Colin S. Smith's Blog, page 43

10 Great Sermons about Jesus Christ

Do you like listening to sermon audio? Do you like to watch sermon videos? If so, you’ll love this list! Here are 10 sermons about Jesus from Pastor Colin Smith.

If you like these 10, then check out Listener Favorites 2019, a CD that contains the most requested messages of Pastor Colin from our listeners over the past year.

The following sermons about Jesus show that He can be trusted, He wants you to be saved, He is God, He knows you completely, and He is the savior. There’s a sermon on why Jesus came to earth, and there’s one on the name Emmanuel. Finally, there are sermons on how Jesus brings joy from pain and how He gives rest.

1.) He Can Be Trusted







2.) He Wants You To Be Saved







3.) He Is God







4.) He Knows You Completely







5.) He Is The Savior







6.) The Ascension of Jesus Christ







7.) Why Jesus Came







8.) Emmanuel: God With Us







9.) Christ Brings Joy From Your Pain







10.) Jesus Will Give You Rest

The Biblical Story of the Body

There is a good, better, best pattern to the Christian life. To be in Christ is good. To be with Christ is better, better by far. But even for those who are with Christ now, the best is yet to be. 

I want to encourage you as we look together at what the Bible has to say about the story of the body, starting at creation and culminating in the resurrection body. We are going to look at four doctrines that take us through this narrative and teach us the importance of the body.  

Creation: God made us body and soul  

The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7). 

The doctrine of creation tells you what you are: A body/soul unity. God made the body of Adam from the dust of the ground. It was a biodegradable corpse, but then into this corpse, he breathed the breath of life. So the life of Adam is a body/soul union. 

This is the reason that the Bible sometimes speaks about death as an “enemy,” or as the “last enemy.”  Because death is the undoing of our nature. It is the tearing apart of what God has joined together.  

You have a cell phone. But if it is not connected to a network, it is no longer a phone. It cannot fulfill the function for which it was made. The same can be said for the network. The fact that there is a cellular network is of no value to you if you do not have a phone. It is the joining of the two together that makes this wonderful gift of telecommunication possible.  

God created your body as much as he created your soul. All that God has created is good. That is why he will not scrap it and start again. What God has made, he will redeem, and that means your body as well as your soul.  

Fall: Sin ruined us body and soul  

Our bodies, as we experience them, are very different from the bodies that Adam and Eve experienced as they were created by God in the garden. They had no aging, no disease, no pain, and no death. All of that came with the entrance of sin into the world.  

Sin has afflicted every area of our lives. That would include tooth decay, cholesterol that goes up, energy that goes down, skin that sags, bones that ache, eyes that need glasses, and hearing that declines.  

We live with the trials of chemical imbalances in the body, and hormones flying around out of control. On top of that, a multitude of diseases, maladies, and conditions that afflict various people at various times during the course of their lives.  

Incarnation: Christ became one with us in body and soul 

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). 

God became a man in Christ Jesus. The body of Jesus was a body like ours with a central nervous system. He grew in strength from a baby to a child to a man, and he knew what it was to be hungry, thirsty, and weary.  

The first heresy, the first false teaching that the early church had to contend with was not the denial that Jesus was God, but the denial that he was man. In that culture people got to thinking, “How could God, who is pure spirit, possibly get mixed up with something as base as the human body?”   

There was a nervousness about the Son of God taking on human flesh, but that is precisely what the Bible teaches. That’s why you find in 2 John 7:

Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. 

If the Bible said, “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word remained spirit” (John 1:1), we would have to limit God’s interest in our lives to the things of the spirit like prayer, meditation, and bible study. It would mean that God was concerned with your heart but not with your home; with your spirit but not with your schedule; with your character but not with your activity.  

But the Bible doesn’t say, “the Word remained spirit.”  It says, “the Word became flesh!”  God entered the world of noisy kids and pushy parents, the world of overcrowded schedules and unscrupulous traders, the world of relentless pressures and unending demands.  

When Jesus went to the cross, he died, not only to save your soul, but also to redeem your life! That means God invading every part of your life– marriage, checkbook, career, kids–everything!

Resurrection: Christ will redeem us body and soul  

All religions have some belief in the idea of survival after death. This is also true of popular culture. That’s why when they made a movie about the Titanic, Celine Dion sings of how “My heart will go on.”  Some idea of the survival of the soul is common to humanity.  

But the resurrection of the body is unique to Christianity. Only Christians have a risen Savior. At the heart of our faith is the great truth that the tomb was empty, that the corpse of Jesus was raised to life, and that all who belong to him will share in his resurrection.  

