Grace and Consequences

Today my message will be on David and Bathsheba. It’s a story of grace and it’s a story of consequences. Most people equate grace with the removal of consequences and this is completely and utterly wrong. Science tells us for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I believe this could be equated with sin and it’s consequences. Sometimes we receive grace from the consequences of our actions, most of the time we don’t.

David sinned with Bathsheba, that was bad enough, but the attempt to cover his actions placed him on a slippery slope to an eventual murder. The prophet Nathan confronted David with a parable, a symbolic story to show David what he’d done. David not realizing he was hearing a parable, pronounced his own judgment declaring what should be done to a man who did such a thing. “The man deserves to die,” David said. That was in fact what David’s sin deserved at that time in history, maybe even today. Instead David, when he realized he was the man in question, confessed and received grace and was forgiven.

That being said, the consequences still came to call. Everything God said would happen to David, still happened. Consequences are not a sign that God has removed his grace, as a matter of fact it’s just the opposite. God allows us to experience the consequences of our actions by His grace. Consequences are designed to turn us back to him, to bring us to a place of repentance, because it’s in repentance that we turn to Jesus and find grace and forgiveness.

Consequences are not a sign that God has given up on you, they’re a sign that you are on the wrong track and need to turn back to God. Remember sin and God are on opposite ends of a continuum. To turn to one is to turn away from the other. Consequences are designed to turn us back to grace.

A Modern Day Parable

There once was a young man driving down the road of life, going too fast and in the wrong direction. People tried to warn him that the bridge ahead was weak and wouldn’t sustain him, but what did they know? They hadn’t been down this road, and even if they had, it was long ago.

Finally one day, he came to the bridge. It looked fine and he charged ahead. The bridge failed under the weight of his speeding car and he plunged into the pit below, falling to the bottom with a mighty crash. When he regained consciousness, a mysterious stranger was helping him out of his car and then helped him to climb out of the pit.

Hurting and broken but wiser, the young man made a decision. He would be the bridge’s last victim. He would honor the man who helped him by keeping people out of the pit. Day after day he positioned himself just up the road from the bridge trying to get people to turn around. He would wave his arms and yell and do what he could to get them to stop. “The Bridge is Out!” He cried. Some looked at him as if he was crazy. Some gave him the finger. One stopped and said, “Who are you to tell me what to do? Who gave you the authority? Who are you to tell me to turn around?” Everyone who passed him felt totally justified as they plummeted off the cliff.

Most of the time it felt like thankless work, but the residual pain of his own injuries and the memory of the mysterious stranger compelled him to continue. Occasionally someone turned around and that made it all worthwhile.

How do I know this? I am that man.

IllustrationFriday.com Challenge: Yield

IllustrationFriday.com Challenge: Yield

I think it really is this simple. God loves you, wants what’s best for you and His way leads to life. To turn from that way is to really mess you up.

Joshua, near the end of his life challenged the people of Israel and he said this…
if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

IllustrationFriday.com Challenge: Suspense

This one made me think of the old joke:
Q: “How do you keep an idiot in suspense?”
A: “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
I know it’s a little mean and yet it’s funny in a strange sort of way. It’s a little deception, a little bait and switch, a set up. You bite on this one thinking you are going to hear a funny joke, but you don’t realize that if you fall for the joke, you will be the butt of it. Fall for it and you get burned.

That’s sort of how sin is. You bite on temptation thinking you are going to experience some pleasure. but if you fall for it, you get burned by it. There are lots of set ups in life that aren’t funny at all. Be careful what you fall for. Temptation can leave you feeling like an idiot.

An Illustration of Life

Sometimes we make life out to be so darn complicated and when it comes to right and wrong, good and evil, sin and righteousness, it’s not difficult at all. I got this illustration on my prayer walk one morning and I think it sets it up very nicely:

(Can’t see the illustration? Click here)

For the believer (at least) it’s pretty much this simple—God and sin can’t coexist. Therefore sin and God, good and evil, righteousness and sin are opposite sides of the same line, the same continuum. This means to go to one is to turn your back on the other. The two paths will never meet. To turn to God is to turn away from sin and to turn to sin is to turn away from God. Yes it really is that simple.

The problem is that we (even the strongest believers) find ourselves going in the wrong direction and often and that is NOT okay. Praise be to God there is a solution. He gave it to us when He gave us His Son Jesus Christ. Remember life is a continuum, you’re headed either in one direction or the other. So if you find yourself headed in the wrong direction, all you need to do is turn around. That turning around is called repentance.

Which direction are you headed? If you’re going in the wrong direction, the solution is really easy.

Turn around.

Video of the Day: Writing in the Dirt

A trap was laid for Jesus. One he supposedly could not beat. A woman caught in the act of adultery was thrown before him, and his enemies demanded he cast judgement. The law of Moses said she was to stoned to death, the law of Rome said only the Romans could hand out capitol punishment. Either way Jesus was in trouble. They thought they had him beat, but Jesus found the third option and in that option is hope for us all.

Repentance

In the last post I began a three post series on the basics–Three things we all need to know if we want to serve the Lord. Yesterday we dealt with sin. Yes I know for some of you this is really basic stuff. My challenge for you is to share it with someone who needs to know.

So what do we do about sin? Well the answer is pretty simple but the actual doing can be a real challenge. It’s repentance. Now I know this is another really unpopular word. Say the word ‘repent” and many get an image of a straggly street preacher carrying a big sign and screaming about the end of the world. While there may be some truth to what the street preacher has to say, I think he paints a bad picture of repentance.

Repentance basically means “turn-around” it’s looking at the stuff that you know is wrong in your life and deciding to turn around and go in the opposite direction.

It’s pretty simple really. God and Jesus have nothing to do with sin. They are diametrically opposed to one sin. To sin is to go in the exact opposite direction of the way God is moving, so if you find yourself there, resist the temptation to keep going and see how it works out and turn around.

Repent.

Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Numbers 19-20; 1 John 4; Psalm 99
You can also download your own chart here.

Sin

If we’re going to serve the Lord with our gifts there are three back to the basics topics we really need to cover. The first is sin.

This word is most unpopular in our society today. A lot of people see it as something that only comes out of the mouths of the judgmental but the truth of the matter is it effects every person breathing on the face of the earth. You, me, everybody. In case you don’t believe me ask yourself, “Have I ever done anything I knew was wrong, on purpose?” No one but Jesus has ever gotten that question right. You’re a sinner, welcome to the club.

The Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It also says that the wages of sin is death. Life’s 100% mortality rate bears out this fact. Don’t beat yourself up, that’s counter productive. The word sin’s original meaning is to miss the mark. In our case the mark is Christ and his perfection and we all fall short of that. We live in a fallen world, sin is in our DNA from our very first parents in the Garden of Eden, it’s not leaving without a fight.

Fortunately we’re not alone in the fight and yes we do have to fight. Sin destroys and kills. It ruins lives, tears families apart and damages us almost beyond repair. Sin is especially heinous for those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ. Our sins force those we are supposed to be showing the way to scream “Hypocrite.” Sin in the church brings dishonor to God, the exact opposite of what we are supposed to be doing. Any terrible story you ever read in your life, any deadly disease, anything destructive in this world can be traced back to sin sometimes our own and sometimes we’re just getting hit by the splatter of someone else’s. Ultimately it can all be traced back to the choice in the garden. “Everybody sins” is not an excuse it’s a wake up call.

We need to stop sinning, we need to pray and we need to change direction and that leads to our next concept…

Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Numbers 17-18; 1 John 3; Psalm 40
You can also download your own chart here.

Why Do Artists Get a Pass?

Artistic License

Some time ago, I was doing some set painting at a local theater and a few of us stage parents and the director were talking about how directors often would rather work with nice people who work hard and cooperate than with more talented people with bad attitudes and work ethics, although occasionally a person is just so talented that you put up with their attitude for the sake of the performance. This brought to mind a question. Why do artists get a pass? I mean lets face it, we hear the stories almost daily of celebrity artists (actors, musicians, etc.) who exhibit some extremely antisocial behavior. For some reason we tolerate it, buy their products and make them rich. We would be mortified if our children behaved in the fashion of some of these folks and yet we tend to write off the “sins” of the talented because they are talented. Why the double standard?

I mean we’ve all heard bad behavior and general weirdness excused due to the “artistic temperament.” We’ve all heard tardy, lacka-daisical and rude attitudes being excused by simply saying, “what do you expect, he’s an artist?” I know some will say, “But nobody gets my vision. I’m misunderstood.” So are lots of people, so again I ask, “Why do we get a pass?” Could it be talent? Sure some people hold us in awe because we can do something they think they can’t, but everyone is talented and I’ve often said there have been hundreds of times I’d trade my artistic gift for the ability to fix my own car and while people may respect our abilities as artists, when the bottom falls out of the economy we move to the bottom of the food chain pretty quickly. Is it possible to be an artist and still be a kind hearted, level headed, well adjusted, responsible, polite and punctual human being? Lord, I hope so.

I don’t know how the rest of the world works but for those of us who are both artistic and followers of Jesus Christ, anything else we do is superceded by the fact that we belong to Jesus. Translation—we don’t get the pass. After all I can’t picture Jesus walking around with the attitude of “look, I can turn water into wine and raise the dead. You’re lucky to have me and I’ll act however I darn well please.” If we’re his followers, we need to take the same attitude.

We all have our struggles, we all have our weak moments and none of this is to be seen as a beating, but too often we let our talents and the praises of men to go to our heads. So check yourself. Are you believing your own press releases? The Bible says Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment… It further says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Which one are you? Your gift comes from God and is to be used to His glory.

You might be asking, “Why is this so important?” because God has entrusted us with an awesome mission. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that when God reconciled us to himself through Jesus, he entrusted us with the ministry of reconciliation calling us to be Christ’s ambassadors. In other words we represent Jesus with our lives. As children of the ultimate Creator, we need to not only be excellent artists, we also need to be excellent people, representing Jesus as He is, as best we can. Tear up your artist pass and show the world Jesus.

Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Genesis 48, Job 30-32
You can also download your own chart here.

Radical Jesus

Radical, Revolutionary, Rebel, Jesus. Not words you’d think of as going together and yet part of the reason Jesus came was to overturn a broken world system that steals and kills and destroys. Jesus never sinned, never did anything wrong and yet many people wanted Him dead and strangely it wasn’t so much the people that church folks might call “sinners” that screamed for his death. It was the religious community that led the cry. This video explores that concept in greater detail.
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Radical. Revolutionary. Rebel. They’re words that create an image in our minds aren’t they? But now let me say another word, Jesus. Most people can’t imagine using those words in the same sentence and yet to imagine Him as anything else is to miss a big part of who He is. We have done a great disservice to the world in the way we portray him. The Jesus we’ve painted seems wimpy up until he dies on the cross for our sins which we see as an act of humble surrender and it is to a point but it’s something much greater as well.

We evangelicals have spent so much time talking about the cross and the resurrection and they are amazingly important things, but how often do we talk about what made people want to kill Him? See Jesus didn’t just go with the status quo. He turned over the tables in the temple. He love the ones most people called unloveable and he called society’s elite on their garbage. His message of love was so radical that most of the religious leaders entrusted with preparing the way for his coming didn’t even recognize Him. As a matter of fact they were the ones screaming loudest for His death. The people wanted Him dead because His message made them look too deep into their own hearts.

Be careful how you think. Most of the time when we see Jesus really get in someone’s face in the scriptures it’s someone religious. Someone whose pride makes them feel like they’re better than everyone else.

One of the best stories of this is found in Matthew chapter 9. Jesus has just called Matthew the tax collector to be one of His disciples. Now if Jesus had wanted to be popular with the religious establishment or cared about public opinion at all this is a move He would not have made. Tax collectors were hated by pretty much everyone, they were seen as turncoats and con men because they would rip the people off. Matthew has to see this as redemption and a fresh start and he’s so excited that he throws a party so all his friends can meet Jesus. The problem is when you’re an outcast like Matthew the only people who will hang out with you are other outcasts. Well it’s not a problem for Jesus and He goes to the party. These are the people He came to save. But about the time Jesus is knee deep in meeting these people where they are, the religious folks show up and start to judge. They basically ask Jesus‘ disciples why does your teacher eat and spend time with the scum of the earth. The implication of their question is really clear. If this guy was worth anything he’d leave these people and hang with respectable people, you know people like us. Well Jesus hears them and here’s what He said. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ He’s not telling them they are good. He’s telling them that their religious act are not going to save them and that if they had the Father’s heart they would be helping him not mocking Him.

Jesus didn’t come so we would be more religious. Jesus’ call was to radical love and humility and service, to Loving God first and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Following Him is not always safe and it’s not always popular. It’s not just the path to heaven when you die, but also a call to an amazing adventure to this life. Jesus is not just the silent lamb led to the slaughter. He’s the lion of the tribe of Judah and as CS Lewis wrote, “He’s not a tame lion but He is good.” What do you want to be? I want to be a radical just like Jesus. His sacrifice may have been an act of submission to the Father, but never forget it was the victory blow in the ultimate battle, the battle where evil did it’s worst and radical love still won.