Saturday, January 21, 2012

Abraham's Obedience

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. (Hebrews 11:08, NKJV).
Verse 8 of Hebrews 11 begins the faith saga of Abraham, the Friend of God and the Father of the Faithful. Like Genesis, which covered the history of the world from Creation through the Flood in 11 chapters, and then spent the next 12 chapters on the life and family of one man, Abraham, so chapter 11 covers the chronology from Creation to the Flood in 7 verses, and then spends the next 10 on this same one man.

Abraham is important. He is the top of the human funnel that, from the entire population of the planet, filters down to the divinely decreed lineage of Messiah. He is also the very first illustration of the way of salvation in a Fallen world, for Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness (Ro 4:3; Ga 3:6; Jas 2:23). Do you see the significance of that?

Human redemption is exemplified in the simple, thrice-repeated proclamation that Abraham was saved by faith, and in being the first, he became our father in the faith. We who believe are all spiritual descendants of this one man who was the founder of many nations, Jew and Gentile, and through his Descendant (singular), all the nations of the world shall be blessed.

From the perspective of Hebrews, this man is characterized by obedience. The fact that the call to go out to his actual going out after his own father died spanned many years does not even enter into the picture. Yes, it took him awhile in this instance, but Hebrews 11 is a "bottom line" exposition. 

In the end, he obeyed, much like Jesus' parable of the two sons, the fawning hypocritical liar, and the rebellious one who refused his father's command, but then complied.

To be sure, later on in Abraham's walk of faith, his obedience became immediate, but this starting point was slow to come to fruition, and for all his descendants by faith who struggle with instant obedience to God, his example should be both illustrative and encouraging. 

Far from perfect, especially at the start, and even after walking for years with his Lord he stumbled, but in the end, he became the shining example, the foundation, of justification by faith.

Why? Because his heart was wholly toward God and he refused to fall away. When he stumbled, he regained his footing and returned to his Lord.

Know that this is God's perspective with all His children. It is the "bottom line" that matters in the end, and this is both good and horrible news. Good because no matter how badly we stumble or backslide, if our hearts are truly with God, we will return and He will restore.

It is horrible because no matter how holy the outside of our lives appear, it is the inside that matters, and it is only from the inside that we endure to the end.

And while any disobedience, however transitional, costs us blessing and peace that otherwise would have been God's delight to bequeath, it is only those who have been made new by faith alone who are truly coheirs with Christ.

Spiritual adornment, holiness and faithful living should not be outward only, nor is it a grit-your-teeth-and-get it-done kind of effort. It is, instead, the result of a humble acquiescence of a human soul and will to Christ's transformative purposes, no matter what it takes on His part to make us like Him.

For Abraham, it took blessing and testing, riches and loss, joy and mourning, and a nomadic life fraught with peril. For each one of us, absolutely unique Creations of an all-powerful Deity, it may take more of less of these same things.

But the essential prerequisite, however imperfectly implemented, is a willing and obedient heart.

Without that, all the outward holiness and lip-service in the Universe will not provide escape from Hell.

With it, no matter how tattered, erratic, or clumsy our walk may be, in the end, He makes us His forever.

Again, to be sure, the goal is to live in obedience as exemplified by the man Abraham in his later years, but our inevitable failures in no way justify giving up the attempt...

…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; (Philippians 1:6, NKJV).

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Noah

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (Hebrews 11:07, NKJV).
Despite all the objective evidence confirming a global catastrophe in the fairly recent past (see here for starters), belief in Noah, the Ark and The Flood is considered, in many circles, equivalent to belief in The Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, with this exception: The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are more acceptable because they are not Biblically based. 

Believing in a literal Genesis in this modern culture makes you all kinds of backwards and nasty things, even in some churches. The fact that the Lord Jesus Himself held The Flood to be a real historical event apparently holds little weight. The teachers and leaders in such churches can presumably take that up with Him on that Day. As for me and my house…

Regardless of your Noahic view, we have here in Hebrews a picture of faith exemplified in a man who found grace in the eyes of God in an era when every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Noah was righteous because He believed God, even in the face of massive popular pressure to do otherwise.

What precisely did he believe?

He believed that God is, so he listened.

He believed that can, so when warned he took the commanded actions.

He believed that God meant what He said, and was moved with godly fear.

