Moralist or Relativist?

Jonah 2:9 - “Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Are you a moralist or a relativist?

Moralist: one who trusts in a moral life as his/her hope.

Relativist: one who lives according to their own standards and desires.

A good example of both is given to us in the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32 .  The elder brother is the moralist:  “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command.”  The younger brother is the relativist: “ . . . he squandered his property in reckless living.”

Both brothers were using something against the father to stay away from him in order to control him.  The younger brother was using his immorality, and the elder brother his morality.  The unbeliever lives by one of these two paradigms.  They have not sought to humbly submit to the Father’s care and turn from their rebellion by trusting that Christ has paid for both their ‘bad’ behavior as well as their supposed ‘good’ behavior.  

At one time or another, or even in one hour or another, we who profess Christ also swing between the two paradigms forgetting that Christ has paid for both sets of sins.  Sometimes we live like a relativist running from God declaring our independence.  At other times we run from God in our moralism thinking that we are getting this Christian life right and deserve God’s favor.

Whether you are an unbeliever or a believer, you still need Christ.  

Jonah was a believing moralist who needed to see that neither his ‘good’ behavior, his family line (Jewish), nor his religious practice merited any more salvation from God than the evil practice of the worst of relativists (Ninevites) de-merited God’s salvation.  Salvation, through and through, belongs to the Lord.  He draws us to trust in His Son and He continues to grow those who trust in Him.  With patience and long suffering He reveals our heart of continued distrust so that we might trust Him more.

nearsighted

Jonah 4:5-11

5  Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 

6  Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7  But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8  When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. 

And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9  But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10  And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” 

Are you one who can get bogged down in details and miss the bigger, more important task at hand?  Maybe you are one who will dust off the leaves of your houseplants but ignore the laundry strewn across the furniture.  Maybe you are easily distracted from your immediate task to do something completely mundane.  I find myself at many times being absent-minded.  Last night I was focused on locking up the church building and drove home without my glasses (they were sitting on my desk) and without my cell phone (It was seated comfortably next to my glasses).  Now, as I write this, my cell phone is dead.  Why did I forget these items?  My mind was distracted, I’m sure, by something vitally important.  Right?  Probably not.  It was nearsightedness.  The mundane took precedent over the more important.

God uses Jonah’s nearsightedness to teach a lesson about grace and mercy.  Jonah goes outside the city Nineveh in order to watch the proceedings of, what He hopes will be God’s judgment against Nineveh.  Maybe he thought his anger at God for showing mercy would win God over to his thinking so that God would destroy these infidels.  Whatever the reason, Jonah is watching and God gives him shade via a gourd vine.  Jonah loves the vine because it gives him comfort.  God removes the vine via a worm.  Jonah gets angry.  Jonah is nearsighted.  Jonah cares more for his comfort from a vine in which he has made no investment, then he does for 120,000 people who don’t know God’s grace.  Ouch.

What creature comforts do you allow into your life that produce a nearsighted effect?  What produces in you more of a concern for your will over God’s will?  What keeps you introverted, secluded, and imprisoned from seeking out how He might use you for His glory and the benefit of another or others?  May God richly bless our time spent in His Word wrestling with sin and conflicted by grace.

Do you do well?

Jonah 4:1-4

1  But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2  And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3  Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4  And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world. 

Really?  Do you believe that?  Why is it that we teach our children to respect other people of all ethnicities while we harbor deep resentment and hatred for people who are different from us even in things such as preferences?  I find that I can be prejudiced against people who like a different music style than my own.  Or people who choose to wear their hat on their head cock-eyed rather than the way ‘it was meant to be’ worn.  Silly me.  Sinful me.  I allow the differences of others to my assumed ‘right ways’ to interfere with God’s mercy by crossing to the proverbial other side of the street.

At the heart of the message of Jonah is a strong sense of provincialism and prejudice.  We know Jonah held such a pride early in the book, but what about now that he has experienced the belly of the fish episode and ‘repented’ and shown his thankfulness to God?  Surely Jonah will be thrilled to see wayward sinners come to know God’s grace!  Wrong . . . so very wrong.  Jonah is not only disappointed, he is ticked.  

