Behind the Song - At the Cross

I don't know if you're familiar with the worship song "At the Cross." I really like that song. Not for the beautiful tune (though it does have a melody and rhythm you can really get into for worship), but for the wonderful reminder of what Jesus did for us.
It's pretty easy for most people to pick up on the 'your blood was shed for me' and 'you have overcome the grave' parts, but I wonder how many people understand 'you tore the veil' and 'what can separate me now.'
Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38 and Luke 23:45 all report that at the moment Jesus died, the veil in the temple was torn in two, Matthew and Mark both specifying 'from top to bottom.'
The significance of this event is great but we have to go back to the Old Testament to fully understand it. In Exodus 26:31-37 God gave the instructions for making that veil and for its purpose. It was to cover the Most Holy Place. The Mercy Seat of God was placed inside that Most Holy Place, behind the veil. Leviticus 16 tells us that only the high priest, on one day out of the year, the Day of Atonement, could enter the Most Holy Place where the Mercy Seat of God was. The high priest had an elaborate ritual that he had to perform to be prepared to go behind the veil. The penalty of not being properly prepared was death.
In other words, no one could get to the Mercy Seat of God except indirectly through the high priest and even he took a big risk doing it.
Hebrews 9 gives us very good insight into what happened at the moment of Jesus Christ's death. He was a perfect sacrifice who had no need of ritual to make himself clean before he could atone for the sins of the people. Instead, when he tore the veil, he opened up the way for all to get to the Mercy Seat of God. He became a High Priest forever! The last one ever needed. The veil was torn because nothing now separates us from God! We have direct access to him through the blood of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul assures us that we are now the temple of the Lord, both individually and corporately as a church (1 Corinthians 3:17 & 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21). That is the truth behind 'nothing can separate me now'!
The veil was torn. That veil restricted access to God to just one man, one day every year. The veil was torn because God came to man! No longer do we have to wait in fear and trembling for the high priest to come out of that mysterious secret place where God dwells on earth and assure us that our sins are forgiven. Now we have direct access because that place where God dwells on earth is in us! What a great and glorious blessing!
Next time you sing that wonderful worship song "At the Cross," please open your heart to fully see it's glorious reminder of what Christ did for us, not just in his shed blood but also in the torn veil. Sing that song like you've never sang it before because truly nothing separates us from God!

On Oaths and Dying

In the last part of Acts, Luke tells the story of how Paul ended up in Rome. That story's very interesting, but one part in particular is very intriguing. In Chapter 23, more than forty of Paul's countrymen hatched a plot. They had "bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul."At the end of Acts, Paul is very much alive and residing in Rome waiting for his audience with Caesar.
In this day and age, oaths aren't that big of a deal, but back in Paul's day, an oath breaker at the very least lost his honor, at the worst he may lose his life. So, if Paul lived more than four years after that oath (see 24:27 & 28:30), what happened to the forty men who took the oath to kill him?
We know that the human body can survive at least forty days without food, but four years? I don't think even the longest hunger strike ever has gone on that long! Did the men finally break down and start eating again after Paul slipped out of their clutches, or did some of them actually keep their oaths and slowly starve to death?
We don't really need to know. Maybe one of the reasons Luke threw this in was because in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught his disciples to not make oaths, but to merely let your yes be yes and your no be no. He said "And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black."
Making an oath like that - to not eat or drink until they kill Paul - is really foolish. It assumes you have a lot more control over life than you do. You may be thinking that you would never do anything so foolish, but is that so? Have you ever said to a worried child "I'm not going to die"? How can you make such a promise? Why would you make such a promise?
What those kinds of promises do is over inflate our importance. The point you should address isn't "will you die and leave me?" Instead, the point needs to be that even if you do die, the child still has God. Don't go for an easy answer. Go for the one that's going to help them learn to trust God rather than trust you. You'll certainly have to do a bit more talking than a simple, "I'm not going to die, sweetie," but it's well worth it to teach a child a very important lesson about the heavenly Father.

