Month: September 2019

Beard Strokes: Short Devotional 007

At a time of extreme apostasy (falling away from the faith), the Israelites began to call out to God for a king. The account is found in 1 Samuel 8. Israel demands a king from God by asking Samuel, the current judge and prophet of Israel, to go before the Lord concerning this matter. Samuel was getting old and his sons were not good men. This prompted the elders if Israel to come and entreat Samuel.

God responded:

And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” 1 Samuel 8:7 ESV

We look at this passage disheartened because the people really did reject God, Samuel, and wanted to be like other surrounding nations. They wanted to be like the world instead of the being a witness to the world. They were a people of God, who were supposed to serve God and worship Him alone.

The fact is God had a plan for a king all along as we see in Deuteronomy 17:14-20. But not just any king. Not a man the people wanted, but a king God wanted. The people chose Saul (indirectly) because they rejected God, and later we see God choose David to ascend to the throne. Yet, David is not the king Israel needs either. His son Solomon, although the wisest man to ever live, was the antithesis to Deuteronomy 17.

The King The Lord had in mind all along is Jesus Christ. God Himself. The seed of David, the one who is now seated at the right hand of the Father and is ruling and reigning. May we be unlike the surrounding world and pledge our allegiance to King Jesus!

Photo Credit: George Case

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A Covenant with My Eyes

Lust is a very serious thing. A sin, although secret, turns into much more if left to itself. We are told not to commit adultery from the Law of Moses in Exodus 20:14. God makes it clear that we are to be committed to one person, our spouse, of the opposite sex mind you. These Laws were handed down by God to Moses on Mount Sinai with this one in particular having a strong stressor. If you break the marriage covenant, you are likely to commit the same unfaithful error towards the Lord. God takes fidelity seriously. Both in our marriage and our relationship to him.

Just as the Pharisee were puffed up during the days of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, we too can be prideful that we have been faithful to not cheat on our significant others. The issue is not actually with the action, but with the heart. With the intention of the heart the flesh soon follows. Just as our first parents SAW that the fruit was good, then they DESIRED it, then they TOOK it. We too can fall into this trap with just a glance.

Jesus made this very clear in Matthew 5:27-30.

“You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For is is better that you lose your members than that you whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go to hell.” ESV

Wow! Jesus doubled down! He took it a step further than anyone expected, pulling back the veil to reveal the heart. If you even so much as look at a woman/man with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart. Jesus goes on to show us the length in which we should be willing to go to rid the sin from our lives. Kill it. Destroy it at all cost. Speaking here in extreme hyperbole Jesus says we should tear out our eye or cut off our arm if it causes us to sin. In other words, get yourself out of that situation, turn off the TV or smash it with a baseball bat. Take the apps off your phone, and stop talking to the sweet girl down the hall at work during your lunch break. Hurt your feelings and your pride. The sin doesn’t come from your arm or your eyes, but from your heart. Jesus is not saying hurt yourself physically, but he is saying do whatever it takes to rid your life of this sin against God.

I will spare you the stats on porn use and the like throughout not only our country, but also in our pulpits. It’s terrifying. What I will emphasize is the gravity of the issue. Marriages are destroyed (before marriage and after) by the lust of the eye because it is never in secret. The verse in Numbers 32:23 comes to mind, “But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out” (ESV). What we look at with our eye and desire with our hearts will show itself in our lives in the worst ways. It could be the reason your marriage is terrible right now. Consider your own heart here. Are you failing in this area? It is important to be as Job and make a covenant with our eyes (Reference Job 31:1).

In the practical sense, do all you can to guard your eyes from sinning against God. If it means cancelling TV or deleting apps on the phone it is a small thing compared to the wrath of God. And more so it is a small thing considering the intimacy gained with your spouse and more so the intimacy of worshiping and honoring your God rightly. Pray that the Lord will give you eyes for only your spouse or to have eyes only for your future spouse. Honor God in this, make a covenant with your eyes. SDG!

Article first appeared in Matter of Theology at matteroftheology.com

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Beard Strokes: Short Devotional 006

God at beginning of time created the union of marriage. He created both male and female in His own image (Genesis 1:27). Placed them in the garden to keep it and multiply His image across the world. It is as if Eden would spread to the utter parts of the world on the means of God’s institution of marriage.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:24 ESV

Marriage done in the context and honor of God is nothing to be ashamed of. It should be celebrated in fact. God made it. The marriage between one man and one woman honors and glorifies Him. A marriage following God’s design is a marriage that can stand naked before God unashamed.