The resurrection of the body is a Crown Jewel of the Christian faith. It is a truth to be treasured and put on display for all to see. We should be proud of this and commending it to the world.

It is a promise to excite our interest, a hope to anticipate with joy. It is a tragedy that many Christians do not have a firm grasp on this wonderful truth.  

I have met many Christians, good people, who have the sub-Christian idea that what God has prepared for us is a kind of half-life, a compensation for those who did not have the strength to continue with real life in this world. 

But friends, the resurrection is the purpose for which you were created by God and redeemed in Christ! 

Photo Credit: Unsplash 

5 Key Connections: Heaven, Inheritance, and more…

Here are 5 Key Connections from recent Christian articles around the web, including one on how angels teach us about heaven, and one on how we can enjoy our inheritance today.

Angels’ Nature Shows Us What Heaven is Like (Colin Smith, Unlocking the Bible)

It’s hard to get our arms around the idea of being “actively engaged” in heaven. The reason is that everything we enjoy in this life is experienced through the body. We enjoy running, but how do you do that without legs? We enjoy listening to music, but how do you do that without ears?

Your Story Tells of Him (Heather Cofer, Well-Watered Women)

Others who are still trapped in darkness need to hear about the miraculous power of the Gospel to bring us from death to life. Let’s not allow the enemy of our souls to taunt and threaten; he has no say. Let’s listen to Jesus and what He has to say because His opinion is the one that matters.

3 Types of Legalism (R.C. Sproul, Ligonier Ministries)

The gospel calls men to repentance, holiness, and godliness. Because of this, the world finds the gospel offensive. But woe to us if we add unnecessarily to that offense by distorting the true nature of Christianity by combining it with legalism

How to Enjoy Your Inheritance Today (Alistair Begg, The Good Book Co.)

The greatest gift of God to his people is God. The greatest joy of heaven is God. Your greatest joy today is God.

Like A Little Salt (Joel Beeke, Meet the Puritans)

Perhaps you call yourself a Christian, but you bend and bow as the winds of culture blow. You do not hunger and thirst for righteousness, but long just to fit in, and so you change your colors like a chameleon. Saltiness requires us to obey God no matter what other people may think.

Glorify God by Looking to His Nature, Not Your Work

Exciting phrases, easy acronyms, and memorable lists formed from dense works of systematic theology can be helpful for the everyday Christian. While these reductions of God’s Word and His nature help us understand general frameworks, they are unable to help us understand everything the Bible teaches.  

It is one thing to know and use the phrase soli deo gloria, and another thing to know how to glorify God. If we only know the five solas, then we know we are to glorify God. However, we are left with a deficiency to articulate the concept of God’s glory and illustrate how that transforms the mundane and ordinary parts of our lives.  

What is God’s Glory?  

So, what is God’s glory? First, it is something that can’t be summarized or shortened. A devotional from Ligonier Ministries writes:   

God’s glory is a concept that we have an awareness of without necessarily being able to describe it in all its fullness.  

This is important to grasp because glorifying God means living for His glory. We need to know what that is before we can glorify Him. And since there is no one-sentence summary of it, we must approach and reflect on the place where His glory is revealed to us: The Bible.  

In his study on the Gospel of John, Richard Bauckman writes this about God’s glory:   

[It is] the radiance and character of God, the grace and truth about which Moses heard, but which the disciples of Jesus have seen in his human person and life.  

Notice a few things: God’s glory is about His character. This seems simple, but often when we think about glorifying God we think of what we should do with our strengths. That’s the wrong place to start! You don’t have to be radical to glorify God—Jesus was radical for you. Look to Him.  

Also, note from this definition that we come to know his glory through hearing and seeing. In other words, you acknowledge God’s significance and presence in your life through your posture toward God, inclining your thoughts, words, desires, and actions toward His glory.   

For the Christian, that means you can glorify God right now—wherever you are. Here are four postures to help you live in light of God’s glory.  

1. Surrender to Jesus’s Lordship  

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)  

If we compiled all our accomplishments and set them before God, His perfect standard of right living would weigh our accomplishments insufficient (Isaiah 64:6). Our sin severely and deeply defiles us.   

However, Jesus’s accomplishments satisfy God’s perfect standard. While we stood condemned in our sin before God, Jesus took on our sin and endured God’s rejection and wrath. By faith in Christ, we are clothed in His righteousness and cleansed in His blood.  

