Daily Archives: December 13, 2012

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Entrusted with the Gospel – Charles Stanley

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1 Thessalonians 2:1-12

Imagine standing by a pool, watching your children get ready to swim. The youngest asks you to hold something—a dirty plastic pail. The oldest makes a similar request, and then hands you an heirloom opal necklace that had been her grandmother’s. Most likely, you wouldn’t worry too much about protecting the toy, but you’d probably guard the jewelry with great care. The way we handle a possession reveals the value we attach to it.

We see this principle in Jesus’ parable about the master who, before going away, entrusted his workers with various sums of money. The two who invested theirs were later commended for wise use of the funds. Their efforts showed that they valued both the treasure and their master. A third worker, however, simply buried his portion in the ground, and all he “earned” was a harsh rebuke and loss of what little treasure he had.

Like these men, we are responsible for something of great worth—far greater, in fact, than money. God has placed in our keeping the most powerful and precious message in existence, the gospel of Jesus. And we are accountable for what we do with it. Our “investment” involves both how we apply its truth to our own life and whether we share it with others.

Do you feed on God’s Word daily, and are you obeying all that He says? He has commanded us to share His life-saving message with a hurting and needy world—and to make disciples in every part of the globe. Whether we listen and obey reveals how much we value the gospel.

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Beyond the Words – Ravi Zacharias

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I would like to begin by telling a story about an event that took place some years ago when I was beginning my studies in apologetics, an event that has had a major impact on my approach to the ministry to this day. I had a neighbor who was deeply committed to a version of the New Age movement. He and I had many conversations about God in the course of several months. He was a highly educated man with a couple of PhDs to his name, and so he provided me with an opportunity to test my training. But the training I was receiving in apologetics was good, and I soon realized that I could not only answer the questions he was asking about my faith in God, I could also poke holes in his worldview in a way that forced him to check books out of the local library to try and put his worldview back together. And I was feeling very good about myself. I was actually getting get it!

Finally I decided to challenge him to consider giving his life to Christ. His reaction surprised me; he did not seem to care at all about what I was telling him. So I said to him, can you please explain to me what is going on? You don’t seem to care about what I am telling you. His answer was even more baffling to me. He said to me, “Listening to you asking me to become a Christian is like listening to a naturalist asking me to become a naturalist.”

I said to him, “What in the world do you mean. I just asked you to consider giving your life to the God who created you, and you are accusing me of being an atheist? What do you mean?”

He said to me, “All you Christians have are statements and creeds. You think that if people accept those statements and creeds, everything will be okay. When I pray, I get in touch with powers that you know nothing about.”

And that was one of the most convicting things anyone has ever said to me. Because what this man was saying to me was essentially this: “Yes, you can say a lot of very convincing things about your faith, but does your faith really rise beyond well-argued propositions?”

In his book, Beyond Opinion, Ravi Zacharias says that the greatest obstacle to the reception of the Gospel is not its inability to provide answers; it is the failure on the part of Christians to live it out. J. I. Packer writes similarly in his classic book, entitled, Knowing God: “From current Christian publications you might think that the most vital issue for any real or would-be Christian in the world today is church union, or social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other faiths, or refuting this or that -ism, or developing a Christian philosophy and culture… it is tragic that…so many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is, and always will be the true priority for every human being—that is, learning to know God in Christ.”(1)

Whatever your position of faith, it is helpful to occasionally step back and ask a similar question of priority. Whatever your calling in life, what is the ultimate goal of all that you do?

The Bible addresses this question in many places, in both the Old and New Testaments, but none so much as in the person of Christ himself. If there is a message we hear loudest in his coming to earth it is this. The primary call of God is to know God, to be near God, not to serve God or to argue on God’s behalf. Apologetics is important, but it is only a means to an end, and the end is knowing God. Even the scriptures were given to us a means to that end. For when all is said and done, when the dust settles, it is the eternally incarnate Son of God who lies behind that hauntingly inescapable question, “Who do you say that I am?” It is a question we must answer, with our words and with our lives. There is no neutral ground.

But how wonderful it is when the curtain is pulled back, and we see God for Who God truly is, and we are able to say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God?”

No, we don’t have only statements and creeds. We stand on holy ground, before a holy God, and it is this God that we present to the world.

J.M. Njoroge is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993),  279.

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Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

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Morning   “Salt without prescribing how much.” / Ezra 7:22

Salt was used in every offering made by fire unto the Lord, and from its

preserving and purifying properties it was the grateful emblem of divine grace

in the soul. It is worthy of our attentive regard that, when Artaxerxes gave

salt to Ezra the priest, he set no limit to the quantity, and we may be quite

certain that when the King of kings distributes grace among his royal

priesthood, the supply is not cut short by him. Often are we straitened in

ourselves, but never in the Lord. He who chooses to gather much manna will

find that he may have as much as he desires. There is no such famine in

Jerusalem that the citizens should eat their bread by weight and drink their

water by measure. Some things in the economy of grace are measured; for

instance our vinegar and gall are given us with such exactness that we never

have a single drop too much, but of the salt of grace no stint is made, “Ask

what thou wilt and it shall be given unto thee.” Parents need to lock up the

fruit cupboard, and the sweet jars, but there is no need to keep the salt-box

under lock and key, for few children will eat too greedily from that. A man

may have too much money, or too much honour, but he cannot have too much

grace. When Jeshurun waxed fat in the flesh, he kicked against God, but there

is no fear of a man’s becoming too full of grace: a plethora of grace is

impossible. More wealth brings more care, but more grace brings more joy.

