Jonathan Evans

Unselfed Gospel

 

I've sung sing it with my kids while driving:  

Because I’m happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I’m happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I’m happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I’m happy

Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do

 

No question, it’s a catchy song. It’s also the guiding principle of a culture: Whatever makes me happy by making me feel good must be the right thing for me to do.  

 

Today, we believe one’s individual desires are the locus of authority and self-definition. (Long gone is any sense of individual responsibility to a larger community of which I am a part, unless I can use them to advance my own interests. Long gone is any individual commitment to sacrifice what I need or want for the good of another, unless, in the end, it gets me what I want.)

 

We consistently find this “truth” in the stories and songs of our culture. We also find this “truth” in the sermons in our churches. We hear messages telling us that not only must we believe in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, but we must also, of equal importance and necessity, believe in ourselves. God’s word and promise is dependent upon man, rooted in man, and oriented around man. Without our positive thinking and confession, God’s hands are tied. 

  

This preaching says that God demands nothing of me, because He’s chiefly concerned with making me feel good. God is sought only as a therapist, to solve my problems, to help me find fulfillment, and never inquired of as Holy God and Sovereign King. 

 

Some of the mantras of this gospel are, “Do your best”, “Believe in yourself”, “Say to yourself”, “Think positive”, “You’re a child of the Almighty”. Now, it’s true: a Christian is a child of the Almighty. But being God's child presupposes something radical, anti-culture, and now anti-church-culture: The gospel.

 

The Biblical gospel is concerned with the objective truth: God over man and man before God. A Biblical gospel preaches that God demands and deserves everything from me (love, obedience, passions, desires), because he is holy, and that I have chosen not to give it to him, because I am a sinner. 

 

The Biblical gospel presupposes God is love and God is holy, and he is never one apart from the other. Sin goes deeper than just doing bad, feeling bad, and having problems (Luke 18:10-14). There is the offense: our sin. There is the offended: God. There is the offender: you and I. There is the cost to be paid: a sacrifice. At the cross, God’s wrath and love were poured out on Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:17). In and through him, God’s holiness was upheld and his love is offered freely to all. Our salvation. 

 

The salvation offered in Jesus Christ goes deeper than just doing good things, having good feelings, and having no problems. While God’s salvation can and does change our whole lives, making them better and happier, God saves us to re-orient our lives around him, not him around us. Whatever “better and happier” looks like or feels like, it now comes as a result of denying our self and dying to our self daily (Luke 9:23).

 

In all that he has created, God can be absent nowhere but the human heart enslaved to sin. Yet, God is present nowhere else in all of creation like he is in the redeemed heart of man.  The gospel – Jesus’ death in my place – is the entry point, not the end point of the unselfed life, a life that starts with Jesus, not with the self; a life where Jesus is at the center, not the self; a life where knowing Jesus is worth the loss of everything the self holds closer (Philippians 3:8).

 

(Adapted from a longer version of this post)

Why we shouldn't worry God will break His promises

Promises are often made that are not always kept. 

Some promises are broken due to busyness. At the end of the day, we realize we don't have the time nor the energy to do what we promised at the beginning. Some are broken due to our forgetfulness. Our intentions are good, but our memory is bad. And some are broken because we lack the character to keep them. We said what was needed in order to get what we wanted.

God has made promises. 

When the people of Israel were in captivity to Pharaoh, they were greatly afflicted (Exodus 3:7). Their oppressors were harsh, unrelenting, giving them no rest from their increasing burdens. Their suffering broke their spirit to the point that they couldn't believe the good news of a coming deliverance (6:9).

But God heard their groaning and saw their pain; He "knew" them intimately (2:24-25). All of God's energy, compassion, and love was being stirred within Him. So God said, "I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt" (3:17). He is personally going to get involved in the lives of His people as their God (6:7). 

WHY? Is He being moved strictly by their present circumstances? No. While God is making a promise, He is also keeping a promise He made centuries before to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (2:24; 6:3-4).

