Ephesians 2: DEAD

Ephesians 2:1-10

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time,gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Apart from Christ, a person is not enough.  I am not enough.  Not only am I powerless to do the good I want to do for the Lord, but because of my sin, I am dead. 

D - Dead people cannot make decisions.  If I went to a graveyard and invited the citizens there to a party, they would have the choice to come or not, but they could not make that decision.  I would have to somehow make them alive.  This is what Christ does for us.  If you follow him now, it is because he first loved you and made you alive by his Spirit.

E - Enough.  Any good thing you do is not enough to atone for your sin.  But Jesus lived a perfect life and his sacrifice is enough to cleanse you and make you alive again.  It is by grace you are saved. Not your free will.  Not your decisions.  Nothing in you caused God to choose you for salvation.  Jesus did it all. 

A - After you are saved, you will show the "incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us."  Your good deeds are an ends, not a means.  They don't save you.  They are a sign that you are saved.

D- Do what God has called you to do.  We are God's workmanship, created for good works in Christ.  Before the Holy Spirit came upon you, you could not do them.  After he has come, now you can. 

And step 1: remember you still have a sin nature, but praise God, it does not have to rule you.  But you still need discernment and the Scriptures to guide you as to whether you should follow your gut or not.

SIN acronym

Step 1: Remember that you still have a sin nature

SIN

Sold to wickedness

1 Kings 21:25, “There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the LORD like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited.”

What does Ahab’s wickedness have to do with my sin?  Ahab was one of the most notoriously wicked kings of Northern Israel.  He married the Phoenician princess Jezebel for a trade relationship.  She led him to worship Baal.  Baal worship included sleeping with prostitutes to induce the god Baal to sleep with his consort Asherah so that they could produce rain.  Some Baal worship also included sacrificing children in fire.

Has my sin ever been this bad?  I have never slept with anyone other than my husband and I have fought the pro-life cause for a long time.  But I have an idolatrous heart that places loves above my Lord and a wicked mind that takes pleasure in wrong things.  And everybody has some beset sin that they are born with.  Lady Gaga is right.  Before Christ saves you, you are born that way, though that way is sin, and it takes many forms.

God wiped out a whole generation of people in a flood because they were all naturally wicked, but he graciously saved Noah, Mrs. Noah, their sons, and their sons’ wives.   And those eight were sinners, too.

…In sin did my mother conceive me, Psalm 51:5b

David wrote that line in a Psalm where he repented of his sin of taking a married woman as his own wife and then killing her husband.  Nobody knew about that sin except God and maybe Joab.  But God revealed David’s sin to Nathan who called him out.  And David repented.  Through God’s grace, David did good things.  He stood up for God against a nine-foot-tall Philistine that everyone else feared.  He spared his enemy, King Saul, when Saul tried to kill him out of jealousy and fear of God’s judgment.  He showed kindness to Saul’s crippled grandson, Mephibosheth, when he had every right to kill him.

But through all his goodness and devotion to God, David still had a prideful sin nature that came out the first time he marred more than one woman, and then really came to a head when he happened to see Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, bathing from a rooftop, slept with her, made her pregnant, and then had Uriah conveniently on a front line in battle and killed. 

And despite all our deeds, we still have pride, and our sin nature still lives.  We cannot be fully Christ’s until that sin is gone.

No one is righteous, no, not one, Romans 3:10b

Romans 7:24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  Paul captures the believer’s struggle perfectly.  Praise God, he sent Jesus to die for my sins and for the sins of all believers.  You don’t have to stay in your sin.  Even if you really love your sin, the Holy Spirit will convict you, show you Jesus, and change your heart so that you no longer desire it.  It will even become ugly to you.  And he will give you Christ’s goodness so that you can love Jesus more than you hated your sin.  Please believe in him.

Romans 7: which to follow: my heart or the Spirit?

I decided to read Romans 7 because it is one of the texts cited at Celebrate Recovery this past week.  I was wanting to read more of it because of Paul's struggle with sin even though he is a Christian now.

The first question that popped in my mind is about verses 1-6 when Paul talks about marriage and divorce.  A shallow question would be, is it a sin for a divorced woman to remarry when her ex is still alive?  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.  I personally believe that she is free to marry if she did not initiate the divorce and if her husband has cheated on her or is abusive.  Jesus said she can divorce if the man is unfaithful.  Abuse is another form of unfaithfulness because the man has broken his vow to love and cherish his wife.  And she should be able to start again.