J.I. Packer in Knowing God states, “The Bible puts flesh on these bare bones of ideas by using pictures and analogies. It tells us that we know God in the manner of…a wife knowing her husband” (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 1973, p37).

Marriage is a picture of Jesus Christ knowing His church and His Church knowing Him. A testimony of the finished work of Jesus, who “paid the bride price” for His church. We can be bold and unashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:16) and be assured we will not be ashamed at His appearing (1 John 2:28). Celebrate marriage and honor God by it!

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Beard Strokes: Short Devotional 005

Jesus took naps. That should be enough to encourage anybody. Seriously. Jesus also got thirsty and hungry. He even went to the bathroom or the nearest rock. “Well, that’s a little much” you may say. The point is He was human. Fully God and fully man. This is what theologians call the hypostatic union. He is still in His glorified and resurrected human body sitting at the right hand of God.

Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who came down to dwell among us. John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (ESV).

He is the Word who was from the beginning (John 1:1). The Word made flesh, who was the one and only expected person in all of human history. Our first glimpse of His arrival is in Genesis 3:15, right on the heals of Adam and Eve’s sin against God. He shows His mercy to them by promising the curse reverser. Paul says it right in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory”(ESV).

Many cults and religious groups deny the deity (divine nature) of Jesus. Some even deny His human existence. If Jesus is not God, we have no hope. Likewise, if Jesus is not man we have no hope. Who could endure the wrath of God but God? Who could live up to the standard of God but God? Who else should die but a man because man sinned against God? Who else should be the substitute for man but a man? We have our hope in the God Man Christ Jesus. Think on these things.

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Beard Strokes: Short Devotional 004

In his book Knowing God, J.I. Packer askes a couple of questions concerning the motives of the Christian.

The question concerns our own motives and intentions as students. We need to ask ourselves: What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have it?

Knowing God, J. I. Packer p.21

With any endeavor we intend to make with the treasures of God and His word, we should, as Packer states, ask ourselves this fundamental question. What are we going to do with the knowledge of God we have gained?

Here is where the Christian needs to be careful because knowledge can puff up (1 Corinthians 8:1-2). It can make you proud. Make sure your pursuit of the things of God is for the right reasons. Not to win a debate or to beat up your loved ones with the knowledge, but rather to build them up with it.

Paul is encouraging throughout the New Testament in this very manner. In 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Paul says, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” Paul gets it. He had written about The Day of the Lord and wanted to encourage the Thessalonians with that knowledge so they could do the same.

As you draw closer to Christ in knowing Him and learning about Him, make it your intention to build up others around you with what you find. As Martin Luther once said, “We are all mere beggars showing other beggars where to find bread.”

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Beard Strokes: Short Devotional 003

People are precious no matter their background, ethnicity, or creed. All matter of men and women have been made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and thus all life is precious. The main issue in all scripture arises in Genesis 3 where our first parents Adam and Eve fall from grace and commit sin against God. That day Adam and Eve died. They died spiritually. Their children and children for all generations that point forward are scarred and marked with sin and depravity (Psalm 51:5, Ephesians 2:1-3).

You, me, our neighbor, our grandma, and the sweet little lady down the street are all sinners against God. At our core we would rather serve ourselves instead of the One True God. We try to make God into our image and have Him serve us too… We got it backwards. Yikes!

“But God”… those are some of the sweetest words in all scripture.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ– by grace you have been saved– and raised us with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” Ephesians 2:4-8 ESV

By grace God sent his Son Jesus to come and save those who are lost and dead in sin (John 3:16). Jesus tells Nicodemus you must be born again (John 3:7) and he is telling all of us the same. Call out to Christ for rebirth, to be born again. This new birth does away with your old nature and gives you a new one. A nature of spiritual life brought on by the Holy Spirit who makes you and forms you into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 2:18, Romans 8:29)!

Those of us who are born again should be encouraged by this fact. We also should be seeking to tell each precious life we encounter, no matter who they are or where they come from, they must be born again. Because all men and women are commanded to repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Beard Strokes: Short Devotion 002

God wrote a book. He wrote it over the course of some 1600 years, with over 40 different authors, on three different continents, and with three different languages. It’s corroboration is unlike any other literature in all of history. We have over five thousands manuscripts (hand written texts) still in existence in which all agree with little to no textual variants besides scribal (hand copy, copyist) error in various forms. None of which compromise the validity and truth and doctrine of the whole.