Part of surrendering to Jesus’s Lordship is understanding that everything is under His rule. The Galatians verse above makes it seem like we are to be completely done with the world, but Ephesians 1:15-23 helps us understand this idea better.   

In this passage, Paul talks about how Christ’s work “put all things under his feet” (1:22). These things were not eradicated but placed under his feet.   

Take culture, for example. Some Christians assume that we need to avoid secular culture. This assumption implies that this part of the world has not been put under Christ’s feet. As Christians surrendering to Jesus as Lord, we embrace culture to glorify God.   

2. Steward God’s Gifts for His Glory  

Why… do you submit to regulations “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” … according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism… but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:20-23)  

Asceticism, which today may look more like depriving yourself of God’s good gifts through creation, culture, and society, has the “appearance of wisdom.” It is of no value to you. Don’t mistake glorifying God with simply retreating into a “Christian” bubble. 

God provides us with a living, active, and transformative relationship in Christ with himself. Through that relationship, God cleanses us of our impurities, clothes our nakedness, frees us from sin’s power, and conceals us from corruption. He is conforming us into Christ’s glorious image! 

In Christ, God makes us whiter than snow, purer than gold, and enrobed with greater glow and splendor than Joseph. We cannot attain more purity, holiness, and blamelessness than that.  

Christ accomplished these things at a great cost to himself. And Jesus didn’t redeem us just to make us feel pleasant about ourselves and spiritually superior to others. He redeemed us to advance the Gospel and his kingdom into our neighbors’ minds and heart through our engagement of his good gifts. 

Of course, we want to make sure we aren’t making an idol out of anything. That is why the first item—surrendering to Jesus’s Lordship is so important.

We need to ask ourselves: Are the gifts we enjoy fostering thankfulness and honor toward God?  

3. Realize that God is Greater than His Gifts  

Whom have I in heaven but you?   
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.   
My flesh and my heart may fail,   
but God is the strength of my heart  
and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25-26) 

A paradox that evildoers prosper while the righteous struggle confused Asaph. Initially bitter and ignorant, Asaph nearly stumbled into envy of the arrogant in their success. But God remained ever-present with Asaph.  

Here in this Psalm, Asaph reminds himself and us that God must be our ultimate hope. Recollecting God’s faithfulness to his people, Asaph guided himself out of jealousy into worshipping the living and true God.  

Besides God, nothing can hold up the infinite weight of our expectations for supreme joy and love. Only God can provide the everlasting, limitless, and constant peace which we crave.  

In Christ, God has provided for our greatest need: a way into his presence. And when he gives us gifts, we enjoy them more than we ever could before because we intimately know the One who gives them.   

4. See God’s Glory and Enjoy His Gifts  

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17).  

God designed his gifts in creation and culture to serve as a beam for his people to gaze through and along to experience himself. He is the radiance of our existence.  

Do not immerse yourselves into the beam and ignore God. Do not retreat from the beam and attempt to experience God apart from his design.  

God has designed humans with a set of sensory tools—taste buds, ears, eyes, noses—to soak in tangible real-life experiences. Additionally, God designed us with a mind and heart for us to connect these experiences to Himself, attributing honor and thanksgiving to Him as the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the universe.   

You see, in Christ, our ability to properly participate in this way within the world is restored; rather than becoming strangely dim, the things of earth grow strangely bright.  

The world pressures us to find our identity in our performance and tempts us to abuse God’s good gifts and to fear the grievous loss of these gifts. God has reserved for us an inheritance.  

This is the Christian hope: the bodily resurrection of the saints into a new world full of potential for adventurous, exciting, and enjoyable experiences joined by unhindered honoring and thanking God for such experiences.  

Photo Credit: Unsplash 

Confessions of an Arrogant Heart

If you know me, this article is for you. If you’ve ever discovered my arrogant heart by teaching me or disagreeing with me, this is for you. 

In
a more general sense, if you’ve ever tried to collaborate with or
constructively critique another person, and they lacked the teachability
or humility needed to receive your words, this is for you too.  

I first titled this article “Confessions of an Arrogant Soul,” but I changed it for two reasons: First, an “arrogant heart” is a biblical phrase I’ve seen throughout Scripture (Psalm 101:5; Isaiah 10:12). Second, I wanted to use the word heart because in my struggle with arrogance I’ve had to confront the fallenness of my own desires.  

For there was a part of me that loved my arrogance. It established deep roots in my heart. And in my pursuit of this sin, I did the following:

1.) I covered up my arrogance by saying “I’m just opinionated.”

