“He’s God’s only forgotten Son
Pushed away by a world gone wrong,
For there’s never a thought
Of the love that He brought
And no thanks for the things that He’s done

He’s the treasure of God’s own heart
To a world living in the dark,
And if they only knew
Even had just a clue
Their denial would tear them apart…”

Do you need any more proof of the reality of sin than that God’s only begotten Son could be so easily laid aside and forgotten?  The world goes on from day to day with barely a thought that it lies under the judgment of God, oblivious to the obvious… we will all one day die and have to face Him.  What’s even more startling though is God’s made a way of escape for all of us and we ignore it:  He sent Jesus to free us from the certain judgment that awaits us, and we don’t even care!  Tell me that sin isn’t real!

Deception and blindness is at the heart of all sin; Adam and Eve succumbed to it in the garden (Genesis 3) and we’re still blinded to this day.  The serpent told Eve, “You will not surely die”.  If there was ever a one trick pony, it’s the Devil.  He hasn’t changed a word since his original lie, and we keep falling for it… hook, line and sinker.

Do you want to know if sin has actual power?  Ask yourself what sane man would willingly board a bus to hell when God is offering a ticket to heaven free of charge?  The very Creator of the universe sent His Son into the world to rescue you from an eternity in hell and you don’t even care? I don’t need anymore proof of the blinding power of sin than that!  God’s Son comes to forgive you, and wash away your sin, and you toss Him aside because you have better things to do with your life than mess around with “religion”?  I hate to say it, but you’ve been blinded to the greatest love the world has ever known!

“The god of this age (the devil) has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  (2 Corinthians 4:4)

The greatest thing that’s ever happened to this world was the entry of Jesus into it.  Do you know Him?  Are you living for Him?  Is He forgotten, or loved by you?

If you’re seeking, go here.

If you’re wandering away from the truth, go here.

“Why did a Holy God
even give us another thought?
He could have held His breath
and the world have died-
Adam by Eve’s own side.
and that would have been the end.”

I heard a preacher recently thunder the wrath of God.  Actually he was very soft spoken, but His words carried the message of God’s judgment.  I’m not totally against that either.  You’ll find that I talk about these things in many of my posts.  There are biblical truths that have been largely discarded, and the message of God’s holiness, wrath, and judgment is almost completely absent in today’s church.  These are truths that need to be taught again.  Scripture teaches, “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”  (Hebrews 10:31)  The NASB version puts it this way:

“It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

I wonder how often you hear that preached today?  It is the truth, and it’s something we need to remember and take very seriously.  Our God is holy and we better be careful to never forget that.  I won’t mention names, but there are some who have appeared and taken up that message, and taken it up very strongly.  You can find their videos on YouTube, their messages on various blogs, and maybe you’ve even gotten an email or two from a friend who’s been shaken by the gravity of what they’ve heard, and it’s caused them to sit up and evaluate their relationship with God.  I think that’s a good thing.  If the bible is telling us that it’s a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God while we go about acting like it’s no big deal to encounter Him, we’ve got a problem!

But I would like to mention another problem:  If we get so focused on the message of God’s judgment and wrath that we forget His mercy, we have an even bigger problem!

“He could have held His breath
and the world have died-
Adam by Eve’s own side.
and that would have been the end.”

God could have ended everything with Adam and Eve.  He could have withheld His breath and their sin would have been the last human sin He ever had to deal with, but He didn’t do that.  What does that tell us about God?  It tells me that His heart of mercy is greater than His desire to send judgment.  It tells me that His love is higher on the ladder than His wrath:  God will find a way to send mercy, and remove judgment, even if it means Him paying the highest price.  He proved that to us by sending His Son as a sacrifice who would bear the penalty for our sins, taking upon Himself the wrath we deserved. 

A return to holiness preaching

Yesterday while listening to a revival preacher in a church we were visiting I heard 1 1/2 hours about God’s judgment, wrath, and displeasure with sin, but God’s answer to our sin problem was never really presented!  I was left with the feeling that God could, and would, smote me for my disobedience and that I “better get right with God”.  The way that I was “to get right with God” was by repenting of my sin.  (More on that later…)  Furthermore, I was told (along with everyone else in the room) that when I stood before Him, if I hadn’t gotten rid of all my “blots and blemishes” I wouldn’t have a prayer in the world of getting into heaven and would be cast straight into hell!  Over and over we were told of our need to be righteous and to live right.  We were reminded that God hates our secret sin.  We were reprimanded for not truly being His disciples if we failed to live correctly, and warned that we would ultimately be found to be fakes and cast out by Jesus with a word:

“Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”

You could hear a pin drop!  And rightly so.  Where do you hear anything like this preached today with any kind of seriousness?  There are tons of places in the bible that warn of self deception, sin and God’s wrath, so why don’t we ever hear any of these things being preached? Many in the church are waking up to the fact that just calling oneself a Christian doesn’t cut it.  Just praying a prayer to “get saved” doesn’t cut it…  So we’re beginning to hear the other side:  God is a holy God and wants us as His children to be holy.  Preaching holiness is scriptural and we need it… but…

Working my way to heaven?

Somewhere during this preacher’s message I began to get concerned however.  Where was Jesus in all this?  The gospel was never really mentioned!  It was all about me “getting right” and I couldn’t help but think, “Man! Without Jesus, I have no righteousness.”  It was all about me repenting, all about me being a disciple, all about me getting rid of my own “blots and blemishes”, all about me “getting my robe clean”.  Hold on!  I thought Jesus was my righteousness.  I thought Jesus clothed me with His robe of righteousness.

“It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.  Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”  (1 Corinthians 1:30-31)

The most serious error of all!

As much as I truly believe there needs to be a return to holiness preaching and “walking as Jesus walked”, we need to be careful that we don’t fall into the most serious error of all:  Forgetting Jesus!  After everything’s said and done, the only way we can stand before a Holy God is to be hidden in Christ.  He alone is our righteousness.  The most serious error of all is to forget that fact.  Like my wife said later as we sat in the parking lot discussing this… “I could scrub and scrub my robe all day long but it still wouldn’t be clean enough.  I would still have so many stains…”  Exactly!  You can’t scrub your robe clean enough to stand before a Holy God.  If you think you can, you still don’t understand just how Holy He is, (or how sinful you are!).

Hearing this “preacher of righteousness” reminded me of a few things:

1. God’s mercy triumphs over judgment.  The fact that the human race continued after Adam and Eve proves that fact!  He could have ended the whole thing right there.  Don’t get so focused on His wrath that you forget His mercy!
2. Even so, we need to preach about God’s wrath and judgment because those things are very real too.  God sent a flood, and He tells us that the present world we live in will be destroyed by fire.  We should be telling people the whole counsel of God, and talking about God’s judgment is part of that.
3. Don’t exchange one error for an even bigger error:  God’s Word tells us over and over again that we are to live holy lives because our God is holy.  Omitting to teach and practice this truth is a serious error.  However, in our zeal to reclaim the truth of holiness we need to be careful that we don’t commit an even more serious error.  Jesus alone is our righteousness, and He alone is the reason we will be able to stand before a Holy God.  If we forget this truth we have made the most serious error of all! 

We are not saved by our works, we better very careful that we don’t give people the impression that we are!

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!  As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!”

(Galatians 1:6-9)

There’s one thing worse than not preaching holiness… it’s failing to preach that ultimately Jesus alone is that holiness for us.  No matter how hard we try, no matter how holy we get, if we don’t realize that Jesus alone is the only way to stand before a holy God, we’ve made the most serious error of all!

“Almighty God, omnipotent
thy wrath is strong-
but love was sent

Upon the cross, the word made flesh
gave us His robe
of righteousness…”

Jesus could have wiped me off the face of the earth because of my sin and been completely justified in doing it, but He didn’t!  Who believes in the God of the bible anymore?  The God of the bible is Almighty: all powerful, all knowing… and just.  He sent destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah.  In Noah’s day he sent a flood, saying, “I will wipe mankind, whom I’ve created from the face of the earth…” (Genesis 6:7)  He hasn’t changed.  In the New Testament we find this:

“He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9)

God may have been tamped down and tamed in the minds of modern men but it would be wise to remember that He is still Almighty God.  He tells us what the future holds in 2 Peter 3:1-17 where it’s graphically laid out for us:  The same God who sent a flood will be sending fire!

“By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

I urge you to read the whole chapter; the God of the bible is very much alive, and as my lyrics express, his wrath is strong.

Why the Lamb of God?

“Upon the cross, the word made flesh
gave us His robe
of righteousness…”

Praise God!  His wrath is not the end of the story:  Wrath will come, but first love is sent!

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  (John 3:16)

We are living in a time of unprecedented grace.  God came to earth… His name is Jesus.  He put on our mortal flesh and walked among us.  He went to the cross and died for us as the sacrificial Lamb of God.  In that act of sacrifice, His blood was shed for our sins.  He paid the price and penalty of God’s judgment in our place.  All that we deserved as punishment for our sins, He took upon Himself.  In that act of love, He did something more… He gave us His righteousness.

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus gave us His robe of righteousness!  He took your sin, and gave you His righteousness.

Why judgment waits

2 Peter 3:9 tells us: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Judgment is being held back because God in His patience is giving you a chance to escape it!  Will you take His offer of love?

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

The same God who hates sin, who has sent judgment in the past, and who promises that one day the world will be destroyed by fire, is holding out His hand of forgiveness, mercy, and love to you.  Will you take it?

If you’re answer is yes, go here.

If you’re wandering away from the truth, go here.

