We live in a world full of penalties. And if we are honest to ourselves, we love it.
Play any game out there. You only get a certain number of chances to fail before you are out. Baseball is an easy one. You get 3 strikes per at bat, 3 outs an inning, 27 outs per game. Football gives you 4 downs. Basketball gives you 5 (or 6) fouls. All of these games gives you a certain amount of time. We thrive in these environments because these penalties or clear roads of failure gives us a marker for our performance. We can easily measure how we are doing. We like to know where we are. We feel a sense of accomplishment when we achieve, pushed on by these boundaries of failure that are well defined and regulated constantly.
There is a sense where we have that in the Christian life but there is another sense in that we don't. We have clear instructions and commands, things that mark a failure to follow Christ. The thing is there is something else that we know.
Everybody fails.
There is no success when it comes to following the law, when obeying every command of Christ all the time for the rest of our lives. This is MADDENING at times. How do we know how we are doing? How many times can we fail before God says "I'm through!"? Then we can know, "well I still have 5287 failures left in my life before I am disqualified. I am doing pretty good!" In a world of rules and penalties, of goals and failures, we thirst for yardsticks. We search for measurement. God, instead put in place and only two things.
His immeasurable perfection.
His immeasurable mercy.
In Jeremiah 42, Judeans who were left after the Babylonian takeover are afraid. The governor that the Babylonians placed over them has been assassinated and they await the wrath of their overlords. They cry out to Jeremiah for a word from God. To show just how far they had departed from God, they ask Jeremiah to "pray to the Lord your God." These people had disobeyed so many times and had endured the wrath of God for their disobedience to the point where they say that God is not even their God anymore. And yet, how does God respond to them?"
"If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down...do not fear (the king of Babylon), declares the Lord, for I am with you, to save you and to deliver you from his hand. I will grant you mercy, that he may have mercy on you and let you remain in your own land." Jeremiah 42:10-12"
To a people seemingly hell-bent on disobedience, God offers mercy again. He has no reason to. They have not lived up to his law. Not only have they not lived up but they have betrayed him utterly. How alike are we? We live in complete view of his mercy and goodness and we still fail. We still choose the fleeting pleasures of this life to the eternal satisfaction of our God. Yet no matter how many times we fail, God shows mercy. He welcomes us back into fellowship, into his arms, into his love, into his blessing. We can have a lifetime of failure and God will still offer his hand of mercy to us. It is, as I said earlier, completely immeasurable, thoroughly incomprehensible, and never depleteable.
God frees us from having to measure ourselves, letting us live without comparison to anybody or anything. All we can stand by are his perfection and mercy, both immeasurable. His mercy is the only thing that is capable of filling the void left by his perfection and he gives it to us for this very purpose; so that we will know that in him, we cannot fail, we cannot lose, because he does not fail and he does not lose.
I must caveat this though. The very next verses show what happens when men sin too much. The Judeans reject God's mercy. The refuse to listen and they run. They are then killed and taken away by the Babylonian army. So God's mercy is never ending. It will always be enough. However, if we make a habit of rejecting God, we will do so again when it matters most. His mercy is sufficient but you MUST accept it.
"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts..." Hebrews 4:7
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Happy Valentine's Day?
Most singles hate Valentine's day.
We call it a Hallmark holiday or Singles Awareness Day. We bemoan its entirely commercial nature, call it completely unnecessary, become conscientious objectors to the whole idea of Valentine's Day.
Not that singles are alone in this. Men in relationships who do not have the romantic bent will hate it because their partner will have an idea of Valentine's Day they can never live up to. Its a day of the year full of unmet expectation that often ends in quiet disappointment.
I have never had a problem with Valentine's Day. I think it is because I have never been in a relationship, I don't know what Valentine's Day is "supposed" to be. In some sense, I don't know what I'm "missing". I've played along, joked with friends, hated on the commercialized nature of it, agreed with exasperated men having to live up to expectations, nodded sagely with those who say, "We don't do Valentine's Day," and generally just floated along while never really having any sort of feeling to it.
It hit me more this year. As I listened and read and talked to people, I wondered, "Why don't I hate it?". I know myself. I am desperately thirsty. If there is any day in the year that I should be reminded of what I do not have, it is this one. And yet...