"I have REMEMBERED my covenant" (6:5, emphasis mine).

Today, as He did yesterday and will tomorrow, God preeminently rules and reigns, works and orchestrates, on the basis of an ETERNAL covenant made not between God and man, but between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – the Triune God.

"you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown BEFORE the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God." (1 Peter 1:18-21, emphasis mine) 

Dear Christian, the plan of our salvation, the design of our rescue, the good news of our redemption is rooted in a covenant, an agreement, established long before the world was formed and man was created. Before the earth revolved around the sun, the purposes of God revolved around the cross. 

As a result, the present and future promises of God for our lives that we hold to in His Word are finally not dependent on God's faithfulness to us, but on God's faithfulness to Himself.

Take hope! Don't worry! God cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). He cannot forget or break His eternal covenant for our eternal redemption and life, a covenant which we had nothing to do with! He is not too busy. He is not forgetful. He does not lack integrity. 

"God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19).

RUTH: God's extraordinary work through suffering

And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?” (Ruth 1:19-21)

From a broken bone to an unexpected doctor’s report, we all suffer in many different ways. In ways that are minor and major, ordinary and tragic, none of us escapes pain, bitterness or the emptiness that often accompanies them. 

Suffering is an ordinary part of our human existence. 

While there can be explanations to many of the sufferings we encounter, there are times when there is no explanation, no answer to the question, “Why?” And we can’t always resolve that tension or ease that pain with a good debate or sound philosophical or theological response.  

For Christians, the belief has been popularized and promoted that when we suffer, Jesus will ALWAYS come and rescue us from that suffering. At times He will. But what if there are times when, rather than Jesus coming to rescue you from that deep pit, He comes to be with you in that pit? 

 

SUFFERING IS NOT PROOF GOD IS UNFAITHFUL

Naomi declares to her friends that “the Almighty has afflicted me” (Ruth 1:21). God? Afflicts me? He has allowed this? Has He forgotten me?

Humanity, for the most part, judges the intent by the act. If the act is good, surely the intent must be good. God, though, judges the act by the intent. God looks on the heart. So, when Naomi describes God’s actions as she has, what must we make of God’s intent? 

Naomi says that “the Almighty” has afflicted her - in Hebrew, El Shaddai. El Shaddai is the name often used in the Old Testament to describe God as a God who blesses, but also who judges. He is the cosmic, all-powerful, SOVEREIGN ruler who acts according to His desires. Yet, Naomi also uses another name for God: the Lord - in Hebrew, Yahweh. Yahweh is the covenant name of God. That is, when God made a covenant with His people in His grace and love, He did so as Yahweh. Naomi, then, is not only saying that God is over all things in His power, but is also saying that her covenant-making and covenant-keeping God is the one who is working in all things, including what has happened to her. God’s intent behind every act of His power is motivated by His covenant. 

Put another way, all of God’s dealings with his children, both sweet and bitter, are within the framework of His covenant-keeping love. No motive in the heart of man to love is as pure and holy as the motive in the heart of God to love His own. Furthermore, no ruler ever loved his own as much as Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, has loved His own. 

Suffering is not proof God is unfaithful. 

 

SUFFERING IS NOT WASTED

Naomi not only says God has afflicted her, but that He has also “dealt very bitterly” with her. As a result, her friends should now call her, “Mara”. Naomi means “pleasant”, Mara means “bitter”. She feels she has been marred by God. But will she always remain marred and unlovely and unpleasant? 

In chapter 2:20, we begin to see through Naomi’s eyes that God is doing something after all. Ruth has “happened” (2:3) to come to a field belonging to the long-lost relative and future kinsman-redeemer, Boaz. He provides food for her and Ruth returns to tell the good news to her mother-in-law. Upon hearing the news, Naomi proclaims, “May he be blessed of the Lord who has not withdrawn his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Naomi is beginning to see that God, even in His bitter dealings with her, had not withdrawn His kindness from her - EVER.  

