The Order of Creation

Genesis 1:2 says that the “earth was without form and void.” Without form means it was a desolate waste, it was in confusion and without form. Void means it was an empty, undistinguishable ruin.

In other words, earth was in total chaos; a complete mess.

The first thing God did was create light so He could see what was going on down here. Probably not literally, but it’s fun to think of it like that! Light reveals the hidden things of darkness; it showed exactly what a chaotic mess the earth was.

After creating light (which wasn’t from the sun; I believe it was a physical manifestation of God’s glory), He divided the light from the darkness.

“Divide” is mentioned 5 times in the first 14 verses of Genesis 1. God was putting things where they go.

Here’s a cool thing: the Greek word for the created world is “kosmos.” We get our English word cosmos from that.

Take a guess what the literal meaning of the Greek word “kosmos” is? It literally means an orderly, apt, and harmonious arrangement!

How cool is that?

The word for the physical creation is an orderly and harmonious arrangement. God put what was in chaos into order.

God is a God of order, not of confusion.  He likes us to do things in order too (especially in church: 1 Corinthians 14:34-40). God likes order.

We know He likes order because the name of the place we now live in (the world) is the Greek word for order!

Unfortunately, we His creation, brought sin into the world. Sin throw order into confusion. Satan, the author of lies, loves to destroy, tear down, and destroy order. All efforts by humanity to destroy order are an act of Satan and go against God’s creative work.

Bringing order into your sphere of influence is one of the greatest things you can do to honor your Creator. Tend and keep your garden God has given you. Don’t let sin destroy your home and family. It starts with your own life. Get yourself in order so you can extend order into our confused world and honor your orderly Creator.

Beautiful.

Hope in the Midst of Stupidity

Isaiah 35 talks about Israel returning to their land in the future, the great regathering to the Promised Land. The last verse of this chapter used to be a song we’d sing at church when I was a youngster.

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, And come with singing unto Zion; And everlasting joy shall be upon their head.

They shall obtain gladness and joy;
And sorrow and mourning shall flee away.

That’s the general context of the chapter.

Part of the chapter talks about a highway being made that the remnant will return by way of. Verse 8 says this about it:

And a highway shall be there,
    and it shall be called the Way of Holiness;
the unclean shall not pass over it.
    It shall belong to those who walk on the way;
    even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.

I love that last line: Even stupid people won’t be able to get lost!

One of the things I look forward to most about Christ returning and setting all things right is the wonderful absence of stupidity.

Sheer evil is bad, but it’s also fairly rare to experience. But stupidity is around us all day long. Man, it gets old. I hate being stupid and I hate being around the effects of stupid people.

Another promise I love about that time is that no one will need to be taught about the Lord. Everyone will already know Him (Jeremiah 31:34).

Fantastic. What a day of rejoicing it will be indeed. Sorrow and mourning will flee away; only gladness and joy will remain.

What a tremendous hope for us as we pass through the valley of the shadow of stupid.

A. W. Tozer on How to get Personal Revival

I was reading an article by A. W. Tozer about revival. Most people want revival but usually just pray for it. Although prayer is great and everything, Tozer thinks obedience is how revival comes. It’s not from begging God for it; it’s from pursuing a new life of obedience toward God.

He also doesn’t think revival will hit a group until it hits individuals. So, in order for revival to come it has to start with individuals being obedient. He then lists ten things he thinks individual obedience would entail. I thought the list was interesting to consider.

1. Be thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself. This flies in the face of most of our self-esteem boosting Christian rah-rah talk. Complacency is the enemy. Do all to press toward the mark and never assume you have arrived and can take it easy.

2. Set your face like flint toward transformation of life. Throw your whole soul into your desire for God.

3. Actually do stuff that leads to spiritual benefit. There are definite paths to walk that lead to green pastures. Pursue the good.

4. Take your time and do a thorough job of repenting. Until the consciousness of sin wounds us, we will never fear evil.

5. Pursue full restitution. Do all to make the crooked straight. Get out of any debts of any kind to anyone.

6. Bring your life into alignment with New Testament commands, such as those in the Sermon on the Mount. An honest man with an open Bible and a pad of paper and pen is sure to find out very quickly what is wrong with him and what to do instead!

7. Be serious-minded. Limit entertainment and stuff that makes sin funny and entertaining. You must make a serious change in habits for there to be any internal change.

