Lord God, as I look back on the stories of Your patience, guidance and many deliverances of Your people, and as I consider the similar story of Your works and ways in my life, I realize that You have put me in a position of great privilege and perspective. You have given me the opportunity to consider and learn from Your many interactions in human history, and You have also given me a personal history of Your many gracious dealings in my own journey. I pray that I would not squander these great gifts, but that I would impart what You have taught me to others so that I would invest in their lives and pass this on to the next generation. I do not want to waste the many blessings You have given me by keeping them to myself. May I pass them on so that Your gracious work in me would be a blessing to others.

We are going to be looking in this article at the doctrine of humanity, and we are going to be looking at what the Bible says about us. Why did God create us? How did He make us like Himself? Then, related to that very important question is how we can please Him in everyday living. That is to say, what is our purpose? So, in understanding the doctrine of humanity and looking at creation, we raise the question of our purpose in life, which is always a very important issue to wrestle with. As I often say, most people I encounter haven’t carefully wrestled with their purpose. What is your unique purpose for being on this planet? I encourage people to make a prayerful search and invite God to reveal progressively a greater clarity of their purpose in this life. Part of that is by reviewing your past and having a sense of your own history to gain perspective on the movements of your life. As you look back, you see certain patterns you could not have seen when you were too close to it. It is very helpful to review your past in terms of significant people, significant events, life lessons, and a variety of issues involving your vocational skills and your desires and your abilities. Is there any pattern of convergence and what does it point to?

It is my conviction that every one of us here has a unique contribution to make in God’s economy if we are willing to synergistically co-operate. When I say synergistically, I mean that the total is greater than the sum of its parts, and it is a divine-human process where we work together and cooperate with the grace of God. Thus, we establish a greater sense of our purpose and meaning and significance in this life.

One of the things I am convinced of is that the more we are aware of the certainty of the promises of God for our future, the more that gives us meaning and significance in our present. We gain a greater sense of meaning, and the richness of our purpose and value in our present is more and more amplified by a greater and clearer vision of God’s purposes for our life. The more you understand that, the more you are confident that He, in fact, is the victor and in Christ we are more than conquerors. Then you grasp that we have a purpose here and that it will continue to be revealed and grow.

So, let’s take a look at this idea of our selves, and we are going to be focusing on humankind as the pinnacle of God’s creative activity. That is what I want us to understand. This is a very heady concept; it is the creation of human beings, both male and female, to be more like Him than anything else He has made. This is what the Scriptures teach. It is a very rich concept. I want to stress again that you and I, being people who were created in God’s image, have been created to be more like Him than anything else He has made, even including angels. Even though angels have a good deal more power than we do, the Scriptures tell us that we will be above the angels and, in fact, we will judge them. We, then, are beings created in God’s image and likeness, and I want to unpack what that means.

Again, I am going to be following Wayne Grudem’s outline. He has a chapter that he calls ‘the creation of man’. Immediately, of course, this raises the thorny question of why you would use the word ‘man’ instead of ‘humanity’. This is an issue we need to discuss. The word ‘man’ refers to the entire human race. Many people today would object to ever using the word ‘man’ this way, and this includes both men and women, because it is claimed that that kind of usage is insensitive to women. Thus, many would say we ought only to use gender neutral terms. For example: humanity, humankind, or persons. We are talking about the Image of God and biblical anthropology; the Greek word anthropos means man, but it was never meant to be limited to man as a male, but man as male and female. Please keep in mind, historically speaking, this recent twist that we see in the last thirty years is the exception and certainly not the rule. Everybody, in all times, understood the idea that you could have a generic term without excluding women. I fear that we redefine things and then turn it into a theological issue. Actually, what is happening here is that we are taking and absolutizing a cultural preference.

Now, am I against using gender neutral language when possible? No. Let me give you an example. Luke 9:23 could be translated, “If any man would come after Me, let Him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Given today’s understanding, that verse could be just as well translated, “If anyone would come after Me…” I have no problem when the text allows for other perspectives. I would have a problem if we went too far and said, “If anyone would come after Him, let him deny himself or herself…” That sort of stuff gets really clumsy.

Read more

If we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, then we are new creations in Him, seated with Him in the heavenly places. But if we are a new creation, then why is there sometimes a discrepancy between our belief and behavior, between our profession and practice?

In other words, what about hypocrites?

This is one of the most basic and repeated objections to Christianity.

People who are not Christians look at those who profess faith and think, “If those kinds of people are Christians, then Christianity cannot be true. I know atheists who are better people than some who claim to be Christians.”

There is an element of truth to that accusation. We have all known raw pagans who are actually nicer folks to be around than a lot of Christians who are uptight and nasty and full of pride and malice. How can this possibly be?

Lewis begins his next-to-last chapter in Mere Christianity by pointing out that although God intends to make us perfect as He is perfect (Matthew 5:48), this doesn’t happen until we die. Only in God’s presence will we experience the fullness of our salvation and be completely Christlike.

Getting at the Underlying Assumptions

In considering the objection that there are non-Christians who are nicer than Christians, Lewis notes two underlying assumptions to that objection, one of which is reasonable and the other of which is not.

The reasonable assumption is this: If someone’s conversion to Christianity is true, then we ought to see evidence of it. That is the point in James 2:18: “Show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” Jesus made a similar point in Luke 6:43–45.