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. (Proverbs 18:2) 

A euphemism is a word or phrase used to make something sound better. This is a great tool when used appropriately. For example, when you need to convince your child that the flu shot won’t hurt as much as they expect, you say it’s “just a poke.”

However, this same tool can be used for ill purposes. For example, when I convince myself that my arrogance isn’t a sin, but it’s just that I’m an opinionated person.

As if the disposition to have strong opinions makes me any less culpable! The definition of arrogant is being “disposed to exaggerate one’s own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner.” If I am naturally compelled to make sure everyone else knows what my opinion is, am I not exaggerating my own worth?

As Proverbs reveals, part of the problem in getting over my sin is that I have to admit something embarrassing: I have taken more pleasure in stating my opinion than in actually learning the truth. My euphemism was a cover-up.

Jesus knew the heart of man and he uncovered its filth:

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. (Mark 7:21)

There is a grace to these hard words. Jesus is helping us see that there are real, glaring problems inside of us. And we won’t ever be redeemed from them if we can’t call them what they really are.

2.)
I refused to listen.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. (Matthew 18:15)

I once shared a story about how I took a critique well from a friend of mine in college. That was far from normal for me.

My arrogant heart causes me to love myself. Now consider the social implication of that. If someone comes to me and admonishes me, even lovingly, my pride pushes back in defense of my self. Because, in sin, I love me and not anything outside of me.

The verse from Matthew above uses the word listen and clearly it means something more than hear. In this situation, a person is going to another person and telling them about some fault. There would be no gain if the person with the fault said, “I hear you, but I will do nothing about it.” No! Listening here has to do with acknowledgment and repentance.

My arrogance may allow me to hear someone’s critique, and I may even be able to recite it perfectly back to them. But if I cling to my pride, I will not change.

An arrogant heart is
in danger of bringing upon itself eternal consequences. Look at Matthew 17:5,
where God the Father said of Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am
well pleased; listen to him.”

Certainly, God the Father was saying not only hear Him but also Follow him. Be changed by his words. If we are arrogant in heart, we will miss the wonderful message of salvation found in Jesus Christ.

3.)
I desired controversy. 

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words… (1 Timothy 6:3-4)

This verse is talking about teaching, but I think it also applies to conversations in small groups or over the dinner table.

As I got older, I started to realize just how prideful I was, even in talking theology with family friends, because I began to see how I craved disagreement. I liked getting into arguments—not so I could help others or learn more but so I could win.

In loving my pride, I neglected Jesus’s teachings. I neglected the importance of repentance and reliance on His righteousness. And, I sought after my own glory than living for the glory of the king.

In doing so, I
dragged others into the whirlwind of pride as well. I was a stumbling block—looking
for controversy and hoping to disrupt the unity of Christian fellowship with
unimportant quarrels.

God’s
Word Gives Me A Clean Heart

Christ’s death on the cross purchased for me right standing with God. In Christ, I am justified. I am no longer a slave to sin. And, in Christ, I am promised more than justification. Christ promises to perfect (complete) me:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16, italics added)

In my pursuit of perfection, I want to be rid of my arrogant heart. I want to have a heart that is perfectly inclined toward the glory of God. But, I cannot do this. I cannot change myself.

But this verse shows me that Scripture has the power to do that. And so, in response to newfound sin in my life, I read Christ’s word and cry out to Him, like the Psalmist, and say:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Two Ways Every Christian Can Be Pastoral

The last time I saw my grandfather alive he made fun of me for being a pastor. You’ve probably heard the jokes or even made them yourself. “What does a pastor do all week anyway? You only work like one hour.” I wanted to tell my grandpa we have two worship services on Sunday morning, and they go for three hours by themselves. But I didn’t think arguing would help. 

That’s one extreme view, the view of a pastor who works little. The other extreme is a pastor who works all the time, like 80 hours a week, and no one else in the congregation does anything because “real ministry” only counts as such when done by professionals. Yet there is no way most churches, my own church included, could exist if only a handful of pastors did all the pastoring. 

Every Christian a Pastor and Every Church His Parish 

You may have heard the phrase, “A man’s home is his castle.” The saying, as I understand it, maintains that no matter the actual wealth of the owner, size of the home, or lineage to nobility, there is a dignity to the owner and his home. The home may not be a castle, but he’s still the king of the castle. 

As Christians, we could tweak the phrase to something like, “A Christian’s church is their parish.” Of course, the word parish reminds us of priests and Roman Catholicism, but don’t get hung up on that. I simply mean to say every Christian has the responsibility and privilege of being pastoral. 