Building a Blog

After reviewing my blogging failure, which I talked about last blog, I thought about how I could overcome my problems. One of the issues for me is having the time to write the blog. I have a reminder in my Outlook, but most of the time I just dismiss it or send it to sleep. The reason for that is that I don't want to take the time from whatever I am currently working on to work on my blog. It's especially hard when I'm trying to do a serial blog. It's not that I don't love doing it, it's just that I don't feel as a strong a passion to doing it as when I'm writing a book or a message that I know when and where I'm going to give. Part of that is in knowing I have an audience, part of it is in knowing I'm doing what God has called me to do. Since I don't know I have an audience for my blog, I don't have the urgency to write. On the other hand, there's the "if you build it they will come" school of thought. Why should anyone read my blog if I'm not blogging? That comes up against: Why should I blog if no one is reading it? Do you see my problem? So (and maybe this is the secret to successful blogs), I'm not writing my blog for anyone but me! If someone happens to drop by and wants to take a sneak peek into my thoughts, they're welcome. In the meantime, I'll just blog selfishly. I love to 'hear myself talk' anyway!

Lessons in Failure

For some odd reason, my blog makes me think of failure. Go figure! Could it have something to do with the fact that I can't seem to get it right? I can't seem to be faithful in writing my blog. I can write a three hundred-twenty page book, a forty minute message or a ten page academic paper, all with relative ease and generally in a reasonable length of time, but I can't stick with a blog. Why is that?
Failures fall into two general categories. There's the old familiar sin type of failure - a rebellious refusal to obey parents, having an affair, holding up a convenience store, lying to cover your tracks. Then there's the kind of failure that comes from a lack of knowledge - the wall you built fell down, you didn't make it out the door on time, you can't seem to do a blog right.
The secret to recovering from failure is three-fold - first you have to recognize that you have failed. This may seem like a no-brainer, but trust me, I know of people who have affairs but they don't think they failed. Their spouse did and they're just responding appropriately. Those people cannot recover from failure.
Second, determine whether your failure was a sin-type that you need to repent of or just the garden variety lack of knowledge. Prayer and discussing the issue with trusted godly friends is the best way to do this.
Finally, with the same aforementioned help, figure out where you went wrong. How did you get on the wrong track? If you sinned, you allowed something to grow in your attitude that prevented you from recognizing and rejecting temptation. Ask God to help you get back to the right attitude. If you simply failed to complete a task in the right way, maybe you lacked the knowledge to succeed, so seek the knowledge; maybe you don't have the right abilities yet, so get some more practice under your belt, take some classes; maybe you were approaching it from the wrong angle, so seek the right angle.
I have the knowledge and ability to write. I haven't yet found the right angle for writing a blog! That is why I'm a blog failure. I'm going to take the lessons that I've learned from that failure and see if I can't find the right angle to be a successful blogger. I hope you'll drop in occasionally and see if I'm learning to get it right.

What We Believe In

Last blog we looked at disbelief in the Gospel of John, this one we’ll start looking at “belief.” First, what does the gospel say we are to believe “in”? Nine times Jesus says believe “in me” (6:35; 7:38; 11:25-26; 12:44, 46; 14:1, 12; 17:20). Twelve times we’re told people believed “in him” (2:11; 3:16, 18; 4:39; 6:40; 7:31, 39; 8:30; 9:36; 11:48; 12:11, 42). They also believed “in his name” (2:23); “in the Son” (3:36); “in the Son of Man” (9:35) and that “you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (11:27). Twenty-five times the Gospel of John specifically shows belief in the person of Jesus. In many of the passages there is a clear statement of his divinity – he is fully God. In 12:44, Jesus says when we believe in him, we also believe “in the one who sent me.” (See also 17:21.) But he goes further. He isn’t just a holy man, sent from God, he claims equality with God: “You believe in God; believe also in me.” (14:1); “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” (14:10). The Gospel writer makes a very clear statement that Jesus isn’t just Messiah, he’s also God: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” (20:31). In 13:19 – if the newest NIV translation is correct (and other translations indicate it is, just not as boldly) – Jesus linked himself to Yahweh by using the phrase God gave to Moses when he asked who he should say sent him: “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you.”’” (Exodus 3:14) – “... you will believe that I am who I am.” (John 13:19) In John 12:36, Jesus told his disciples to “believe in the light.” (Remember that light is one of the keywords we found in our subject passage. In fact, it’s the rabbit trail that started this exploration!) This part of that rabbit trail is long enough for one blog. Let's pick up here next time.

