Tag: joy

Draw Near to God

SAMSUNG
SAMSUNG

Hebrews 10:22

We live in a day that emphasizes methodology and technique above character. People in our time suppose that it doesn’t matter what you are as long as you do what you’re supposed to, whatever that means. This can be seen in the attitudes of people towards star athletes on their favorite teams. Character doesn’t matter until the athlete does something so horrendous and out of control that people have to notice. However, people of true greatness avoid that trap. For example, consider John Adams at the time of the Boston Massacre. He was then a prominent lawyer with a growing practice and enlarging political prospects. Then came the tragic events of the evening of March 5, 1770. The British officer and soldiers who fired on the crowd were charged with murder. No one would defend them in court—except John Adams. Though he feared for his reputation and even the welfare and lives of his family and himself, he did not hesitate to take the case. Why? He did so because he believed in the rule of law and the right of every man to a fair trial and a proper defense. So he risked everything to do what was right.

Every church must have a sense of Christ’s character and want to demonstrate his character and way of life before a watching world, and more importantly, to God. To say this another way, our individual spiritual lives must be in right order before the collective “body life” of our church can be right. A crucial aspect of this way of life is drawing near to God. When Christians draw near to God, then they realize that they are near to each other. Consider Romans 15:7.

The Holy Spirit in this text gives as tremendous exhortation: “let us draw near”. But think of the One whom the writer encourages us to approach. He is the true and living God. He is the God who is glorious and majestic (1:3), the Creator of all things (3:4; 11:3). He is angry with sinners (3:10; 10:27) and is all-knowing (4:13). He is also the Judge of mankind (10:30-31; 12:23; 13:4) and is a consuming fire (12:29; cf. Deuteronomy 4:23-24). Anyone that takes these words seriously might want to draw back. We might well fear him rather than want to be near him. You see, in order to draw near to God, we must have a correct concept of the God who is there and who wants us to draw near! This involves an ever-deepening knowledge of God’s revelation of himself in the Scriptures.

“As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods. Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and to ponder his nature, and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom, and power —the straightedge to which we must be shaped. Then, what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness. What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. What wore the face of power will prove itself the most miserable weakness. That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.1.2)

However, (and this is the good news!), because of God’s free grace to us in Jesus Christ, we can approach God with joyful confidence. This joyful confidence rests on what we have in Christ. “Since we have… let us…” (10:21-22). In the words of Margaret Clarkson in the hymn “We Come, O Christ, to You”: “You are the Way to God, your blood our ransom paid; in you we face our Judge and Maker unafraid.” Here we see the logic of the believer. Or to say this another way, God wants us to love and worship him with our minds. Think about what you have in Christ, and then think about what you should do because you have been so richly blessed. Our nickname for this is “Therefore Christianity”. Know what you have in Christ, and therefore, live this way. How then should we think? Don’t merely moan about your failings. Proper mourning over sin is fine; in fact, it is commendable (Matthew 5:4), as long as it doesn’t leave you in the swamp of depression. True spiritual sorrow over sin in a believer will lead the saint back to Christ and real repentance (2 Corinthians 7:8-11). However, don’t look for a supplemental experience, as if Christ were insufficient. Instead, by faith lay hold of Christ and then live like someone in Christ should live.

By these words God the Holy Spirit is revealing to us God’s desire for close fellowship with his people (1 John 1:3-4; 1 Corinthians 1:9). God wants you! Therefore, a Christian who is living by faith in Christ should have a good self-image. On the other hand, if anyone is struggling with self-image problems it shows some sort of failure in the life. It might be sin and a guilty conscience or more specific sins or weaknesses, such as not laying hold of spiritual blessings by faith, or having little faith, or becoming disconnected from Christ by legalism, or not meditating on the Bible, or not keeping in step with the Spirit’s leadership or grieving the Holy Spirit. To draw near to God is the way to have a little of heaven on earth. In heaven you will be with God; on earth he would be with you. Is there any difference in kind? So then, we see a spiritual attitude of which we should be giving evidence and promoting. What is it? We should be exhorting one another to draw near to God. “Let us draw near to God.”

Grace and peace, David

God at Work

Thoughts for a Monday on 2 Corinthians 7:5-7

Every disciple or learner of Jesus Christ desires to experience God at work: in the world, in one’s nation and community, in one’s local church, and in one’s own life. We want to see God glorified, people coming to the Lord, and God changing us and providing for us. What we may not want is the way our Father in heaven carries out his activity in our lives. We want God to just speak a word and all will be well. We seem to prefer that the Lord would do it the easy way and act apart from his chosen means, such as the good news about Jesus and the efIMG_0547 (2)forts of his people, especially the latter. Getting people involved means that there will be a mess involved of some sort or another. Since God has chosen to use means in a fallen world, pain will also be part of the process, and we’re simply not happy about pain and suffering and troubles. Like the rest of us, the apostle Paul had to experience troubles as he served the living God. Here he tells his dear brothers and sisters in Christ in Corinth about what he experienced, so that they can know how God is at work in their lives.

God worked through troubling circumstances (7:5). We require reminders about God’s sovereignty. God is always in charge of every circumstance of life (Rm 8:28). Nothing happens apart from his will of purpose, though he permits much that is against is will of precept. God will achieve his plan to bring glory to his name through Christ and his people. But in the day to day accomplishment of his plan, a lot of sinful mess happens. As God’s plan progressively occurs, the Holy Spirit constantly acts with the Scriptures, and in and through followers of Christ to produce the successive steps of change that God has willed. As we are in the midst of the macro, meso, and micro events that the Spirit uses, we can become quite perplexed (cf. 4:8). But our perplexity and troubles do not mean that God has lost control. From our place in the middle of swirling events, it is impossible to see the whole picture, apart from what God has revealed in his word.

Paul, like us, was caught in the middle. And it hurt! It is not easy to be pressed against the grinding wheel as the Lord of heaven and earth sharpens his instruments. God has predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son (Romans 8:29). Paul says that this affected his entire person, both inside and out. There might be a slight emphasis here on toll this was taking on his body. Since we are a functional unity of physical and spiritual, what affects the one affects the other to some degree.

On the outside there were conflicts. (Notice the plural.) It is impossible to know exactly what these conflicts were, since Paul does not say. He was somewhere in Macedonia at this point, and in that place he had experienced persecution. He seemed to always be in come conflict with false teachers. But at this time, he only mentions conflict in general. Not all our troubles are of our own making. We should realize that Christ’s people may encounter opposition of various kinds from those outside because of Christ and the gospel.

On the inside there were fears. (Notice the plural again.) From the letter we can discern that at least some of these involved Titus and the Corinthians. How was Titus received at Corinth? How had the Corinthians reacted to the painful letter he had sent? Had he caused them too much pain? Had Paul boasted too much about the Corinthians to Titus? Had Titus fallen into physical harm on the trip to or from Corinth (cf. 11:26, travel at that time could be very dangerous)? How extensive was the influence of the false teachers at Corinth? How widespread was the ungodly conduct in the Corinthian believers (cf. 12:20-21)?

I used to build homes. One of the great joys of doing that was that you could watch the steady progress from the site work to handing the keys to the new owner. Each day you could usually start from where you had the previous day. Problems from the weather or vandalism were relatively rare. But not in the gospel ministry where we have an enemy who daily seeks to ruin all we’ve accomplished. For this reason, we need to rely on the Lord in prayer constantly

God worked to comfort Paul (7:6). Here is one of the great “but God” interventions that we see in the Bible (cf. Ephesians 2:4). We need to know these, because we are in ongoing predicaments that would be hopeless, if not for the truth of “but God….”

Here is a reminder about God as the believer’s comforter. This is one of God’s characteristics; the present tense uses shows that it is one of God’s timeless attributes. Who is God? He is Sovereign and he is Comforter. God breaks into the unpleasant, painful, perplexing circumstances of his people to produce comfort. This is who God is. Paul experienced God this way. So will all who reach out in faith to him. This is God’s agenda during the new covenant age. As you read 2 Corinthians, you can see that the book of Isaiah was on Paul’s heart. It tells of the restoration of the God’s people through Christ and the gospel. And now in Christ, the new creation is here, and God is bringing comfort to his renewed people (Isaiah 49:13).

God worked through Titus to bring comfort to Paul. Christ’s people are God’s coworkers, not only in spreading the gospel and doing good works in the world, but also in comforting and strengthening one another. This is why as the temple of the living God (6:16) we should be acting to benefit other believers. God gave comfort through Titus’ presence. Titus was one of the gospel partners closest to Paul, serving as the apostle’s envoy or representative on many occasions. When Titus was on the scene, it was like Paul was there. Now Paul was glad because his dear friend was with him. Sometimes friends just need their friends with them. God gave comfort through the report Titus was able to give about the repentance of the Corinthians. As Paul’s emissary, he was able to give Paul a correct gospel evaluation of their spiritual condition. And it was good news (Proverbs 25:25).

Observe that Paul’s sorrows and joys were not limited by the boundaries of himself. He found joy in what God was doing in the lives of others. This is how our lives ought to be in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:26). Christ’s followers must not live for their own benefit! Others ought always to be on our hearts.

God worked in the Corinthians to produce change in them (7:7). Can people change? Yes, by God’s grace we can! People in Christ can change because Christ lives in us by the Holy Spirit.

So then, what happened in the Corinthians? They expressed their longings, which showed that their hearts were opening up to some extent, whether towards Paul or in a far reaching change of mind. They had deep sorrow, which Paul will speak more about in 7:8-11. They developed zeal. The nature of this zeal is unspecified at this point, but he will mention it again in 7:11. Clearly, Christ desires zeal in his churches; he has a distaste for lukewarm people (Revelation 3:15-16). We ought to examine ourselves. Do we have these three characteristics? If not, we are in a worse condition than the church in Corinth.

What their change produced in Paul—joy! Here is hope for those serving Christ. Because God is at work, he can bring joy out of deep sorrow. But there’s more; his joy was greater than before. See the change that God can bring in his people. Paul confessed his conflicts and fears, and those experiences were painful. But now he has a greater joy. It’s a strange path, isn’t it?

In Christ we can know the greatness of God, who comforts the downcast. Yes, our present condition might be filled with conflicts outside and fears within. But God uses them as opportunities to make his surpassing comfort known to us. Troubled believer, through faith in Jesus Christ draw near to God today. Cast your burden on him, and he will sustain you.