October 19, 2009

• Letter 7 on assurance and fighting for joy (remember His love for us while we were sinners)

  I'm continuing to write about assurance and fighting for joy...If you have not already done so, I would recommend you read the previous letters in this series here, here, here, here and here and here.

  
  

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  Dear child of the King, my friend in and co-heir with Jesus,

  You know how I wrote here in the fourth letter on joy about God's great salvation to us in Jesus Christ and how we need to continue to reflect on that so we might have His joy in us and our joy might be complete. How can we know His joy if we do not know Him who is true Joy? So first, let us remember these things are only for those who are His by grace through faith. (I know you know this, but others see the promises of Jesus and pluck them out of context and say they apply to all. They want the comfort of Christianity but are not willing to count the cost. They want the benefits of Christ without actually ever having partaken of Christ.) How can we know Him who is true Joy if we do not continue to abide in Him and in His words to us and allow His words to abide in us. GIGO, right? Let us strive to know Him. Yes, I know that we know Him, but let us press on to know Him more as the apostle Paul wrote. We have known Him because He knew us and set His love on us, but yet is there not always more we can know? Is He not infinite and we finite? May we strengthen us to be filled with His fullness. Let us not ever be content and say we know Him and we know all we need to know of Him. God forbid that we become complacent and do that. We have tasted now of that fullness of joy now, have we not? O, may He fill us until we want no more. And then let us go back for more! For there is always more to know, is there not?

  As I was reflecting more on our salvation in Him, I believe I would be remiss if I didn't back up and consider once more what we were apart from Christ. I've talked about this a bit already in that other letter: we were not a people, we did not know His mercy, we were in darkness, we were separated from Him, we were helpless. But I would like to give you some specific Scriptures which point to our condition apart from Him, all so we might remember our salvation is all of Him from first to last, He is the alpha and omega, the author and perfecter of our faith. I know you know these things, but let us remind one another of them now, shall we?

  Now, you may be a bit surprised at this, but I'm going to have you turn to the Old Testament, first to the book of Ezekiel. Something you had written to me about our lowly beginnings reminded me of this passage. Yes, Ezekiel. Chapter 16. No, no strange vision just a magnificent story of a God who condescends to save His chosen people:

  Again the word of the LORD came to me:
  
  2 Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, 3 and say, Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
  
  4 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. 5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
  
  6 “And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, Live! I said to you in your blood, Live! 7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.
  
  8 “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine. 9 Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. 10 I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. 11 And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. 12 And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. 14 And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord GOD.

  Is this not a picture of each one of us individually and the Church as a whole? (Of course, the passage goes on to lament how Israel turned from the Lord and played the harlot, which serves as a warning to us to always be working out our salvation with fear and trembling. But for today, let us look at the gift of salvation God gave Israel and is made available to all by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, so we might grow in the joy we have in Him.)

  I don't really want to tear this passage apart too much. Sometimes we can overanalyze things in the Word of God and lose the wonder of them, or should I say the wonder of our Lord?

  Look at the heritage of Israel. That's a picture of our heritage. They were the lowest of the low, were they not? Look at the language God uses there. The references there to the land of Canaanites and father and mother as Amorite and Hittite, respectively. That was a slam right there. Here is God calling the kettle black, so to speak. He's calling His chosen people by the names of the surrounding pagan nations, those who worshiped idols and not the true God. The point here is that we have all been born into sin. Our hearts are wicked, deceitful and desperately wicked. Our nature is fallen. We were separated from Him. Sin came into the world through the first Adam. We had no ability to seek God much less love Him. And there is nothing in us to commend us to Him. He is holy and He cannot abide sin in His presence. Not a speck of it. Yet we have been born into sin and are filled inside and out with sin: from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes. How can sinners like us even approach Him?

  Like Israel, there was no hope or help for us apart from God. Look back at Ezekiel 16. We could do nothing to rescue ourselves. No one else could do anything to rescue us either. Not only that, but we were abhorred, despised. Yet what did God do? In His mercy, God passed by and saw us. The Good Shepherd can't walk by any of His sheep in His flock without stopping. (Oh, this is a whole other matter...how He has put into us that same shepherd heart to labor in the harvest, has He not? But I will not dwell on that now, but I do hope to write about that another day.) God could not remain aloof to us and ignore us like the priest and the Levite did to the injured man on the Jericho road. Our God had pity and compassion on us when no one else did. While we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly! Christ was despised and rejected so we might not be! God saw our helpless estate and sent His Son to die for us so we might be reconciled to Him. While we were dead in our sins and transgressions, He sent His Spirit to breathe life into us and forgive us our sins. He did not treat us like our sins deserve. A holy God who had every right to keep far, far away from us instead made the grand movement toward us – and thanks be to God He did – for we had no ability to move toward Him. He became man and took the punishment we deserve. And then, being that our whole nature is totally fallen, His kindness swept in and gave us the gift of repentance and forgiveness of sins! By His grace we humbled ourselves and He came to dwell with us! The God whose throne is in heaven has promised to come and live in the lowly and contrite heart. Does this make any sense to us? Only adore it, my friend. Only adore that by His grace through faith (and even that faith is His gift to us!), we are now children of the King. We are objects of mercy that should have known wrath. Our salvation is all of Him, through Him and to Him. To Him be all the glory!

