daily choice: react or respond to life’s unexpected setbacks and mind-boggling disappointments (Heb. 12:14-15). Reacting is being angry at our circumstances, frustrated with people, and despondent at not getting our way (James 1:20).

Responding sees the bigger picture: God has an appointment in our disappointment. It is not God’s will that people sin, but when God allows their sin to touch our lives, then their actions have become God’s will for us (2 Cor. 4:7-12). To grow deeper in our relationship with the Lord, we must have a yielded heart: a willingness to allow God to use our trials and tribulations to produce the life of Christ in us (Phil 1:29; 3:10). In order to grow spiritually, we trust God’s sovereign purposes. He is using selfish people, hard places, and broken things to give us our heart’s desire: genuine Christlikeness (Rom. 8:17).

Responding believes that our Heavenly Father has a divine appointment in the midst of our various trials and setbacks. It trusts God’s goodness knowing that God’s sovereign hand is operating in and through the baffling and trying times of life.

We may not understand “why,” but we choose to trust our Heavenly Father who is good, loving, and gracious. We believe that the Father has our best in mind and is not rejecting us by allowing various difficulties in our lives (Heb. 12:7-12).

Responding comes forth from a thankful heart drawing us into the Holy Spirit’s wellspring of grace (Heb. 12:14-15). Responding says “yes” to God and looks for opportunities to grow in our intimate love relationship with Christ. In short, responding is confident that God has an appointment in our disappointment.

 

Disappointment, His Appointment

 

Disappointment-His appointment, change one letter

Then I see, that the thwarting of my purpose is God’s better choice for me.

His appointment must be blessing, though it may come in disguise.

For the end from the beginning, open to his wisdom lies.

 

Disappointment-His appointment, whose?

The Lord’s who loves me best,

Understands and knows me fully, Who my faith and love would test.

For like loving, earthly parent,

He rejoices when He knows,

That his child accepts unquestioned all that from His wisdom flows.

 

Disappointment-His appointment,

No good thing will He withhold, from denials oft we gather,

Treasures of His love untold,

Well He knows each broken purpose leads to fuller deeper trust,

And the end of all His dealings, proves our God is wise and just.

 

Disappointment-His appointment,

Lord, I take it then as such,

Like the clay in hands of potter yielding wholly to Thy touch.

All my life’s plan is Thy molding, not one single choice be mine,

Let me answer unrepining Father not my will but THINE.

Lyrics: Anonymous

Made popular by Phil Keaggy

Album: “Love Broke Thru”


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Biblical Childlikeness

On Having a Childlike Heart

I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Matt. 18:3-4 ESV

Biblical childlikeness is an attitude of neediness, dependence, and receptiveness to God. Childlikeness is a simple trust in the tender care of our heavenly Father. A childlike spirit is not to be confused with childishness: childishness is a refusal to take responsibility and an all-consuming focus on oneself. Childlikeness is not passivity, but trusts that God will work in and through us to serve others.

A child and a cynic walk through the shadow of death differently. A cynic focuses on the darkness and confusion. A person with childlike heart dwells on God’s goodness and faithfulness. A childlike heart know that difficulties await when living in a fallen world; they are confident that God’s grace is bigger and more powerful than Satan’s evil schemes.

Jesus celebrates the humility that comes from the child’s weakness, defenselessness, and vulnerability. The child can really do nothing for himself or herself and will die if left alone. It is this kind of humility that Jesus uses as a visual aid.

Michael J. Wilkins quoted in Grant R. Osbourne, Matthew: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Clinton E. Arnold, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 669.

 

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Consummate Glory in God

 

Glorifying God

Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done this wondrous thing. Shout for joy, O depths of the earth! Break into song, O mountains and forests and every tree! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob and is glorified in Israel.

Isa. 44:23 NLT

Glory is the manifested presence and power of God in our lives and through his church. Glory is pictured in the Bible as the bright, shining radiance that surrounds God’s ineffable perfection. Glory is the presence of God in all his faultlessness, beauty, sinlessness, holiness, majesty, power, sufficiency, and love.

How do we glorify God? First, we need to be mindful that we cannot add to God’s glory. Second, glorifying God means to acknowledge his perfect presence, to value him above everything, and to make him known to all. Last, glorifying God involves heartfelt thanksgiving for his grace and trust in his infinite love.