God speaks of his people this way in both the Old and New Testaments. When God saved his people from the house of slavery in Egypt, he told them they would be “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). Later, God set apart the specific tribe of Levi for the task of full-time, vocational ministry. But the principle was clear: whether you’re a Levite or not, the whole nation of Israel was to be priestly.  

In the New Testament, the Apostle Peter picks up on this same language when he speaks of all Christians as “a royal priesthood” called to “proclaim the excellencies” of God (1 Peter 2:9). We most often associate proclaiming with preachers, but Peter encourages us that, though only some proclaim from a pulpit, every Christian preaches. 

Two Ways for Every Christian to Serve Pastorally 

You don’t need the office of pastor to be pastoral. In fact, your church would shrivel and die if the Christians within your church stopped pastoring. There’s way too much pastoring to go around for only the pastors to pastor.

Think about it like this. Doctors are great, but the medical community would become crippled if every kid who scraped his knee had to go to the ER.

Yet, just as with medical procedures, there are some things better left to those called to the office of pastor, as spoken of in passages such as 1 Timothy 3:17–7. In all things, Scripture should be our guide.

But as I think about the church I pastor, many ways come to mind that we could grow in “church-wide pastoral ministry,” but I wish we engaged two particular areas with more passion. 

First, every Christian can pastor by seeking sheep who stray. 

It doesn’t take a large church for people to fall through the cracks, though “falling through the cracks” has become a cliché that makes us callous to the reality. The actual experience can leave bruises that don’t heal quickly.  

Christians have always found encouragement that Jesus is the kind of shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine secure sheep to find the one lost sheep (Luke 15:1–7), which is why pastoral ministry must involve this same thing, seeking those on the fringes and pulling them back.  

When you notice a person miss a few weeks in a row, find ways to follow up. Sometimes it’s actually easier for the Christian in a pew to notice a person missing in action than a pastor who is up front.  

And don’t fear you’ll be prying into people’s business. I know if I left a church, I’d want people to notice. Wouldn’t you? 

Second, every Christian can pastor by discipling others. 

I know that discipling, not unlike preaching, can sound like the sort of thing only done by professional Christians. But it’s not. A disciple just means a follower of Jesus, and part of being a follower of Jesus involves helping others follow him. It’s what we do. As a pastor, discipling is a part of my job, yet our church would be far more healthy if dozens of people were doing it too. 

You might not feel ready or equipped to seek out someone to disciple on your own. I’d recommend you approach a pastor in your church and tell him you wanted to disciple others. I’m sure he would help you. Also, Unlocking the Bible has also created Open, a new website resource for you to use to share the whole story of the Bible with others. Use that as you disciple others. 

Here’s one more way to pastor through discipleship. If you come to church with people, before the conversation slides to what’s for lunch, who’s mowing the lawn, and how much you’re ready for a nap, keep the conversation on the worship service—what confused, challenged, convicted, and comforted you. 

I’m sure people at my church talk about my sermons on the way home when I preach a lousy or controversial one, but I wish the pastoral debriefing of the ways God spoke through his Word to our hearts became the norm. 

A “Reverse” Game of Jenga 

The membership book I wrote for our church is called Each Part Working Properly. The title comes from a verse in Ephesians 4:16 where Paul writes that when each part of the body of Christ works properly, the body “builds itself up in love.”

I often think of this as a beautiful reversal of the game of Jenga. When you play Jenga, as the wooden structure gets taller, the whole thing becomes less stable. But that’s not the way Paul says it should be in local churches. When each part engages in pastoral ministry, the church gets more stable, not less. 

My grandpa never really attended church, hence his confusion about my role as a pastor and how much I work. But I wish he had attended, not only so he could have heard me preach the gospel but also so he could have experienced the love of Jesus Christ embodied by a church full of pastors. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Angels’ Nature Shows us What Heaven is Like

Believers who have died are with Christ in heaven. They don’t yet have the resurrection body, they don’t yet have the new earth, but they are eagerly waiting for these things, fully conscious and actively engaged in heaven.

It’s hard to get our arms around the idea of being “actively engaged” in heaven. The reason is that everything we enjoy in this life is experienced through the body. We enjoy running, but how do you do that without legs? We enjoy listening to music, but how do you do that without ears? And, we enjoy seeing the world, but how do you do that without eyes?  

All that we do in this life is mediated through the body, and now the body of a person you love has been laid to rest. We know from Scripture that they won’t get the resurrection body until Christ comes again. So, what in the world can they possibly be doing right now?  

