Holiness

I've been reading through the Old Testament (Leviticus, in particular, these past few weeks) - reading about all the details of the law, the sacrifices, the priestly duties.  It's not that hard to see how easily the people could get bogged down in analyzing the law, trying to understand every bit, so there would be no missteps.  From that perspective, it's not a big step to find oneself caught up in legalism.  Remember the harsh words Jesus had for the Pharisees who were so enmeshed in the letter of the law that they had completely ignored the spirit of the law leading them to miss the law-giver standing there in their midst.


It must be that legalism begins when mankind tries to fulfill the letter of the law in their own power - not trusting in God to guide them.  The law was a framework in which the image of holiness was framed.  Jesus Christ came that we might see, not the image of holiness, but holiness itself: in the flesh, in its purest form, in the face of God.  Holiness cannot be achieved by man, by his striving to keep the law, to be holy by his "acts" of holiness.  Holiness is a grace bestowed by God - it is a transformational process that begins with Jesus, continues in Jesus and is completed by Jesus.  We must not fall into the trap of thinking that our good deeds, our acts of holiness, will make us righteous in God's eyes.  Remember the word from Isaiah 64:5 (NIV) all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.  Instead, look to Jesus Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2). Look to the Holy Spirit who comes alongside to guide, teach, empower us and transform us into the image of our holy Lord and Savior. Look to God our Father who has created us in his image - his holy image - and who calls us his children, giving us all the rights and privileges of sonship in the family of God.   


The mystery, the beauty and the reality of salvation is that because of Jesus' obedience, love and sacrifice, we have become - and are becoming - a royal priesthood, a holy nation, (1 Peter 2:9), sons and daughters of the King of kings, the beautiful, pure bride of Christ; and this is not accomplished by our good works, our close attention to doing the right and good things we should do.  


It is a beautiful work of God.

Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! (Psalm 115:1)

 Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:3-4)

Prayer

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 4:2)



"Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus. It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honour of a Christian."  


From C. H. Spurgeon's Morning and Evening Daily Devotional

Happy Easter!

The Lord has made known is salvation, he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.  (Psalm 98:2)


Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb,  Amen!  Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!  Amen.  (Revelation 7:10, 12)

Good Friday

Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers,  children who deal corruptly!  They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.  Why will you still be struck down?  Why will you continue to rebel?  The whole head is sick,  and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores  and raw wounds;  they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil. Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. (Isaiah 1:4-7)


Ok, granted, not a cheerful passage to start off with.  But can you close your eyes for a minute and get a mental picture of what these words describe?  It's hideous!  Like something out of a horror movie with zombies, and burnt out, desolate, abandoned cities, darkness and hopelessness.  Isaiah says the people are utterly estranged from God.  That's what sin does. We can sugarcoat it all we want to, but the ugliness of our sin, the hideousness of it as compared to the beauty and holiness of God is a reality we cannot change.


Sin is what separates us from God.  If left unconfessed, unrepented, it can harden our hearts to the point that we become  utterly estranged from God; it becomes more and more difficult to hear his still, small voice calling out to us to turn away from the sin and turn to him.  What a dismal picture!


Today is Good Friday, the day we remember and enter into the last hours of Jesus' life on earth, his great suffering and death on the cross, the physical pain and suffering he endured, the whipping and abuse before the cross and the torturous, agonizing hours he endured nailed to that cross.  He also endured spiritual suffering the likes of which we can never know.  By taking on himself the horror and ugliness of our sin, he must have endured an anguish in his spirit that was unimaginable - only God could have withstood it. The King of kings and Lord of lords left the glory and beauty of heaven and the continual, blessed communion with the Father and the Spirit to die the most horrendous death man could devise.  Out of love and obedience, God became man, dwelt among us, walked, talked, taught, healed and saved, only to be crucified as a criminal.  The gentle Lamb of God was slaughtered.

• He was despised and rejected by men; 
  a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; 
  and as one from whom men hide their faces 
  he was despised, and we esteemed him not.  (Isaiah 53:3)
• All we like sheep have gone astray; we have 
  turned—every one—to his own way; 
  and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:6-9)
• I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax;  it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. (Psalm 22:14-15

In John's Gospel, Jesus told his beloved brothers what was coming and why:  Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.  (John 12:31-32)  In Jesus' life, words, suffering and death, we see the face of God:  LOVE.  Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.  (John 15:13)

On this Good Friday as we remember these events of some 2000 years ago, may we look on them with fresh eyes,  We need to see our own sinfulness that separates us from God - from LOVE - that caused our dear Lord to cry out in anguish from the cross.  We have to face the ugliness of our sin, confess it, repent of it, and leave it at the cross never to be picked up again.

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.  (Romans 6:6-11 The Message)

Wait For It

Reading my Lenten devotional this morning, the author wrote powerfully and honestly about suffering, being in the midst of suffering:  "Lent is an opportunity to recognize that Jesus will return to set all things right, but he hasn't yet.  In the midst of suffering it is terrifying to feel the pain, tell the story, ask God for help and wait for it."  Please read those words again, put yourself in that place - we've all been there to some degree.  It can be a terrifying place to be!  No end in sight, just the place of suffering, of crying out to God, unanswered questions of "Why?" and "How long?".  We know that Jesus himself asked those questions in his own unimaginable suffering.  He is fully acquainted with our grief and suffering:  

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.  (Isaiah 53:3-5)

Look once again at the quote from the devotional, it ends with the words, "wait for it".  That's what it means to be a follower of Christ.  We can wait because we have hope.  We can ask the unanswered questions of the one who holds all the answers. We can hold on to God's promises because they are sure and true.  We can sit in our places of suffering and know that we are not alone; we have one who is closer than a brother - closer than our very breath - who knows the depths of our pain and suffering. He knows our fears.  We can say, with Paul, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.  (2 Timothy 1:12)   

I have seen time and time again how tenderly, lovingly and even reverently, Jesus ministers to his hurting and suffering children.  As a prayer minister, I'm constantly awed by Jesus and the ways he is with someone in their time of pain.  I often feel as if I'm standing on holy ground - to be allowed to share in the intimacy of Jesus' presence and ministrations to a suffering child of God.

Wait for it.  Wait on the Lord.  He is always faithful, always near.  His promise is that we will be renewed, restored and revived.  Even more than that:  they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

We are just days away from our Easter celebrations:  the glory, the beauty, the hallelujahs.  But we must go through these days of remembering the suffering and passion of our Lord.  Wait for it.  The light will burst forth.  Easter is coming.  The darkness and suffering of Good Friday is not the end of the story.

Wait for it!

2012 Lenten Devotional from Trinity School of Ministry  http://www.tsm.edu/