  Oh, yes, let us always remember we were sinners and we are sinners. That is when the Gospel shines brightest! When we dumb down, excuse, rationalize or ignore our sin, we are saying to God, "The cross on which my Savior died didn't really count for that much." Can I even call Him my Savior when I make little of my sin? When we make little of our sin, we make little of the cross. When we make little of the cross, we make little of Christ. When we make little of Christ, we make little of our salvation. O, God forbid, that we ever do that! If there were no sin, there would be no need for the cross or for the Lamb to offer Himself willingly as a sin offering in our place. The spotless Lamb became sin for us. Can you imagine it? Our sin, not in part but the whole, placed on the pure, spotless, holy Son of God, who was nailed to the cross! What kind of God is this? Can we not help but rejoice? Who else would die for sinners like us? Perhaps a good man might die for another good man. But the Son of God died for sinners! Who else could do this? The Lord God alone. No other sacrifice would be sufficient to take away sin, to atone for our sin and to reconcile us to God. The God-man Christ Jesus did what we could not do. Praise be to our Redeemer who loved us first! We could not love Him apart from His loving us first. May the old, old story of Jesus and His love never become old hat to us!

  The Lord God told us, "Live!" while we were dead in our sins and transgressions. He breathed life into us by His Holy Spirit. He made us flourish. We grew and matured and were made us fruitful. All our righteousness was filthy rags. All our fruit was wild grapes. But He is bearing good and holy fruit in us now by His Spirit. The very first fruit being our ability to believe on Him. We were naked and bare, much like the tax collector, who could only look down and beat on his breast. Nothing in our hands we bring, only to His cross we cling. O, was not that the problem with the Israelites and our problem today and the problem with the Church today? We're not clinging to the cross. We've received life in His Name but then we go a-whoring after idols! O, that He might return us to Him, our first Love. Yet, have we not seen Him calling us and others back to Himself once again? Praise Him!

  God covered us with Christ's righteousness by faith because our sin was placed upon Christ. We have become the righteousness of God. God entered into a covenant with us. He died. We receive His life. He provided the sacrifice. We accept it. A unilateral covenant in His blood. We became His. I read a snippet of Horatius Bonar that said other religions end with forgiveness, but Christianity begins with it! Have you ever thought of it that way? Yes, we knew it, but how wonderful that is. How wonderful He is! We have no place in the Kingdom of God apart from His full and free forgiveness granted to us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. How could we? He is holy. We are sinners.

  He washed and anointed us with oil. He has cleansed us from our sin by His blood and He washes us with the water of His Word. He anoints us with His Holy Spirit so we might be holy devoted to Him. He clothes us with royal clothing because we are now the children of a King, though we were nothing close to royalty, far, far from it! He is doing it all! We were paupers but now we are His royal priesthood. Like the prodigal son, we are welcomed into the royal family as sons, not servants. And God gives us abundant food to eat; He feeds us with the choicest food, the Word of God and His blessed Spirit. His Spirit leads us into all truth as abide in Him and His Word. And though He has already justified us by His blood and counted Christ's perfect righteousness to us, through the mysterious lifelong process of sanctification by the Spirit we become truly beautiful because of the splendor He has bestowed on us, we begin to shine as lights in the world. O, I know often I don't look very bright, but He who has begun that work in me will complete it, will He not? We will become a praise in the earth when we were once a reproach. Our minds are continuing to be transformed and we are being conformed to the image of His Son. (Yes, it's painful at times, but we know His discipline will yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness in us!) Anyhow, as I said, let's not tear His Word apart too much, but only sit at His feet and adore Him. Let us never forget our humble beginnings!

  May the day never come that we forget how wondrous our salvation is and how wonderful He is! Our salvation is truly a miracle and the greatest blessing God has given us. Who else can bring a dead soul condemned and destined for hell into the arms of God? Who can give us full and free pardon from the penalty of our sin and release us from the bondage of our sin nature? O, may we never take our salvation for granted. I know I once used to. For a long, long time, as a matter of fact. O, I regret that. God forbid I would lapse back and do that again. I don't want to be lukewarm to God but burn as a flaming fire for Him. My friend, I hope and pray we never forget what He did for us that day He looked upon us while we abhorred, out in the field, cast out, with no one to care for us. He did it all! Let us rejoice in Him! Let us tell what He has done for us!

  As often as we are able to, let us continue to ask Him:

  What is man that you are mindful of him?

  Might we go in and sit before the Lord like David:

  18 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD and said, Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?
  19 And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD. You have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord GOD! 20 And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD! 21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness, to make your servant know it.