Christianity is not merely a matter of profession; it involves practice. Many people keep up a pretense of believing in God, but they do not have a real relationship with Jesus Christ.

In this sense, those in the world are quite right to object to a faith that seems to produce no results—no genuine change.

There’s also an unreasonable assumption underlying the “hypocrites objection.” That assumption is that there are only two types of people in the world—Christians and non-Christians—AND that these two groups of people ought to be clearly differentiated (e.g., by their levels of niceness). Lewis gives three arguments for why this is not the case.

First, the world isn’t so simple. Only God knows people’s hearts. We are often not the best judges of others because we don’t know people’s thoughts and motives, and we tend to judge by appearances.

Secondly, people have different natural dispositions. We should look at the starting point for each person. A Christian should become a nicer person after conversion; however, this does not mean he or she is automatically nicer than any given non-Christian.

Thirdly, the assumption doesn’t go deep enough in its view of human nature. Every single person, regardless of how “nice” they are, falls short of the perfection He demands. God does not have mere niceness in view. He is looking for a new creation, a transformed life.

It’s important to consider the fact that both nice people and nasty people reject God, and both types of people turn to Him. Indeed, it should not surprise us if nasty—or “bad”—people come to God in greater numbers.

Why? We’ll explore that idea next.

Day 4:

• James 2:8

• Luke 6:43–45

• Romans 3:10–12

• Romans 3:23

• Galatians 3:11

• Galatians 6:15

In this article, we are going to look at the issue of inerrancy of Scripture and then the issue of clarity in Scripture. Inerrancy has to do with whether or not there are errors or contradictions in Scripture, and the clarity issue has to do with the question of interpretation. People often fall back on the objection, ‘that is just your interpretation’, or, ‘there are a thousand ways of interpreting that text’.

We have already discussed the authority of Scripture in the last article. Jesus makes this claim of authority, as do the apostles and the prophets. Therefore, to disbelieve or disobey the words in Scripture would be to disbelieve or disobey God. Furthermore, God is a truthful God and He cannot lie; God is not a man, therefore He would not lie.

When we talk about the issue of inerrancy, we see, first of all, that Psalm 12:6 says, “The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.” There is a continual reference to the idea of the authority of Scripture, and in Proverbs 30:5 we see: “Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.” The concept is that the Scriptures affirm, again and again, its authority and that they are never false. The text I quoted earlier was Numbers 23:19—“God is not a man, that He would lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent…” So, what I mean by inerrancy, then, is the concept that Scripture, in the original manuscripts, does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact. It is truthful concerning everything it talks about—not just some subjects.

Now, this does not mean that you cannot use ordinary language and everyday speech. The fact is that it is a divine human product and the two go hand in hand. The idea of inerrancy is not incompatible with the idea of it having been authored by humans. The ordinary language of everyday speech has to do with scientific or historical descriptions of facts or events. From our perspective, how do we describe when the day breaks? What is the term we use to describe the movement of the sun? We say the sun rises; and we say the sun sets—even though we know it is not the sun doing the rising or the setting. We do that because we use ordinary speech. The Bible, therefore, never teaches, and has never taught, that the earth is the center of the universe. Many have tried to make it so, but it does not do that. The perspective of the speaker has always to be taken into view. We do that ourselves with phenomenological language.

The same applies to the use of numbers; when you report that 8,000 men were killed in a certain battle, would that be compatible to discovering that it was actually 8,050? So, if it turns out that there is variation here, it will be within the limits of truthfulness and dependent upon the degree of precision implied by the speaker and expected by the readers. Now, sometimes the Scriptures will be very specific down to the man. One example would be the census of Israel. Recall it was 603,550 fighting men that were exactly counted. But there will be other times when the numbers might simply be a round number.

Read more

Lord Jesus, You are my Hope and Deliverer. In spite of my folly and waywardness, You listen to my prayers and work in ways that are too marvelous for me to understand. I give thanks that You really care, and though I live in a broken world of sin, disease and death, I know that nothing can finally separate me from Your love. I give thanks for the privilege of prayer and for the truth that You are my Mediator and Advocate. In spite of the uncertainties of this life, You will never leave or abandon me. You have set me free from the bondage of sin and death, and You have graciously chosen me to accomplish something worthwhile in this life that will endure forever. May I freely lay hold of the benefits of prayer and seek Your wisdom and power amid the adversities and uncertainties of this life.

When we started this series on the Word of God in the last article, we saw that it could mean a number of things. It can be that God’s own Son came into the world, was incarnate, and was, in fact, the living incarnate Word. One key verse for that, which I did not mention is Hebrews 4:12-13. We see there that “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword…” He is talking here about the written word, and goes on to say, “…as piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” But in verse 13 we see “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Note the personal pronoun used; it suddenly switches and moves into “His sight.”

This is an intriguing text because he is saying that we will all be judged by the living Word, namely Jesus Christ. Recall that Jesus says “…not even the Father judges anyone,” and all judgment has been given to the Son. He is the living Word, then, the One by whom the manifestation of God is most clearly expressed.

Hebrews 1 is also a text we need to consider here. Beginning with verse 1, we see: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways…” This shows us that there have been lots of ways that God has communicated or revealed Himself to us—through prophets, through dreams, through visions, and various other ways. But, continuing on, “…in these last days (He) has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of his power.” This is a clear testimony that the living Word holds all things together and that He is the highest revelation of the living God. Personal revelation, then, is the clearest, highest, and most decisive revelation of God.

We saw, as well, that the word of God can refer to speech by God and that this in turn can refer to God’s decrees and words of God’s personal address. Throughout Scripture these have divine authority. His words are also communicated as speech through human lips, primarily through the prophets in the Old Testament.

It is also in the written form that we see that they point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ—the written word points to the living Word in Jesus. Recall in Luke the story of the road to Emmaus, where Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection. He was speaking of how the Scriptures spoke of Him. “Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Jesus is saying that all the Scriptures—the writings, the prophets, the Torah—all these things referred to Him. That is a message I would like to have heard; it would have been great to hear what He actually had to say. In any case, we see that God’s word, in written form, is critical and becomes the authoritative basis for our understanding of doctrine and for application and practice in our lives.

The last article also discussed the canon of the Old Testament. I explained that the canon of Scripture consists of a list of all the books that belong there, and how we know which ones really belong there. We noted that the Old Testament concept—Deuteronomy 32:47—says this word is your very life. It is not a trivial matter. We saw that the Scriptures were written out in the Ten Commandments with the finger of God and that Moses was involved in the inscripturation process. We saw how Joshua and Samuel and the other prophets were involved. We saw as well how the canon of the Old Testament continued to grow and was completed by time of Malachi, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Ester—completed about 435 BC. After that time we observed that there were no books that really talk about claiming ‘thus says the Lord’. That is to say, the books of that time communicate the concept that the prophets had ceased.

Read more

At first, denying ourselves and following Christ may seem hard in one sense—like the way of death, denial, and loss. However, it is ultimately the way to fullness of life. Thus, it’s “easier” in another sense.

After all, remember that the One who tells you to pick up your cross daily also says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

Many of us are still wearing a yoke—needlessly, because serving Him is our perfect freedom. Serving anything else will result in a heavy burden. Serving Christ leads to liberty and life.

Each of us serves something (or someone), but the choice of a heavy or a light burden is yours.

Lewis demonstrates how the Christian way is both harder and easier than the way of ordinary morality with an example about the laziest boy in a class.

The Schoolboy Example

The laziest boy in a class is the one who ends up working the hardest.

Throughout the semester, he may skim by, learning an answer here or there, but he never puts in the work upfront to understand or memorize the material. When final exams approach, he panics and has to pull all-nighters to cram material into his brain for the exam. If he had only put in the work upfront, he would have found the exams easier. His lazy behavior does not give him the relaxation it promised (nor does it help him learn—the real goal!).

Surrendering to Christ is difficult in the sense of the hard work a student may put in upfront. This is because, although it is almost impossible to surrender the whole self to Christ, it is much easier to do that than to do what we typically try to do instead: Most of us want to keep our natural self intact and give it what it desires while at the same time trying to be good. But we cannot ultimately succeed at this endeavor. We cannot play by two sets of rules. Our resolutions to be better will never be strong enough; we must surrender our pride and give ourselves humbly to God. He is the One who changes us, and He demands our whole selves.

There’s no shortcut to Christian growth or transformation. It happens in God’s way, from the inside out.

It Gets Easier—and Harder

At first, listening to Christ’s voice will be difficult. As we go on, however, we’ll develop the habit of listening to Him and walking in the newness of life. It will become easier and freeing in a new way.

At the same time, walking with Christ will continue to seem hard, even impossible, because we’ll come to understand the depth of our sinfulness and of our need for Him. The transformation process is never completed in this life.

God knows this, and He still loves us. He is patient with us. And He is committed to beginning in us the work that He Himself has initiated—having promised to abundantly supply what we need to continue to follow Him (Philippians 1:6; 1 Peter 1:11).

Day 3 Scripture Readings

• Hebrews 10:23

• Proverbs 15:19

• Philippians 3:13–15

• Philippians 1:6

In this article, we begin a discussion on the doctrine of the Scriptures as the Word of God. We will touch on a variety of questions, including just what does the Word of God mean; which books of the Bible are authoritative; and what authority does the Bible have for us.

Here, I want to focus on two key questions: what are the different forms of the Word of God; and which of the books are to be regarded as part of the authoritative collection so we can have confidence that what we have really is what God prepared for us. With that in mind, let’s start with an understanding of the Word of God, first of all, as a person.

In Revelation 19:13, the Son of God is called the Word of God in that text: “…and his name is called The Word of God.” Similarly, in the beginning of John’s Gospel you also have that well-known prologue, which is extraordinary in its depth and insight—particularly verses 1-18—but if we focus only on the early verses we see, “In the beginning was the Word,” ‘logos’, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”

Moving down to verse 14 we see: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So, the Word of God became flesh. This beginning, “In the beginning was the Word,” is even before the beginning we see in Genesis 1:1 because in Genesis we have the beginning of the created Word, where He spoke and it came into being. In John, the Word is eternal, because this Word, logos, is God Himself, through whom all things have been made.

We understand from this that among the members of the Trinity is God the Son, who in His person and His words has the role of communicating the character of God to us, and the role of expressing God’s will for us. So, if you want to know what the Father is like, then you turn to the Son and you see that clear and distinct image; He is the high point, the pinnacle, of revelation. But there is another aspect of the Word of God, and that is speech by God.

There are several different ways of looking at this speech by God. One of those ways is by looking at God’s decrees in Scripture. These powerful decrees of God bring things into being and cause events to happen. Genesis 1:3 is a good example: “Let there be light; and there was light.” You have a clear picture of Him, through His powerful word, speaking all things into being; He spoke, and it was. We see, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of His mouth all their host,” in Psalm 33:6. So, a decree of God is a word of God that causes something to take place.

Read more

Lord God, You have progressively revealed Your person, powers and perfections through the course of Your dealings with people in the pages of Scripture. It is through Your revelation that I can see Your glorious attributes of holiness, love, mercy and justice. I find with the passing of time that Your patience with Your people is astonishing. I give thanks for Your forbearance and kindness and for Your willingness to endure my waywardness. But at the same time, I ask that I would not foolishly test the limits of Your patience and presume on Your grace. You discipline me when I stray too far, and I desire to take the better course of staying near rather than straying far. I know that the way of obedience is life-giving and that the way of disobedience is death-dealing.

In this final article on Proverbs, I want to talk a little bit about the theology behind the book. That is to say, what is the theology of wisdom? If we look at this book, we discover that godly parents exhort their children to embrace wisdom—and that wisdom is God’s plan to transform a dead chaos into a living cosmos. This is the same wisdom that God used to shape and to create and to form this world.

By wisdom, God was able to transform a dead, dark, and chaotic planet and turn it into something that was beautifully ordered. And even though fallen, it is still an exquisite design. This book also informs us that in the same way God can take you and me—and our own chaos and unruliness—and order us and make us something meaningful and profound. Hence, it views us, through a New Testament vision, as being dead in our trespasses and sin, and without God. Naturally, in a fallen world, we are in need of redemption. So, the One who said, “Let there be light” is also One who will say to our darkened hearts, “Let there be light” and life. His desire for us is that there be a moral path, a light that we can follow. As we look at this, we discover that this moral path is achieved by surrendering ourselves and submitting to God and His claims.

Wisdom, then, is a very relational term; it is not a list of aphorisms or like Poor Richard’s Almanac. It is far more than that and is something that is related to a true source of wisdom—and the source of that, in the wisdom literature, is God Himself in His character, His attributes, and His perfection. This is not something that comes from human aspirations. In fact, if we consider the source of wisdom just briefly, we can consider looking at it this way: if we had a grid, and in this grid we had ‘works’ on the left side and ‘grace’ on the right side, then on the vertical axis—wisdom—we would see success in human activities at the bottom and as we move up the axis we see an ever growing understanding of God’s law, God’s word, and God’s commands. Moving further up this value scale, we might then describe that as entering into a relationship—or becoming aware of—the source of that wisdom, which is Jesus Christ. In other words, it is an increasing personal encounter with the living God. Ultimately, at the top of the value scale is a continuing and intimate experience with God and His wisdom. If we look at this scale in that manner, we discover a couple of things. First, we discover that the object of wisdom can be varied—wisdom about relationships, wisdom about work, wisdom about money, wisdom about character, or wisdom about speech. All those are areas we can discuss as being objects of wisdom. But, here it is, the source of wisdom—wisdom from what? If we are looking at the left side of this grid—the ‘works’ side of things—we discover that the source of wisdom there would be anthropomorphic, it would come from ourselves, whereas if we move toward the ‘grace’ side, we discover that wisdom is theocentric; it is a gift from God and not something we can just invent or create.

By way of contrast, I would like to look ahead to the wisdom literature of the New Testament and pull out a few verses there.

In James 3:13-18, for example, we see that there is a marvelous contrast between two sources of wisdom. One is a source of wisdom that is ‘works’ oriented and anthropocentric—it is man centered; the other source of wisdom is ‘grace’ centered—it is divine in its nature and orientation. James contrasts these by saying that one is earthly, while the other is divine. “Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.” Now we approach his contrast: “This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, and demonic.” In other words, this is the kind of wisdom the world tells us to pursue. Continuing, “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every selfish thing.” This, then, is a wisdom that promotes shrewdness and caginess and manipulation; it is wisdom that is “…earthly, natural, and demonic.” By contrast, James then writes, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Read more

Yesterday, we said that coming to God means we cannot simply “clean up our act” and be moral—and therefore pleasing to God—on our own. This approach to life is called moralism, and it’s the opposite of Christianity.

The Christian way is to “die to ourselves” first, and then we “put on Christ,” who enables us to pursue the good.

In dying to ourselves, we are laying down our lives—acknowledging that we cannot be good on our own. In this process, Christ doesn’t want some of our lives but the whole.

Christ remakes us entirely; He gives us new life instead of ordering us to try harder to better our old life.

We are not reformed but transformed.

The apostle Paul sums up this truth in Romans 8:8: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Did you catch that? If you are walking in the flesh according to your works, you cannot please God, no matter how hard you try. Only in coming to Christ can you have new life.

Freedom—at a Cost

Ironically, when you surrender to Him, you gain freedom—true freedom. Freedom from bondage to sin. This freedom does come at a cost: you are called to put to death the deeds of the flesh and walk by the power of the Spirit. This is less difficult in one sense, but much more difficult in another: our natural self does not want to die, but it must do so for us to have new life.

We tend to hold tightly to the things we suppose are valuable, or at least to the things the world declares to be important. Our natural self is one of those things. We grasp it with our fingers tightly clenched, and God has to take it out of our hands, opening one finger at a time. When we finally release our grip, we find that all we had was a bunch of tinfoil. God was going to give us diamonds, and we wanted to cling to that tinfoil. Even when we have finally released it, we can still be tempted to pick it back up again, returning to a temporal mindset instead of holding on to an eternal one.

As we die to our natural self and pick up our cross daily (see Luke 9:23), it helps to remember the price Jesus paid to give us His life. He died on the cross so that we would not be trapped in the ways of the flesh but could have true spiritual life in Him. We, too, must pick up our cross and submit our wills to God. When we do so, we will find that the new life in Christ is much better than what we are leaving behind.

Day 1 Scripture Readings:

• Romans 8:8

• Luke 9:23

• Galatians 5

• John 8:31–36

We are going to be talking in this article about the whole biblical theme of money. We will be using Proverbs to pull out certain principles that will help us understand the value of money as well as its limitations. There is a tremendous amount of timeless wisdom found in the book of Proverbs on this important topic.

As I have often described, in many people’s lives wisdom is extraordinarily uneven. There are some who are wise in one area yet are very foolish in another area—many people are just not fully balanced in these ways. Frankly, I am one of those, and we are about to talk about one area of my greatest incompetence—money. It is an area where I know the correct principles, but I don’t always follow them.

Let me now make a few introductory comments on this: usually when you hear sermons on money you hear two things. You hear how evil it is and then you are asked to give it up. But, at the same time, the people giving the sermons have an interest in receiving what you are giving up. Apparently, it is evil for you to have it, but not so bad for them to have it. Yes, it is true that a love of money is a cause, or a root, of all kinds of evil, and we have all heard the phrase, “…the love of money is the root of all evil.” Actually, that is not a good translation of that text, which appears in 1 Timothy 6:10. The love of money is not the root of all evil; it is “…a root of all sorts of evil,” but it is not the final source of all evil. If you were to select one candidate to be the root of all evil, I would select pride. Out of pride everything else proceeds. To make money our sole goal or objective in life is really a sin against the God who holds us together, made us, and who has claims on our hearts. If Christ purchased us for Himself—both by our creation and by virtue of the new creation—then it is important for us to realize that in coveting part of God’s creation more than God Himself is idolatrous. Making money a rival of God is simply spiritual adultery.

So we want to consider what the book of Proverbs says about it. It is folly and foolish, Proverbs tells us, to make money our goal in life. If it is your goal, then you are missing the mark because you are putting the material above the spiritual. The first concern of your heart should be the knowledge of God. If that is not first, you have an idol in its place. This doesn’t mean it cannot be a secondary consideration or concern—those things are natural and God has wired us in that way. But the danger is that even when we make God first, the secondary concerns have a way of crowding out the primary focus. It is a subtlety that must be reviewed again and again.

Here are three reasons why making money your principal goal is foolishness. First of all, there are profound limitations to wealth. Money simply cannot satisfy your deepest spiritual appetite. Now, it can satisfy certain physical and sensual appetites, but it cannot satisfy the spiritual ones. It cannot buy you real love, real joy, or real peace.

Read more

Father, when I read the Book of Judges I see that it is a series of warnings that were written for our instruction. Through it, You teach the awful monotony and destructiveness of rebellion and disobedience, and You warn me that to veer off the way of trust and obedience is to take a path that leads to destruction and death. I see in the stories of Judges that it is difficult to hold fast to You when times are relatively easy and peaceful. In such times, I lose the cutting edge of gratitude and dependence and I hope in the things of this world rather than what You tell me to value. The cycles of sin are so predictable and relentless, and when I get caught in this vortex, I lose my peace. By the power of Your Spirit, I pray that I would hold fast to You, not only in times of adversity, but also in times of ease.

In this article, we are going to explore an important topic in the book of Proverbs. Last week we looked at the theme of the character of the wise person; what kind of character do we associate with wisdom? This provided us the foundation for everything that follows, and that is why we focused on character last week. If the character is right, then, all the other things fall into place, including our speech, which is the topic of this article. We are presupposing that a person who hears these proverbs has an interest in cultivating the right kind of character—a godly character.

There are many proverbs—over 150 verses—that relate to the way we speak to other people. We see, therefore, that the wise person knows three things: the value of speech; the characteristics of good words; and, also, the source of good words.

As we consider the value of speech, we want to keep in mind that, on average, we open our mouths to speak several hundred times and thousands of words pour out of our mouths every day. In fact, on some days, it is the equivalent of a small book; some people, therefore, speak almost a book a day. However, the average person reads less than one book a year. As you can well imagine, there is a disproportionate problem of input and output. It is incredibly important for us, then, to consider the implications of what we say. I would be fascinated, if I could get a transcript, to see just one day of my own speech. What if you had something like that? How would you like reading it? Doubtless, you would discover an awful lot about things you can’t believe you actually said—some in a far, far more loquacious manner than you thought. When we realize the volume of what we say, we realize that there is a tremendous power in our speech—both for good and for ill.

I want to unpack that, first of all, by looking at the power of the words we use to communicate. There is a tremendous power in our speech.

There is the tale of a king who once sent a servant on a mission to bring back the most valuable thing in his kingdom. The servant came back to the king with a tongue on a silver platter. At that point the servant was sent on another mission to bring back the most dangerous item in the realm—and the servant returned with the same thing. We can see from this that speech has both incredible power and incredible danger.

I want to first talk about the power of words and focus on the power of life and death—words have a power to give life or to give death. Again, we are going to be using Proverbs chapters 10-31, because chapter ten is really where the proverbs begin. The first nine chapters are designed to prepare us for the proverbs proper, which really begin with chapter ten. We are also approaching these topically because the verses in Proverbs are not systematically arranged by topic.

Let’s now turn to Proverbs 18:21. There we see: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Tongues, then, have the power of life and death; it is a precious member that can do more damage than the fists or the teeth or anything else—for good or for ill. The tongue also has the power of spiritual life over another person. You affect the spirit of other people as you use your speech.

Read more

Day 1: The Key to Salvation

The typical idea of salvation in our society today, as it has been for decades, is that a person needs to please God through good works to gain entrance into heaven.

Going to church, being baptized, serving the community, giving to the poor—these are the types of acts an average person thinks he or she must do to live a “good” life.

In reality, this mindset is not so different from that of other world religions. In fact, all religions, with the one exception of Christianity, have a variation on this theme of doing good works to curry favor with a god or gods. In the East, for example, you must practice yoga or meditation to reduce your karmic debt.

Christianity takes a different stance on morality. Christianity argues that putting on Christ is key.

Putting on Christ

Paul references “putting on Christ” or being “clothed with Christ” in several of his letters in the New Testament (see Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27). And the great English theologian and author C. S. Lewis, in his classic Mere Christianity, called this concept of putting on Christ “the whole of Christianity.”

Sounds rather important, right?

Putting on Christ may sound mysterious, like an activity reserved for the super-spiritual. But from Paul’s writings, it’s clear that this is something God calls every Christian to do. Indeed, if we don’t do it, it’s impossible to live the Christian life!

Most of us take our ordinary self, with its various desires and interests, as the starting point of morality. Even in a morally degenerate culture, society makes certain demands of us. We have an idea that there are some things we ought to do because they are right (for example, feed the poor), while there are other things that we ought not to do because they are wrong (such as lie, cheat, and steal).

As we adhere to these demands, we are engaging in some form of moralism. We’re seeking to “clean up our act.” But the whole point of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we cannot clean up our act on our own. If we could, there would have been no need for Christ to come; His sacrifice would have been unnecessary.

In short, many of us seek to change our external actions, but we do not want to—or understand the need to—be changed on the inside, to the core of our very selves. We think we’re “not so bad” on the whole and just need a little “touching up.”

This mindset does not work out in the long term.

The more we pay attention to morality and its demands, the more our conscience will be amplified. We will become increasingly aware that we are not good. This, in turn, leads us to become frustrated or angry with ourselves because we are unable to adhere to the moral standards we have.

We’ll continue to explore this idea later.

Day 1 Scripture Readings:

• Romans 13:14

• Galatians 3:27

In this article we are continuing in our study of the book of Proverbs. We will be moving away from the ten introductory sermons that were designed to prepare and equip the listener for the material that really begins in earnest in chapter ten. As we launch into chapter ten and following, the only way we can cover this properly is to not look at it sequentially—in sections—because the material is very dispersive. Our best approach for the rest of the book, beginning with chapter ten where the proverbs really begin, is to look at the material topic by topic.

So in this article, we will focus on two of those topics. The first will be on the character of the wise; that is the most fundamental of them all. What does the character of the wise person look like? After all, this is a book that focuses on character. Following that topic we will delve into the wise person’s speech. Speech, of course, is something we do an awful lot of—but often we discover that we have very little training in the prudence of speech as well as in listening.

Character is really a key component of wisdom. As we think about the wise person’s character, I want us to keep in mind that this material is convicting and we really do not know anybody that fulfills all of these images of what a wise person is like. The material points beyond ourselves to the needs that we have to be transformed on an ongoing basis by Christ Himself through the power of the Spirit that is within us. We cannot live this kind of life on our own. In fact, this kind of material goes beyond the Law itself; it actually transcends the Law and goes into the subtle details of life itself.

As we consider the issue of character, education without the development of character is pretty worthless. The fascinating thing is that we can often get education without a clue as to what character is like. This reminds me of the true account of a Columbia University student that sued the university because part of the purpose statement for a four-year undergraduate degree was that it would cultivate wisdom and character. After he graduated, the fellow said he didn’t get any wisdom or character out of this—so he sued. He didn’t do very well, but it illustrates the point that it is very easy to be educated, but without a clue as to what our character ought to be like. You must have a heart for the subject. Tuition would be a waste of money if the student has no heart to learn. This is a theme we discover in Proverbs 17:16. There we see, “Why is there a price in the hand of a fool to buy wisdom, when he has no heart?” Although my translation has “sense,” the word can be taken to mean “heart.” He doesn’t have a “heart” for the subject. He has no capacity for appreciation, so he has a “price in his hand,” but he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it even if he heard it. Let’s now take a look at several aspects of wise character.

The first issue of character has to do with humility. A wise person is humble, not proud. This component alone seems to underscore all the others. What do we see in the first Beatitude? “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” What does it mean to have poverty of spirit? Among other things, poverty of spirit relates to an issue of humility, of grasping your spiritual poverty and your utter dependence upon God. In other words, you must recognize your spiritual bankruptcy before God before you are really ready to receive His grace. If you think you have something to offer to God, apart from His grace, you are making a serious mistake. Even our best works are displeasing to Him if they are not done in His power. Even our good deeds can be tainted by the problem of our selfishness and our desire for recognition. So, this idea of humility is very essential. We see here, then, a person who trusts and fears God. When we think about a person like that, we think of a person who submits his life to God’s revealed standards, who stands in awe of God. He does not trust his own intellect; rather he submits his life to the Lord of Holy Scripture. This is a person who has a stance of faith, a real commitment before God. He comes to God with a sense of desperate need and true dependence. All of these characterizations, then, represent the heart of the first nine chapters of Proverbs which were designed to cultivate this mindset of wisdom.

Read more

Lord, I thank You that You have created me in Your image and have given me the dignity of being capable of moral choices that genuinely affect my journey and destiny. By Your grace, may I exercise this moral and spiritual capacity by taking the steps of faith, especially in times when my flesh resists this process and when fears prevent me from trusting You. I realize that there are times in my life when You ask me to make the first step, because You don’t want to force me into obedience but desire my willing cooperation with Your glorious intentions. I recognize that without You I cannot, but without me You will not. May I strengthen my resolve to be Your loving servant and child so that I will pursue the course You have set before me in spite of my fears and natural resistance.

We have seen that the first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs are actually an introduction to the proverbs themselves that begin in chapter ten. Therefore, since we are looking at this introductory material, we have a series of ten exhortations of a father to his child—his son—to give him a heart for this subject. Then, when we get to chapter ten, we launch into the proverbs, but they don’t really follow much of a sequence. Consequently, we will approach those topically. For example, what would be the proverbs that talk about a wise person’s speech? What is the speech of a wise person; or, how about the skills of listening? Proverbs speaks a lot about the art of listening and communication. We will also see topics on relationships and on the wise person’s use of money. As well, we will see a wise person’s way of relating to others, in terms of marriage and also of raising children. Ultimately, we will be focusing especially on the character of the wise person.

We learned in chapters 1-4 of the six little exhortations, which were designed to create a sense of hunger and thirst for the material contained in Proverbs. The exhortations continually remind the reader that the pursuit of wisdom is the pursuit of that which is far, far greater than silver or gold or precious gems—there is nothing in this world that can compare with wisdom.

We also saw the main theme of Proverbs in chapter 1, verse 7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The fear of God, then, is really the foundation for knowledge itself. Proverbs 9:10 also amplifies this theme: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” That may be the best encapsulation of what Proverbs is designed to do. It is designed to encourage a person in the direction of knowing God.

Now, the fear of God, as we have said, involves two components. One component has to do with the reverential awe before the majesty of God—the One before whom we will ultimately give an account. I have mentioned before that if you want to get a proper perspective on who you are in this world—and how great He is—lay on your back on a starry night and stare at the sky for an hour or so, and that will have a profound affect on reducing your cockiness and arrogance, getting you in a proper perspective again on just how great He is. The second aspect on the fear of the Lord is the attitude of a subject before his king, the attitude of one who recognizes that everything about us—our disposition and our well-being—are really in the hands of this great king. This is a king, though, who is not some sort of tyrant. Rather, He is One who is the lover of our souls. He is ultimately powerful and sovereign in all things, and yet He loves us and wishes to have intimacy with us. He tells us that we can enjoy intimacy with Him, even though His power is so awesome and great. At one and the same time He is transcendent—far off—but He is also imminent—He is near; and the marvelous picture of Scripture teaches us that not only is He holy and majestic, He is also One who is loving and caring. This is a picture of a God who is not some force or energy field, but a picture of a person—a person in whom we can enter into a relationship. That is the real genius of Christianity; it is not a religion—it is a relationship. It is a relationship with God, mediated through, most personally, the work of Jesus Christ; and coming to know Christ is to also know the Father and to have access to the indwelling Spirit of God that is in us.

I want you to be aware, as we look at Proverbs, that we are going to notice that wisdom is personified as a woman, but ultimately wisdom becomes incarnate in this world—wisdom becomes the incarnate Christ. This is a picture of wisdom as One who invites us to know God. We are going to see the personification of folly as well as the personification of wisdom—and both are personified as women. One is a woman of ill repute and one is a woman of excellence. Both of them make an invitation to the passer-by; one does it under the cover of darkness while other invites us to know her in the light of open places, without any duplicity. This is a wisdom that invites us to know her and to know her treasures, doing it in a way that is open to all who will receive it.

Read more

Today we look at three additional means for discerning God’s direction in our lives. Keep in mind that any sense of God’s direction in our lives should be “checked” against whatever He is communicating to us through the Bible and prayer.

Principle #5: Counsel—What Do Wise and Godly Friends Say About This Decision?

The Bible is full of examples of people who benefited from heeding wise counsel. It’s also full of those who suffered by ignoring such counsel.

If a decision has significant implications, we should not limit ourselves to our own judgment. Instead, we should seek the perspective of mature and godly people who have wisdom and experience.

Good counsel is both instructive and corrective. It requires frankness, not flattery.

Although it’s wise to listen to wise counsel, the precepts and principles of Scripture should always have the greatest influence on our decision-making. Even the wisest of people are finite and biased. We should avoid the pitfall of uncritically accepting the advice we receive as if it were a word from the Lord. Ultimately, we alone are responsible for the decisions we make.

Principle #6: Compulsion—What Are My Desires?

In Philippians 2:13, Paul wrote that “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

One of the ways God works in us is to give us the desire to do the things that are pleasing to Him. For example, He may give us a compelling desire to move in a specific direction or a burden to minister to certain people.

God doesn’t give us desires contrary to the commandments and counsel of His Word. Burdens and desires can have significant input in our decisions only if we evaluate them in the larger context of communication (prayer and Scripture), conscience, common sense, circumstances, and counsel.

Principle #7: Contentment and Confirmation—Do I Have a Sense of Peace and Assurance About This Decision?

Philippians 4:6–7 says peace replaces anxiety when we offer our problems and needs to the Lord. God wants us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts (Colossians 3:15).

If a decision gives us a sense of doubt, distress, or confusion, something is wrong. A good decision may not feel easy, but it should still be accompanied by peace.

For example, a ministry door opened for Paul in Troas, but he had no rest in his spirit about going there. He went to Macedonia instead (2 Corinthians 2:12–13).

As a principle of guidance, peace in our hearts isn’t enough. But if an option passes the test of the other seven principles discussed, and yet it fails to provide peace, the wisest action is to wait on the Lord (if the decision can be deferred). Make room for other input or counsel. The option could be right, but the timing might be wrong.

Day 7 Scripture Readings:

• Proverbs 1:14

• Proverbs 12:15

• Proverbs 15:22

• Philippians 2:13

• 2 Corinthians 2:12–13

Now we are going to actually launch into the book of Proverbs proper, having had an overview of the book in our first article. We will begin by looking at the first nine chapters, and we will break that into two sections because these chapters are so extraordinarily important. Here, we look at chapters one through four and next week dig into the next five.

These nine chapters provide ten of what are called sermonic exhortations—invocations as if it were from a father to a son. These are invitations to pursue wisdom. On every page these ten various invitations provide not only the benefits of pursuing wisdom, but also, by contrast, the downside of neglecting wisdom—of rejecting wisdom’s offer. What we will see are chapters and verses designed to prepare the people, much like Deuteronomy was designed to prepare the people. Before you get to the legal material in Deuteronomy, the first eight or ten chapters focus on the preparation of the people, both morally and spiritually, and it is encouraging them to receive what they are about to hear, and to apply it to new generations.

Here, then, we see a generation being instructed and being told to learn and live, and not merely live and learn. They are being told to develop character, and then here are the reasons why. They are being told to develop a heart for the subject so that when they begin hearing the proverbs in chapter ten, they can hear that wisdom with a proper perspective, because what is the use in giving a person proverbs if they lack a heart to receive them? If you do not have a heart for the subject, then it is a hopeless task. So, the implication here is that the child is untutored, naïve, and is not formed yet in the way of wisdom, prudence, discernment, equity, righteousness, and knowledge. All these things must be formulated in the child, and you will hear many of these expressions again and again because they need to be heard again and again. As you know, repetition is a very important pedagogical device; if you do not repeat yourself people generally aren’t going to get the message the first time around. This is true in almost all relationships, and there are certain things that must be heard many times before you get the idea.

This is very true for the gospel itself; hearing about Jesus and what He offers, especially for a person who has never heard it before, sounds very much like a foreign language. It must be heard over and over, and often from several people, before some even get a clue as to what is going on because it goes against the natural bent of our mind. Normally we think we earn everything ourselves—we get into heaven the hard way, we earn it. Actually, we don’t earn it. If anything in Scripture is clear, this is it: we don’t earn it, and we don’t merit it; the Law was revealed not to save anybody but to make us realize the need for faith in the Lord. And then having put their faith and hope in Him, that brings about the justification and the change. So also, here, we have something that also transcends the Law insofar as Proverbs deals with the many aspects of living that are too fine to get caught in the mesh of the Law—aspects of living that are too small to be hit by the broadsides of the prophets. These are details of life that are more refined, and it is really in the small details of living that the decisive elements of our character are going to be developed and exposed. Proverbs is a book that looks at, and pays attention to, the little details of life, and that is why it is a very practical and often convicting book because it is so penetrating and so piercing.

Let’s begin our journey through the first four chapters. As I have mentioned, the book starts off by describing the authorship. Although we do know that Solomon did not author all of them, all are considered to be Solomonic. However, in verse one we see: “The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel.” We know, of course, that Solomon was a man whose knowledge was encyclopedic; his quest for wisdom made him a person who knew more than anyone else, who had understanding and discernment, and whose wisdom was so legendary that people would come from hundreds of miles away to hear him speak. He would often give lengthy discourses on birds, animals, and life itself. Sadly, of course, this wisest of men became foolish in his old age, becoming a man that did not follow his own wisdom. It is one thing to have wisdom, in terms of the knowledge; but it is another thing to apply it, and that needs to be done in dependence upon the power of God. The purpose of Proverbs was to know wisdom and instruction, and to discern the sayings of understanding.

So, what we have here in verse one is the title, and then in verses two through six we have the purpose of the book itself. The word ‘proverbs’—mashal in Hebrew—are simple illustrations that expose fundamental realities about life; that is the best way I know to define a proverb. The word also relates to similitudes, or comparisons; they are simple, pithy, and catchy; they can also be easily memorized, which is part of the idea here, and they can be understood and then applied. In short, they are sayings that serve us well.

Read more