Excited!

I just got the new Caedmon's Call CD in the mail--you can view information on their new album here. The title of the new album is called "Overdressed" and it is great to hear Derek Webb with them again--to me, it just really hasn't been Caedmon's Call without him. Of course, he won't be joining them permanently (I don't think--but I'm not sure).

The EVEN BIGGER NEWS is that Caedmon's will actually be coming to do a concert 15 minutes from where we live!!! My wife and I haven't gotten to see them since college, so we are VERY excited that they are coming close by--it will be a real treat to see them again.

In other slightly important news, the Red Sox play the Yanks tonight, and I'm not sure I'll watch since as a superstitious baseball fan, to watch would be to somehow jinx the Sox, and I don't want that 8 game lead to dwindle!

Tale of Two Dexters

Yesterday was an interesting day. I may have mentioned before on this blog how I seem to attract dogs that are not my own--well, it happened again yesterday.

I took my dog for his morning walk, as is always my job on the weekends, and suddenly this Jack Russell darts out into our walking path. It has no collar and no owner appears to be nearby. To set the stage, it is 7 AM on a Sunday morning, so to quote a Christmas poem, "not a creature was stirring."

So, here is this Jack Russell, and I'm really not sure what to do with it--having my dog is actually a good thing, as it seems most dogs will come to you if you also have a dog with you. My dog was going nuts, as he does with all dogs his size ("someone to play with!"). I picked the dog up--he did not seem to mind--and took him to a house where I had thought I had seen a Jack Russell before, but after I knocked a couple of times, realized that it was not the same dog.

After going back and forth in thinking that I could take the dog home and call Animal Control to see if anyone had reported missing a dog and taking it back to the place where I had found it, a woman drove by in a minivan, jumped out and said, "Dexter!"

********

Fast forward to later in the day, where we went over to another young couple's house (who attend our church), who also had a dog named Dexter. What are the odds?

Cheerful Holiness

Spurgeon, as always, continues to amaze me with his words. In today's morning reading (which can be found here), in speaking about Psalm 92:4 he says:

Cheerful holiness is the most forcible of sermons, but the Lord must give it you.

We all acknowledge that the Lord must even give us the faith and grace to continue in this life, but look at the type of holiness that Spurgeon speaks of here. A cheerful holiness--not a prideful, boastful, solemn or dutiful holiness, but a cheerful one--makes the greatest testimony to the work that God has done in you.

Why? Because through your words and actions you display your gratefulness to God for the salvation He has given you. Your sanctification should be permeated by a thankfulness to the God of all things--this is why an overemphasis with what a man has done in the salvation he has attained through Christ (that man came to Christ on his own, etc. without any effectual drawing) can overshadow or deflect such gratefulness (in my opinion) and make the focus of their sanctification wholly one of duty rather than one of cheerfulness and thankfulness.

Glorify God in your sanctification, never forgetting that Christ has died for you--love others and express to others the love you have been shown!

Life Before Cable?

So I was watching the PGA Golf Tournament yesterday on CBS, and the tournament was about 45 minutes from being over, Tiger Woods was on his way to his 13th major, and suddenly, the TV got stuck. I mean every channel became freeze-framed. The DVR stated that all the channels were temporarily off the air, and when I took the DVR off-line, the channels were all stuck in that particular moment in time.

I thought, "man, I'd like to see the rest of the tournament, guess I'll have to see if they are broadcasting it on the internet." (for some reason, the internet, which we also get by cable, was working) So, for a few minutes, I was watching on the PGA website some very grainy "live" webcam action from the tournament.

A few minutes later, my wife says, "you know, we might be able to get some type of reception." And I was thinking, "but the cable's out, right?" She says, "through the antenna."

And it was like transporting to a former time (not too long ago for us, but still a few years ago) where we adjusted the ol' rabbit ears to see if we could get this or that channel--lucky for me the tournament was on a network station, and I got to watch the rest of the tournament. Always nice to have a backup plan.

Wash Me Savior, or I Die

The above is a very memorable line from a great hymn, Rock of Ages. The full verse reads as follows:

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly,--
Wash me, Savior, or I die!