By his unprecedented actions of faith, he condemned the world just prior to divine judgment finally being executed. The timing was no accident, but was orchestrated by God to teach what it means to live by faith, and used in this superlative chapter of Hebrews to provide us with yet another concrete example of life according to the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
Noah and his household were an extremist minority. Ultimately, there were only eight of them, and they believed and acted upon things NO ONE ELSE would dare. In and of itself, this is not necessarily a hallmark of faith, but when taken in the context of his entire life, word and deed, it is a profound proclamation of where he put his trust. Or more precisely, in WHOM he put his trust.

When divinely warned of things not yet seen, he responded. In Noah's time, what had not yet been seen was rain as we know it (the ground was still being watered with a nightly mist), and flooding, especially a Flood that would cover all the mountaintops of all the earth. In reality, Noah had even less reason to believe than we do today, but believe he did, and he moved with godly fear, prepar[ing] an ark for the saving of his household.

The Ark itself was a massive project which took over a century to complete. In building it, his allegiance to God was undeniable, and undoubtedly subjected him to the scorn of his contemporaries. ALL of his contemporaries, save those in his own household. He had NO SUPPORT outside his immediate family for believing and doing what he did.

Do you sometimes feel that way?

Now exclusivity of belief, in and of itself, is no proof of anything, but taken in the context of his entire life, it spoke volumes of his faithfulness.

And these are the key take-aways from this man's godly example.

His entire life was lived in acknowledgement of, and submission to, the living God of the universe. The fact that he and his family were the ONLY ONES at that time is secondary to the foundational truth of his faith.

But despite the fact that he was vastly outnumbered, he obeyed the One in whom he believed. He did not allow social pressure in all of its pervasive forms to alter his personal conviction. Or actions. He was a man of steadfast belief, and lived out his faith in very conspicuous ways. Not because that was his, but God's choice.

His consistency and integrity served as an example to his sons, so that they followed their father's leadership with no hint of question or rebellion. We read nothing of any dispute among them, or of any disparagement of their father's faith. Family dysfunction only occurred well after the Flood, and then only because Noah lapsed into drunkenness, and one of three sons succumbed to a rebellious impulse.

Noah was not perfect, but he was a man of faith. Just like believers today.

He is an extreme example, and by extreme I mean undeniably obvious.

Sometimes, maybe most times, faithful obedience to the Lord can be done quietly and inconspicuously.

But there may be other times when God decrees otherwise. When, like in Noah's day, the coming judgment was scoffed at, scorned, and ridiculed, and the means by which God instructed Noah to survive the ordeal was anything but subtle.

In one sense, we have it easier today. As far as I know, no one is being commanded to build the modern-day equivalent of an Ark.

Plus, we have the record of The Flood and other judgments objectively recorded in writing for our learning. 

Nevertheless, our struggle is the same as Noah's in this sense: it flies it direct opposition to the ways of the world, and is a source of contempt and calumny from the worldly-minded.

Yet, as with all the other heroes of the faith, Noah became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

That is the only goal that counts in this life: faithful obedience.

Anything else is just vapor.

Monday, January 09, 2012

Believing That He Is

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:06, NKJV).

In the Western world, for generations, families have gone to great lengths to convince children to believe in all kinds of myths, like King Arthur, Merlin, Magic, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Christmas Elves, the Easter Bunny, Evolution and the Tooth Fairy.

The primary danger in this is that when the inevitable awakening to the truth occurs, and these cherished beliefs are determined to be false, the child learns to equate all such believing in things not seen as equivalently false, and the integrity and truthfulness of the caregivers in the family are rightly called into question.

As quaint traditions to enliven Holidays and family get-togethers, or to celebrate rites of passage or exercise the imagination, these myths, if presented as myths, can either be benign or serve a greater purpose as a contrast to Biblical reality, but there is a grave peril in teaching children to falsely believe something that isn't true.

It can inoculate them against faith, poisoning the well of what C.S. Lewis has termed, Mere Christianity. Recall this ancient text:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, (1 Peter 1:6-8, NKJV).

Children have an inherent ability for faith. It's built-in, part of their original equipment. Don't be fooled into thinking this innate ability is something evolution magically concocted to enhance survival. From the physical perspective, belief itself has very little survival value.