Basil the Great stated that we glorify God when we reject performance orientation and receive Christ’s righteousness. God is exalted when we turn our backs on our “good works” accept Christ’s righteousness as our own. Receiving Christ’s righteousness is being made right with God–our justification. Justification is an immediate work of God in which he forgives our sins, counts Christ’s sinlessness as ours, and declares us right in his sight. God is most glorified when we look to the Cross for our salvation.

What is true glory and what makes a man great?

‘In this,’ says the Prophet, ‘let him that glories, glory that he understands and knows that I am the Lord’ (Jer. 9:24).

This constitutes the highest dignity of man, this is his glory and greatness: truly to know what is great and to cleave to it, and to seek after glory from the Lord of glory. The Apostle tells us: ‘He that glories may glory in the Lord,’ saying: ‘Christ was made for us wisdom of God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption; that, as it is written: he that glories may glory in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:30-31).

Now, this is the perfect and consummate glory in God: not to exult in one’s own righteousness, but, recognizing oneself as lacking true righteousness, to be justified by faith in Christ alone.

Basil the Great, 330-379, Homily on Humility 20.3.

HT: Trevin Wax

 

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Noxious Weeds

 

The Noxious Weeds of Self-Sufficiency

He died for all, fthat those who live might no longer live for themselves but gfor him who for their sake died and was raised.

2 Cor. 5:14 ESV

We all do it. We all fall back into it. We try to earn God’s acceptance and approval by our good performance (Gal. 3:1-3). We think if we will be a good little boys or girls, then God will be obligated and have to bless us. God will see our sincerity, our best efforts, and our decent morals and accept us, forgive us, and honor us. Our goodness will earn for us freedom from suffering and hardship–true salvation. We grow secure in our own goodness by our own efforts.

However, the Cross of Christ rejects our self-sufficiency. The Cross declares our efforts null and void (Rom. 3:10-12). The Cross shouts from Golgotha, our best efforts are morally corrupt, intrinsically selfish, and ultimately self-deceiving (Gal. 3:13). Our self-centered sins are noxious weeds that choke off life, joy, and hope.

In our faces, the Cross declares our need for a savior. The Cross is our most precious treasure for it frees us from ourselves (2 Cor. 5:15). The notion that we can save ourselves is destroyed. We see that our best efforts for salvation are absurd and ridiculous.We look upon our suffering Savior and recognize that our sin and selfishness put him there. That ultimately, Jesus is bearing on the Cross our just punishment for our sins. Our own selfishness, our desire to be first and foremost, our self-absorption, self-concern, and self-conceit put Jesus there (Rom. 4:25).

The Cross breaks us of our pride as we witness God’s love poured out in Christ. We see that our best efforts are nothing. Our choice: accept God’s grace in Christ or continue to flounder, waver, harden our hearts, and be destroyed by our pride and selfishness (1 Cor. 15:10).

The Cross does not have to be a stumbling block!

Our sin must be extremely horrible.  Nothing reveals the gravity of sin like the cross.  For ultimately what sent Christ there was neither the greed of Judas, nor the envy of the priests, nor the vacillating cowardice of Pilate, but our own greed, envy, cowardice and other sins, and Christ’s resolve in love and mercy to bear their judgment and so put them away.

It is impossible for us to face Christ’s cross with integrity and not to feel ashamed of ourselves.  Apathy, selfishness and complacency blossom everywhere in the world except at the cross.  There these noxious weeds shrivel and die.  They are seen for the tatty, poisonous things they are.  For if there was no way by which the righteous God could righteously forgive our unrighteousness, except that he should bear it himself in Christ, it must be serious indeed.  It is only when we see this that, stripped of our self-righteousness and self-satisfaction, we are ready to put our trust in Jesus Christ as the Saviour we urgently need.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 83.

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What Does It Mean To Be, “In Christ”?

