Month: October 2009

Hi Everyone 🙂

Happy middle-of-the-week to you! I hope all is well. I’m sorry for the late post. I’m going to have to be shorter this week due to increased family obligations…

Today we’ll continue to look at what the Lord Jesus Christ has said in His sermon on the mount, focusing on the first part called the Beatitudes. These beatitudes can be seen as character traits or personal qualities of those who are on the right road to eternal salvation. And what better motivation can we have than to see if we are such as one of those?

As we progress along these beatitudes, I want to first recap the ones we covered thus far…

Mathew 5:3-4
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Those who are “poor in spirit” know in their heart of hearts that they are unable to contribute anything to their declaration of “not guilty” before the Divine Judge. In fact they know beyond all reasonable doubt they are indeed guilty. Such people are “poor” as in being destitute of righteousness. They are beggars.

And once a proud sinner sees by the light of truth that they have been on death row all along, they contemplate what crimes they committed to get there. And believe me, such ponderings can bring a person low to deep sorrow over those sins.

Then, if one’s conscience is beholding this awful truth and such conviction of sins is like Isaiah’s (Isaiah 6:5), divinely facilitated, then God-willing… Dear Almighty God willing, true repentance will come forth.

Now this brings us to this week’s beatitude…

Mathew 5:5
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Pop quiz: What does a wicked and hard-hearted sinner become after truly repenting and putting their trust in Christ, recognizing that it was only by the grace of God that their death sentence was commuted?

Answer: Meek (among many other wonderful character traits)

Lest I be too oversimplified, I think this beatitude is the first evidence of a transformed heart after having been justified in the eyes of God. For you see, justification is like a courtroom matter, and meekness speaks to sanctification. In other words, when God through His Holy Spirit transforms you, He causes you to want to be more like Christ… and Jesus was certainly meek.

So let’s answer the obvious question… What does meek mean?

Main Entry: meek

Pronunciation: \ˈmēk\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse mjūkr gentle; akin to Welsh esmwyth soft

Date: 13th century

1 : enduring injury with patience and without resentment

How cool is that? From the Viking’s word for GENTLE and the Celt’s word for SOFT. Gentle and soft; a gentleman or a gentlewoman… or a soft-hearted person. So, meek does not mean weak. Meek does not mean timid. Meekness really comes out of compassion and concern for others, not self-centeredness.

And, praytell, who endured injury beyond comprehension with total patience and with no capacity for resentment? Yessir… Jesus Christ! I’ll tell you right now, a natural man is not one who can endure any form of injury with patience AND without resentment. Such wonderful traits must be provided for from on high.

Need an example of meekness? Just think of Jesus when He cleared out the temple of greedy businessmen by Himself… no wimp could have done that. Then, fast forward to our same gracious Savior hanging as a bloody pulp up on that cross…

Luke 23:34
And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do…

Friends, who could be more worthy to be called Lord? Now let’s consider the second part of the beatitude, “..they shall inherit the earth.”

Oh this is good! Remember the thought of the redeemed being more like Christ? Well, who do you suppose really owns the title deed to the earth?

Revelation 5:7
And He (Jesus) went and took the scroll from the right hand of Him (God the Father) who was seated on the throne.

If Jesus owns the earth, how will those He redeemed inherit it too?

Galatians 4:7
… you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

How is all of this possible? Jesus prayed to God the Father that it would be this way…

John 17:24
Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

What wonderful love our Lord has for those who name the name of Christ!

Okay… gotta go!  

**Comments/ questions/ affirmations/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim

Good Afternoon!

How are you all feeling this fine Wednesday in late October? Are you prepared to feel sad? Strange question, huh?

If you are anything like I am, you prefer to be cheerful than sad. Waking up and peeking out the window to see what the weather may be like for the day, (hoping for clear skies) is a cheerful little morning habit. Some mornings when time and circumstance permit, I like to get my hot cup of coffee and walk out on the back deck and sit down to listen to the birds sing. Ah, beholding God glorious creation is cheerful indeed.