Angels Give Us a Model 

Here’s what has helped me on this question. God has given you life in this world through the union of a body and a soul. He breathed the breath of life into your mortal body. Death is the separating of the soul from the body, which is why death is such a fearful enemy. It is the undoing of our nature, the tearing apart of what God has joined together.  

But angels are souls or spirits without bodies – ministering spirits (Hebrews 1:14). Jesus said “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). Wayne Grudem explains: “Angels are created, spiritual beings, with moral judgment and high intelligence, but without physical bodies.” [1]   

So we have, in the Bible, created beings that are spirits or souls without bodies, and we are told a great deal about their activity.  

The activity of angels, who are ministering spirits, gives us a model, a pattern, for thinking about the life and experience of our believing loved ones who are now with the Lord. We have precedent for this in the words of Jesus, who says that in at least one regard, we will be like the angels in the resurrection (Mark 12:25).

Let me give you some examples of what angels can do, as souls or spirits without bodies, that will point us to the kinds of things that our believing loved ones can do, right now in the presence of Jesus, while they are waiting for the resurrection. 

Angels see, and so do believers in heaven. 

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).  

Angels see the face of God. They are spirits. They do not have eyeballs or retinas, but they see the face of God. And the same is true for your believing loved ones.  

Faith has been turned to sight for them. They will have eyes in the resurrection, but right now they see, just as angels (who do not have bodies), can see.  

Angels speak, and so do believers in heaven.

Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:13-14).  

Angels are spirits. They do not have vocal cords. They don’t have bodies, but they are able to communicate the praise of God. And the same is true for your believing loved ones. They will have vocal cords in the resurrection, but right now they speak just like the angels.  

Angels rejoice, and so do believers in heaven. 

“There is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).  

There is nothing in Scripture to suggest that believers who are with the Lord are somehow watching the details of our lives down here. But Jesus says that there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents:“If there is joy in heaven, why would believers who have gone there not share in it?” [2]  Especially parents or grandparents who prayed for children or grandchildren for 10, 20, 30 years and died before they saw them come to faith. 

Angels worship, and so do believers in heaven 

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne… the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:11-12). 

Weak is the effort of my heart and cold my warmest thought. / But when I see thee as thou art, I’ll praise thee as I ought. [3] 

Angels inquire, and so do believers in heaven 

…things into which angels long to look. (1 Peter 1:12). 

Angels are highly intelligent, and their minds are constantly engaged in trying to fathom the wonders and the glories of God. You don’t need a body to do that.  

In Revelation 6, John sees souls in the presence of Jesus. They were made visible to John in the vision just as the angels were made visible to the shepherds on the night that Jesus was born. John sees these souls in heaven, a particular group of believers who had been killed – they were martyrs – and they’re actively engaged asking questions: “How long, O Lord?”  

There are some things that, like the angels, these souls in heaven do not yet know. God has more for them that is yet to be revealed – when Christ comes. And they are looking forward to it, just as we are. But until then, they are actively engaged. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash 
 
 

[1] Ibid., p. 397. 

[2] Maurice Roberts, The Happiness, of Heaven, p. 67, Reformation Heritage, 2009. 

[3] John Newton, from the hymn: How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds, 1774. 

5 Key Connections: Hagar, Discipleship, and more…

Here are 5 Key Connections from recent Christian articles around the web, including one on what Hagar’s life can teach us today, and another on the surprising places of discipleship.

Three Glimpses of God’s Love Seen in Hagar’s Life (Colin Smith, Unlocking the Bible)

Living in the tension of a home where there is little peace? Living with the emotional abandonment and the spiritual wounding you may have experienced? I am saying to you today from the Scriptures that God loves you deeply. God sees you. He knows you. He hears your affliction. By God’s grace, and through his Word, he draws near to you today with the command to repent, and with a promise of blessing. 

At Home Discipleship (Lara D’Entremont)

My ideal of discipleship involved weekly meetings, formal Bible studies, answers to hard questions, and in-depth counseling. But this wasn’t what God provided at the time. Rather, God provided me with something much less intentional, but no less formative—a family who showed us hospitality.

Lose Your Best Life (Jen Oshman)

For so many of us in the West — and I am looking in the mirror with grief here — Christianity is the cherry on top of an already sweet ice cream sundae. There’s a sanitized prosperity theology lurking in the corners of our hearts and minds: I am a child of God. It’s his will for me to live the good life — my best life, right here, right now.