However, that is not the point of this chapter.  Paul is comparing our sinful nature as that ex-husband who is still alive and Christ as that new husband who we want to marry.  If you are in your sins, you cannot come to God because God cannot look on evil.  You will explode in flames of God's wrath.  Your sins will not be forgiven.  Either you will die for them, or somebody will take your place.  And that perfect somebody is the only perfect man, Jesus, who is also God the Son.  He takes that punishment, sends his Holy Spirit to change your heart, and now you can come to God through Christ and his blood that covers you.

Christ has taken all my sins on himself and given me his righteousness, and so I can come to God's presence humbled and grateful.  At the same time, I still live on this planet where Christ's kingdom has not been consummated.  And I still live in my old body and soul which has been weakened by sin.  Although I have God's Spirit inside me, I still have my old sinful nature nagging at me.  It's like, it's not quite dead yet (why does Monty Python and the Holy Grail come to mind right now?).  It's not getting better, but it is still kicking.  And that is why when I need to make a decision, I can't just go with my gut.  I have to take in serious prayer and Bible reading. 

Let's use Paul as an example.  Before he was a Christian, he hated Jesus and persecuted Christians, killing even women and children.  He probably had lots of anger and never struggled because there were no competing voices inside him.  Now that Christ has come and changed him, he probably still has anger.  You can see his biting sarcasm as you read scenes in Acts and in his epistles.  He now struggles between anger/hatred versus his new love in Christ.  He cannot just do what he wants because the old Saul still calls out to him.  He cannot go with his gut.  He must follow Christ.

I am a Christian.  I don't remember a time when I did not believe in God.  I remember being about 6 or 7 and saying to my mom, "At church, they talk about God as if he is real."  And she said, "That's because he is real.  He's just invisible."  So I believed.  Then another time we were talking about a sister I had that had died in infancy.  She talked about heaven, and I said, "Is heaven real?"  "Yes, it is."  So I believed.  Then when I was 11 years old, Dad came home from a Promise Keeper's conference and introduced me to Christian rock music, and I decided I wanted to follow Jesus completely and make him my world. 

Since then, I have struggled with making close friendships, loneliness, mental sins, bad temper, and even anger.  Although I have loved Jesus and believed him as long as I can remember, I still have sin, and so I can't just make decisions based on how I feel.  I must be humble and read Scripture, pray, and even take advice from others.  To do otherwise would be denial, the key word from CR, this past week.  You can't deny that you still have a sin nature, and you must not follow your heart.

Do you feel such tensions in your life?  How do you deal with them?

Hosea: fallow ground

In this blog on Kelly Needham's inductive study on Hosea, I will go through her techniques, and then just jump to my conclusion.

Here is the text: Hosea 10:11-15

11 Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck; but I will put Ephraim to the yoke; Judah must plow; Jacob must harrow for himself. 12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. 13 You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors, 14 therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed, as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle; mothers were dashed in pieces with their children. 15 Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil. At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off

1. Define words such as thresh, harrow, and fallow.

Thresh means to separate grain from a plant, usually with a flail or repetitive motion. 

Harrow is an implement consisting of a heavy frame set with teeth or tines that is dragged over plowed land to break up clods, remove weeds, and cover seed.

I usually think of the term "harrowing" to describe a scary experience.

Fallow means farmland that is left plowed and harrowed but unsown so that it will regain its fertility.

When God calls someone to repent, that person's salvation is all the work of God and nobody else.  Nothing you did made God choose you for salvation.  He just did it because he wanted to.  But afterward, you have to work to repent and change your life.  And God usually dumps your whole world upside-down. And it is harrowing.  I discovered anger and impulses in my life that need to be totally stripped away, and it has not been fun.  I've even experienced a threshing, a return to boring repetition that seems meaningless and back to square one.  Maybe soon I will see a light at the end of the tunnel and be restored to something else.

2. Look at the cross-references.

3. Use the rest of the Bible.

4. Reread the passage.

At the end, the main thing I thought about was the parable of the sower that Jesus tells.  There are four soils.  One is a path where seed falls, but birds eat it up and nothing happens.  The other soils are rocky or thorny.  Plants grow for a time but soon die away due to having no true root in Jesus or by being choked by worries and other people.  And the last is good soil where the plants thrive. 

And I think, the good soil was probably rocky and thorny once.  It might even have been a path.  But God came with a bulldozer and cleared the land and slowly chipped away things I thought were important so that I could focus on the Lord and not worry about what other people think.  It's painful, but it's wonderful, too.  It makes me realize that I'm not as amazing as I think I am.  But God is.  I am not enough, but Jesus is.

4 Things God Permits but Doesn’t Like

I decided to put this list together because people will take some kind of sin, usually a sexual one, that the church has historically opposed and point to reasons why it isn’t actually sinful.  Then they will point to things that happened in the Bible and say, “See, God allows this.  Why not this?”  Here are some of those things.