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Union With Christ

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

1 Cor. 1:30 NKJV

The phrase “in Christ” or its corresponding idea is used one hundred and seventy-two times in the New Testament with the Apostle Paul alone utilizing the phrase ninety-seven times in his letters. To be “in Christ” is to receive all the benefits of Christ’s saving work on the Cross, to walk in all the blessings of Christ’s life and resurrection and to enjoy all the favor of Christ’s inheritance from the Father’s favor. To be “in Christ” is to be located in the Divine Person—all that Christ’s has done, received, or achieved is ours to be enjoyed.

The phrase, “in Christ” is the ultimate phrase in the Christian faith, for it locates us in a Person-the Divine Person-and it locates us in Him here and now. It brings us to the ultimate relationship-“in.”

E. Stanley Jones, In Christ (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1980), 4.

Nothing is more striking than the breadth of application which this principle of union with Christ has in the gospel. Christianity obliterates no natural relationships, destroys no human obligations, makes void no moral or spiritual laws. But it lifts all these up into a new sphere, and puts upon them this seal and signature of the gospel, in Christ. So that while all things continue as they were from the beginning, all, by their readjustment to this divine character and person, become virtually new.

Life is still of God, but it has this new dependency” in Christ.” ” Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:30). The obligation to labor remains unchanged, but a new motive and a new sanctity are given to it by its relation to Christ. “Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58). The marriage relation is stamped with this new signet, ” Only in the Lord.” Filial obedience is exalted into direct connection with the Son of God. “Children obey your parents in the Lord.” Daily life becomes “a good conversation in Christ.” Joy and sorrow, triumph and suffering, are all in Christ. Even truth, as though needing a fresh baptism, is viewed henceforth ” as it is in ‘Jesus.” Death remains, but it is robbed of its sting and crowned with a beatitude, because in Christ. ” Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”

A. J. Gordon, In Christ or The Believer’s Union with His Lord (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1964), 12.

Our union in Christ is not just a theological theory, but a reality to be lived and enjoyed moment-by-moment. Christ lives in us by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. As Andrew Murray stated, “It is through the Holy Spirit that we have Christ in our hearts-a mighty force stirring, enlightening, and filling us.” [Daily in His Presence (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2004), Feb. 6th.] Christ encourages us each day to trust him, to love him, and to live through him. As we trust him, all the benefits of Christ’s life, death, burial, and resurrection can be experienced now in us. The Holy Spirit makes these truths known, reveals them to our hearts, and enables us to live them.

Christ’s own words to His disciples explain this best. Just as the Father lived and worked in Him, so Jesus lives and works in us. The Son expressed the Father. We are to express Christ. The Father worked in the Son, and the Son gave expression to that which the Father brought about in Him, Christ works in us and enables us to carry on His work. This is His gift to us.

Andrew Murray, Daily in His Presence, Feb. 5th.

Christ’s gift to us was himself–nothing more was, is, or will be needed for us to live the Christian life. Christ is our joy, blessing and victory.

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Shrinking to Our True Size

At the Foot of the Cross

Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross .

Gal. 3:1 NLT

Spent several hours yesterday studying and reflecting on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Love the Apostle Paul’s personal directness, powerful conviction, and moral clarity in proclaiming the gospel vis-a-vis the law, that is, performance orientation. The earliest heresy of the church was not Gnosticism, but moralism.

Moralism promises the approval of God and the receiving of God’s righteousness to sinners if we only behave and commit ourselves to moral improvement (i.e., doing better and trying harder). Moralism is not the gospel. We cannot fix, improve, or renovate ourselves. Only by Christ’s cross and the Spirit’s enablement can our hearts be changed and our sins forgiven, forgotten, and overcome. Only by trusting Christ’s finished work on the Cross can we be accepted by God.

I repeat, moralism is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the news that Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, died for our sins and rose again. Christ was, is, and forever will be triumphant over all his and our enemies. Because of Christ’s work on the Cross, no condemnation exists for those who believe, but only everlasting joy now and forever. The Gospel shrinks us down to size, it declares to us that there is nothing in ourselves that can save ourselves.

This is the gospel Paul preached in the letter to the Galatians:

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is here, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

John Stott, The Message of Galatians (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1968), 179.