In fact, the young of all "higher" species get by pretty well without the ability to believe things that cannot be seen, for as far as we know, human children, constructed in the image of God, are the only ones who are born with the capability to perceive 3-dimensional reality and superimpose on it another qualitatively different reality. Call it what you will - the Spiritual Realm, the Supernatural, the World of the Imagination - its only earthly pioneers and explorers are human.

And human children are its most stalwart adventurers. That is part of the reason Jesus tells us that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now, entering the Kingdom of Heaven is synonymous with coming to God. To do either, you must first believe that He is, and further, that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

According to the latest global surveys, more than 75% of the world's adult population believe in some Higher Power or Supreme Being. But that percentage is shrinking yearly, especially in Europe. Indeed, some countries, Denmark and Sweden, for instance, boast that between 46% and 80% of its residents are either agnostic or atheistic.

What is surprising, however, is that the percentage of belief in God remains so high, given the almost constant barrage of negativity in the world's news, opinion, higher education and entertainment media regarding religion. 

This persistence of belief is intensely frustrating to the increasingly aggressive proponents of humanism. But these men and women willfully forget that arrayed against the Ivy League, New York, Hollywood, Europe and all the other realms of worldly humanistic propaganda and intellectual elitism, is the God of the Bible. 

The God who is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. The God who has bridged the gap between Fallen man and holy Creator by declaring that faith in His Risen Son will achieve what no amount of human performance can achieve - access to His throne of grace. 

He can, and does, ensure that the avenue of faith remains open. At least for now.

Coming to God entails believing that He is, even in the face of propaganda and popular opinion to the contrary. Or more precisely, especially in the face of such global misinformation, for that makes the exercise of faith that much more significant.

Further it entails believing, as a necessary subsequent step, that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Why else come to Him in the first place?

But what does diligent seeking involve, exactly? 

Most importantly it means seeking Him as He has revealed Himself to be in His Word. Who knows what God the 75-percenters believe in? Is it the God of the Bible, or the God of their own vain and futile imaginings?

You cannot diligently seek Someone of whom you have no clue or information.

Fortunately - providentially - He has left us with all the clues we need, written down and preserved for millennia so that His light shines in the darkness, illuminating the path to His throne, His grace, and Himself.

Our task is to find and follow that roadmap, something He empowers and assists us to do if only we ask.

If you seek Him with your whole heart, mind and soul, He will be found. He guarantees it.

And He will reward your diligence in ways impossible to anticipate or comprehend, both in this life and in the life to come.

First you will get God Himself, as inconceivable as that may sound, for that is exactly what He promised Abraham so long ago.

And in getting Him you will get everything else, for …as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9, NKJV).

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Pleasing God

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:06, NKJV).
…for whatever is not from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23, NKJV).

For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).
If it were not for faith, there would be no hope for human beings. None.

We would be born in this fallen world, live a life chasing futile satisfactions, involved in ephemeral relationships doomed for separation, either before or at death, and facing an inevitable demise only to discover that the worst of earthly life was heaven itself compared to what awaits in the torments of Hell.

Make no mistake, though, it is not merely faith itself, but faith in Christ that saves us from our otherwise default destiny.

And it is not faith in the Christ of our own imagination or convenience. It is the resurrected Christ who came first as the Suffering Servant, but who will return as the Executor of Judgment.

It is the Christ of the Bible that saves, not some New Age avatar or Ascended Master, not some Cosmic Consciousness or Pantheistic Force, not some red-headed, long-tressed, broad-shouldered Shepherd that could just as easily adorn the cover of some pulp Romance Novel.

It is He who was from the beginning.

It is the Captain of the Lord's Host.

It is He who treads the winepress of God's wrath, who will execute judgment on an ungodly world, who will slay the wicked with a word, and will shed their blood, bridle-height, in the Valley of Armageddon.

It is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the Living God, best by far to become His by faith, so that rather than fall, as a unbelieving rebel, He embrace you in His arms as a beloved child.

There are two fatal errors - and I mean eternally fatal errors - about faith.

The first is that it is yours to grit your teeth and drum up, like its the result of some spiritual pep rally. It is not that at all. It is first a gift of God, dealt to each one by measure, and can be left to languish like a vestigial organ, or exercised by volitional and humble dependence on God as who He is, not as you might like Him to be. 