Divorce: Nobody explains this one better than Jesus.  Here he is in Matthew 19 when the Pharisees decided to ask him about divorce.

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

⁴ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

⁷ “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

⁸ Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹ I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

¹⁰ The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

¹¹ Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. ¹² For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Polygamy: Somebody once said that God actually commanded this.  Like if a man and woman married, and the woman produced no child, then the woman was obligated to provide a servant for the man to produce a child for her.  That woman could not marry the man because of her social status and served as a concubine.  Heroes of the Bible such as David had many wives and people loved him.  So this is clearly allowed, right?

No, not exactly.  Like Jesus said, when God created mankind, he created them male and female and they would become one flesh.  Also, what people don’t realize is that the Bible accounts often describe things that did happen, not necessarily what should happen.  I read a Bible dictionary once that said that God did allow this practice, but history shows what a disaster it always caused.

For example, Jacob’s wives always fought with each other over who got to have kids and sleep with Jacob.  Hannah was heartbroken because her husband took on another wife because she couldn’t have kids.  David’s many marriages caused him to take on another man’s wife and kill him and then one of his sons thought he should be allowed to rape his half-sister and another son killed that son, tried to kill David, and slept with all his concubines on a roof in broad daylight.

So what about passages that seem to command men to take on an extra wife to provide for children.  Actually, they never command that.  God simply provides rules for when men happen to do that.

In Exodus 21:7-11 it says:

 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. ⁸ If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. ⁹ If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. ¹⁰ If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. ¹¹ If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

It did not command a man to either sell his daughter or take on a servant consort; it merely said what to do if that happened.

This leads me to my next thing:

Slavery

I think in the ancient times, slavery started as a kind of way to pay debts.  If Tim owed Bill some money or had committed a crime that was not punishable by death, he could work for Bill as a servant for an amount of time to pay off that debt.  It would save taxpayers from having to support him in a penal system and he could contribute to society.

Also, women could enter into slavery as a household servant to a woman or as a way to produce children for a man.

Through the years it became the horrifying practice that was finally condemned after the American Civil War at least in America and in England before that.  Human sin changed it into a civil debt system into the brutality that it would become. 

It was so common that Paul commanded slaves to obey their masters and masters to be kind to their slaves.  And when Onesimus was converted to a believer, Paul pled with his master, Philemon, to take him not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ.

I think the issue of slavery is one of the most embarrassing things for conservative believers to support when it was the monster that it became.  It fooled even giants such as George Whitfield.  But God hates the idea of a man owning another man and he hates abuse. 

The Crucifixion of Jesus

Not only did God allow this, but the whole Trinity planned on doing this from before creation.  When God created a being in his image called human, he knew that this image would not be as perfect as him.  And he knew that the humans would betray their creator and sin.  So the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always planned on sending the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, to earth to be born as a man and to die for the sins of all the Lord had chosen to believe.  (Acts 13:48, all who were appointed for eternal life believed).

Does God love the idea that people betrayed him and that they could not come to him in their sins on their own terms?  There was no greater injustice than the only perfect human dying on the cross, but people needed a substitute for their sins and they needed his alien righteousness applied to their lives in order to come to God.  We will never quite understand the contrasts between God’s expressed will (what we know he loves and hates) and his secret decrees (what he allows for reasons only he knows).  But we know that he is God, his commandments are right, all he does and plans is right, and that Christ is the only perfect human and God himself who did not want all humanity lost in its own rebellion.  Believe on him, and you will have your sins imputed to Christ and his goodness imputed to you.  And through our perfect permanent priest who needs no replacement can we come to God and have our sins forgiven.

Honesty: the struggle is real

Back in October, I was supposed to give a talk to children about honesty.  It never happened, but here is the main verse in that talk: Proverbs 24:26, An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.

The idea is that usually if you love someone, you kiss them on the lips.  If you give an honest answer, that must mean you love that person.

But then I think, I don't kiss everyone on the lips.  In fact, I only kiss one person on the lips: Tim.  I'm married to him and can do that.  Usually, you only save a lip kiss for someone you intend to marry or are married to or have a romantic relationship with.  You are making yourself vulnerable to betrayal and heartbreak.

So, if you don't kiss everyone on the lips, do you give everyone an honest answer?  You must be truthful with everyone yes.  The Lord commands us to not bear false witness.  But just like you don't run around naked in public, you also don't have to reveal everything lest it be used against you.  Be wise with who you tell the truth to.

For example, it is true that I did not give this talk like planned.  But what only a handful of people know is why it got cancelled.  Even fewer know the finer details of that.  And knowing the conundrum I'm having with this verse, it's just as well. 