 

 

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The Theologian of Glory

The Heidelberg Disputation

[Jesus] gave up his divine privileges he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Phil 2:7-8 NLT

The years of 1517 and 1519 are of the utmost importance in the life of Martin Luther. The latter date is the famous debate with Johannes Eck in Leipzig and the former date is the posting of the 95 Theses on indulgences in Wittenberg. The middle year is often thought of as the silent year, that of 1518. However, a significant event occurred in the history of theology of that year, it is called the Heidelberg Disputation. In April of that year, Johannes von Staupitz, the vicar-general of the Augustinian order of which Luther was a monk, invited him to discourse on his new ideas. Every year the Augustinian order would meet for a public disputation in Heidelberg. Staupitz instructed Luther not to discuss his more controversial views about the Pope and Church Authority, but to share his new understanding of the righteousness of God. This was Luther’s first great opportunity to share his insights, which he called the theology of the cross. Crux sola est nostra theologia is in opposition to what Luther called the theology of glory.

The “theologian of glory” calls the bad good and the good bad. The “theologian of the cross” says what a thing is. . . . Without a theology of the cross, man misuses the best things in the worst way.

Martin Luther, Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenburger (New York: Anchor Press, 1961), 503.

The theologian of glory prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and in general, good to evil. . . . God can only be found in suffering and the cross. . . . Therefore the friends of the cross say that the cross is good and works are evil, for through the cross works are dethroned and the old Adam, who is especially edified by works, is crucified. It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his good works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil until he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.

Martin Luther cited in Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 81.

 

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Why Were Ananias and Sapphira Judged?

Judgment and Grace Simultaneously

Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

Acts 5:9-11 (NIV)

Recently, I was asked an excellent question. In regard to Acts 5:1-11 and the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira: “Why did God judge Ananias and Sapphira so completely when the New Testament period is supposed to be an age of grace?” “Is not judgment an Old Testament characteristic of God?”

First, we need to avoid dividing the various and seemingly contradictorily attributes of God between the Old and New Testaments. The Marcion heresy of the early church taught that the Old Testament God was a god of judgment and wrath, but in the New Testament, Jesus is a god of grace and love. Today, we often fall into the same post-modern trap in our thinking. Some teachers contrast the mean and angry god of the Old Testament with Jesus meek and mild–the friend of all–in the New Testament. Anglican pastor, John Stott notes:

God is not at odds with himself, however much it may appear to us that he is. He is ‘the God of peace’, of inner tranquility not turmoil. True, we find it difficult to hold in our minds simultaneously the images of God as the Judge who must punish evil-doers and of the Lover who must find a way to forgive them. Yet he is both, and at the same time.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 131.

The Holy Trinity is the same God in both testaments: a God of love, grace, mercy, judgment, and wrath. Read Jesus’ statements in Mark 13, Matt 23, and the Rev. 1. He is the God of justice, holiness, and righteousness in the New Testament as well as the Old. I am currently reading The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer. Tozer comments that God’s attributes are the same in both the Old and New Testaments.

We should banish from our minds forever the common but erroneous notion that justice and judgment characterize the God of Israel, while mercy and grace belong to the Lord of the Church. Actually there is in principle no difference between the Old Testament and the New.

In the New Testament Scriptures there is a fuller development of redemptive truth, but one God speaks in both dispensations, and what He speaks agrees with what He is. Wherever and whenever God appears to men, He acts like Himself. Whether in the Garden of Eden or the Garden of Gethsemane, God is merciful as well as just. He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when His mercy is despised.

Thus He did in antediluvian times; thus when Christ walked among men; thus He is doing today and will continue always to do for no other reason than that He is God.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961), 97.

New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles,  comments about Acts 5, “Luke’s [the author of Acts] view is that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is the same God Jesus and the disciples served, and so one should expect continuity of character and action.”

Second, we often misinterpret John 1:17, “For the law was through Moses: grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” We commonly think that the verse is pitting grace against law,” The Law is judgment and it was in the Old Testament, it was bad, and needs to be discarded, because in Jesus we now have grace.”

However, the Apostle John was not contrasting grace against law. John believes that the law is good: the Law (Torah) is the promises of God, and Jesus is the fulfillment of those promises. Grace and truth are covenant terms which designate God’s loyalty and faithfulness. John declares that in Jesus, the Lord is fulfilling his promises and covenant commitment found in the Law (Torah).