8. Deliberately narrow your interests. A jack of all trades is not good in any. Close the doors of your heart to wastes of time and being busy with many projects. Throw the doors of your heart wide open to what Christ desires.

9. Begin to witness. Find something to do for God and man. If your faith is not benefitting others, it won’t do much for you either.

10. Have faith in God. Begin to expect. You are a partaker of the divine nature and all heaven’s supply for life and godliness are available for you. Use what you’ve got available.

Although some of these might sound a little floaty and out there, I think they are good things to pursue. I wanted to write them down for me if no one else! We could all use a little more reviving in life.

Isolated Christians Get Weirder and Weirder

One thing I’ve noticed in my years in the church are people who get tired of church and leave it. They “worship God” in nature or with their family. I don’t know what that means exactly, but the basic idea is that they sit by themselves on Sunday mornings.

It’s a free country. You can do what you want on Sunday mornings. It’s also true that you should not be deceived, God is not mocked, you will reap what you sow.

People who leave the church and sit alone without regular Christian fellowship get weirder and weirder. They get more convinced they are superior and righter than anyone else, way better than your dumb church. Their ideas run rampant as there is no feedback to check the weirdness. The weird grows and grows.

I’ve seen several people do this and boy howdy, without fail they end up believing weird stuff, all the while letting you know they are better than you and maybe someday, if God is gracious to you, you’ll get to their elevated levels of spiritual awesomeness.

It’s quite the thing to watch.

Although I have seen this scenario play out a number of times, I was greatly encouraged to see a verse in the Bible that says the same thing. I’ve been reading the ESV this year. It’s a fine version and has some different translations, especially in the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs is a very hard book to translate because there is no real context for many of the verses to help with the translation. You only have that sentence to work with. There can be wide variation in the different translations on some of these verses.

Proverbs 18:1 stuck out to me this time through.

“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.”

Well, there ya go! That was my observation and now I have biblical support to back it up. Guess it must be true then.

Was God the Father Angry With Jesus His Son?

One problem I have with Bible commentaries and Study Bibles is that the author(s) often have a favorite doctrine that they will see in every passage. This is a very bad thing as it distracts from what the Bible is actually saying at any given time. Here’s an example for you from my recent reading in Isaiah.

Here is Isaiah 12:1:

And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.

Here is The MacArthur Study Bible note on Isaiah 12:1:

Your anger turned away. For the future remnant who will recognize the substitutionary death of Christ for their sins, Christ bore God’s anger in their place. Otherwise, that anger against them would remain.

MacArthur is a big fan of Calvinism. Calvinism is based on Substitutionary Atonement, or rather Substitutionary Atonement is based on Calvinism. One or the other. You can’t have one without the other.

It seems the main point of the MacArthur Study Bible is John trying to convince himself Calvinism is biblical. He sees it everywhere even though it’s not there ever.

This idea that God was angry with Christ is insane to me. The Bible never says this anywhere. The idea is that God is angry and His anger has to go somewhere. He’s angry with you as a sinner, but if you repent and believe the Gospel, His anger merely shifts to another object. Instead of being angry with you, now He’s angry with His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased for dying for you.

Sometimes it’s expressed in relation to killing people and death. God wants to kill you, you filthy rotten sinner, but you’re lucky Jesus loves you! Now instead of killing you, God will kill His own Son.

God just has to kill someone. He’s a raving maniacal killer whose blood lust must be fulfilled. If He can’t kill you, He’ll kill His Son. If He can’t be angry with you; He has to be angry with someone, so He’ll be angry with His Son who died for you.

This makes zero sense.

When my kids were little, one of them would get in trouble. They’d do something disrespectful and make me angry. If they saw the error of their way and humbly apologized, my anger went away. It’s not like if they made me angry by disobedience and then repented I’d be like, “Oh man, I’ve got this anger here now though. I have to do something with it, guess I’ll whoop up on your sister instead.”

Repentance has a way of making anger go away. A soft answer turns away wrath. It doesn’t move wrath from one object to another; it dissipates the wrath. Israel, as a redeemed people, would no longer be an object of wrath. That’s not because God whooped up on His Son instead; it’s because Israel is no longer doing things that provoke God’s anger and they met the condition of faith that took care of their past sins.

It’s the goodness of God that leads people to repentance. Love is the prime motivator in all that God did in sending His Son and in all that His Son did in dying for us.