We read in Genesis 50:19-20 how God eventually turned the evil intended to Joseph by his brothers into something good; good not only for Joseph, but also for his brothers. God was kind to them, too! In James 5:11, we are exhorted to remember how Job endured his suffering and what the outcome of God’s bitter dealings with him was: namely, a demonstration of God’s compassion and mercy. God never answered why Job was suffering. But after, Job saw God’s kindness in it all.

Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:11 that God is doing all things according to the counsel of His own will. He’s not taking advice from anyone. There’s no counsel foreign or outside of Himself. He determines within Himself what is good and perfect. Ultimately, Paul says in verse 10, God is doing all things, determining all things, accomplishing all things -- working all the good and bad things together -- to sum up all things AGAIN in Jesus Christ. No suffering is wasted and nothing in your life is insignificant. Why? Because the glory of Jesus is at stake.

 

SUFFERING IS NOT THE LAST WORD

When Naomi left the land of Israel for the land of Moab, she went away full. But when she returned, she was empty. She was in a state of nothingness. She walked through the streets “empty”.  

The Word of God was written and given for our encouragement (Romans 15:4), in particular during times when we need to take hope and endure. This is why Ruth is so encouraging. We get to read the end of the story! We get to see from beginning to end what exactly God was doing throughout the days of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. So when we read the last few verses of the book of Ruth, we can see how Naomi’s emptiness was not intended to last. Rather, she would be brought from emptiness to fulness of joy.

“Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him” (Ruth 4:14-15). 

Naomi’s friends, who had seen her stroll back into town afflicted and bitter, can now look at her and say “God, Yahweh, the covenant-making and keeping Lord, has not left you! He has blessed you!”  God had provided a redeemer for Naomi. God was restoring life to her. God would sustain her until the end of her days. Naomi’s suffering was not the last word.  Why? Because of Ruth.

Where was Ruth’s suffering in this story? Surely she did suffer. Nowhere in the book is there any mention of Ruth suffering, though we can imagine that she did. Rather, we have a picture of a woman entering into another person’s suffering, walking with and serving that person out of love: “...for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.” When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her” (Ruth 1:16-18). 

Where was Ruth’s suffering? Grace entered in. Where was Naomi’s suffering? Swallowed up in the birth of a son. Grace determinedly entered lives and ensured that suffering wasn’t the last word.  

 

There is no other god who willingly enters suffering. Yet, Jesus Christ entered suffering -- our suffering. He took our punishment on the cross. He cared enough for our suffering that He came, was born, lived and died. He rose from the dead and will come again. He will dwell with His people and wipe away every one of their tears and there will be no more mourning, crying or pain (Revelation 21:3-4). God has not removed Himself from our suffering. He is in it with us until the end. All of God’s promises of eternal life, joy, peace and rest were secured in the sufferings of Jesus -- DEFINITIVELY.

What does my love for God depend on?

“In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

In the beginning was God. God is love. In the beginning of all creation was Love. 

Yet God goes back, way back before there was a beginning. This confounds my children: “Dad, you know what’s really hard to get? That God has always been there.”  Love has always been there.

God loved before we loved Him. God loved after we stopped loving Him. God loved us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), haters (1:30) and enemies of Him (5:10). We were loved before we loved, so that we might always know that being loved by God doesn’t depend upon our loving Him.

We love Him now because He loved us then (1 John 4:19). God’s love for us depends entirely upon the propitiation of Jesus - His wrath-absorbing death. If Jesus had not died and taken our place and judgment, we could not have life and be forgiven and welcomed through Him into the perfect love of God. God is love.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God...” God doesn’t match His love to your love - dollar for dollar, deed for deed, thought for thought, affection for affection, etc. What a weak, poor, limited love that would be! His love is unlimited! 