The name, Saint Valentine first appeared in a Catholic book of martyrs in the 1400's though a "feast of Saint Valentine" was said to be instituted even earlier in the 400's. The importance is not really who he is or what he did but the fact that he was found and remembered as a martyr.
John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."
1 John 3:16 "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
You know it seems like every other day, we realize what love we have. However, this one day out of the year, we buy into the lie that culture has given us. We let stores and cards and people's stories ascribe to us our worth and define our identity like we never do around Christmas. Why have we let culture redefine this day? Because we want what the culture has for us. We want this redefined image of love and we forget what real love is.
Real love is what brought the Gospel to your ear. Someone loved you enough to face rejection and ridicule to give you the truth of Christ. Real love is what gave you the Bible in your language. Someone faced punishment and death to write and translate the Word and even more loved enough to distribute it. Real love is what is spread the Gospel to the far corners of the earth. Real love is what brought the Gospel out of the first century. Real love is what fueled the Gospel outside of Jerusalem. Real love is what kept Jesus on the cross, making sure that there even is a Gospel.
Love is the vehicle by which the Gospel has spread throughout time and space and into our hearts today. God gave of himself, all of himself for us. Men and women gave of themselves, all they had including their lives, for us. Unlike the culture that connects worth to chocolates and diamonds and dinners and teddy bears, countless people have told you that you are treasured by giving you their life so that you can hear the glorious truth of the one who loves you most. Don't buy into the lies because you are beautiful, you are treasured and you are worth every bit of that sacrifice because of the grace and the love of God himself.
So, honestly, have a Happy Valentine's day. It is worth celebrating.
We call it a Hallmark holiday or Singles Awareness Day. We bemoan its entirely commercial nature, call it completely unnecessary, become conscientious objectors to the whole idea of Valentine's Day.
Not that singles are alone in this. Men in relationships who do not have the romantic bent will hate it because their partner will have an idea of Valentine's Day they can never live up to. Its a day of the year full of unmet expectation that often ends in quiet disappointment.
I have never had a problem with Valentine's Day. I think it is because I have never been in a relationship, I don't know what Valentine's Day is "supposed" to be. In some sense, I don't know what I'm "missing". I've played along, joked with friends, hated on the commercialized nature of it, agreed with exasperated men having to live up to expectations, nodded sagely with those who say, "We don't do Valentine's Day," and generally just floated along while never really having any sort of feeling to it.
It hit me more this year. As I listened and read and talked to people, I wondered, "Why don't I hate it?". I know myself. I am desperately thirsty. If there is any day in the year that I should be reminded of what I do not have, it is this one. And yet...
The name, Saint Valentine first appeared in a Catholic book of martyrs in the 1400's though a "feast of Saint Valentine" was said to be instituted even earlier in the 400's. The importance is not really who he is or what he did but the fact that he was found and remembered as a martyr.
John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."
1 John 3:16 "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
You know it seems like every other day, we realize what love we have. However, this one day out of the year, we buy into the lie that culture has given us. We let stores and cards and people's stories ascribe to us our worth and define our identity like we never do around Christmas. Why have we let culture redefine this day? Because we want what the culture has for us. We want this redefined image of love and we forget what real love is.
Real love is what brought the Gospel to your ear. Someone loved you enough to face rejection and ridicule to give you the truth of Christ. Real love is what gave you the Bible in your language. Someone faced punishment and death to write and translate the Word and even more loved enough to distribute it. Real love is what is spread the Gospel to the far corners of the earth. Real love is what brought the Gospel out of the first century. Real love is what fueled the Gospel outside of Jerusalem. Real love is what kept Jesus on the cross, making sure that there even is a Gospel.
Love is the vehicle by which the Gospel has spread throughout time and space and into our hearts today. God gave of himself, all of himself for us. Men and women gave of themselves, all they had including their lives, for us. Unlike the culture that connects worth to chocolates and diamonds and dinners and teddy bears, countless people have told you that you are treasured by giving you their life so that you can hear the glorious truth of the one who loves you most. Don't buy into the lies because you are beautiful, you are treasured and you are worth every bit of that sacrifice because of the grace and the love of God himself.
So, honestly, have a Happy Valentine's day. It is worth celebrating.
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