Among the Northern Mockingbirds and Chipping Sparrows and occasional Red-Bellied Woodpecker chirping and singing in the trees, I will hear another bird sing… the Mourning Dove. Oh, how sad it sounds; a type of lamentable cry that makes it easy to imagine that it feels lost and alone with no one (bird) who cares.

As rainbows are God’s reminder to us earthbound creatures that He’ll never flood the entire earth again (Genesis 9:16), could Mourning doves also have been commissioned to remind us of our next beatitude? Hmmm…

Matthew 5:4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Has anyone here ever mourned over something or someone before? Perhaps you mourned over the death of a loved one. Perhaps you mourned over the lost opportunity to buy gold when it was cheap, or perhaps you recently mourned over the sad state of your beloved football team. Mourning is like being sad over something where the levee of hope has been washed away. In my mind, I think grief is like a cousin to mourning.

Let’s get a grip on the meaning of mourning. Indulge me to copy and paste from Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary…

Main Entry: mourn·ing

Pronunciation: \ˈmȯr-niŋ\

Function: noun

Date: 13th century

1 : the act of sorrowing

Doh! Okay… now we have to look at sorrowing…

Main Entry: ¹sor·row

Pronunciation: \ˈsär-(ˌ)ō, ˈsȯr-\

Function: noun

Date: before 12th century

1 : deep distress, sadness, or regret especially for the loss of someone or something loved

So we see that distress, sadness, and regret can cause one to mourn. I presume all of us have felt these emotions at some point in our lifetime thus far. I’m sure some of you even have a memory in mind now.

Okay, so Jesus tells us that the people who are mourning will be comforted. (This sounds so simple on the surface level.) But I also presume most of us have experienced mourning and Jesus was not around to comfort us. For example: Jesus never told me, “Oh Jim, the Redskins will be a good football team again someday… don’t despair. Here, take this warm cup of milk and drink it to calm your nerves, and you’ll soon fall into blissful sleep.” Ha! That may be comforting in the short term. But I’ll wake up in a couple of hours and the Redskins will not have magically changed. Frankly, the Redskins and every other sports team are but a passing fancy in this passing world.

Thus to make sense of this beatitude, we must leap to the spiritual side of things and call up another verse that speaks to such painful moments…

2^nd Corinthians 7:10
… godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Ahh, this is good! God is teaching us through Paul the different realities of grief! Notice there are two kinds of grief;
1. godly
2. worldly

Did you all know there are two kinds? Notice what they ultimately produce;
1. a repentance that leads to salvation without regret
2. death

So using the spiritual thinking cap you have on, which kind of grief do you suppose Jesus was referring to in the Beatitudes? The kind that leads to salvation… (hence, being “comforted”) ding ding!

Let us look again in the Bible (it’s a great habit) where God shows us through Hosea what “worldly grief” looks like…

Hosea 7:14
They (Israel) do not cry to Me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against Me.

In contrast, King David shows us his heart as he expresses godly grief…

Psalm 51:2-3
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

See the difference? There is the self-centered mourning over lost crops which shall pass away anyway and the God-centered mourning over violating His love which produces an earnest desire to be delivered from such ugly wicked thoughts, words, and deeds so as to no longer be a transgressor of such loving-kindness ever again.

So, as strange as this may sound, godly grief is a desirable thing. Some of our grandparents knew the sense behind this when they said, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” And here’s another seemingly strange thing… if your sins have hardened your heart and you don’t have guilt and shame over them anymore, consider asking God to help you sense it again. I personally know God does answer this prayer!

Finally, King David exemplified this beatitude… he mourned over his sins (see above), and in him was produced a repentance that lead him to salvation without regret…

 Psalm 32:3-5
For when I kept silent (concerning his sins), my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy on me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Is there any doubt King David was a blessed man? He certainly mourned and was comforted. Let us do likewise!

**Comments/ questions/ affirmations/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim

Good Morning!

