The Old Testament Book of Daniel, Part 3

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7

Obedience

[Jesus asked:] “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46)

These words confronted me in my daily quiet time with God today.

They hit me hard. I felt that they were directed at me and not at "other people." 

As a Lutheran Christian, I regularly confess my sinful nature. Of course, it's a true confession for any human being.

But I realize today that I also make this confession, in part, to excuse my disobedience to the will of God, the law of God, to explain it away.

Of course, the law of God cannot save me from sin and death because I'm incapable of perfect obedience. Only the perfect sinless Jesus, Who took humanity's rightful punishment for sin--death--can save those who repent and trust in Him as their God and Savior.

But surely that's no reason for me to not try to obey God's law out of gratitude for God's grace and new life given freely to all who turn from sin and trust in Christ. 

I am forced to ask myself this question: If I'm willfully disobedient or casually so, can I honestly say that I'm letting Jesus be my Lord? Am I doing violence to my relationship with Him, risking its loss because of subtle disobedience?

I've been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's meditation on Psalm 119, left incomplete at his death. This is Bonhoeffer's point regarding this psalm extolling God's law: Believers in the God we now know more fully in Jesus Christ seek to live obediently to His Word, to His law.  That message dovetails with the simple words of Jesus I focused on today.

I sensed God telling me, "If you believe in Me, no more excuses! If you believe in Me, obey!"

Of course, God is compassionate. He remembers that we are dust. But I best express my gratitude for His love and redemption by striving always to obey Him. 

God, help me to be obedient.

Miracle at a Speedway Station

Today, several members of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, hit the bricks to share God's love in a practical way, giving away 168 bottles of cold water to total strangers in less than an hour.

One member brought her grandsons. When one of the boys saw an elderly man filling up his gas tank at a Speedway station, he asked his grandma if they could share a water with the man. I'm convinced that the young man was responding to a prompt from God's Holy Spirit, because when he and his grandmother had given the water to the man, he was deeply touched.

"Are you the kind of church that prays for sick people," he asked. "Every week," he was told.

He then asked if they could pray for his wife, suffering from a terminal illness, and who he hoped to bring home before she passed. The group of three began to pray, right there by the pump at the Speedway station.

As it happened, a veterinarian, whose office is near the station, saw the praying group, walked over from his office, and asked if he could pray with them.

It's been my experience that when we dare to reach out to others with the love God has given to all the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus, scenes like this happen. Just think what happened in that short interchange of strangers, a miracle at a Speedway station:

• The comfort of God came to a man carrying a world of hurt and grief.
• A little boy learned to respond to Jesus' call to love others as we love ourselves.
• The group of us on this outreach learned again that God uses those willing to follow His lead to spread the message of His love in our communities and in our world.

God was the author of it all and I came away from it simply amazed by Him. (Again!)

Luther on the Function of God's Law

Scripture is clear that God's Law--the commandments--are wonderful and reflective of the loving will of God. (That's why Bob Lenz calls them "the tender commandments," rather than the Ten Commandments.)

But God's Law cannot save us from sin and death. Only the grace of God--the free gifts of relationship with Him, forgiveness of sins, and new life given to all who believe in Jesus Christ--can save us. The Law can only show us of our need of the grace that saves us.

I love this paragraph from Martin Luther's comments on Galatians 3:30, where he explains all of this:

The proverb has it that Hunger is the best cook. The Law makes afflicted consciences hungry for Christ. Christ tastes good to them. Thirsty souls are what Christ wants. He invites them: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Christ's benefits are so precious that He will dispense them only to those who need them and really desire them.

Life Isn't Like 'Let's Make a Deal'

"Good works are not the means of salvation but the result."

That sentence comes at the end of today's installment of Our Daily Bread. I found the entire piece moving.

But as it moved me, it also conveyed great Biblical theology, based on Micah 6:1-8. (Incidentally, be sure to read the hyperlinked passage from Micah before reading the hyperlinked Our Daily Bread post.)