The Seriousness of Disbelief

In the last blog, we looked at what the Gospel of John said about the disbelief of the people, what they didn’t believe in, why they didn’t believe and what would happen because of their disbelief. Why is this important to understanding our subject passage? First, theologians generally accept that in spite of translators’ quotation marks or red lettering (ancient Greek didn’t use quotation marks), John 3:16-21 was not said to Nicodemus by Jesus. (For an easy check on this, see the newest NIV, 2011.) Linguistically 16-21 doesn’t fit with the rest of Jesus’ statement. In vv. 10-15, Jesus was speaking of the present or the future (“you people do not accept our testimony” v. 11; “I have spoken ... and you do not believe” v. 12; “the Son of Man must be lifted up” v. 14.) In verse 16, the tense becomes past: “For God ... gave his ... Son”; “whoever does not believe stands condemned already” v. 18; “Light has come into the world” v. 19. (A deeper study will reveal even more evidence. See for yourself how it doesn’t fit. In fact, remember how much it's like the prologue? I recommend a good commentary to understand this fully.) This passage is the gospel writer’s comment on what has already happened – Jesus has already died and brought eternal life to believers. When the gospel writer says “they have not believed” (3:18), all the things I mentioned before, the author has already seen happen. He is stating a foundational truth about faith that he will prove in the course of the gospel. We love to quote John 3:16, but we generally ignore John 3:18 even though it has a very powerful message too. It tells us that if you do not believe in Jesus, if you ignore his life, his works, his teaching; if you cling to the religion you know instead of seeking the truth – you will be condemned! You will not receive eternal life. That’s pretty serious stuff! But it doesn’t have to happen that way. Next time we’ll explore some of the evidence for belief.

Hello Again

It's been a long time since I last blogged. I hope you don't mind if I confess that the reason for that is because I've been discouraged, enough so that I was almost depressed. I've been writing for two years now. That means I don't have a job so I'm not making any money. Though I've gotten lots of great feedback on my books, I haven't gotten lots of money! I truly believe that I've been obedient to God in writing the stories he's given me. I have to believe that he has indeed given them to me. Not only do I get good reports about how my books have impacted people for God, but the actual mechanics of my writing is impossible. I've written ten books in two years, and they're not little paperbacks just thrown together. They average 120,000 words. That's about a 300 page hardcover book. They are also well crafted, edited and reviewed at least three times after the first draft is complete. I also layout the book in InDesign, including the cover. I am about to finish publishing my sixth book - and I only started writing in May 2009. Without God, that's not possible. But like I said, I'm not making money. Too many people in the Christian world want us to believe that if we're not financially prosperous, we can't really be serving God. I've heard too much of that lately, so I've been struggling to understand what's going on. If I'm really serving God, why isn't he giving me the obvious blessing of financial prosperity? Exploring the true teachings of the bible on financial prosperity is too much for this blog. At this time, all I really need to say is that I don't know the answer to the above question. I also don't know when or if God will ever bless me financially. It doesn't matter. The strongest evidence tells me that God has given me a calling. My responsibility is to use the talents he's given me for his glory. God is responsible for the results. If he chooses to not get the books I write into the hands of thousands of people, that's his right. My right is to decide to follow him or not. If I choose to follow him, I must do it regardless of any obvious results. I do choose to follow him. I do choose to write. That said, I still don't like to blog as much as I like to write my stories! I can't promise that I'm going to become much better at keeping up with my blog, but I am at least back on track. If you're really curious to know how the John thing that I was blogging about works out, you'll be happy to know that I've already written the next two posts. I shouldn't have too much trouble getting them up. I hope you'll come back.