Love is the deal. Love eliminates wrath. Perfect love casts out fear. God doesn’t have to be angry with someone else because you came to Him.

God loves you and loves His Son. His Son has never once done anything to provoke His Father to wrath. There are zero reasons why God would be angry with Jesus Christ. Zero. Don’t believe anyone who says there are. They aren’t dealing with Scripture; they’re dealing with a humanly devised philosophy based on a caricature of the God of the Bible.

Why “Church” is only Mentioned 3 Times in the Gospels

I was reading a book that told me that Christians should be more ecumenical to show unity to a divided world. We should ignore our doctrinal differences, many of which they made light of, to do bake sales and block parties.

As much as I’d be fine with the churches showing more unity to a divided world, doing so by ignoring doctrine is not a tactic I’m thrilled about. If unity is the result of good doctrine, then bring it on. If unity is prioritized over good doctrine then only bad things will result.

Anyway, back to the author’s point, he went on to prove his point by saying that Jesus only used the word “church” three times in the Gospels, whereas He used the word “kingdom” 121 times.

The result of his math is that church is insignificant in comparison to building the Kingdom. The “Kingdom” to the author means doing block parties and bake sales to show the world how happy we are.

This sort of reasoning is the kind of stuff that gets published in our day. The author is a pastor. He has a book published. He has no idea what the Bible is talking about.

Throughout the book he used the Bible very sloppily. At one point he stated that we should throw block parties for our neighbors to fulfill the Great Commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. He then said, “This is why Jesus spent so much of His time at parties.”

I, for the life of me, can’t figure out what party schedule Jesus kept. I can think of the wedding at Cana, maybe the shindig at the tax collector’s house and Zaccheus’ house maybe. That’s three in 33 years. Not sure how that’s “so much of his time.”

But this passes as biblical scholarship in our day.

Back to the math of church used 3 times and kingdom used 121 times in the Gospel.

There’s a pretty straightforward reason for this: There was no church in the Gospels. The church is the Body of Christ, the mystery Paul spoke of where Jews and Gentiles were united in Christ. This was only possible after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Jesus Christ came to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He forbade His disciples to go to the Gentiles. Matthew 10-5-7 is a fine proof text for my statement. This all changed after Christ’s death and resurrection. Now they were to start in Jerusalem but then go to the ends of the earth.

When speaking to Israel, Christ spoke of the Kingdom, because that’s what Israel was prophesied to get. That’s language they understood and knew their Messiah would usher in.

They missed the fact that the Messiah had to suffer and die in order to bring it in though. They didn’t see the two comings as distinct. They thought the Messiah would come and then bring in the Kingdom. That’s the question the disciples have at the beginning of Acts.

Once the Spirit comes, there’s a new program. The church is brought in. The disciples now go to Jews and Gentiles and promise them a birth into the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ.

It’s a large issue, deserves more space than this, but I’m tired. It takes time and effort to understand the Bible. It’s hard. What’s way easier is to have a flippant understanding of the Bible and then you can make it say the point you set out to make regardless of the Bible’s points.

That’s what this author did and he annoyed me.

Is Pleasing God Legalism?

Many Christians warn you not to try and get God’s approval by doing good things for Him. They will warn you that this is legalism and will feel like duty bound drudgery.

It certainly can be this for some people, no doubt about that. And, if you’re doing these things so God will save you, then yes, you are indeed missing something.

But to warn a believer not do good works for God’s approval seems really dumb.

So, why do some say this?

Mostly it rests on the idea that our identity is in Christ. You will hear, “When God looks at you, he sees Christ and not you,” or, “Christ’s works are accredited to you, so God only sees Christ’s works and not yours.” If you seek to do good for God, you are allegedly denying Christ and His provision and grace.

There are no verses in the Bible that say that Christ’s works are added to you, or that God doesn’t see you, only Christ. If these verses aren’t in the Bible, why do so many Christians maintain these ideas?

Think about it. Why would a person not want God to see their life?! Why would someone desire a doctrine that tells them what they do doesn’t matter?

The only possible answer I can come up with is that they don’t think their life is very righteous. I personally don’t mind God seeing my life. Even when I sin and I’m wrong, I want God to know that so He can correct me, maybe even discipline me, so I will knock it off.

Sin is bad. It hurts people. It’s not doing you any favors. I want God to know what I’m doing because I want Him to help me overcome these sins that so easily beset me and the weights that slow me down from pursuing Him.

