Cut To The Chase

Sometimes the Bible confronts us with a clear piece of truth. God cuts to the chase. As I was reading Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, which seemed to wander as it compared wisdom and folly, tossing in a few other seemingly random thoughts, verse 20 jumped right out at me, saying:

"Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."

That sentence is a short and direct statement of fact. There is no person, man or woman, who is completely righteous, which we are told means both doing good and never sinning.

Reading that verse this week, the week of Easter, points me straight to the cross and the empty tomb. At the time Ecclesiastes was written there was no one who lived who had met that simple definition of righteousness. And since that time there has only been one, Jesus. No one you know personally, such as a dear and precious grandmother, meets that definition. Neither does anyone you know and admire, such a famous person living now, or one from some other point in history. Neither does the person you see in the mirror. They each may do lots and lots of things that we would see as being good, but it is the "never sins" part that trips them up. Every single one.

Those sins, no matter how minor they may seem from our point-of-view, are a barrier between each person and God. We can't remove them. We can’t pretend they doesn’t exist. All we can do with them is turn towards God and seek for him to forgive the sins we've committed against him. And when we have faith in Jesus, as the one who saves us from our sin, that sin, each and every last bit of it, is forgiven.

At one particular point in time there was one man, who was righteous in doing good and never sinning. The Lord Jesus. For Jesus "doing good" ultimately meant laying down his life so that sin could be removed from all who believe in him as their Savior.

Try as I might I can't live the perfectly righteous life, but this week of Easter reminds me that because Jesus did, my faith in him brings me peace with God. May you find rest and hope by faith in him too.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Urgency

The other day I read an article that was posted to a Facebook group I belong to. The article, by a Christian author, had to do with grace, but the picture of grace that I drew from the article seemed very secular. Being kind and considerate to others. Being willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. These aren’t bad things at all. In my opinion they just fall short of what grace, as given from God to sinners, is.

God's grace isn't God giving me the benefit of the doubt over my sins against him, saying something like, "That's okay, just try harder next time." God's grace is God, looking at me, dead in my sin, and saying something like, "You can't save yourself, no matter how hard you try. My gift to you is the forgiveness of your sin, all of it, through the death of my son, Jesus. It is only through his death that you can have life."

When I read that article and thought about it a little bit the next thing that came to my mind was a quote I have taped to the pulpit of our church. That’s a picture of it in the upper right corner.

Richard Baxter was an English preacher in the 17th century, which was not an easy time to stand in a pulpit and proclaim God's truth. Baxter understood matters of  eternal life and death were at stake every time he entered the pulpit.  He preached as someone who understood that the need for salvation in Christ applied to his own life as well as the lives of those in the pews. He knew that the future, in an earthly sense, was uncertain, and so the time to hear and respond to the Good News in Jesus as now.

I put that quote on the pulpit to remind me of the urgency of preaching the Good News each time I stand there to read, explain and apply God's word. The things that seem like grace in a secular sense are fine, and I can encourage people to grow in them. But first, and foremost, I need to use God's word to show them their desperate state before God, and the grace offered through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dead in sin and with no hope of any kind, save that found in Jesus. May all who have been rescued by him have a sense of urgency as we point others to that same, and only, source of  true and everlasting life. Amen.

Envy

If I were to sit down to read my Bible merely for pleasure, Proverbs wouldn't be the book inside that I would turn to. There are any number of other books where the words just jump off the pages and shine in my heart. A few of these, in no particular order, are Genesis, Revelation, Psalms, John, Romans, Ephesians and Colossians. In a heartbeat I could start reading from them and feel the excitement of God's story come alive. But Proverbs? Not so much.

Proverbs is classified as wisdom literature, but sometimes in reading all the short sayings that make up so much of the book, wisdom seems kind of hard to see, particularly wisdom that fits into the overall storyline of the Bible, which is wisdom that points to Christ.

And with that mindset I was reading Proverbs the other day. Not because I was looking for delight, but because it was what came up for my Bible reading plan. Reading through the New Testament and Psalms twice a year, and the remainder of the Old Testament once a year, means that for roughly a week to a month each year, I read from Proverbs.

As I read Proverbs 23 I saw this in verse 17:

"Let not your heart envy sinners,

but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day."

On this particular reading of Proverbs that word "envy" caught my attention, because envy runs through my mind a lot. I'm not going to spell out any examples but just ask you to trust me that there are many of them, and that they are varied to many situations in life.

The proverb reminds me that while envy takes place in my mind, the real trouble is with my heart. There is dissatisfaction in my heart over the way a thing might be at a particular time, because my heart is not seeking rest in something that is true all of the time.

The thing that is true is that I have faith in Jesus as my Savior and Lord.

For the believer, fear of the Lord is not so much being afraid of God, as having deep reverence for him. When we think about the holiness, righteousness and justice of God there is good reason to be afraid of him, especially if we are living without faith. But with faith, which means trusting in Jesus, alone, to be forgiven of sin against God, we grow in reverence for the one who has rescued us and promises to hold us as his own forever.

That is the truth that needs to fill my heart more and more, so that envy has no place to take root. There really is no comparison between having saving faith on the one hand, and anything I could possibly desire to hold in the other hand.

Writing this is making me excited to see what previously overlooked gem I'll find tomorrow in Proverbs 25!

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.