When Jesus asked Peter for the third time, “Peter, do you love me?”, Peter was grieved. Maybe, remembering his betrayal of Jesus, he considered his love to be unworthy of Jesus. Yet he appealed to something other than his own efforts. He saw beyond his denial, beyond himself, to something not of himself - something in his heart that was undeniably true. “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.” (John 21:15-17) 

Jesus knows all things. He knows that my love for Him is imperfect and my love for others is, too. He knows that my love for Him doesn’t meet my expectations nor live up to my zealous standards. He knows that from one moment to the next, I can go from praying to sleeping. He knows my thoughts wander and my words slip. He knows... but He knows that I love Him. 

Imperfect is an earthly adjective, and the more I come to realize my imperfect love for Him on earth, the more I come to treasure His perfect love for me in Heaven. Because, ultimately, His love for me doesn’t depend upon my unfailing, unending love for Him. Rather, my love for Him depends upon His unfailing, unending love for me. 

God, not man, is the beginning

The dwelling place of God is with man. It is true that God created man so that man could be with Him. But it is equally true that God created man so that God could be with him. 

 

It is not man who loved God first, but God who loved man first. It is not man who created God, but God who created man. It is not man who desired to be reconciled to God, but God who desired reconciliation with man. And it is not man who pursued God, but God who pursued man, to find him, to deliver him, to rescue him, to forgive him, to cleanse him, and to bring him into a new abundant and everlasting life.  

 

It is God who descended to man, because man could never have ascended to Him. In Jesus Christ, God came in the flesh. It is God who died for us. In the Holy Spirit, it is God who lives in us. It is God who is with us. It is God who is for us. It is God who keeps us. It is God who intercedes for us. It is God who prepares us. It is God who is returning for us. It is God who is waiting for us to dwell with us forever.

 

God, not man, is the beginning and the end. Yes, we can dwell with Him, but only because “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21:3). 

WORSHIP FOR A CHANGE

If you want to change, worship Jesus. Not because of what He can give you, but because of who He can make you. Because while every spiritual blessing found in God is given to us in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), most profoundly and most gloriously, God has given Himself to us in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19; 1 Peter 3:18). And that’s where worship begins and ends: with Jesus.

 

Most of us don’t change because we end up pursuing the spiritual blessings of freedom, deliverance, change and transformation apart from Jesus, not in Jesus. We have yet to understand that freedom, deliverance, change and transformation (and every spiritual blessing) come in the shape of Jesus. In other words, we worship Jesus because in Him we have everything and in everything else we have nothing. Worship is beholding Jesus in all His supremacy as all our sufficiency.  

 

You become like what you worship. In our worship we receive Jesus. In our worship we are conformed to the image of Jesus, who is the image of God, the exact imprint of God’s nature, and the full radiance of God’s glory (Colossians 1:15; Philippians 2:6; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Hebrews 1:3). When we behold God in Jesus Christ, it is impossible not to change.

THE UNREPEATABILITY OF JESUS’ DEATH

“He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.” Hebrews 7:27

 

What Is To Be Repeated

In this physical, earthly life, God created things that are to be repeated. For example, the sun will repeatedly rise and set ,and a day will repeatedly come and go. As human beings, we were created with needs that must be repeatedly met. We will either eat again and again or else we will die. We will either drink over and over or else we will die. We will either breath in and breathe out or else we will die. If these things are not repeated, death ensues.

 

What Was To Be Repeated

In the Old Testament God created and established one very important thing also to be repeated. In the Tabernacle, designed by God and built by Moses, there were Levites who served in and guarded the Tabernacle. Among them was the High Priest, whose highest duty was to perform the sacrifice for sin. He would repeatedly take, kill and offer on the altar a lamb, for his own sins and for the sins of the people. In this way, he continually ensured God’s forgiveness and acceptance. It was God who in His grace provided a way out of slavery in Egypt, a way out of their disobedience and sins, and a way into His favor through the sacrificial system. This system did not originate with man. It originated in the heart of God. Because Israel sinned repeatedly, sacrifices needed to be made repeatedly by the High Priest. The sight and smell of blood was constant.