The only people who desire an unseen life are those who are ashamed of their life. Men love darkness and hate the light, remember?!

Instead of developing non-biblical doctrines that convince you your sin is undetected by God so don’t worry about it, perhaps cleanse yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God like 2 Corinthians 7:1 says.

If doing what God says feels like duty and begrudging tasks, then yes, you do have a problem! The solution to this problem is not devising doctrines that tell you not to worry about it and stop worrying about doing good. The answer is to get saved.

This isn’t my opinion, this is the Bible.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
–1 John 5:2-3

Yes, doing good can be a checklist mentality resulting in drudgery. Doing what God says can make life harder, less fun, and potentially draining. Yet for the believer, this is all totally worth it! It doesn’t bog down the believer because the believer knows that Jesus Christ emptied himself, was made a servant, lead a hard life that wasn’t much fun, and lead to Him being called a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He did all this for us!

As Paul said, “That I may know Him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” This is not drudgery for the believer; this is what leads to spiritual fruit, holiness, and the end everlasting life.

So, yes, if doing what God says is a burden to you this should alert you to a problem. The problem is that you’re approaching God’s word and God Himself from the wrong foundation.

If you come to God on the foundation of the Gospel, truly understanding not only what Christ did for you, but also what you did with Him (Romans 6—we were crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, and raised up with Christ to new life where we now present our members as instruments of righteousness and not sin) we will desire to do what God says, not out of drudgery, but out of love.

The vast majority of false doctrine comes from people trying to deny personal responsibility. We want to sin and get away with it. We want our fleshly fun with no guilt. We want to revel in worldliness and have God smile at us too.

It doesn’t work that way. The reason you came to the Gospel to begin with, supposedly, was to be freed from sin, the world, and the flesh. The true believer desires to please God, a thing he could never do before but now through the Gospel he can!

If you struggle with the idea of pleasing God or doing things He approves of, more than likely it’s because you know your sin and you really don’t want to give it up. You want smooth words to cover your shame rather than the work required to live a new life, to work out what Christ has worked in you through the Gospel.

Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that wars entangles himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.
–2 Timothy 2:3-4

If you have no desire to endure hardness and live your life apart from worldliness pursuing what pleases God, then you are not saved. That doesn’t mean that for the believer enduring hardness is fun, it does mean he endures it for the joy set before him, just like Christ did coming to the cross for us.

Your attitude toward pleasing God reveals your heart. Get this issue right.

Do Believers Need to Seek God’s Approval?

Many Christians reject the idea of having to please God.

The thinking goes like this:

We’re accepted in the beloved. God approves of us because we are in Christ; not because of what we do. God loves us unconditionally; therefore you always have His approval and should never do anything to get His approval because this is rejecting His love, mercy, and grace.

It all sounds good and there are bits of truth in there. True believers are accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). There is a sense in which, once a person is saved God does approve of them. This primarily relates to their eternal, spiritual state, not necessarily what they do from minute to minute.

And that’s where this whole thing falls apart.

If thinking “accepted in the beloved” and being approved by God for eternity means your actions no longer matter, you’ve taken a biblical concept out of context and turned it into heresy.

Paul says “study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed.” “Study” means to be zealous, put some effort into it. If you are approved by God, then zealously pursue those things which show you’ve been approved. This all happens, incidentally, by rightly handling God’s Word, which is not what you’re doing when you take “accepted in the beloved” to mean you can sin now and God is cool with it.

The New Testament is filled with commands that believers are supposed to do (look at how Colossians 3:20 is phrased). This makes no sense if God automatically approves everything you do. Why would He tell me to stop sinning and do good then? Thought He didn’t care? 1 John 3:22 says my prayers will be answered if I do things that are pleasing in His sight.

We will all, including believers, give an account to God for everything done in the body and for how we built on the foundation of Christ (1 Corinthians 3). Judgment certainly implies that what I do matters to God and He doesn’t automatically approve of all that I do.

We are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit. “Grieve” means to cause to mourn. How would it be possible to grieve the Holy Spirit if God always approves of what I do?

The real bummer of thinking God approves of everything you do so don’t bother trying to please Him, is that you’ll try to please someone else then.

If you’re not living for God’s approval; you will live for someone else’s.