It used to bother me that we have no original autographs (or original copies) of the text. After some time to ponder and consider the implications of that, I feel God in His sovereignty, kept those autographs from being relics or idols of worship instead of the God who is to be worshiped. It also provides fact checks, what scholars call “textual criticism”, to allow for the highest accuracy of the Bible as a whole. Instead of just one source, we have many manuscripts to compare one to another. In other words, if something were out of place, we have over five thousand manuscripts to highlight the issue instead of just a small subset of manuscripts. This amount of manuscripts allows us to get as close to the original autographs as possible without actually having them. With this amount of sources we can be confident we have an accurate translation on our shelf, in our hands, and hidden in our hearts.

God wrote a book and we can believe it because God has breathed it out from Himself (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and preserved it for His people (Isaiah 40:8) to read and follow its commands (John 14:15). It has stood the test of time and has held up against the most severe opposing criticism. We can be confident we have the very word of God passed down to us!

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Beard Strokes: Short Devotional 001

Is it important to read the Bible? Yes! What’s equally important is HOW to read your Bible. Realize these are two different links in a chain of sanctification (progression in holiness), but both are vital to the whole of the chain. Recently I read from Dr. Joel Beeke’s Reformed Systematic Theology. A statement in the systematic sticks out like a missing tooth. “Exegesis is what the text says, hermeneutics is what the text means”. Wow! Those are fancy words!

We can read our Bibles by just looking over the words, but do we know what is said and what that means?

I think of it like this. EXegesis like an EXcavator digging out what is in the text (Bible passage). What does it actually say? Not what I want it to say, but actually say? It’s work. We dig and dig until we find boulders.

Hermeneutics is what does finding boulders mean? This is also work. We found them, now we have to figure out why. Not what the boulders (text) means to me, but what is meant by these boulders (text) being here. Allow Scripture to interpret itself. Context and cross reference are key here. Keep reading and be familiar with your Bible. The more you read, the more it will come together and make sense. Read entire books of the Bible instead of skipping around.

Hope you found this helpful. Now go read your Bible!

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Because I have Daughters

I set my face to be a man because I have daughters.

My affections are tender, my heart is full because I have daughters.

Make strong my arms and make gentle my hands because I have daughters.

Stern are my words, encouraging is my mouth because I have daughters.

Wisdom I seek and prayers I make because I have daughters.

Dances in the kitchen and books by the lamp because I have daughters.

Laughs in the morning and cuddles at night because I have daughters.

Hugs around my neck and little feet on my toes because I have daughters.

Kisses goodnight and smiles aglow because I have daughters.

 

Having children is a joy to my soul. Of course my son is the prince of the castle and my best little buddy, but there is something particular about my girls. What once was a calloused heart has become more tender than before. Their beautiful deep eyes have that effect no doubt. Yet, I know I have to be stronger than ever for them.

That brings me to the thought I want to share. If we want good daughters that grow to be good women, we need good men. We as fathers or father figures should show our girls what it means to be a woman by being what we are. Men.

I know not all situations are alike. Many men are not even allowed to be a vital part of their child’s life and that is sad. But all things being equal, let’s consider what I mean in these three points (In typical Baptist form ;).

1. Treating your daughters with love and respect: This is obvious, I think. These precious ones are blessings from God (Psalm 127). Treat them as they are to be treated. Girls are precious gifts God has given you to love and nurture with respect until your dying breath. Anything less is letting them down. Not only that, it’s a sin against God. Ultimately these are His girls you know. Don’t ever forget that.

2. Love their mama (or their “mum” for my dudes across the pond): Again, all things equal, be a loving husband to your wife. It is the very best thing you can do for your daughter. Show her what a good man does for his wife, how he provides, how he laughs, how he talks to her. Even how he hugs and kisses her in public. A good man communicates and leads his house well. His love for his wife is obvious and those little girls will not only see it but look for it in their future husband (See Ephesians 5:25-33).

3. Love Jesus: This too is obvious but has to be said. If you are not loving Jesus your your wife and your children will suffer. Show those girls a man who loves Jesus is a man who will love them! That starts at home with their daddy. Family worship, family prayer, signing together, etc. are all essential for not only the spiritual development of your family, but will also pay dividends perpetually for your grands! Be a generational man. Lead your girls and their girls closer to Jesus. Show them with your life. Don’t expect some background music accompanied by a light bulb over your kid’s head to know when the thing will stick. Just love Jesus day in and day out in front of your girls; it will teach them to do the same.

Face it men, we have a huge responsibility when it comes to our girls. Love them with all you have. Steal their hearts; dance, sing, and play. Be their first love in hopes it will lead them to a lasting love grounded firm in the Rock of our Salvation. Be a man because you have daughters.

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