So often, we see the frequently-quoted (and beautiful) Micah 6:8, in isolation from its context. Viewed in that way, it's possible for us to think that God is commanding the performance of good deeds--doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God--as means by which we earn God's forgiveness and grace.

But when you look at the verses immediately preceding verse 8, you see that the theme here is that forgiveness and relationship with God cannot be secured by the performance of good deeds. We can't earn God's favor, forgiveness, or the new and eternal life, what we Christians call salvation, that only He can give.

Life with God isn't like being a contestant on Let's Make a Deal.

Life with God is like this:

• FIRST, we surrender to and receive God's grace. God already loves you. God already has done everything needed for you to be reconciled to Him. He did it all through Jesus Christ. You don't have to make deals with God by performing guilt- or fear-induced good works.
• THEN, good works become not ways of winning the approval of people or of God, but of expressing our thanks to God for all His undeserved gifts, most especially the gift of Christ, God in the flesh, Who lived, died, and rose to give all these gifts to who will divest themselves of their addiction to sin (repent) and surrender their whole lives to Christ (believe only in Him).

When you know that Christ has saved you from sin and death, without any merit or effort on your part, you want to trust Him with every part of your life. You want "to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God..."

The Kindness Outreach Chronicles (Part 3)

These are pictures snapped by my wife Ann during the Saint Matthew Kindness Outreach of July 9. During the outreaches, when traffic lights at busy intersections turn read, we offer free bottled water to drivers and passengers of stopped vehicles. We share the love of God, no strings attached.

In a world in which we're taught "there's no such thing as a free lunch," it can be hard to convince people that we're actually giving away anything without charge. But these give-aways are a great picture of how grace works. Grace, God's undeserved favor, isn't earned. But God won't force it on you either. You have to be humble and needy enough to willingly receive it.

In the picture above, Dick and Joy hand out bottles of water and Jacob hurries to make sure that everyone in the car gets their free gifts.

Above: Jacob shares another bottle of water.

Above: The preacher in action.

A Tough, But Liberating Word

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread is based on James 4:1-10:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? ²You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says,

 “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? ⁶

But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.   

"Adulterers," I take to be addressed not only to those engaged in adultery, but in all activities that put the world, the self, and other pursuits or relationships ahead of God. Through the prophets in Old Testament times, God described Himself as husband to Israel, condemning His people's penchant for playing the adulteress by worshiping other gods.

The New Testament describes the Church as the bride of Christ. So, any time we Christians allow other things to take God's place of absolute ruler over our lives, we are engaging in idolatry--idol worship, or as the Old Testament puts it, adultery.

The passage from James ends with a tremendous promise: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." This is nothing other than a call to wake up and acknowledge reality:

• God is bigger than you are. 
• Only God can give you life. 
• And unlike all the other things you might submit to in life, God will help you and love you even when you fall or fail. 

In Philippians 2:5-11, the apostle Paul gets at much the same message when he cites what most scholars agree must have been a hymn of the early church that reminds us that in calling us to submit to the will of God the Father, we're not being asked to do anything more than Christ did.

God "opposes the proud," not because God is an egotist, but because God wants us to live. As I mentioned in another post recently, if the only way for a drowning man to get to shore is to hold onto the lifeguard, you would hardly call the lifeguard arrogant for saying so to the thrashing victim. The God we know in Jesus Christ is that lifeguard. Take it from one willful thrasher to another: Submit to the Lifeguard and you will have real life!

Read the Our Daily Bread piece by Anne Cetas.

Patience, Tension, and Openness to What God Will Do

Those are components in faith, as explained in the book, Grace and Faith in the Old Testament, by one of my seminary professors, Ron Hals:

The sovereign freedom inherent in the Lord's grace always means that his people are called to a faith that allows the future to remain in God's hands. That automatically means patience and tension are a built-in part of what faith involves, but it also means an openness to God's next act in history.