It is mostly private and always individual, meaning that it cannot be inherited or passed down by tradition or practice. It must be activated by a sincere decision of a person's will and mind. 

The second fatal error is to view faith along the lines of this ancient and deceitful cliche: God helps those who help themselves.

This is a subtle and brilliantly effective lie from the pit of Hell itself. It is a statement that appears Biblical, but is, in fact, its antithesis. It is the essence of human-centric legalism, and is quite close to denying the existence of God itself. Or at least implying that He should allow room on His throne for you.

Until you realize that there is nothing good in you, that you have no intrinsic value to God in and of yourself, you are helplessly mired in your trespasses and sins. You may be a shining example of the best that human beings can offer, but you are nonetheless fodder for the fires of Hades.

This is because you are not intrinsically good, but the opposite. You are defective goods. You were born that way, conceived in sin and brought forth to die in sin.

Unless you are remade, you are far worse than useless. You are worthy of judgment.

Harsh but true.

That is why faith is so, so important. It changes all of that. Faith in Christ remakes you. It regenerates you. It kills you on His Cross and makes you alive again in Him.

It is your only hope.

And by exercising that faith in a momentous act of acknowledged helplessness, you enter from death into life.

God has decreed faith to effect your pardon. It pleased Him to do so.

But for that pardon, He had to send His Son to die in your place. He who knew sin became sin for us, and propitiated God's wrath against sin forever by making Himself a substitutionary sacrifice.

For you and for me.

But there is only one way to have that sacrifice credited to your account: faith. It is the currency of salvation. Nothing else will do.

By believing, you take full receipt of that unspeakable gift. Otherwise, Christ's death was of no effect for you, and you trample it under your feet and put Him to an open shame.

Thus you can see why faith is the only way to earn God's pleasure. He enables it in you so that you can give it back.

He has decreed what saves, and then provided you with the very thing that meets the single requirement.

When you acquiesce humbly to His gracious way of escape, He rewards you as if you were someone completely new and sinless. He sees in you His precious Son.

And that pleases Him, indeed.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10, NKJV).

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Enoch

By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, “and was not found, because God had taken him”; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. (Hebrews 11:05, NKJV).
Presented in chronological order, the succinct and profound journey through the annals of the faithful in Scripture now brings us to Enoch, the seventh from Adam, whose name means, teaching.
If Abel is a representative of the Spirit-led Old Testament believer, Cain a picture of the bitter and self-worshiping religious hypocrite of all ages, then Enoch is a brilliant symbol of the New Testament church.

Precious few words are written about him, only a brief passage in Genesis, here in Hebrews, and finally in Jude. All emphasize his righteous walk of faith, speaking nothing of his actual deeds, but only of his heart - a heart that walked with, and pleased, God.

In fact God was so taken with him, that He took him - raptured him - into His presence without death, just before the global flood of divine judgment.

In all of existence, all its permutations and convolutions, all its decisions, priorities, and potentials, there is NOTHING that matters beyond your relationship with your Creator. Get that right through faith, and EVERYTHING else falls into place. Get that wrong through unbelief, and regardless of whatever else happens, your life is a tragic waste.

God has decreed this to be so. He created humanity - with its will, emotions, spirit and mind - for unique and everlasting fellowship with Him. The rest is either just icing on the cake, or a downward rebellion spiraling into eternal torment.

Enoch so pleased God by faith that He spared Him from judgment in the most conspicuous and unexpected way possible. He snatched him from the face of the earth. Before that, Enoch was bestowed a son, and chose a name for that son based on his role as one of the first ancient prophets. He called the boy, Methuselah, whose name signifies, his death shall bring.

This boy became the longest lived person in the antediluvian world. At his death, the Flood came and destroyed all but the eight humans preserved through the judgment in the Ark. But Enoch was taken before that in a marvelous act of grace.

The chronicle of Enoch, like Abel before him is presented with the formula By faith…

Having personally memorized Hebrews, I can attest that this chapter was perhaps the easiest, and certainly the most lyrical to commit to memory because of the formulaic preface to each episode, building into a verbal crescendo of glory after glory. The repetition of By faith, By faith, By faith along with its precise historical chronology is so very effective and powerful. It is a joy to recite, precisely because of its pattern and content.

And the lesson it drives home is simple, yet life-changing.

Faith, that substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, is the nuclear furnace of life, provided that it is centered upon the living God of the Bible.