Third, Ananias and Sapphira’s sin was very grave. Giving was voluntary in the early Church. However, Ananias and Sapphira lied about giving all the proceeds for the sale of their property.They “kept back” (v.2) which in the Greek implies the utmost dishonesty and secrecy. Not only were they lying with conspiratorial intent, but that lying was Satanically inspired (v.3). Satan was using their flesh to corrupt and divide an early church which was just beginning its witness to the world. God’s judgment of their sin had be swift or the early church would lose its witness and unity.

Again, New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, states, “In Luke’s view this couple is guilty of secrecy, collusion, and attempting to lie to the Holy Spirit. What is at stake here is the koinonia of the community which the Spirit indwelt. One act of secrecy and selfishness violates the character of openness and honesty which characterized the earliest community of Jesus’ followers.”

Lesson to today’s church: The God of the New Testament is still concerned about the holiness of his people.

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Performance Orientation

Striving and Trying for God

Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ.

Gal. 3:2 NLT

Performance orientation is attempting to earn God’s acceptance and love by our trying, striving, and laboring.

We suffer great exertion and struggle tremendously in our Christian walk. We long to live by the precepts of the Christian life. On a good day, our attitude and actions suggest some degree of Christian commitment. We think by our performance that God is obligated to bless us and reward us for walking according to his standards. We think of ourselves as “good little boys and girls” and that good things always happen to good people.  On our good days, we walk in self-righteous pride, and on our bad days, we plod along in discouragement and despair.

We have reverted back to living under the Law, we think we earn the blessing of the Holy Spirit by our performance. We think we deserve God’s rejection by our failures. We become frustrated with the Christian life, the up’s and down’s, the elation and the despair.

We have forgotten grace. We have forgotten that the Christian life is a person and that Jesus’ work on the Cross performed all we would ever need to be accepted by God. We have forgotten that Christ perfectly lived the law and died in our place that we might be accepted by God. We have forgotten that the Christian life is lived by faith trusting every day that Christ’s Cross has taken all our failed performances and nailed them to a tree.

We must remember that we are not accepted before God based on our performance, but we are accepted because of Christ’s beautiful performance on the Cross. We don’t perform the Christian life to be loved by God. We perform for God because know that we are loved and accepted in Christ.

We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization, I’m accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.”

Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day-by-Day (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008), 6.

 

 

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Holy, Holy, Holy

What Is God’s Holiness?

Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?

Exodus 15:11

Holiness is God’s infinite glory manifested to the world through his sinlessness of character, purity of intention, and righteousness of person. God is right, acts right, and does right. God’s holiness opposes wrong and his love reaches out to the wrongdoer. God’s holiness opposes sin for sin turns the world upside down, inside out, and wrong side up. Sin brings destruction, pain, and suffering to all. It denigrates God’s majesty and exalts humankind’s pride and rebellion. God’s holiness stands against sin’s evil, and therefore, gives God glory. God is beautiful for he cares about rampant injustice, ugly selfishness, and our self-inflicted pain.

It is his glory and beauty. Holiness is the honour of the creature; sanctification and honour are linked together (1 Thess. iv. 4); much more is it the honour of God; it is the image of God in the creature (Epn. iv. 24). When we take the picture of a man, we draw the most beautiful part, the face, which is a member of the greatest excellency. When God would be drawn to the life, as much as can be, in the spirit of his creatures, he is drawn in this attribute, as being the most beautiful perfection of God, and most valuable with him. Power is his hand and arm; omniscience, his eye; mercy, his bowels; eternity, his duration; his holiness is his beauty (2 Chron. xx. 21);—’ should praise the beauty of holiness.’ In Ps. xxvii. 4, David desires ‘to behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his holy temple;’ that is, the holiness of God manifested in his hatred of sin in the daily sacrifices. Holiness was the beauty of the temple (Isa. xlvi. 11); holy and beautiful house are joined together; much more the beauty of God that dwelt in the sanctuary. This renders him lovely to all his innocent creatures, though formidable to the guilty ones. . . . And the angels’ song intimate it to be his glory (Isa. vi. 3); ‘The whole earth is full of thy glory;’ that is, of his holiness in his laws, and in his judgments against sin, that being the attribute applauded by them before.

Stephen Charnock, “The Atributes and Existence of God,” Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, Vol. One.