Reading the Bible (Josh Moody, God Centered Life)

Is the Bible really enough for me to hear from God? Can God actually speak to me, directly, personally, radically, thrillingly, demonstrably, compellingly, through… reading the Bible? And should I do it, even when I don’t “feel” excited by it? The answer to all these questions is an unadulterated yes.

Some Things Are Worth Doing Poorly (Seth Lewis)

It’s true for exercise and prayer, cooking and learning, loving and just about everything else. As G.K. Chesterton put it, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

Give Your Children the Good Gift of God’s Word

Witness new parents and, despite the unnerving sleeplessness of those early days, you will likely see aweing smiles and hear expressions of joy and every good intention possible for their new addition.

While little can prepare a new parent for the round-the-clock needs of a new baby, nothing can prepare a new parent for the overflowing love.

Scripture does not chide parents for their brimming desire
to give good gifts to their children—rather, it assumed that God’s design is
for parents to have full, generous hearts. Proverbs highlights what children
might anticipate from godly parents:

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. (Proverbs 1:8-9)

By the time this Proverb was written, Israelite parents had
already been instructed to teach God’s ways to their children:

And these words [the law] that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

Proverbs 1:9, then, designates this earlier parental charge
for instruction and teaching of God’s Word to children as joyous head- and
heart-adorning: “a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.”

Head Wreaths and Neck Pendants

A literal head wreath and pendant for the neck in the
ancient Near East were considered symbols for honor and prestige. For example, when
Joseph had favor with Pharaoh, he was adorned with a gold chain around his neck
(Genesis 41:41).[1]

This necklace was a “badge of rank” or “dignity.”[2] And
Egyptian heroes wore a great wreath after victory over enemies, signifying what
was considered the vindication of power and status that accompanied being a
victor.[3]

In the Egyptian context, a neck pendant and head garland
could theoretically be given for honor to even a deceitful leader or a wayward
victor-king. The qualifier for these was not the inner man, but the outward status
or victory.

Similarly, unwary parents can cause dissonance between God’s good purposefor a parent’s overflowing heart and their children receiving the goodness God intents. Perhaps an abundance of entertainment, possessions, or social and educational status can become viewed as the best honor and prestige a parent might enable.

But Proverbs 1:8-9 corrects. God’s own Word, crowning and
ruling the mind—what richer education? And God’s own Word, hanging beautifully
upon the heart to steer its direction—what finer possession?

God Adorns Us with His Victory

According to Psalm
149:4, in God’s pleasure with His people, He “adorns” us with His victorious
salvation. Reflecting Him, the honor of parenthood is to adorn children with a
knowledge of God’s grace and ways.

He allows His people who are parents to, as it were, place His
garland of grace upon a child’s head and fasten His pendant of true instruction
and teaching around the neck.

Parents wanting to give generously to their children might feel inadequate, like enough can never be bestowed. But the grace of victory in Christ over sin and death and the value of God’s pure and wise ways have already come from the heavenly Father for parents to give.

God’s intention for the parent’s full heart is not
ultimately about what we have to give, but adorning our children with what God
has already given us. Biblical instruction and teaching “themselves are the adornments”[4]
that outrank other good gifts.

As parents, we can pray that our children hear and do not
forsake the instruction and teaching of the Lord for any lesser honors or values
(Proverbs 1:8), as we display the same through what we communicate to our
children is most prized to flow from us to them.

And in rightly directing our hearts, we can find that passing forward God’s grace that cannot be fully fathomed abundantly satisfies our longings to give.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

[1]
Proverbs 1:9 and Genesis 41:41 are related according to Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset,
and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible,
(Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 1: 391.

[2] Ibid.,
1:42.

[3] Bruce
K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1–15, The New International Commentary
on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004)
187-188.

[4]
Ibid.

3 Daily Wages of Sin in Your Life

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) 

I love re-reading parts of Scripture that I have read many times. And Romans 6:23 is one of those verses I’ve read a lot. I’m pretty sure I used this verse in every Bible class paper throughout high school and college. 

What’s remarkable about the Bible, and maybe you know this from first-hand experience, is that every time I approach it with a willingness and eagerness to learn, God’s Word teaches me something new.  

Sometimes I grasp onto some nuance, and other times I pick up on something so obvious, I think: How did I not see this before?  

Romans 6:23: Wages of Sin 

I’m not sure whether it’s a nuance or an obvious thing, but I recently read this verse again and realized something I had not before. I’ve always read it as: if you’re a sinner without Christ, at the end of your life you’ll experience eternal death, but if you are in Christ, you will receive the free gift of eternal life.  