Increased wisdom is increased sorrow, but abundance of the Spirit is fulness

of joy. Believer, go to the throne for a large supply of heavenly salt. It

will season thine afflictions, which are unsavoury without salt; it will

preserve thy heart which corrupts if salt be absent, and it will kill thy sins

even as salt kills reptiles. Thou needest much; seek much, and have much.

 

Evening   “I will make thy windows of agates.” / Isaiah 54:12

The church is most instructively symbolized by a building erected by heavenly

power, and designed by divine skill. Such a spiritual house must not be dark,

for the Israelites had light in their dwellings; there must therefore be

windows to let the light in and to allow the inhabitants to gaze abroad. These

windows are precious as agates: the ways in which the church beholds her Lord

and heaven, and spiritual truth in general, are to be had in the highest

esteem. Agates are not the most transparent of gems, they are but

semi-pellucid at the best:

“Our knowledge of that life is small,

Our eye of faith is dim.”

Faith is one of these precious agate windows, but alas! it is often so misty

and beclouded, that we see but darkly, and mistake much that we do see. Yet if

we cannot gaze through windows of diamonds and know even as we are known, it

is a glorious thing to behold the altogether lovely One, even though the glass

be hazy as the agate. Experience is another of these dim but precious windows,

yielding to us a subdued religious light, in which we see the sufferings of

the Man of Sorrows, through our own afflictions. Our weak eyes could not

endure windows of transparent glass to let in the Master’s glory, but when

they are dimmed with weeping, the beams of the Sun of Righteousness are

tempered, and shine through the windows of agate with a soft radiance

inexpressibly soothing to tempted souls. Sanctification, as it conforms us to

our Lord, is another agate window. Only as we become heavenly can we

comprehend heavenly things. The pure in heart see a pure God. Those who are

like Jesus see him as he is. Because we are so little like him, the window is

but agate; because we are somewhat like him, it is agate. We thank God for

what we have, and long for more. When shall we see God and Jesus, and heaven

and truth, face to face?

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Worship of Distinction – John MacArthur

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“When He again brings the first-born into the world, He says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him'” (Heb. 1:6).

Even though Jesus Christ humbled Himself and was made lower than the angels for a time, angels are still to worship Him. Since angels are to worship Him, then Christ must be greater than them.

Angels have always worshiped Christ, only they worshiped Him as God. It wasn’t until His incarnation that angels were commanded to worship Him as God’s Son. It is a sin to worship anyone or anything but God–in fact, note how sternly the apostle John was rebuked for worshiping angels (Rev. 19:10; 22:8-9). So the very fact that angels are to worship Christ verifies that Christ is indeed God.

At present, the angels don’t fully understand the entire picture of God’s redemptive plan. Peter tells us that the prophets didn’t understand all that they wrote, “seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow” (1 Pet. 1:11). Then he added, “Things into which angels long to look” (v. 12). They are still trying to figure out things they don’t understand.

But that won’t always be the case. Notice that Hebrews 1:6 says, “When He again brings the first-born into the world” (emphasis added). God already brought Christ into the world once–at the second coming He will bring Him into the world in blazing glory. Then the fullness of the prophecy of Psalm 97:7 quoted in Hebrews 1:6 will come to pass: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.”

In His second coming Christ is revealed in full glory as the Son. More than ever we have reason to join the heavenly chorus in declaring, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Rev. 5:12).

Suggestion for Prayer:   Thank God for His wonderful plan of salvation. Ask Him to make it more real to you every day.

For Further Study:  Read Revelation 5:1-11 and note the reactions of the angels to the Lamb of God. What specific event motivated their response?

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No Room in the Inn – Greg Laurie

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She brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.             —Luke 2:7

In these days of modern technology, we never miss a thing with TiVo, voice mail, DVD recorders, and camera phones. But even though our toys keep us from missing a phone call, they can also cause us to miss the real reason for the holiday season.

You can watch Christmas disappear in front of your eyes, in a heap of shredded wrapping paper, and find yourself saying, “I was so busy shopping, so busy attending this, going to that, that I think I actually missed the point of Christmas.”

It might be surprising to know that the majority of people missed the very first Christmas as well. People just carried on with business as usual, paying no attention to what was happening just a few feet away.

In Luke chapter 2, we are introduced to an innkeeper who had no time for Christmas. In this familiar story, Mary and Joseph came to the innkeeper for a room, but because his inn was full, he turned them away.

The only place he had for this young pregnant woman and her husband was a stable, a cold, dark, and damp stable—which was more than likely a cave. He was too preoccupied with other things to make the time for Christmas.

There are people like this in the world today. They don’t necessarily oppose or hate God outright. They are simply preoccupied. God and spiritual things do not concern them. Their interests lie more in what can immediately satisfy their own physical needs. The innkeeper was too busy to make room in the inn for the soon coming Messiah.

Let me ask you this: have you made room for Jesus this Christmas? If not, there is still time to refocus and make room for Christ this Christmas, today!