Restore us, O LORD God of hosts!
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
I love this.
While perhaps the context doesn’t translate directly, it reminds us that God’s grace, God’s grace in revealing himself to us in Jesus Christ on the cross, is where we find our salvation.
Seeing God, as he is, is the only way we see our need for him and so receive his total blessing.
That is beautiful.
After Jesus fed the five thousand, people the people who ate and had their fill followed him around. He was hidden and they sought him out. These were his words to the crowd:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves…”
This obviously isn’t seen as a good thing. Yet, there’s a whole chunk of the church that believes that having faith in Christ will ease their financial woes, resolve marital problems, bring home estranged children and right wrongs.
In subtle ways, even parts of the non-prosperity gospel church teach their congregations these things.
It’s even possible they might be true. But Jesus condemns this. He performed a great miracle in multiplying the food. A sign that he was the messiah and that salvation awaited those who would trust him for it. But although these people saw it, they ignored it and allowed their awe to be on their filled bellies.
I think this is a gut check. Not just for prosperity-Christians either. God has performed an outrageous miracle in producing new life in spiritually dead vessels. But I think that we sometimes have the tendency to focus on the perks associated with that over the miracle that points us to an all satisfying God.
Perhaps for overcome habits or destructive tendencies. More rewarding work or better friendships. But even though these may be amazing byproducts of a powerful miracle, they were never the point. God, in all his glory was.
This is a crucial combination. Jesus came to seek and save. He didn’t only come to seek the lost, to find they might end up rejecting him (they would). Nor did he stay put and wait for folks to find him (they wouldn’t) so that he could save them. No, Jesus came to seek and save the lost.
“…The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Just like Zacchaeus, who Jesus went after, called down out of the tree, and lodged with (Luke 19:1-10), I owe my soul to this.
Thank God.
In between finishing the bible reading plan yesterday and starting the bible reading plan fresh next Monday, I’ve been reading scattered portions of scripture. Today, I found encouragement in 1 Peter 1:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
I love the imagery. That the inheritance we’re promised is no fickle, unsure thing. It’s imperishable, undefiled and unfading. In three words, it is absolutely unlike anything we’ve experienced here in this lifetime. But not only that, God’s power guards them with our faith as a simple conduit.
Encouragement 101—brought to you by the Apostle Peter. Sweet.
All of Grace is Charles Spurgeon’s published evangelistic work aimed completely at the unbeliever. It’s written as a letter, to plead with them to consider the Gospel of Jesus and surrender to the Holy Spirit.
I started reading All of Grace partially because I’d been meaning to read it for quite some time now. But also in part because I really needed to re-digest some of the basic tenants of God’s grace. And who better to help me do that than the Prince of Preachers himself, Charles Spurgeon?
All of Grace is, as it’s title suggests, all about grace. Spurgeon is careful not to lay any kind of burdens on the shoulders of his God-seeking readers. He intends to make clear that salvation is absolutely a total act of God’s grace on undeserving sinners. He wants no one misunderstanding what he says and attempting to earn their salvation. To this effect, Spurgeon says in the beginning of his second chapter:
“…this book does not come to make a demand upon you, but to bring you something. We are not going to talk about law, and duty, and punishment, but about love, and goodness, and forgiveness, and mercy, and eternal life.”
This is absolutely the feeling you get as your read. Spurgeon exalts the grace of God high, just as God himself did when he gave up Jesus to death.
Spurgeon speaks to unbelievers who already had some working knowledge of Jesus. Probably church goers who are solely that and nothing more. He doesn’t retouch on a lot of foundational issues—such as what happened at the cross. But from the starting point he takes, he covers grace with fervency and care.
Unfortunately, Spurgeon is speaking to an extinct generation. While the Gospel is timeless, Spurgeon’s methods are not. There are very few unbelievers that I believe would likely benefit from this work. It’s written with some clear cultural presuppositions that are simply irrelevant today. However, I don’t think that nullifies the books great usefulness.
All of Grace can serve as a great reminder and a great encouragement to walking believers and almost-walking believers. And that is who I will recommend read this book. Anyone feeling the weight of their faith will remember the lightness of Jesus’ yoke after taking in these words. It’s an easy read, cheap in print and free online.
All of Grace can be read for free online, here.
"I know now," writes John C. Miller, "[what was missing] was the expectation that lives of faith will be changed lives. I had expected too little from [my church members]. I was content with surface reformations."
In this short passage, Miller pours out his failure as a pastor to expect from his congregation that the professing Christians ought to act like professing Christians. It wasn’t until "seasoned" Christians started being converted to the Gospel of grace that he realized his flaw. When he realized his error, he learned not to assume people’s faith, based only on their words.
He started to look for the genuine fruit of the Spirit, for the "Streams of Living Water." Miller says that it wasn’t long before the prayer meetings in the church were overflowing onto the church lawn.
We should all be so blessed to have pastors that do not assume the salvation of their congregations simply by virtue of their congregation-hood. May our pastors and preachers, have the courage, the humility, and the love to look for the fruit and to ask the hard questions.
First verse from Not What My Hands Have Done, a hymn written many years ago by Horatius Bonar.
"Not what my hands have done
Can save my guilty soul;
Not what my toiling flesh has borne
Can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do
Can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers,
And sighs and tears
Can bear my awful load."
The words of this hymn may not be the words of God, but they are his message. This is pretty well sums up the desperate condition of mankind. It’s simply not without our power to make things right. The comfort we feel when work a kind of self-atonement is hollow and is nothing more than a "feeling", which Horatius rightly asserts cannot provide peace with God.
This flies in the face of the American ideals, but it’s also the foundation of joy in the Gospel.