How are you? Doing well, I hope. The foliage is changing in Northern Maryland now and it is bee-u-ti-full. 🙂

First off, I want to thank you for taking the time to read these weekly messages. If you recall over the past month or so, we have considered that God and His word are holy and true, and we also (should have) considered our spirit within us, our inner person as the real us that really matters to God. With this proper regard for these things, today I am starting a series that will likely take us to the end of 2009.

Now, please keep in mind, these weekly messages concern spiritual things, godly things. Let us endeavor to elevate our thinking to such things that most people take for granted and/ or ignore. A higher level of concentration and attendant deep thinking will serve you well.

Have you ever wondered what God desires? Think about this: God, Who made the heavens and the earth and all they contain, Who Providentially guided human history over thousands of years, came down to earth in the person of Jesus and sat down one particular day to teach the things that matter to Him. In the Bible, this great teaching is called the Sermon on the Mount.

Frankly, the entire Bible is divine teaching from the mind of God, but this specific sermon given by Christ is like a golden nugget of truth that demands to be gazed at and studied intensely. Matthew, chapters 5,6, and 7 are the Sermon on the Mount. Today I want to simply scratch the surface of the beginning.

The beginning of this teaching shows the proper way into God’s eternal kingdom. These first few verses are called The Beatitudes. There are several, but we’ll just look at the first one this morning…

Matthew 5:1-3
Seeing the crowds, He (Jesus) went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…”

Blessed are the poor in spirit… Okay, let’s first look at the word “Blessed”.

“Blessed” basically means one is in a state of happiness, contentment, well-being, at ease, by means of God’s dealings with them… When someone sneezes and you say “Bless you”, you are invoking God’s favor on that person because the sneeze is indicative of impending sickness and death (old holdover from the Bubonic plague). Interesting, huh?

So the perplexing thing in this first Beatitude is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” Poor in spirit??

Well, you know about (and can recognize) your spirit now, right? So does the inner you carry actual money? Nope! But think about this; the currency your spirit naturally carries is pride. Yep, good ole’ pride.  What is the opposite of rich? It is poor. What is the opposite of self-centeredness? It is selflessness. What is the opposite of proud? It is humble.

So spiritually speaking now, pride is an attitude that you manifest towards self and others in all kinds of ways. And a living a life of self-centeredness and self-righteousness marks a person who is NOT poor in spirit. See how that works? Look at it this way too, if you find yourself as living inside a cardboard box made of guilt and shame over your thoughts, words and deeds, this is closer to what it means to be poor (beggarly) in spirit.

Here’s a good question to ask yourself… Is asking for help easy or difficult for you? Asking for help (for certain things) requires a certain admission that you are unable and insufficient on your own. Asking for help requires a swallowing of pride, right?

Here’s another good question… Is saying you’re sorry (and meaning it) easy or difficult for you? Apologizing is an admission that an offense was made by you (courtesy of your self-centeredness). Saying you’re sorry for something requires humbleness and contrition, ergo, a swallowing of pride.

Oh my, the Lord God Almighty gets excited over such attitudes…  

Psalm 25:9
He (God) leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way.

Proverbs 3:34
Toward the scorners He (God) is scornful, but to the humble He gives favor.

James 4:10
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Now, recognizing all these spiritual attitudes, what does it mean to be really poor in spirit?

It means you have to get to the end of your rope, the end of yourself. It is like you have tried and tried to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you just can’t anymore. Your own ugliness on the inside overwhelms you and you come to the point where you are cast out on the street (spiritually speaking) with no resources… helpless, naked, and desperate, reduced to begging, saying you’re sorry to God and asking for His for help, because of your guilt and shame over violating His moral law and your inability to do anything about it.

Losing the currency of your pride and self-esteem and self-centeredness and self-righteousness will cause you to see a strangely clear and other-worldly true recognition of reality. Almighty God will meet you there and lead you in what is right and teach you His ways… trust me, you’ll be willing at that point! And this is why the Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”, for such people are on the right path.

**Comments/ questions/ affirmations/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim