Life Here and There

Moments ago, I was spending some time in prayer and I was confessing known sin in my life. As I prayed, I said, “God, I’m sorry for this sin, I ought to hate this sin.” Almost instantly God spoke to my heart and I blurted out what I heard Him say, “Brandon, you’ll either learn to hate your sin, or you’ll wind up hating yourself.”

As we confess sin and seek the Holy Spirit’s power to overcome it, we ought to remember that we have a new identity in Christ. We are not to be subject to a very popular but perhaps erroneous “miserable sinnerism” (coined by J. Sidlow Baxter) but rather we are to see ourselves as forgiven and freed. Sin no longer defines us, Christ does, if we’ve been washed once for all in His blood.

In order to preserve a close intimacy with God and forward spiritual progress, I desperately need to see myself as “in Christ,” to see sin as something to be loathed, and to see cleansing as a continuous need. If we loathe ourselves, we’ll give up. If we exalt ourselves, we’ll blow it because of pride. But if we hate sin and exalt the indwelling Christ in us, we’ll see the victory!

“Love not the world… for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world, and the world passeth away…” -1 John 2:15-17

Remember Louis Armstrong’s great What A Wonderful World? Angie and I had that song played at our wedding. This truly is a wonderful world in many respects. It’s the place where we view the glory of God in creation. This world is where Jesus came to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. This world is where Jesus found me and saved me and is now using believers across the world to extend His Kingdom. But this world is not everything. In fact, it isn’t even permanent.

John and other New Testament writers often used the word “world” (kosmos) to refer, not to the physical creation (though that was the literal meaning of kosmos), but to what we might call today, secularism. The “world” of which John spoke was the human realm of thinking, devoid of God. It’s the realm in which Satan attempts to pull us away from God through his three primary tempting agents: the lust of the flesh (that which feels good to our body), the lust of the eyes (that which appeals to our sight), and the pride of life (that which fills us with a false sense of fulfillment or self-achievement).

Preachers used to speak of “worldliness” more in churches, but it was usually in reference to cultural stigmas such as going to dances or movies or having the wrong haircut. Worldliness is much broader than these or any other simple actions. Worldliness is thinking in temporal terms, living for the here and now with total disregard to eternity. We’ll either live in fear of an eternal God or we’ll be left to our own devices (i.e. worldliness).

When left with the choice between living in godless humanism or godly cosecration, let us remember the words of Peter Marshall, “It is Christ or chaos!” Are your everyday decisions informed by Scripture or society? Do you think in spiritual terms or cultural tones? Does Christ have all of you or do you have one foot in the church and the other in the world?

“At the end of twelve months he was walking about the royal palace of Babylon. The king spoke, saying, ‘Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?’ While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you.’” -Daniel 4:29-30 (NKJV)

Whose kingdom are you building with your life? Without realizing it, many of us are building our own kingdoms. If we’re pursuing pleasure, possessions, or power for our own glory, then we’re building our own kingdoms. In fact, most people, without even realizing it, live life for themselves rather than for God. If our lives are not centered on Christ, then they are centered on self. To check this in your own life, ask yourself what your goals are? What is your purpose? Whom do you exist for? Whom do you ultimately work for?Jesus said it plainly, “

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…” To build God’s kingdom we must live a God-centered life. Everything else about who I am needs to revolve around His glory. I am married, but my marriage was designed in the eternal wisdom of God to bring Him glory. I have a career (personally, it’s a ministry, but you get the point), but my work is supposed to bring Him glory. I am a parent and I am to raise my kids to glorify God.

Lord help us never to fall into the trap of Nebuchadnezzar, building our own kingdoms, living life by our own designs for our own goals. Instead, help us to be consumed with a zeal for Your glory!

“And they found Adoni-bezek in Bezek:… and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.” (Judges 1:5-7)

The Buddhist idea of karma teaches that “what goes around comes around” and that all is equitable in the universe. Christianity agrees that all is equitable in God’s economy. However, what ought to come around to us has come around to the cross that we might be forgiven, spared, and spoiled by God’s mercy and grace. There is, however, still much truth in the old adage, as King Adoni-bezek learned the hard way.

He had spent his days in cruel and tyrannical oppression over his people. He confessed at the end of his life that he once maimed seventy kings and humiliated them in front of his own dinner guests as a sign of his pride and power. Now, through the advancing nation of Israel, God was exacting revenge for his crime. Not only was God delivering the promised land to Israel, He was in the meantime using them as His instrument of judgment against the wicked and idolatrous Canaanites.

Because Adoni-bezek lost his thumbs and his big toes, we can learn the big lesson that cruelty has a way of coming back to us. God always remains righteous as He judges sin and though we may not always understand His ways, we can trust that He is a just and fair judge. He is displeased with unecessary cruelty toward others and He handles vengeance in such matters. If you can’t learn this lesson then perhaps God will someday say to you, “I ‘toed’ you so!”

This past Sunday was Open House Sunday at Bethel, and what a blessing it was to greet half a dozen new families and share a wonderful fellowship meal with our church family. My pride factor was increased as Bethel’s members paid special attention to quality and friendliness. Much preparation went into the day and it was well worth it! But Sunday evening was far more of a blessing to my own heart. In fact, most Sundays are just that way.

On Sunday mornings, we rush in to tie up loose ends and make sure that all details are in order for the morning worship service. After all, if the lighting, the temperature, or the sound volume isn’t perfect, God might not be able to work in the hearts of attendees, right? I fear that sometimes when we are focused too much on having an ideal public service, we miss the absolutely awe-inspiring nature of the centerpiece of our service – God’s perfect Word. By the time we open our Bibles, we’re a bit drained from the tension of striving for perfection.

That’s why I love Sunday evening services. It seems, for some reason, that the tension is over. We’ve been relieved from the pressure to impress the visiting crowd and we tend to focus our attention more on the Word of God in study. Rather than double-checking the sound and making sure the bulletins aren’t printed upside down on the inside, we simply stroll in, take our seats, and seek the face of Jesus.

My conclusion is that we probably have a lot to learn about Sunday mornings from all of this. Perhaps it’s time to “get spiritual” and realize that we aren’t gathering for a show, we’re gathering in Jesus’ classroom, sitting at the feet of our Lord, waiting for those drippings from the altar. Our worship will be more precious when it is “simply God’s Word.”

Remember the story of Mary and Martha? Martha wasn’t wrong in serving, but she was wrong in missing Jesus in her attention to the details of preparing dinner. Every Sunday, we prepare the table for special guests, but let’s not miss the sweet fellowship time with Jesus by our attention to the details. As you approach God’s Word this weekend with your church family, seek the face of Jesus in the simplicity of God’s wonderful Word.

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.”—Proverbs 8:13

Sin is a bitter enemy. Until we learn to spot it, name it, and hate it, we’ll never overcome it. Learning to hate sin is a matter of agreeing with God about sin – sharing His perspective on it. Sin has done nothing but wreck and plunder God’s wonderful creation, so He detests it. Sin is the very opposite of all that is divine in nature, so God loathes it. Repentance demands that we turn from our sin and begin to agree with God about it – to hate it as He does.

Our problem is often that we minimize sin in our lives. Why? Because the world does so. When we laugh along with the world at inappropriate humor, at the triviality of injustice, or at the grossness of sin, we’re sort of participating in it, and we’re desensitizing ourselves to it as well. If you want to overcome sin, you must look at it the way God does – with hatred.

Never hate others. Never hate yourself. But learn to hate that which hurts you and others around you – sin.