The verse is very powerful (as is the rest of the song) because of its imagery--a person acknowledging that he has nothing to bring to salvation and knows that he must cling to the Cross and that Christ must clothe him with His righteousness. But before this is obtained, a washing must take place in the fountain which is Christ's blood that was shed for us.

I have been meaning to post on this topic for a while, only because in C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (a book in the Chronicles of Narnia series) there is a amazing illustration of this. To set the background, in this book, Edmund and Lucy, two of the original Pevensie children who visited Narnia in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe have returned to Narnia with their cousin, Eustace, who is most certainly a brat in the kindest sense of the word. He is self-centered and only concerned about what he can get out of Narnia. In this scene, Eustace has wandered off from the landing party and to a cave.

But as he got to the mouth of the cave, he saw what we would know as a dragon, which came to the edge of the lake to drink, twitched, giving one last breath and died. Edmund almost laughed out loud in relief, and went inside the cave when it began to rain. When he went in the cave, what did he find but loads of treasure--in fact he had found a bracelet which was too big for his wrist but slid it up past his elbow (since he thought he could take some of this treasure for himself). Then he went to sleep and a strange thing happened....

He awoke to a great pain in his arm, and he noticed that the pain had become strangely tight. He moved to take it off and was shocked at what he saw coming from his right and his left: dragon arms moved across his sight line as he moved his arms. Of course, he thought that he was now between two dragons that surrounded him as he slept, but he saw that smoke was coming out of his own nostrils: he had turned into a dragon.

Eustace, after realizing this, only now wanted his friends and felt bad for how he had treated them, resigning himself to the life of a dragon. And then one night he was visited by a lion (those reading the books would know him to be Aslan), and the lion prompted Eustace to follow him to a well:

But the lion told me that I must undress first...I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are the snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins...So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place...my whole skin peeled off beautifully...it was lying beside me, looking rather nasty.

Eustace tried this several times, but discovered each time as he went down to bathe in the well that each attempt to scratch the skin off had been unsuccessful. The lion soon spoke:

"You will have to let me undress you."

Fear ran fast through Eustace as the lion approached him with his claws, but Eustace's desperation won over his fear:

I was pretty afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but the I was pretty nearly desperate now. The very first tear he (the lion) made was so deep that I thought it had gone right through my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt...He peeled the beastly stuff off just as I thought I had done it myself the other three times, only it hadn't hurt--and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and knobbly-looking than the others had been.

The lion then grabbed Eustace and threw him into the water, waiting a few moments, then dressing Eustace in new clothes.
************************

What a great illustration this is of the concept of our rebirth in Christ! Before we come to Christ, we may be prompted by some sense of our own self-righteousness or morality to reform ourselves and then think ourselves better (such as Eustace trying to scrape his dragon skin off). But when we come to Christ, we realize that we are no different than we were in the innermost depths of our soul, and there is a washing that only Christ can do when he washes our hearts (in regeneration and justification), replacing a heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Christ sees our inner wickedness that must be redeemed that we cannot see (or choose not to see) in the mirror.

Without this washing by Christ, we are still under God's wrath and are justly condemned to die for our sins, just as the other dragon died in the story above that Eustace met before he became a dragon.

Christian, rejoice today in the new creation that you are and the new clothes that Christ has given you in the salvation that He has called you to!

Jesus as Guarantor of a BETTER Covenant

Pastor David continued into Hebrews 7 yesterday, covering verses 18-22:

18 For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness 19 (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God. 20 And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, 21 but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him:

“The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever.’”

22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

Pastor David began by reminding us the definition of covenant, which is essentially a solemn promise between two parties. A guarantor is someone that assumes responsibilities for paying another's debt or fulfilling their responsibilities (for example, like a co-signer on a car loan).

Beginning in the text, the writer-preacher is quick to point out yet again the weak nature of the Old commandments in how they could not save and did not make anything perfect. The writer also again points to the uniqueness of Christ's priesthood, in that Christ was made priest with an oath (whereas Levitical priests were made priests simply by bloodline)--The LORD swore an oath that Christ would be priest forever. The permanence of such a promise likely had a profound effect on the hearers, yet they were still tempted to go back to what they knew!