It the crowning achievement of Fallen man. Without it, every other achievement is worthless, full of gas and vapor.

With it, even the smallest act becomes a cause for triumphant celebration, and lavish praise from the Lord of the Universe.

The ultimate reward of a life of faith is God Himself, as He declared to Abram in Genesis 15.

Yes, we obtain righteousness by faith. Yes, it is faith that enables us to be adopted into the family of God and live forever. Yes, it is faith that defeats Satan and conquers death.

But above even these marvelous things, faith gives us Jesus, in intimate, heroic, and noble fellowship. And fills the otherwise empty void of life that without Him, is vain futility ending in everlasting torment.

God has decreed that faith, not our own works of righteousness, earns His pleasure.

And that decree is the foundation of His greatest mercy and grace.

Exercise that gift of faith now, while there is still time, and become His beloved child, and like Enoch, you will be spared the coming judgment.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Abel

By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. (Hebrews 11:04, NKJV)
The second murder in history took place at the dawn of the planet when a bitter, resentful and prideful brother committed premeditated fratricide. He followed the precedent set by Satan himself, the one who was a "murderer from the beginning" and the "father of lies", who, through his deceitful seduction of the woman, Eve, caused her husband, Adam, to willfully rebel against God, thus causing them both to die.

It is clear that Abel, the second from Adam, knew something of God's atoning provision for sin: the shedding of innocent blood. He killed the firstborn of his flock and offered it as a sacrifice, while his elder brother, Cain, offered the fruit of the ground.

We are told that God respected Abel's sacrifice, but not Cain's, and like the self-centered, arrogant, and bloatedly prideful man he was, Cain's countenance fell.

In modern parlance, we mistakenly refer to this as sibling rivalry. It was not. First, there is no indication in the text that Abel competed with his brother on any level. In fact, when Cain invited him out to the killing field, it looks like Abel went willingly, trustingly.

The facts appear to shout these truths about the killer Cain: he had no objection to violence; he was a cheapskate (what did it cost him to offer to God what God himself had nurtured - the fruit of the ground?); and he could not tolerate criticism, implied or otherwise.

In short, Cain was a highly functioning self-worshipper; a man who considered all his thoughts and impulses as golden, and not to be denied. When he couldn't revenge himself against God, he did what in his mind was the next best thing - he sought and achieved vengeance against his godly brother.

Cain is indistinguishable from most members of human society since that time.

Don't be mislead by the simplicity of this historical vignette in Genesis 4. It highlights merely the pertinent details of the crime, and leaves much of the background information unreported. And here in Hebrews 11, the core of the matter is laid bare even more concisely.

It's this: Abel's offering, founded on faith, pleased God. It wasn't that his was blood, and his brother's produce, though that did speak to the comparison between their respective investments of time and effort.

In stark contrast, Cain merely went through the motions to look good. His heart was filled, not with gratitude and reverence for God, but with festering self-adulation.

God honored Abel's sacrifice, and even now, witnesses to the righteousness of the man through his act of faith, thus memorializing forever both the man, and the single path to redemption: faith.

Cain too is indelibly etched in history, as the quintessential symbol of human evil.

Think about it. The motive for the murder did not entail love or money or fame. The motive for the murder was the most banal and primitive imaginable. Cain was offended.

It takes an enormous sense of self-entitlement to go down the senseless path that Cain chose. There are many forms of the same response to offense prevalent today, though most fall short of actual physical murder (but refer to the Sermon on the Mount for the true definition of murder from God's perspective).

His heinous act accomplished nothing but further exile, and an eternal place in infamy, symbolized forever by the mark of Cain.

The man's response when discovered? Whining self-pity, the very opposite of repentance.

The man's legacy of evil: his descendants were even more psychopathically self-centered than was he himself.

I submit that this was the most senseless and evil act of murder in human history. Not only was it the first human-on-human violence, but it was the most puerile and useless.

Above all, it illustrates the root of all sin: pride.

Cain was a selfish monster, a goblin, a fiend - pure and simple. He deprived his brother of life because Abel's continued existence was an insult.

As such, Cain is rightfully held up as the progenitor of all human violence since the dawn of human history.

In the end, Cain, not Adam, is our most vile forebear.

We all inherit his dreaded mark, and only faith in Christ can remove the stain.