  22 Therefore you are great, O LORD God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. 23 And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things by driving out before your people, whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods? 24 And you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O LORD, became their God. 25 And now, O LORD God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, and do as you have spoken. 26 And your name will be magnified forever, saying, The LORD of hosts is God over Israel, and the house of your servant David will be established before you. 27 For you, O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. 28 And now, O Lord GOD, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant.

  29 Now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord GOD, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever.

  –II Samuel 7:18-29

  Is this a man who took God's salvation for granted? No, not at all. He saw it as a blessing from the Lord God. (Oh, yes, we do see David's sin with Bathsheba not long after that, yet do we not see how David prayed for God to restore to Him the joy of His salvation and He did so! Yet, let us always be humble and may we ever rejoice in the Lord and not His gifts to us. May we be completely satisfied in Him and Him alone and not go lusting after other gods. Let us be thankful for our families and friends, those precious relationships He has given to us, but yet, may we never put any earthly relationship before Him or seek more than He has chosen to give us. That was David's problem there. It's a picture of how we must let the Lord be our all in all. This is all a definite warning to us, my friend. We both know that our hearts are still prone to wander and how easily we can play the harlot against the Lover of our souls. The devil continues to prowl, does he not? Let us always keep up our guard!)

  What do you think would happen if all the people in a single congregation (and/or perhaps all our friends on Xanga and Revelife here) were to read through and meditate on David's words or that passage in Ezekiel? Or why not both? Should we try it for a week and see how God might use it to grow our intimacy with Him and increase our love for Him and our joy in Him? How could it not? That we might know Him more than we do today! Is that not eternal life? Let's read of His great love for us while we were nothing, shall we? And let us encourage our friends to do so. O, to reflect on His sovereign goodness and grace to us. In His mercy and grace, might He not choose to further inflame the fire which is already burning in hearts on fire for Him? And might He not light the flames of those who are barely flickering now! O, wouldn't that be wonderful? Is that not we are seeking? For His people to be revived and on fire. For those who know Him to know Him more deeply, and for those who only know about Him to come to know Him. O, to know Him and then to make Him known, is that not our hearts' desire, my friend? O, my heart is rejoicing now! How I was nothing and He set His love on me and made me His daughter, a child of the King of glory!

  One more Old Testament passage that reminds us of our lowly beginnings and the love He showed to us – it's one of my favorites:

  For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

  The LORD set His love on us. Why? Because He loves us!
  The LORD has chosen us. Why? Because He loves us!
  The LORD has brought us out and redeemed us. Why? Because He loves us!

  All through the Psalms we are told to rejoice and be glad. When we remember our humble beginnings, our place in that open field where we were cast out, despised, helpless and how He chose us and came to us! He called us as a people to Himself and set His love on us, all because He loved us! O, may we never forget that we did not choose Him but He chose us. O, may we never forget that He chose to be an atoning sacrifice in our place on the cross because He loved us!

  "How He Loves"[1] from Crowder's "Church Music" is in my head now:

  He is jealous for me,
  Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
  Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
  When all of a sudden,
  I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
  And I realize just how beautiful You are,
  And how great Your affections are for me.
  
  And oh, how He loves us so,
  Oh how He loves us,
  How He loves us all
  
  He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves.
  Yeah, He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves.
  
  And we are His portion and He is our prize,
  Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
  If his grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
  And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
  And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
  I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
  When I think about, the way…
  
  He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves.
  Yeah, He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves us,
  Oh how He loves.
  
  

  That's it. Oh, how He loves us! That's what will keep us running the race. His love is the source of our joy! Let us remember how He loved us while we were yet sinners and were far from Him. I think it was Spurgeon who said something like God had to have foreknown us before the foundation of the world because when you and I were born if He had looked on us at that point there was nothing at all lovely in or about us! Do you know that quote? If I find it, I will share it with you.

  Oh, how He loves us! Of course, we don't need Spurgeon to tell us these things, do we? We have read of His love for us in the Scripture and the Spirit has spoken His love to our hearts. May He continue to lead us into all truth, into a greater intimacy with God so our joy might be full and His joy might remain in us!

  Let us adore Him and His great love for us in Jesus Christ. Oh, how He loves us! Oh, how He loves His bride! Amen.

  Let us read through those passages and allow Him to enrapture us with His love for us so we might know Him!

  Loved by His love and being filled with all the fullness of God only because He loves me!

  Karen

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  Related posts:
  

  • Bible Reading: Lamentations 1:12-Is His Sacrifice nothing to you?
  • Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Why the Cross? Part 1-The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin
  • Praise to the Triumphant Lamb: "God of Unexampled Grace"
  • God's Valentine to sinful men: "Nadie te amo como Yo"
  • the Father's Valentine
  • A belated Valentine from God

  [1] "How He Loves" by John Mark McMillan, © 2005 Integrity's Hosanna Music. You can listen to David Crowder Band's version of the song here. Lyrics are subject to US Copyright Laws and are the property of their respective authors, artists and labels. Commercial use prohibited.

  Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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