Month: March 2020

JESUS

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REASONS FOR THE APPEARING OF JESUS

Did JESUS come to appease an angry GOD?  From a human viewpoint that makes sense because I know I am a sinner and certainly GOD is not pleased with me.  But, no, “He has come to lift the veil and reveal the heart of a gracious, sin-pardoning God.  He declaring that the ‘Father Himself loves us,’ and that ‘he that hath seen me,’ so full of grace, ‘hath seen the Father’ (John 14:9); in other words, He affirms that He is a copy, or a representation, of the Father.  The love, grace, truth, holiness, power, compassion, and tenderness exhibited in such fullness of supply by Jesus, and distributed by Him so profusely, had their origin and their counterpart in God” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, April 24th).

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…”(Heb 1:3 ESV).

“Why did God bruise his Son and bring him to grief?  He did it to resolve the dissonance between his love for his glory and his love for sinners….God-dishonoring sin could not be ignored….Because God loves the honor of his name….his Son…will demonstrate to all the world the infinite worth of the Father’s glory” John Piper (ref#220, p161).

“Righteousness and the glory of God are his passion….He came from heaven primarily to vindicate God’s glory and God’s honour, and not just to save us….the great motive was the glory of God, which had been violated by the Devil and by sin….His anger is roused against the enemies of his holy and righteous Father” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#265, p271).

“Jesus wants us to see that his willingness to lose his life is because of his love for the glory of the Father” John Piper (ref#220, p165).  “In that very moment when the Son was taking upon himself everything that God hates in us, and God was forsaking him to death, even then the Father knew that the measure of his Son’s suffering was the depth of his Son’s love for the Father’s glory” John Piper (ref#220, p176).

So, FATHER, to give You the deepest pleasure I need to give my life for Your glory—as one willing to show how much I love You.  Make me make it so.

JESUS

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THE RESTORER

FATHER, the making of creation in six days is amazing enough but the love You show me in my recreation is beyond phenomenal!

“…the work of restoration is a greater achievement of power than was the work of creation….In one day He [GOD] made man; He spent four thousand years redeeming man.  It cost Him nothing to create a soul; it cost Him His dear Son to save it….He met with no opposition in creating man; in re-creating him, Satan, the world, and man himself are against Him” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, May 4th, brackets mine).

“…behold what sinhas done!  Man has lost his original resemblance to God.  It is true, he still retains his spiritual, intelligent, and immortal nature: these he can never lose.  But his moral likeness to God—his knowledge, purity, justice, truth, and love—is blotted from his soul; darkness, impurity desolation, and death reign there instead. With the obliteration of his moral resemblance, the soul has lost all love to God….there is not only the absence of love, but there is active enmity….Man has revolted from God, and, having thrown off all allegiance to Him as his sovereign, he seeks to be a god to himself….This being the moral destitution of man, God has ceased to dwell in him;…it is impossible for God to make your heart His dwelling place while every thought, feeling, and passion is up in arms against Him, as it would be for Christ to dwell with Satan, or light to mingle with darkness.  You must be renewed in the spirit of your mind.  You must be born again” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, May 3rd).

“Here is a world that has rebelled against God.  It spat into His holy face; in arrogance it lifted itself up against Him; it said, ‘I have a right to be equal with God.’ Now, a world like that deserves nothing by punishment; it deserves perdition.  Yet into that very world…God sent His Son…His very appearing and coming…is proof that God loves us” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#211, p67).

“’For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”(John 3:16 ESV).

JESUS

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THE DIVINE REMEDY FOR SIN

“A biblical Christian is one who has seriously considered the one divine remedy for sin….all of our true help comes down from above and meets us where we are” Albert N. Martin (ref#221, p9).

FATHER, I lose my way around the Bible if I take my eyes off JESUS (Alistair Begg). When GOD first spoke of evil in Gen 3:15, He announced His remedy to defeat the now prince of the power of earth’s air, satan.  A descendent of Adam would crush his head.  Throughout the Old Testament, I see glimpses of GOD working out His plan until finally JESUS, born of a woman (Adam’s descendent) comes to earth.  The entire Bible presents GOD’s plan to redeem men back to Him.  It portrays a loving GOD’s effort to save a people for Himself.

There are few passages that capture the disaster of sin and what it does to people made in God’s image better than Genesis 6:5-6:

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (ESV)

“Note two things from this passage.  First, the affect of sin on people was deep, heart deep.  Sin is not just a matter of bad behavior.  It is a condition of the heart.  That’s why you cannot free yourself from it.  Second, the effects of sin on you and me are comprehensive. Note the words ‘every intention’ coupled with the words ‘only evil continually.’  But the passage tells us more.  God was not satisfied leaving us in the disaster of sin.  The disease that infected the heart of every human being produced sorrow in his heart.  But his sorrow was not just the sorrow of remorse or the sorrow of judgment; it was the sorrow of grace.  The words of Genesis 6:8—‘But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD’—tell you that Genesis 6 is not the end of the story.  God would not just punish sin; he would raise up a nation out of which his Son would come to live and die to deliver us from it.  The cross of his Son stands as a lasting reminder of just how desperate our need is for the grace that that cross represents” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Feb 29th).

“…’there is no condemnation’ to a poor soul that shelters itself beneath the cross of Jesus” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, May 5th).