The reason that the writer preacher is spending time on this is that the hearers of this message are under much persecution--homes are being destroyed and they are being thrown in prison. It was easy to follow Christ when times were easy and good, and the Romans tolerated their religion--but Pastor David pointed out that when the persecution began, the pressure was trying to push them back to the Old Covenant and all that came along with it.

But the writer's point in showing this "better hope" and Jesus being the guarantor of a better covenant is to show them that Jesus fulfilled the law and superseded the Old Covenant and brought the New Covenant. There is no Old Covenant to retreat to, and yet these hearers wanted to run back to it!

The same pull or force that tempted them to desire the ways of the Old Covenant is the same force that drives us to fall back into old patterns when we come into suffering or strife that tests our faith. When we are stressed and the pressure is brought to bear on our life, we crave the "comfortable" (or at least what we think is comfort). Even as regenerated, new creations in Christ, we grab for the thing which does not satisfy when we are put under pressure, because we think that will satisfy and bring us comfort. But it is a lie! Christ, as the guarantor of a better covenant, is the only thing that will truly satisfy and sustain. We cannot turn to bad language, violence, pornography, gossip, or other vices to alleviate our suffering or make us feel better about ourselves. We must ask the Spirit to cleanse our minds and our thoughts and fight the temptation to revert to patterns which we must surrender to Him.

Lord help us to resist the temptation to fall back into old patterns and instead cling to the Cross, as you are the guarantor of a better covenant and a lasting hope!

Who Was Melchizedek, Part II

Last Sunday Pastor David explored verses 11-19 of Ch. 7, where the writer-preacher lays out the comparison between Jesus and Melchizedek, and which read as follows:

11 Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? 12 For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. 13 For the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. 14 For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.

15 This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, 16 who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. 17 For it is witnessed of him,


“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”

18 For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness 19 (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.

Pastor David broke this section down into two parts, the first addressing the imperfections of the Levitical priesthood.

I. Imperfections of the Levitical Priesthood: vv. 11-14

1. The imperfect nature of the Levitical priesthood as established from Levi, the 3rd son of Jacob and Leah can be illustrated in two ways:
a. First, to give some background, Levi was one of the brothers who defended his sister's honor by going into the city to find the men that defiled her and killed all the males, not just some, but ALL. Does this sound like a priest?

It is important to note that the priesthood came from Levi because first, Moses, who was a to be a great deliverer of Israel (as Christ is the ultimate deliverer) was the son of a Levite. Thus, Aaron, as his brother and first of all priests was also a Levite. In addition, even though Jacob had essentially disinherited Jacob from any land when his other sons got land, God had a different plan. In Numbers 3, God sets the Levites apart as His, to be His servants and the Lord anointed them as priests. From that point on, the Levites were to be given 10 percent from the other tribes essentially in exchange (as a redemption price) for having ALL Levite sons being dedicated to the Lord, in place of dedicating all firstborn sons from all tribes in that fashion.

b. Second, the imperfections are quite evident and don't take long to show, as the most obvious would be when Aaron agrees to have a golden calf made from jewelry of the people while Moses is still on Mt. Sinai. Thus, the FIRST opportunity Aaron has to exert authority and minister to the people, he fails! But this should ever tell us that people are fallible, no matter their position, because they are sinners!

The most striking thing about the above example is what Moses says in response to Aaron and the Israelites when arriving and finding what they have done--he states that perhaps he can make atonement for their sins. He knows the God that He serves and His majesty, holiness and justice! He is a mere man and can only beg of God's mercy as He did with Sodom and Gomorrah--at that point there is no firm approaching of God as we have in Christ! So this is why the law needed to be changed--for while our disobedience can be radical, He pours out His grace even more to overcome it!

2. Changing the Mosaic Law (vv. 12-14)
As evidenced in the above example, the law could not save the Israelites--it only served to show God's standards, their sinfulness and their inability to keep that standard. Just as they could not do this, we cannot either--their faith in some ways was tied to their obedience because they had a law that could not be satisfied within themselves. Our faith is not predicated on a maybe or perhaps, but on a firm foundation.