 

What Will Never Be Repeated 

When John the Baptist came on the scene, he saw Jesus Christ walking towards him and said of Him, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) What did John see in Jesus to make such a remarkable pronouncement? All the sacrifices made throughout the days of the Old Testament in the Tabernacle pointed to Jesus. Of the High Priests of the Old Testament we read that they were prevented by death from continuing in that office (Hebrews 7:23). Likewise, as a new High Priest was always needed because of death, so were the sacrifices always needed because of sin. But in Jesus, we find something unique. He offered Himself as a sacrifice. This means, first, He was our High Priest, since only the High Priest could make sacrifices for sins. But Jesus was sinless and, therefore, did not offer a sacrifice for His sins. For this reason, being the sinless Son of God, the perfect Lamb of God, He alone was qualified to be a sacrifice of such infinite value that He could offer Himself for the sins of His people. And He did, once and for all, not only for the sins of Israel, but for the sins of the entire world. This is the scope and power of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. There is now no need for a repeated sacrifice to be made, because Jesus Christ remains forever alive in the presence of God as both the High Priest and the sacrifice for all who believe in Him. 

 

In Him our sins have been forgiven, not just today, but everyday into eternity. In Him we are accepted by God, not just today, but for eternal life. This is the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, our perfect sacrifice and great High Priest, “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26).

 

Chosen before the foundation of the world

“...he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” Ephesians 1:4

The truth of the Gospel should never cease to amaze us. It should ever pierce our hearts and minds in new and fresh ways as we more closely behold and more deeply understand the glorious grace of God towards us in Jesus Christ. 

 

CHOSEN

Dear Christian, you have been selected, chosen, hand-picked by God Himself. Let that sink in... the Creator God, the Living God, the Eternal God, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient and Omnipresent God has chosen YOU. It’s easy to overlook others and to be overlooked ourselves. But God has specifically chosen a people for himself out of the midst of all the peoples on the face of the earth (Deuteronomy 7:6; Revelation 5:9). Although they were small and weak, God chose the people of Israel to be His treasured possession (Deut. 7:6-8). Although we are low and despised (1 Corinthians 1:28), God has chosen sinners to make for Himself a people for His own possession (1 Peter 2:9), holy and blameless before Him. His choosing us is sheer, unmistakable and glorious grace. 

 

BEFORE

Dear Christian, you were chosen by God Himself before the foundation of the world. Before God created the world, He had already chosen you. And before you were formed in your mother’s womb, God had already called you (Jeremiah 1:5). And before you even took your first breath, God had already known you (Psalm 139; Isaiah 44:2). And before you did anything good or bad, God had already loved you (Romans 9:11). Is that astounding to you? I hope so! Many wrongly believe that God chooses men in this world because of what they do right and, conversely, that God doesn’t choose men because of what they do wrong. And so they try harder and harder to do right, to avoid wrong, to get noticed so that they can be chosen. But God has chosen us for reasons that are both unknown to us and unalterable by us! This is good news, precisely because there is NOTHING in you or I that would ever move God to choose us. Something else had to move Him to choose us.

 

IN JESUS

Dear Christian, you were chosen in Jesus Christ. You were chosen IN Jesus Christ BEFORE the foundation of the world. There was something outside of this world and something before time existed that became the grounds (the reason) on which God would choose us. What is it? We are chosen simply on the grounds of who Jesus is and what He has done - on the basis of His merit alone. There is no merit of our own or any reason outside of Jesus Christ and His righteousness by which God would or could choose and save a sinner. Do you see it?! God has loved you with an everlasting love, a love that is bigger than creation and a love that is not limited by time. Before there was a world there was a choice. Yet before there was a choice there was a name: Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Your salvation “predates” everything. Your salvation is grounded in eternal love.