I invite you to read Jonah 4 and begin investigating for yourself what it is that angers Jonah.  Meanwhile, ask the Lord to reveal what makes you angry at Him and others and causes His grace through you to be minimized by you.  Do you do well to be angry?

not so blissful ignorance

Jonah 3:5-10

5  And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. 6  The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7  And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8  but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9  Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” 

From Thomas Watson’s, “The Doctrine of Repentance”:

The first part of Christ's physic is eye-salve (Acts 26.18). It is the great thing noted in the prodigal's repentance: `he came to himself' (Luke 15.17). He saw himself a sinner and nothing but a sinner. Before a man can come to Christ he must first come to himself. Solomon, in his description of repentance, considers this as the first ingredient: `if they shall bethink themselves' (1 Kings 8.47). A man must first recognize and consider what his sin is, and know the plague of his heart before he can be duly humbled for it. The first creature God made was light. So the first thing in a penitent is illumination: `Now ye are light in the Lord' (Eph. 5.8). The eye is made both for seeing and weeping. Sin must first be seen before it can be wept for.

God chose to have Nineveh see His perfect and righteous justice by exposing their sins.  He did this by His power, through a reluctant prophet, in a few simple words: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”   They came to themselves and found they were wanting.  

I’ve avoided the doctor for years.  Seeing many dear friends diagnosed with many and varied cancers and illnesses, I would rather live in blissful ignorance than risk being found out.  We can often do the same as Christians.  Just as Nineveh lived in sin that grew deeper and more heinous, so we can go without check in sin and misery and miss the diagnosis.  The problem is, we also miss out on health, vitality, mercy, and grace.  We lose out on seeing the many demonstrations of Christ’s love for us.

The life of the Christian ought to be desire to have God’s Word constantly applied to his or her life so that sin would be exposed, grace administered, and the joy of salvation grown up into maturity.  Yet often what we find is that we are lazy Christians.  We long to know Christ and to be known by Him, but we find every excuse to not be confronted by His Word by opening His Word or putting ourselves in places where the Word is administered.  

Lord, I pray that you would reveal ways in which I have avoided having a thorough examination by Your Word and lead me, not only to see my sin, but Christ as the salve for my sin. 

Mist Matters

Psalm 90:4

4  For a thousand years in your sight

are but as yesterday when it is past,

or as a watch in the night.

Today is like a flea on a hair on a wart on a frog on a log on the bottom of the sea when placed as a mere blip on God’s screen.  Psalm 39:5: “Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! “  So why should God care about today, or tomorrow, or even a single life?  Why does He engage with mankind in all of our petty dealings, our silly wars, our worries and woes?  Why would He care if I slept with another man’s wife, or was fraudulent with money, or spoke angry words at my children?  Again, James 4:14, says, “ . . . yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”  

Moses, the author of this Psalm, answers our questions.  “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us” (v. 17).  It has been God’s favor, His delight, to be our dwelling place (v. 1).  He has chosen to enter into the minute details of our lives.  God had every right to ignore His creation and to ignore us, yet He chose rather to invest deeply.

We see this most fully in His Son.  The advent of Jesus upon the earth was a demonstration of God’s willingness to enter into our condition.  Even the life of Christ upon the earth, in regard to eternity, was the smallest of molecules in comparison.  Yet His life impacted all of eternity for us!  Of the very angels He says, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:14)?  Yet Christ is considered far greater, “having become much superior to angels” (Hebrews 1:4).  So how much more, if angels are ministering spirits, is Christ a compassionate Savior?  

We need only to look to the cross to find out.  On the cross we see God’s willingness to dwell near His people and to enter where no other mortal man could enter.  The closest I can get to my bride of one flesh is not near as close as Christ has entered into the heart of His people.  Christ has known sin more than the deepest sin you and I will ever encounter as He has taken the burden of the sins of those who live by faith in Him upon Himself and took on God’s wrath for us.  