I had just released and uploaded my song, “Where is the love?” on June 25th and on that day found an email from David Wilkerson’s ministry titled, “Are you a merciful person?”   It was one of those God moments that stops and makes you think.  My new song is all about showing mercy and how Christians judge each other and the hurting world around them, so getting an email about that subject the very day I released the song was bound to get my attention!  You should go and read what he has to say.  You can find his article here.  I appreciate what he wrote, and can say that some of the things he spoke were all too real to me as our small home group went through a rough spot recently.  The scripture tells us that “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it… “  (1 Corinthians 12:26)  Do we understand that we can make the suffering worse by our lack of mercy?  But love covers a multitude of sins. Mercy triumphs over judgment!  (James 2:13)  If only we could grab a hold of that!

“Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  Luke 15:1-2

The ones who were “the religious leaders” and should have been listening to the greatest teacher who ever walked the earth were too busy to hear what He had to say.  They were too busy muttering about those who were listening, to ever stop to think that maybe He had something to say to THEM!

They had it all figured out:  They were better than Jesus!  They were better than the sinners that sat at his feet.  They weren’t gathered to listen, they had come to judge.  Little did they know, THEY were the ones to come under God’s judgment!

Read it at Matthew 23

The most common phrase quoted about the church in Laodicea is?  My guess would be, “So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

I wonder why we do that; tell only half the story?  We like to thunder the judgment and forget the mercy!  James tells us that, “Mercy triumphs over judgment”, but you’d never know it by the way we act sometimes.  I used to be very good at proclaiming judgment.  I’d visit a church with thunder and lightning!  I’d always leave wondering why I did that.  I was so aware of my need of mercy, but so hard on others.  Then one day God stopped me in the middle of my message.  I was speaking on “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion!”  I was emoting, and pointing my finger, and practically shouting when I heard God’s still small voice say to me, “Is THAT the way I say it?”  No, it wasn’t, he made plain to me.  He was pleading.  His cry was out of a heart of mercy!  He didn’t want to judge, so his warning came as a plea, a cry of love!  By this time I’d started singing the next song while this conversation with God was going on in my head.  Then I heard Him say, “Now tell them how I say it!”  Oh boy, I was instantly humbled.  I stopped my song right in the middle of it all and said, “I need to tell you something…”  I could tell by the expressions on peoples faces that they were puzzled.  I must have looked like quite the double personality up there, swinging from “hell fire and brimstone” to “Jesus loves His little lambs”!  The tone of my voice, the look of my countenance, had all suddenly changed as I told the people what God had just told me… His mercy triumphs over judgment!

You’d think that would have cured me of my “wrath of God” delivery methods.  It didn’t.  But it did make me start thinking, and over time I came to ask myself, “Why do I ask God for mercy when it comes to me, but call down judgment when it comes to others?”  I was so aware of my own need for grace, but sure had a hard time extending it to the lives of others.  I had become a Pharisee!  And a judge!  And I thought I was being a minister of the gospel! 

Now the funny thing is, I learned that people thought that all the shouting, and thundering and such was spiritual!  What????  Yes, many thought my behavior was “anointed”!  I found that out after I decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore.  I explained my decision to some people who I thought would say, “Oh, good!  We’ve been waiting for that!”  But instead I got, “Are you SURE?  It’s so powerful when you speak like that!”

Well, it might have sounded powerful, but I was sure God was telling me it wasn’t spiritual, and I changed my ways.  It all came down to attitude.  (Jeremiah represents the correct attitude: Jeremiah was a “weeping prophet”.  He told the truth, but his heart was filled with mercy.)  In the New Testament we’d called that, “speaking the truth in love”!

Which brings me back to the church of Laodicea.  Why do we always hear just half the story?  Why is it always about Jesus spitting us lukewarm Christians out of His mouth?  Why isn’t it about Him giving us an invitation to dine with Him?  Think about that!  THAT’S in there too!  We have an invitation to dine with Jesus!  How can we just leave that out when we talk about the lukewarm church?  Jesus asks you to have supper or breakfast with Him and you don’t think that’s worth mentioning??

His message to the church in Laodicea is exactly what He explained to me that day when I was thundering my judgment… it’s not about judgment, it’s about mercy… “I want you to dine with me!”  He tells us the reason He’s rebuked us and disciplined us is BECAUSE HE LOVES US!  He goes on to tell us THAT’S the reason we should repent and then GIVES US AN INVITATION TO DINE WITH HIM!

“Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and He with me.”

Yes, that’s right, Jesus wants to have dinner with you!  He wants to hang out and have fellowship!  THAT’S the whole reason for all the other stuff written to the church of Laodicea.  It’s not about Him wanting to judge you, it’s about Him wanting to love you and be with Him!  Revelation 3:20 is often used to call the unsaved to come to eternal life in Christ, but the truth is, in context it’s actually an invitation that God is making to a wayward church!  “Turn from your lukewarm life and come have dinner with me!”  Wow!

Find it at Revelation 3:14-22