A thing I’ve noticed among Christians is that those who adamantly maintain they don’t have to please God because He already approves of them, are highly concerned with other people’s opinions of them.

They are constantly trying to get people’s approval. They will lie about everything in order to save face. They are motivated solely by pleasing others. They will smile and act Christian. They will live their lives to be respectable. Or, some go the other way and will deny respectability, but will conform to some group. They will find it impossible to stay out of sins that their group does. They will talk and act and look like whatever group they think they need the approval of.

You have to serve someone. That’s who we are as people. God made us to serve Him. When you don’t think you have to, you’ll by default serve someone else.

When you do something good, do you need people to praise you? Our culture’s habit of “virtue signaling” proves this. Why do so many people who reject God in our culture need to post their virtues on social media for likes? Because they need approval.

Conformity to the world is driven by our need for approval. We have to fit into our group. The group becomes the judge, the one you seek approval from. This will destroy your soul.

Living in the fear of God, in light of coming judgment, and in the full realization that God is not a senile old grandfather who approves of all the little things your cute little self does, is the only way to resist conformity to the world.

You either conform to Christ or to the world. Christ does love you. If you knew that and responded to it out of sincere faith, you would do all in your power to lead a life pleasing to Him.

For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God

Colossians 1:9-10

Jesus, Parables, and Israel’s Covenant

We once had a Sunday School curriculum called “Teach Like Jesus Taught.” It was a large box of story books, lesson plans, and little trinkets to be used as illustrations. Each lesson told a parable with objects to convey spiritual truth to kids. Allegedly.

I have also read a number of books for pastors about preaching encouraging pastors to have good object lessons and illustrations, just like Jesus.

The humorous thing about this, and remember there’s something funny about a lot of sad things, is that Jesus used parables so people wouldn’t get His point.

As you read the New Testament epistles you will notice a lack of illustrations. Oh sure, faith is a fight and race to be run, but they are more similes than they are elaborate stories like the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son.

My take on this is that the Epistles are written to believers who have the Holy Spirit, thus they can discern spiritual things. Jesus is not talking to people with the Holy Spirit. Plus there’s other stuff going on. Big stuff that most miss when they read the Gospels.

The disciples asked Jesus why He spoke in parables. Mark 4:11 has His answer, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables.”

Those “on the outside” are everyone except the disciples and anyone who is following Christ. So, why did He speak in parables to those on the outside? Jesus tells you in the next two verses:

“They may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!”

Jesus doesn’t want those on the outside to turn and be forgiven!

Calvinist types pounce on this verse: “See! God keeps people from being saved! He not only ordains to life; He ordains to destruction! It’s right there!”

Here’s the bit of the Four Gospels most people miss: There’s lots of stuff going on with Israel and their Covenant. Israel was prophesied to crucify their Messiah. It was prophesied that they would miss Him, that they would destroy their Covenant and be scattered among the nations. All this is in the process of happening while Jesus is speaking.

These two verses are a quotation of Isaiah 6:9-10. When Israel blows their covenant they will be set aside. He won’t hear their prayers. They have turned from Him and He has let them go. He uses their going to accomplish the Gospel.

This is not talking about God arbitrarily hardening some to destruction; it’s a fulfillment of prophecy. It’s the reaping of having sown disobedience to their covenant. They broke it; God is not going to skip on their punishment. He won’t let them off the hook. They will blow it and be set aside.

This passage is not talking about individual salvation. It is talking about Israel and their covenant being set aside.

Here’s the real kicker: This is also what Romans 9-11 is talking about.

Israel was chosen. God guaranteed their chosen-ness until they brought forth the Messiah (which is what they were chosen to accomplish). Once they do that, and subsequently reject Him, Israel is set aside and the Gentiles are brought in. It’s all explained in Romans 9 and 11, neither of which are about individual salvation.

Romans 10 is about individual salvation, and what does Romans 10 say? Any who call on Him will be saved. If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth you will be saved.

Israel has a lot to do with what God is talking about in the Bible. We pretend it’s all about us. It aint. Much of it is by inference, and certainly the results of what Israel did impact us, but not all of it is geared directly at Gentiles.

If you know this you will see it everywhere, especially in the parables of Jesus. Most of them make a point about Israel. They aren’t about you and I being nice to people; they are mostly about Israel and God’s plan of redemption.

Read the Bible to understand what the Bible is talking about, not just to get pithy illustrations to guilt people with!