Therefore, Lord, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). I have very great reason to live each day rejoicing and pursuing Your glory and righteousness.  Though my life is a mere vapor,  You have chosen to enter into it.  You care deeply about my each hour and day.  Thank You for revealing Christ as the display of Your love for me and all of Your people who call upon His name.  I ask for the desire, the motivation, and the strength to live today in Your sight because Christ matters above all else.

Spiritual Warfare Re-Visited

What is the essence of spiritual warfare?

My college years were the late 80’s.  It was, what seemed like, the height of an awakened awareness of spiritual warfare.  Frank Peretti had written his novel, “This Present Darkness,” and I began looking for demons behind every bush, person, institution, or creepy looking building.  Ironically, SNL’s sketch “The Church Lady” was also blaming her every sin on the devil.  It also played in 1986, the same year Peretti’s book was published.  Spiritual warfare became an “us-and-them” warfare.  The Church was the spiritual good (us), the world and everything in the world was the “them”.  The goal was separation so that we would not be defiled by the world.  

But the essence of spiritual warfare is not out there but in here.  It is in the heart.  It is a fight to believe, trustingly and obediently, the gospel - the reality that the Christian is so free from his sin and guilt and declared righteous before God that nothing can separate him from the love of God in Christ - nothing.  

Every believer in Christ experiences the battle.  On some days and at some moments we despair our sin and think our particular circumstance is too great a wound to be covered by Christ’s forgiveness.  On other days and at other times, we feel pretty good about our Christian performance and feel we deserve God’s grace.  Spiritual warfare is the fight to believe that God’s grace in Christ is sufficient for the worst of sinners and the best of sinners.    

The “I believe; help my unbelief” of Mark 9:24 becomes the motto of the Christian involved in this spiritual warfare.  

Lord, help me to believe that you are enough.  Do not allow me to despair my condition and run to despair.  And do not allow me to puff up with a pride that trusts in my religious performance to gain your affection and atonement.  I am loved just as much today as yesterday and every day afterward because of Christ’s substitution for me.

Past the Plate

Jonah 1:4-6

“A few years ago I met with a group of twenty-five leading Christian youths, aged sixteen to twenty, from an excellent church.  I asked them, “How many of you would say the essence of your Christian life is this:  First, you don’t do certain things other kids your age do, like drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes or marijuana, or experimenting sexually.  Second, you do some things they don’t - you go to church, read the Bible, and seek Christian friends.  Raise your hand if you think these two things are the essence of your faith.”  All but one raised a hand.  Their doing was the core of their faith.”

• Dan Doriani, The Life of a God-Made Man, p.199).

I would imagine that if a prophet were to poll Israel in the day of Jonah, Israel’s response as a nation would be much the same.  They might add a caveat or two, something like, “Well, yeah, we do have our sins, but they aren’t nearly as bad as the Assyrians.  Man, they’re just plain evil.”

Would a poll of the evangelical church yield any different answer toward those outside the church?  

So let’s take the scenario a step farther.  What if you then pressed these people to step out of their “do good/avoid bad” world into the world of those who “drink alcohol, smoke dope, cook meth, are sexually perverted, etc.” to love them?  I would expect that at the very best we would pull out our checkbooks and ask, “How much do you need to send a professional missionary to them?”  But more than likely, we would yawn, stretch our arms over our heads, say, “Could you hold that thought,” drive home, power down our cell phones, and find a nice warm blanket and a cozy chair in which to hide and fall asleep. 

So it was with Jonah.  So it is with us.  If the essence of our faith is not Jesus Christ, but our supposed good behavior vs. bad behavior, then we will run from whatever or whomever rocks our boat of performance religion . . . be it God or our peers.  God’s Word says, “Arise! Go to Nineveh”, and topples us off of our self-made thrones.  If the essence of our faith is our comfort, we will sleep every time.  If the essence of our faith is in the Jesus Christ, we will respond with glad and trusting hearts ready to serve our Savior who has served us.