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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
J.D. Greear
Read between
February 16 - February 16, 2023
I once heard someone describe the experience of reading the Bible like “looking through a keyhole and seeing an eye looking back at you.”6
I experienced that wonder through my parents. Seeing how real God was to them, how generously they treated people, how joyful they were in struggle and disappointment, and how quickly they ran to God with their problems gave me a glimpse of something I knew had to be real. Their lives made me turn aside and listen.
can’t remember ever being in the presence of another person who exuded such consistent serenity and joy.
what she was going through was nothing compared to what God had prepared for her in eternity—that our lives, whether we live to be 20 or 120, are only small drops of water compared to the expansive beauty of eternity’s ocean.
Her life was a burning bush that beckoned many to turn aside.
Like Moses, we may not be listening for him when he speaks. But he beckons us to turn aside and consider Jesus, his Voice become flesh, and the inspired record of Jesus’s message to humankind, the Bible (John 1:14–18; 2 Tim 3:16–17).
Three septillion one-trillion-megaton-bombs-per-second-energy-producing-exploding-nuclear-spheres vs. five energy-efficient lightbulbs for two minutes.
To state the obvious: God’s power is immeasurably greater than mine. It doesn’t even make sense to compare us.
So if the measure of God’s wisdom is as high above mine as his power is above mine, am I really in a place to evaluate it?
No one can comprehend [God’s work] under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it (Eccl 8:17). “No one” is a big category. It includes you and me.
Our inability to discern God’s purpose has more to do with how limited our perspective is.
The apostle Paul compares our journey in this life to the process of childbirth: temporary pain for long-term joy.
Paul said, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. . . . We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Rom 8:18, 22).
“When we get to heaven, it’s not that we look back and see the reasons bad things happen and say, ‘Oh . . . that’s why that happened!’
Rather, we will say, ‘What bad things?’ In that moment, we will be so consumed with God and our future in him that we will scarcely remember the process he used!”
Scripture tells us that a day is coming when God will undo every injustice and heal every hurt and that his end “product” will be stronger and be...
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On that day God will wipe away every tear, says the apostle John, and make all things new (Rev 21:4–5). To use the words of J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, he will “make every sad thing come untrue.” God doesn’t erase our memory of them; he shows us how they were all part of a beautiful plan. ...
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Our current world may not be the best place we can imagine, but it is the world best suited to bring us to that best world. God’s plan is not just to take us to heaven; it is to put heaven into us.
“If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.”4
No one, Solomon says, can comprehend God’s work while they live “under the sun” (Eccl 8:17). Our earthly minds are just not big enough.
Moses declared that God’s ways were altogether true and righteous even when he couldn’t understand them. He knew the God who had spoken to him out of the bush was the I AM of perfect truth and justice.
And forty more questions like these. In other words, “Job, are you and I really on level playing fields? I tell you what, Job. Let’s meet for coffee to discuss your objections to my methods. You bring your universe and I’ll bring mine, and we’ll compare. . . . Oh, what’s that? You don’t have a universe? Then maybe you’re not in a place to judge how I rule mine.”
God’s answer to Job’s queries is not really an answer; it’s a display. “Job, if you can’t even understand the natural world, can you really expect to understand the purposes of the eternal God above it?”
But God doesn’t tell Job this. He simply answers Job by showing Job how big he is. Sometimes that is all he gives us too.
But as you do so, do it with a proper posture toward the One you are addressing. God said to Isaiah, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa 55:8–9, ESV)
if our faith is conditioned on understanding everything, we’ll never believe. God often provides no explanation for his ways. Instead, he gives us a revelation of his character.
In many cases, we have to live out our days not knowing the precise reason for terrible events. But the cross shows us what they cannot mean. They cannot mean that God is absent or out of control.
The cross both reveals God’s intentions for the world and gives us insight into how he accomplishes them. He works in all things for his glory and our salvation.
My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore. (Ps 131)
Some things were simply “too wonderful” for David to understand, too “great” for his small mind. So during the pain, he clung tightly to the God who cared for him more than a new mother cares for her infant child. We may not understand all our Father’s ways, but we know him. The cross reveals him. Even where we can’t trace his hand, we can trust his heart.
God is too big for me to base my trust in him on my ability to figure him out. I trust him because I know that my Redeemer lives.
What I’ll surely be confused by in eternity is how a God of such infinite power and purity could have loved me.
most of us know what it’s like to fear the exposure of some part of our lives that we’d rather keep hidden.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. That’s not really me.” Yet . . . in that moment it was you, wasn’t it? In that moment, it was exactly how you felt. It actually was from the real you—the you that you usually filter.
But just because we filter effectively doesn’t mean the impure thought isn’t there. A lot of things stay buried in our hearts until the right set of circumstances evoke them.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that one day every thought, word, and deed will be laid bare, naked, and ...
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“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory!” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Isa 6:1–5)
In Hebrew, repetition expresses superlative. If something is really big, you say it is “big, big,” or if a lake is very deep, you say it is “deep, deep.” “Holy, holy, holy” is the only superlative in the Bible with a threefold repetition.1 God exists as infinite, undiluted holiness.
Isaiah learned two things about himself that forever changed his theology: his goodness was not that good, and his strengths were not that strong.
We might wonder if Isaiah overreacted. After all, he was a respected prophet. But his despair was fully justified when you consider what happened to others in the Bible who found themselves in the unfiltered presence of God’s holiness: Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the ark so it didn’t fall into the dirt as a group of oxen pulled it along the road. God struck him dead. For one forbidden touch (2 Sam 6:7)! Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for taking one look at the city God told her to flee. She lost her life for one glance (Gen 19:26). A group of seventy Israelites peered
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Goodness done in the context of cosmic treason still seems wicked.
Sin makes us detestable to a holy God. And our lives are saturated with it.
I am not only breaking the ninth commandment to not bear falsehood, but also the first, by caring about other people’s opinions more than I do God’s.
Those who delight in the misfortune of others are regarded as murderers before God (Matt 5:21–22).
