Tag: law

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

To Love God’s Law

Holy Father,
Your holiness both attracts and repulses me. As a sinner, I am well aware that I have no business being in the your presence, face-to-face with your perfection. Yet at the very same time, I know that apart from your holiness, I would be hopeless to ever attain righteousness on my own, so I am drawn to you. In Jesus Christ you provide not only the forgiveness my sin requires, but also the holiness I cannot achieve on my own.

It is the new man in me, raised up by the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus, that now loves your law. I desire to carry out your will. Obedience is no longer the dirty word it used to be, but a daily delight to be pursued. All that is good and right in your sight is also pleasing to me. The good news of the gospel and the freedom I have in Jesus Christ compel me to seek your kingdom and your righteousness, and to reflect it in my thoughts, words, and actions. Help me to show my thanks for Jesus, who perfectly kept the law for me in my place, by continuing to develop my own love for your law. Graciously fill me with both the desire and the ability to keep it as I follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

To Love Your Commands

Loving Lord,
You tell us in your Word that we love by keeping your commands. Yet, our sinful nature still bristles at the thought of being told by anyone else what to do or how to live. We prefer to call the shots and cater to our own self-serving wishes and desires.

Transform our view of your commands by changing our hearts to see your commands as they truly are. Your law is not a straitjacket, but a delight. There is genuine joy to be found not only in carrying out your will, but also in seeing how blessed we and others are when we do so. Lead us to love your law and fill us with your Spirit to keep us in step with it. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

Live Holy Lives

adbLeave a comment

(Matthew 5:21-37)

What do the concept of sharing and rules have in common? Would you agree that they are very good things… for everyone else to do. Sharing is great – for other people to do with me. Rules are great – for other people to follow. When it comes to me sharing or keeping rules, though – that’s a different story. So when they apply to me, I am not as crazy about them.

That’s because our primary view of God’s law is to see it as a list of restrictions and prohibitions. In his law, God spells out the things we are to avoid and the behavior we should avoid carrying out so that we don’t sin. In that sense then, God’s laws will always serve to accuse, convict, and condemn, for when addressed to fallen sinners, they can only serve that purpose. My guess is that you feel that sting as you read the verses from our Savior’s sermon in Matthew 5. 

So God’s law makes it abundantly clear that his demand for perfection is not one that can ever be attained by us. Whenever we slip into the pharisaical false sense of security, God’s law sets us straight. It uncovers another nuance of our inherent sinfulness that we didn’t even know was there until the law exposed it. The words of Jesus this morning fall into that category of God’s law. Jesus addressed some pretty standard sins, but then took it a step further. 

Regarding murder, he took it to another level by pointing out that murder itself was only a symptom of the real culprit – a hating heart. So one does not even need to be guilty of ending another’s life to be under the same judgment! Regarding sexual immorality, one does not even need to remove a single article of clothing to be guilty – his eyes permit the heart to be lured into lust. Regarding your word, no official oath or contract or signed document is needed as proof against you – if you simply go against the very yes or no that you spoke to someone, you have broken your word and are an untrustworthy liar. Jesus’ words before us today do not at all leave us brimming with confidence! Quite the opposite – they knock us clean off any personal pedestal on which we may have imagined ourselves standing.

Moreover, Jesus’ sermon provides perhaps one of the starkest cautions against sin that we find anywhere in verses 29-30. “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” We miss the point if we too hastily presume that Jesus is speaking in hyperbole and conclude that he wasn’t serious about gouging out eyes or lopping off limbs. The point Jesus is making is that we had better take sin seriously because it is not a thing to be trifled with. 

Sin is not a plaything that we can pick up on occasion to entertain ourselves and then put back down at will when it has served its purpose. It is not content to be relegated to such a role! Rather, it seeks to ensnare and master anyone who willingly gives it the time of day. Sin will never be content sharing a soul with the Savior – it wants all of us, and so to treat it lightly or innocently ignores the damage it seeks to inflict. Sin longs to inflict irreparable harm on our relationship with Jesus. It seeks to turn us against him at every opportunity it gets. So what will happen if we warmly welcome it into our lives? What will happen when, instead of confessing it, we become comfortable with it? What will happen when we deceive ourselves into letting it “harmlessly” hang around? Shouldn’t we have learned this lesson early on with Cain and Abel?

See how the Lord described it to Cain in Genesis, following Cain’s less-than-pleasing offering before God. The Lord said, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). Sin is not and will not remain an innocent bystander! Sadly, the need for the Lord’s urgent warning was validated as the very next verse records for us the first murder in the Bible. Cain disregarded the Lord’s words and murdered his brother, Abel. With different words, Jesus is reiterating the same potentially devastating impact sin can still have in our lives today when left unchecked. So yes, the law exposes our sin and makes clear the very real damage – even eternal damage – that sin can inflict. We do well to take Jesus’ warnings seriously.

However, is that enough? To this point, have you read anything new? Did you not already know about the ways we could sin that Jesus mentions in these verses? Did you not already know that sin is bad? Did you not already know that the danger of hell that Jesus warns about is very real? Assuming you knew all these things, then why don’t you stop doing them? Why don’t we stop doing them? We know God doesn’t want it. We know it’s bad for us. We know hell is real and not someplace we want to be! So why don’t we take Jesus seriously and just stop doing what he says to stop doing?

Because the law cannot empower us to. It cannot equip us to. It can only show us what we are to do and sadly, by extension, what we have not done. It has no power or ability to enable us to stay on its path. 

That’s why Jesus had to come. Do you get it? If Jesus came to be another lawgiver in the same way that Moses first codified God’s law as he came down from Mt. Sinai, then we didn’t need Jesus for that! We don’t need Jesus for that. We need him for another reason, a reason that he laid out in his sermon in the words just prior to our verses this morning. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (v.17). What does it mean that Jesus came, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it? It means that everything that Jesus listed in this section of the Savior’s Sermon that we’re hearing today was carried out. It was completed. It was done perfectly. Everything that Jesus commands in these words was carried out. And by whom? By the very individual who spoke them. Jesus commanded them… and it was Jesus who kept them. 

One of the knocks people have against Christian preachers and Christians, in general, is that they are hypocrites. They preach one thing and do another. They point out the moral failures or shortcomings of others but are guilty of those very same things themselves. By that standard, if only those able to perfectly keep the law are the ones permitted to point out the law to others, then no one but Jesus could ever speak. Everyone else would be hypocrites. Jesus is the sole individual who could never be labeled a hypocrite. He’s the one about whom it can legitimately be said that he practiced what he preached.

But do you know why he kept everything he commanded? Not for his own sake. He had nothing to prove. He was already holy when he left heaven. No, he kept what he commanded for our sake. His perfection was to benefit us. By his perfect life, we have been made holy. By faith, his obedience serves in place of our disobedience. His sanctification stands in place of our sin. How can this be? Did God just decide that our sin suddenly didn’t count against us?

You know the answer to that. In addition to his obedience, or rather, as yet one more example of it, Jesus paid for our sin with his life. When he died, the blood he shed was the payment price for our sin. So he took our sin on himself and placed his perfection on us. 

So now, you are free. What do we do with this freedom? There is no burden of law. There is no picture of God keeping tabs on our disobedience, tracking each transgression in order to formulate a proper punishment that fits our crimes and exact that punishment on us when we die. There is only freedom. 

So if God doesn’t need your perfection, which he already has in Christ, if God doesn’t need your obedience, for he already has Christ’s, then why does Jesus call us to live such holy lives as he describes? Because while God doesn’t need our holiness, your neighbor does. Your holy lives are a blessing to your neighbor. As you thank and honor God with your holy living, what you are really doing is loving and serving your neighbor with your holy living. Consider three benefits of your holy living: it shows love to God, it serves your neighbor, and… it feels good!

The Bible is very repetitive with the first one. How do we show love for God? We keep his commands. “This is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome…” (1 John 5:3). A husband and wife express their love for each other with words. But blessed is the marriage in which that love is carried out through acts of service for each other. Love is not just spoken, but shown. In the same way, it is one thing to say we love God – anyone can do that. But holy living shows it. 

And what we’re doing in that same process is also serving our neighbor. You are protecting their marriage. You are keeping your word to them. In contrast to a fly-off-the-handle world, you show them patient kindness that keeps anger in check. You are doing for them exactly what Jesus encouraged previously in his sermon: making their world better and brighter as you are salt and light in your holy living.

Will your neighbor always acknowledge it? Not necessarily. Will she always appreciate it? Don’t count on it. Will your neighbor become a believer through your holy living? Never through that on its own, although it very well might provide the first step in that process. 

Finally – it feels good to live holy lives! Think of the alternative. When is the last time that you were well aware of a sin that you had just committed? None of us has to go way back on the mental surveillance tapes. I want you to remember how you felt when you reflected on your sin. I believe I know the answer. Not great. That may be an understatement. And don’t mix up the sin itself with the guilt over that sin I’m referring to. Even if the sin itself may have felt good at the time, when you become acutely aware of it, it doesn’t feel good.

But you know what does feel good? Doing the right thing. I don’t know if we give as much attention to this as we ought to. If feels good to do the right thing. And we don’t need to feel bad about feeling good! That’s OK – in fact, it’s one of the blessings attached to doing the right thing – it feels good. Consider how the psalms speak of it again and again. The pictures associated with righteousness and doing the right thing are pleasant pictures, pleasing feelings – it feels good!

Too often when we set out to do the right thing, what derails us is that we zero in on every single time we fail. We let the failures crowd out the successes. We hardly ever celebrate the successes, because we linger in the guilt too long to remember them! Live holy lives because it feels good to do the right thing.

Live holy lives. Jesus kept his own commands so that you could. So do it. And love doing it. And love God and your neighbor in the process.

Reception Uncovered

adbLeave a comment

(Luke 4:16-30)

Perhaps you experienced it not too long ago when exchanging gifts at Christmas. You were genuinely more excited about giving a certain gift to a certain person – even more excited than you were about the anticipation of receiving any gifts. As you shopped for it, your face lit up when you came across it while thinking of the individual to whom you were going to give it. You had a beaming smile on your face while wrapping it as you imagined their reaction upon unwrapping it. You couldn’t wait for them to receive it!

And then they did.

And it fell flat.

It was not at all the ecstatic reaction you had played out in your mind. Their ho-hum reception of the gift didn’t come close to matching the eagerness with which you gave it, leaving you deflated. 

Could you imagine God feeling similarly about how his Word is received? Consider the eternal plans God had in place for our salvation and all of the details involved in carrying it out. He countered the very first death-inducing sin with the very first promise of a life-restoring Savior. To the patriarchs God personally repeated that promise numerous times. He sent his private army of prophets throughout the Old Testament, armed with the promise and his powerful Word. Rulers were raised up and brought down, empires rose and fell, language, commerce, technology – God brought all things under his control and used all of it to establish the ideal time for the Savior to be born. And it was finally happening! Jesus’ message and ministry were underway. The good news was starting to spread. God was unveiling his precious, priceless gift to the world – surely the world would receive it with eagerness and delight!

We have the same expectation, don’t we? Those of us who have been accustomed to listening to sermons for perhaps the better part of our lives expect that the natural response to the Word of God will be a positive one. Hearts that have been made alive in Christ know how precious his Word is. We expect that whenever it is preached, taught, read, or studied, it will be received with eagerness and joy. We know the Word of God is a good thing, a necessary thing, a beneficial and blessed thing. Therefore, whenever it is heard, the normal response we anticipate is a positive one. We even refer to the Bible as “The Good Book.” We keep coming back here to God’s house not primarily out of obedience or obligation, but because we find value in hearing the Word of God. It is a good thing for us and we presume the same about the others around us. So a positive reception to the Word of God is our normal expectation.

And it even seemed as if a positive reception was going to be the case initially in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Following his reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and his initial part of his message, the listeners were eating it up. “The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him” (v.20). They couldn’t take their eyes off of him as he spoke! “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips” (v.22). This was no ordinary Sabbath at the synagogue – they were hearing something special! 

But by the end of Jesus’ message, things had taken a drastic turn. “All the people… were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff” (v.28-29). What on earth happened? How had things taken a turn for the worse so quickly and to such a degree?

In short, Jesus called them out. When it clicked for them that this Jesus was no one more than the neighborhood boy who had grown up in their community, Jesus knew where their hearts were going. He knew they’d demand to see the proof that he was someone more special than just the hometown kid who had grown up a bit. Familiarity breeds contempt, and apparently, it eventually demands to see the amazing miracles that other villages and towns got to witness. For without those, all the buzz surrounding Jesus would quickly die down. Then, just as Jesus made clear to them with the examples of Elijah and Elisha, God would take his message outside of Israel to people who might be willing to listen.

Let’s not pretend we don’t know what was going on, for the hearts that beat inside our chests are every bit as capable of turning against God and his Word. Oh, the message is positive enough! It’s uplifting. It’s inspiring. It’s encouraging. Just take the words of Isaiah that Jesus quoted. They are filled with all kinds of positive pictures: “good news,” “freedom,” “recovery of sight,” and “favor.” These are word pictures and concepts that any inspiring or memorable speech is sure to include!

But its sweet taste turns suddenly sour when its intended audience is revealed. “Poor,” “blind,” “prisoners”? Wait, who are you calling “poor,” “blind,” “prisoners”? Those labels aren’t being applied to me, are they? Surely they must refer to someone else not quite as righteous as I am, for those aren’t very flattering terms!

Here’s the odd thing about the relationship we sometimes have with the law: sometimes we pride ourselves in not shying away from the law or talking about sin. We even say we crave it. We want to hear it. We want to confess it. We conclude that other larger Christian churches must only grow because they don’t take sin as seriously as we do. I have been encouraged over the course of my ministry to preach the law in this area or that, to speak more pointedly about this sin or that sin. And yes, this is necessary – the law must be preached. 

But may I provide you with some food for thought? If we want to hear the law, if we clamor for it, if we find comfort in hearing the law preached and sin condemned, then there’s a problem. If the fire and brimstone preaching of the law ever leads us to favorably cheer on the preacher, there’s a problem. If the idea of railing on the blatant and besetting sin of others around us prompts sadistic thoughts of “Yeah, give it to ‘em, pastor,” there’s a problem. If the appeal of coming to church is to get beat up by the law each week, there’s a problem!

No, the law should have the same effect on us that it did on Jesus’ listeners that day in the synagogue – it should drive us to the point of wanting to throw Jesus – or those speaking on his behalf – off the nearest cliff. It ought to make you want to forcibly tie any preacher, drive out to Sunset Cliffs, and toss him over! That’s how the law should make us feel! Because that means it has led us to connect the dots and see that the law is actually referring to me when it talks of being poor, blind, prisoners, hostile to God, etc.! 

Our relationship with God’s Word is a lot like sitting around a campfire. We can become entranced almost by the flicker of the fire, sitting in enjoyment of its warmth and cozy crackle. But if you’re roasting marshmallows and using a small stick, it requires you to be so close to the fire’s heat that it becomes unbearable. What is nice and enjoyable from a ways away becomes painful when it gets too close. So it is with the law and repentance. The law cannot deliver pleasure, but only pain!

When the law is worked properly in us, though, then those words of Isaiah breathe life into beaten-down souls. Then the message of the sweet gospel hits its mark with pictures like “good news,” “freedom,” “recovery,” and “favor.” When the law has revealed how truly enslaved and imprisoned by sin I am on my own, along comes the good news of freedom. When the law has beaten me up and left me for dead, along comes the good news of restoration and rescue. When the law shows how blind and lost I am on my own, along comes the good news of recovery of sight! When the law condemns me as forsaken and forgotten, along comes the good news that we are favored!

This was the good news Jesus came to bring! This was the salvation he came to secure! He was stripped of his freedom so that we could be free. He was arrested and chained up for our crimes. He was beaten up and left to die the death our sins deserved. He was forsaken and forgotten by the Father in our place on the cross. It was the same prophet quoted by Jesus that day in the synagogue, Isaiah, who prophesied another event Jesus would fulfill: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (53:5). That is good news, promised by God, preached by Christ, and made possible by him. The same Savior preaching the law in the synagogue is the one who came to endure the wrath of that law in our place. May we always receive that amazing news with joyful hearts!

Let us not stop there, though. Let us carry on the work Jesus started in the synagogues. Let us be proclaimers of that peace to others. You know when that becomes easier to do? When rejection – not acceptance – becomes our expectation. That’s when our view starts to shift. That’s when “no” isn’t seen as rejection, but rather as redirection. Move along and take the good news to the next person. Jesus didn’t sit and sulk in Nazareth, “But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way” (v.30). Give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to change hearts and minds from loathing God’s Word to loving it. Be patient with them so that the law can do its work of convicting and killing, so that the gospel can do its work of setting free and giving life.