Exhortation, Encouragement, and Comfort in Christ.
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The gospel message about what Christ has done for us on the cross is great not only because of what it tells us about what God did for us in the past. It’s increasingly glorious in what it produces in us now and in its promises for our future. [click to continue…]
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There are, on God’s palette, many colors and shades from which He chooses when painting the canvas upon which His glory is revealed. They are not all bright rainbow colors. Among His supplies are earthy browns, dark umber hues, grays, and blacks that, when painted by the master, fall perfectly into His bright design.
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On the first Easter morning the apostles were cognitively non-Christians. When Mary, Joanna and Mary the mother of James reported that angles had told them that Jesus had risen, they considered the words as nonsense. It’s remarkable to me that the apostles would be so dull. After all, these men had been with Jesus, they heard everything He said, they saw every miracle He performed, and they had even been told in advance about His betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection. In addition to their direct experiences with Jesus, having heard all His words and seen all His works, they also had three reliable, trustworthy eye witnesses testifying to the gospel they heard from the mouths of angels. All this was still not enough. The first time they heard the gospel message they thought it was nonsense.
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In the very moment, being famished, and the smell of Jacob’s tasty red stew filling the room, a very small thing, like a bowl of porridge, seemed more desirable to Esau than a much bigger thing, his birthright. Thus Esau despised his birthright, a big thing far off, for stew – a small thing immediately available. Unbelief is like that, it uses time and distance to distort the true value of precious things. To despise means to think little of, to be dismissive toward, and to disregard. Esau thought little of, and was dismissive of, the true value of his birthright – when it seemed far off. Esau was an earthy man, a hunter, a man of the fields – he lived in the moment and gave little thought to tomorrow. Better, he thought, was good stew right now when hungry, than a birthright which could only be enjoyed in the distant future.
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Isaac’s life was not easy. Growing up, he was the son of a sojourner and a constant stranger. I don’t think he liked the sojourner’s life because the Bible records that when he grew up he settled himself in Beer-lahai-roi. But that wasn’t to be – a famine drove him away from his home. Famines are massively stressful events. When we read about this famine, it unfolds over just one verse, but for Issac it represented weeks, perhaps months of dwindling supplies and dwindling hope for rain and harvest. As circumstances grew more and more bleak, he was forced to uproot his household. Such a circumstance is not easy to endure.
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A popular application question from the story of Abraham offering Isaac is whether or not you would have enough faith to offer your child, if God told you to. But I think this question is somewhat flawed. Because Abraham’s test was not merely the hardest test God could think of to determine how much faith Abraham had. It did not test the quantity of Abraham’s faith, but rather the basis of it. The task wasn’t designed to see whether or not Abraham would do something outrageous simply because God told him to. The task corresponded with God’s specific promises regarding Isaac and his decendants.
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It is a well-observed spiritual truth that suffering is among the chief means for deepening communion with God. The fellowship of sharing in Jesus’ sufferings brings joy. Faith grows up in the broken soil of our pains. Hope, refined by trials, increases our longing for heaven. When I’m under the shadow of suffering, God’s promises renew my strength. Such times cause me to anticipate the weight of glory promised for my eternal future.
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This is the second time this centurion has captured my attention. When I encountered him during my meditations in Matthew chapter eight I wrote a devotional called “A Centurion Came to Him, Entreating Him.” What originally captured my attention was Jesus’s estimation of this man’s faith – I wanted to squeeze out as many insights into what this great faith was like, so that my own faith might grow too. This time I encountered him in Luke chapter seven. Here I’ve been impressed with the kind of life that nurtured such great faith. If a soul is like soil, which, if it’s good, bears fruit according to the seed sown in it, then I want to examine the composition of this centurion’s soil. It must been some good soil for Jesus to marvel its fruit!
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For three agonizing days Joseph and Mary searched for their precious Son. There have been a few times and places where I have lost track of one of my children. Those few anxious minutes felt like hours as the sickening feeling of anxiety welled up in my gut. How much more painful to lose track of a child for three days? Life need not deliver such extreme forms of distress in order to provoke my anxiety; its small doses produce dread and anxiety easily enough. My inner turmoil is a reflexive consequence of such circumstances.
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According to Hebrews chapter 11, faith has two primary characteristics. One, it believes that God exists and that He makes all the things that exist out of nothing. Secondly, faith believes that God is a personal, covenant-making, promise-keeping God who rewards those that earnestly seek Him. This is the character of genuine faith and it is through faith alone that God saves, justifies and imputes the righteousness of Christ to undeserving sinners like me. And God determined to grant salvation through faith for a reason, which is that it might be – in accordance with grace.
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Considering Christ