II. Superiority of the New Priesthood
1. Jesus' priesthood is forever, and He is our Savior to the uttermost!
Christ lived the perfect life and became priest in this manner and not because
he descended from Levites.

2. Jesus is a better hope! Jesus, being perfect in every way, living the perfect
life, and being raised on the third day is a MUCH better hope than the
Israelites had in their priests (who made their own share of mistakes).

Pastor David concluded by looking to Isaiah 11 where it talks of Christ's coming and God speaks of what His priest will do and how peace will be illustrated by a lion laying down with a lamb. This is the work of Christ and the power of His salvation: that peace will reign in the hearts of men because He has saved them and has given them a new nature and new heart. This is the awesomeness and effectiveness of His priesthood. He is not a Levite priest who wails repentant prayers of atonement annually for the people hoping that a righteous and justly wrathful God will hopefully hear his prayers, but Jesus Christ, Word made flesh, who reigns on high with the Father in the Triune Godhead who was made sin for us that we might live and ever intercedes for us before the Father. Picture it, for this is your hope and salvation! Rest in the glorious grace of Christ.

Meditating on the Promises of God

After having pulled two 12-hour work days from 6AM to 6PM (I was actually on the road this morning to court by 20 minutes to 6), I'm quite tired, so blogging Pastor David's most excellent sermon from last Sunday will be up tomorrow.

In the meantime, I will turn once again to Spurgeon for something worth thinking about, this taken from my morning reading on Friday July 27th, where Spurgeon quotes 2 Peter 1:4 ("Exceeding great and precious promises"):

If you would know experimentally the preciousness of the promises, and enjoy them in your own heart, meditate much upon them. There are promises which are like grapes in the wine-press; if you will tread them the juice will flow. Thinking over the hallowed words will often be the prelude to their fulfilment. While you are musing upon them, the boon which you are seeking will insensibly come to you. Many a Christian who has thirsted for the promise has found the favour which it ensured gently distilling into his soul even while he has been considering the divine record; and he has rejoiced that ever he was led to lay the promise near his heart.

But besides meditating upon the promises, seek in thy soul to receive them as being the very words of God. Speak to thy soul thus, “If I were dealing with a man’s promise, I should carefully consider the ability and the character of the man who had covenanted with me. So with the promise of God; my eye must not be so much fixed upon the greatness of the mercy—that may stagger me; as upon the greatness of the promiser—that will cheer me. My soul, it is God, even thy God, God that cannot lie, who speaks to thee. This word of his which thou art now considering is as true as his own existence. He is a God unchangeable. He has not altered the thing which has gone out of his mouth, nor called back one single consolatory sentence. Nor doth he lack any power; it is the God that made the heavens and the earth who has spoken thus. Nor can he fail in wisdom as to the time when he will bestow the favours, for he knoweth when it is best to give and when better to withhold. Therefore, seeing that it is the word of a God so true, so immutable, so powerful, so wise, I will and must believe the promise.” If we thus meditate upon the promises, and consider the Promiser, we shall experience their sweetness, and obtain their fulfilment.

**************

Christian, I will simply say that it is quite easy for us to read the Bible as we do any other book, as I myself often do, as if it is an assignment for a grade! But how often are we exhorted to meditate on the promises, to own them and know the God that made them! Read the promises of God and pause, considering the God who has made them in his wonder and glory, crying out at the same time, "wretched sinner that I am!" Yet, wonder in His infinite grace and know that you are His, bought with the blood of Christ! If he can achieve so great a salvation, can He not provide for you in EVERY other manner?

Worry and doubt are rooted in the ignorance (meaning, lack of knowledge) of Biblical principles--and that may offend some, but it is the truth. Why do you think that several writers in the New Testament are rebuking their hearers that they should have moved on to spiritual meat instead of being stuck on spiritual milk? Many of those even in Christendom would want to see signs or experience God in some sweeping emotional way when they have the Word of God right in front of them! He has revealed Himself to us in His Word so that we may know Him and believe, and with the help of His Spirit we can grow in knowledge of Him. We are called to be a sanctified people, set apart for Him--and in this sanctification, we grow in Him.

Christian, meditate deeply on the riches of Christ and the promises of God, and pray that the Holy Spirit lead you to the assurance that only God gives!