But in the long run, you must be truthful and loving to everyone you meet, even at risk to yourself and your emotions.  You won't get close to people otherwise.  Just how much you reveal takes much prayer and maybe advice from someone you trust.  It's hard for me to be close to people for that very reason.  I don't know the difference of being truthful and telling too much.  But I'm not alone in that struggle.  How do you go around with that balance?

Hosea: the ugly chronicles of Israel following their hearts

As Kelly Needham moves on to chapters 8-9, she highlights four parts that mention people or places from Israel's history referenced by Hosea as he is God's mouthpiece to his wanton nation.

1. First is chapter 8 verses 4-6:

4 They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. 5 I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? 6 For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.

Hosea references Jeroboam many times.  First, King Solomon joined in wedlock to a thousand foreign women.  They turned his heart away from God to serve false idols.  A prophet came and said that during his son's reign, Israel would split and Solomon's actions would cause most of the nation to fall away from God.  Ten tribes would form a new country and Israel would be two kingdoms.  Then, his son Rehoboam became king.  He was a jerk, and the country split and made Jeroboam king.  Jeroboam knew that people would still go to Jerusalem to worship God, so he set up two golden calves, told the people that they could worship the true God through them, and thus Israel's northern kingdom would not be quite as faithful to God as the south.  Then, Omri set up Samaria as the capital, and his son Ahab, the most wicked king, brought everybody to Baal worship.

It just shows that one sin after another influences many to turn away from the true God and will destroy everybody if God never steps in and causes the people to repent.  

2. But Israel's sin goes back farther than that.  Hosea 9:9 mentions a problem in the time of the judges when everybody followed their hearts:

They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah; he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.

Where is Gibeah?  Oh yeah, it's the town in Judges 19 where the most horrifying Bible story occurs.  A man and his concubine stay in Gibeah.  Just like in Sodom and Gomorrah, men would go around looking for someone to rape.  And this was in the nation that was supposed to be following God.  The man and his host throw a daughter and his concubine out among those men who do whatever with them all night long.  Then, when the man leaves in the morning, there is the concubine passed out on the doorstep.  He tells her, "let's go."  She doesn't.  Then he sends parts of her to all the tribes of Israel and they make war on Benjamin and nearly wipe out that tribe.  Why would people go so far from the Lord that they would think it is alright to have fun by violating women and also that it's alright to send women into such a fray to protect themselves?  This is where even little sins take you if the Lord does not step in and cause you to repent.

3. But the problem goes farther back even to Moses.  Hosea 9:10:

Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Baal-Peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved.

God had set these people apart from all the people in the world to be his prized followers among a world that has turned its back on him.  But then these people get attracted to the world and start following their false gods.  Baal-Peor is the place where in the wilderness, the Midianites send attractive women to the men who seduce them and cause them to worship Baal for the the first time.  Baal is the fertility god who sends rain when he and Asherah consort.  To induce them to do this, the worshipers sleep with prostitutes so that they can have rain and harvests.  So, God sends a plague on the nation, and Moses declares that everyone who has slept with a Midianite woman should be killed.  Then a man takes the chief's daughter, Kozbi, into his tent in front of Moses and the grieving Israelites.  Aaron's grandson kills them both, and then the plague stops.  

Your sins don't just hurt yourself.  It plagues everyone you know.  And Israel's sin starts in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan, goes on through Gibeah and all the judges and then comes to a head long before Jeroboam comes along.

4. Hosea 9:15:

Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.

Gilgal is where Israel decides it needs a king: just like everybody else.  God was supposed to be their king, but he isn't cool, so they need a king.

How many of our sins start by trying to be like everybody else?  Sure, you heard in church that sex is to be saved for marriage between a man and a woman but all your friends are doing it and you have these strong feelings for someone.  Sure, you heard that you should only worship the God who revealed himself through Jesus and not bow down to stars, but horoscopes are so interesting and harmless.  Sure, the teacher told you to not touch her things, but they looks so inviting and I'll look cool if I touch it.

the solution: Israel's history is one big example of them betraying God who did everything for them and God showing them that they simply cannot follow God without his help because they love themselves so much.  How did he solve this problem?  After he exiled them from the land, he brought them back, and then he sent Jesus to die for their sins.  And not just their sins, but for the sins of anybody, whether Israeli or not.  God does not forgive sins, and if you don't believe in Jesus, then you will be punished for your sins.  But if you believe, then Jesus takes that punishment and then gives you his righteousness so that you can follow him completely.  Only a perfect man could do that, and only a man who was God himself could do that.  Will you believe in him so that he can give you his Spirit and change you?