While that’s true, I realized the phrase “wages of sin” seems to imply not only what happens when we die but also what happens now in our lives.

Don’t take this as a commentary on first-century life, because I’m not an expert, but people don’t normally get paid for all their work when they retire, right? People usually get paid directly or soon after they work.  

When we sin, we receive its wages. And when we rest in God’s grace, we receive God’s free gift. It may be helpful to make a distinction between lifetime wages and daily wages. Lifetime wages of sin, or the end result, means eternal death. But what are the daily wages? 

3 Daily Wages of Sin



Turmoil – Death of Comfort  

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; 
    my eye is wasted from grief; 
    my soul and my body also. 
For my life is spent with sorrow, 
    and my years with sighing; 
my strength fails because of my iniquity, 
    and my bones waste away. (Psalm 31:9-10) 

David had committed a great sin and he received its wages—turmoil. Hear his words: in distress, eye is wasted, life is spent, sighing, strength fails, bones waste away. This is a man in turmoil due to his own actions.  

What causes this turmoil? In the beginning, God created us to be in union with him. But humanity sinned, and we corrupted our nature. We now cannot do good (Psalm 53:3), but through God’s great grace there’s still something inside of us that seeks good: God “has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). 

We know good exists, but we cannot do it. And so, when we sin, we are reminding ourselves of our inability to achieve what our hearts desperately want—union with God. This brings us great turmoil.  

Jesus speaks to those who were weeping, to those who were mourning. He says: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). He’s saying that there’s a way out of the turmoil. If you recognize it, admit your sin, and grieve it in your life, Jesus is there to comfort you.  

But for those who don’t acknowledge sin’s daily wages, those who continue in sin, turmoil turns into apathy. And no mourning means no blessed comfort—in other words, the death of comfort. 

Strain – Death of Peace  

You keep him in perfect peace 
    whose mind is stayed on you, 
    because he trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3) 

When we sin, we are putting something else before God and His Word—our own reputation, our selfish desires, etc. Here in Isaiah, God’s Word promises to keep those who trust in Him “in perfect peace.” How is this so? Romans 8:28 says: 

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.  

Is this verse saying that everyone who believes in God will have a perfect, easy life? No. It’s saying that if you are all-in for God’s glory, then you know for sure that things will end well because God has all the glory and will make his glory known to the whole world. 

If you are not all-in for God’s glory, perhaps you are part-in for his glory and part-in for your glory, then you will lack the peace that comes from having your mind “stayed on [God].”  

When we sinfully put ourselves before God, we open the door for great strain in our lives. Your money may run out, your successes may end, and your relationships may fail. I know I spend way too much time straining to bring myself peace amid these uncertain things.  

Don’t let strain reign in your life—killing the peace you can obtain through God’s Word.  

Foolishness – Death of Wisdom  

Haughty eyes and a proud heart, 
    the lamp of the wicked, are sin. (Proverbs 21:3) 

A friend of mine sat in a parking lot pulling up directions on her phone. A truck tried to pull through into the spot next to her. The only problem was that there was a shopping cart there, slanted toward her car. The cart then slammed into her car and scratched its way across the doors. 

Meanwhile, my friend sat wide-eyed in horror inside her car as the truck continued its attempt to move forward. Finally, it stopped. She got out to confront the driver. 

She approached the window, saw a man in the driver’s seat, and told him he had damaged her car. My friend was reasonably upset, and all she asked of him was to exchange insurance information so she could leave. 

The man, however, became visibly agitated. He started yelling at her, blaming her for the accident. My friend then called the store, and a manager came out with two security guards. When the man in the truck saw them, he started blaming them for the accident. It took a while, but he eventually gave her the information. 

Outside the moment, it’s easy to identify this behavior as foolishness. But in the moment of our sin, it’s not so easy. In the moment, our sin fuels that “lamp of the wicked” spurring us onto a proud heart. How can we resist this?  

Psalm 119:10 says:  

The unfolding of your words gives light; 
    it imparts understanding to the simple. 

Submitting ourselves to God’s will and looking for wisdom in his Word brings true light. So, don’t seek the false light from “the lamp of the wicked,” resulting in foolishness, but receive wisdom and true light from God’s Word. 

Daily Wages of Faith 

These are but a few things that sin will cause in your life. Why choose it? Choose to have faith in Jesus and experience the free gift of eternal life. This will happen in the future, and for now, we receive its daily wages: his comfort, his peace, and his wisdom. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash