Do you do well to be angry?

Nineveh is in the news again, but under a different name.  Its ancient ruins are just across the river from the modern city of Mosul in northern Iraq. This timeless story still speaks.

God said, Go tell Nineveh they’re in trouble with Me.

Jonah ran away to sea.

God took up the chase. 

He hurled a great wind upon the sea.

He determined the lot that would find Jonah guilty.

He made the wind blow stronger till terrified seamen had no choice but to hurl Jonah overboard.

He appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

Jonah wasn’t getting anywhere in his avoidance of God’s assignment. He couldn't even escape by dying, though he may have wished he could during those three days and nights in the belly of a fish!

Then God spoke to the fish to vomit Jonah out so he could get on with his job.

How humiliating for Jonah.  How gracious of God that Jonah lived to tell his story.  Would you have? 

The whole experience was something one might want to put behind them.  Bad choices usually are. 

And of course, we know it didn’t end there, with Jonah washed up all mucky on the beach.  Again there came the voice of our unrelenting God, determined to show His mercy to the undeserving: "Get up and go to Nineveh".

Jonah reluctantly does his job—with a fierce vengeance I imagine. 

And God does his.  He forgives.

Jonah is furious and commences to pout.  God intervenes again…

“Do you do well to be angry?” He asks.

And He appoints a plant to grow shade for Jonah’s comfort while he considers this and watches for the fireworks that never begin.

And God appoints a worm to eat the plant that grew the shade for  pouting Jonah.

And God appoints a hot east wind to team with the blazing sun in making Jonah wish to die.

And Jonah is angry, again.

And God asks again, “Do you do well to be angry?”

And while Nineveh is spared a lashing, Jonah gets a talking to by the God who cares for both the unforgiven and  the unforgiving. His love is unrelenting. 

God knows just what is needed, for the both of them.

And the story gets told for generations to come, a reminder that God is good when men are not.  And Jonah’s stint in that whale of a fish becomes an object lesson for the greatest good news of all time—Jesus lives though swallowed by death for three days and nights.  He lives to put all things right in and around us, in His good time.

And all these years down the sands of time I read in the news that Jonah’s alleged tomb was destroyed this summer  by Islamic militants in what was once ancient Nineveh and is now Iraq.  But his story lives on, a symbol attesting to God’s mercy that is great enough for all of us, and knows just what is needed when we do not.

--LS

“For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation….The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” Lk.11:30,32

“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love,
But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you…
Salvation belongs to the LORD!” –Jonah, in the belly of a fish

“O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster….” --Jonah, suicidal at the thought of his enemies being forgiven

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven…Mt.5:44,45

Cause for Celebration—Grace at Work!

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast!
I Cor.5:7-8

The good thing about a study in grace is that as it unfolds (and you realize with a sinking feeling how not-gracious you are) there is grace to repent and to be forgiven and to value grace all the more.

That has been my week in a nutshell.

First I was looking at the indicators of a life where grace is in place.  People who have been smitten by grace…

• forgive readily, no strings attached.  They remember what they’ve been forgiven.
• give cheerfully, and generously—of their time, their talents, their possessions, their very lives!
• rejoice unenvyingly when others are blessed (whether they ‘deserve’ it or not)
• love liberally with no expectation of return
• repent continually.  They are more aware of their own sins than their neighbor’s.
• live humbly. Their confidence and boasting are all in Christ.  They’re just glad to be included in His family!

Then, I was feeling mighty pitiful…for just a bit.  Repentance was needed.

A person may try to be ‘holy’, by doing or not doing.  A person can think herself righteous as compared with her neighbor… But when grace is missing it is hard to deny.  And grace received is the stuff of heaven’s rejoicing! “I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which [think they?] need no repentance.” Lk.15:7

Round about this point the Spirit nudged me with this song… averting my gaze from the truth about me, apart from Jesus, to the truth about me because of Jesus!

Every debt that you've ever had
Has been paid up in full by the grace of the Lord.
Be ye glad, be ye glad, be ye glad

 

I’m Glad!

And I found myself in Ephesians 1 relishing: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ…”  (and beginning a Bible memory project!)

But lastly came the reminder that among the spiritual disciplines helpful to our growth in Christ is that of CELEBRATION.  Hmphf.  Not something I’m a natural at. Give me solitude, study, and silence any day over this! Give me something I can DO to be holy.  But in celebration we relinquish our conscientious pre-occupation with a thousand worries and self-appointed ‘disciplines’ and prove our reliance to be on God for our salvation.  It is the Sabbath principle at work (or should I say, play?) 

And I realized I’d come full-circle, back to the celebration of the true Passover Lamb whose blood makes clean.  He invites me to sit and eat—‘this is my Body broken for you’’  to feast on Him, to partake of His grace:“My grace is sufficient for you.” 

It was as though He were saying… I did not call you because you were good. Here is my grace—rest in it.  Celebrate Me.  Your sin is no deterrent to grace, your weakness no shame at My Table.  You will not overcome by trying harder or working smarter.   Grace doesn’t come that way.  You cannot even crucify yourself.  Flesh cannot conquer flesh.  Freedom is not something you ‘figure out’, attain by discipline, or earn by hard work.  It is not by might or power that freedom will come but by yielding to My Spirit.   Come, sit, eat.

All this rests in the symbolism of the Passover Lamb. On the Cross His work was finished.  We derive the benefit by resting in it.  We live by being forgiven…

And that has been the kaleidoscope of thoughts dazzling my mind’s eye this week—what a lead-up to Easter week it has been!

--LS

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Jn.6:53

“May grace and peace be multiplied to YOU in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” II Pet.1:2

P.S. I must share one more song.  Just can’t get enough of these lyrics. “We have a great High Priest—the perfect risen Lamb!  My life is hid with Christ on high—with Christ my Saviour and my God.”

Before the Throne of God

Before the Throne of God

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I’ve been feasting this week on the the good words of:

      Roy Hession: Be Filled Now (available online here: http://www.christianissues.biz/pdf-bin/sanctification/befillednow.pdf )

      J.I. Packer: God’s Words: Studies of Key Bible Themes (Baker,1992)

      John Piper: Future Grace (Multnomah,1995)

I can’t resist tucking in some precious quotes below…

re:The Spirit as Comforter: (Hession: Be Filled Now)

We seem to appreciate most intensely the Spirit's ministry as Comforter, when, having become cold and out of touch with God, we try to get back to Him by 'works.' How natural it is for us to imagine that if we have got away from Him by committing sin, we shall come back to Him by doing good. And so we promise ourselves we will try harder, we set ourselves higher goals, we seek to do more for God or even to spend longer on our devotions. All these things are right, of course, but in as much as we so often do not attain those goals, we only end by burdening ourselves with additional self-reproach and an added sense of failure. We become tense in our efforts to improve, and condemned because we cannot succeed. We have come to experience what Paul did, when he said, 'The commandment, which was ordained to life (if I could attain to it), I found to be unto death (because I failed to do so),' and if we go farther along this road, we shall be in the same place of despair that he came to when he said, 'O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' (Rom 7:10 and 24).

What a relief it is when the Holy Spirit points us, as He did Paul, away from our work to Another's work, the finished work of Christ for us on the Cross, whereby we see that the work has been done for us, the distance between us and God bridged and peace made! The Spirit bids us cease from trying to get peace by our efforts, and to come to Jesus as a sinner and rest in what He had done. As we do so, the burden of striving and self-reproach slips away from our hearts, and the Comforter whispers peace to our hearts.

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(Roy Hession: Be Filled Now)
It may be asked how do we get this new sight of Jesus as and when we need it? Not by trying to get it, nor even, I suggest, by praying for it, but rather by telling God we have not got it. Let us not dissipate our energies for the time being anywhere else but in this one direction. Tell Him you are not seeing Jesus, tell Him you are in bad shape, that you are not free, that you have not peace. Tell Him you are struggling to get by your efforts what deep down you know is a gift, but that you are struggling none the less. Tell Him that today you have not this sight of Jesus, His Blood and His victory that you had yesterday. Make no effort to get it, just tell Him you have not got it. Then allow Him to show you why you do not have it. He may show you dark and unsuspected things, but say yes to Him. All this is what is meant by going to the feet of Jesus, to the foot of His Cross. Such phrases may sound like cliches to some, but they express an awesome and hallowed experience to others. It is there that the Blood of Jesus avails for you. And you will not have been long at His feet before the Holy Spirit arises with healing in His wings, and gives you to see all you need to see of Jesus, and to possess all you need to possess of His fullness.

Re:The life of grace is a life of freedom…(Packer, God’s Words)

1. "...the Christian under grace is freed from the hopeless necessity of trying to commend himself to God by perfect law-keeping. Now he lives by being forgiven, and so is free at every point in his life to fail (as inevitably he does in fact, again and again) --and, having failed, to pick himself up where he fell, to seek and find God's pardon, and to start again. Pride, our natural disposition, which is self-protective, self righteous and vainglorious, will either refuse to admit failure at all or refuse to try again, lest the trauma of failing be repeated; but the humility of the man who lives by being forgiven knows no such inhibitions....daily...his shortcomings are forgiven and his joy restored." (Packer, 106)

2.“Moreover, the Christian under grace is free from sin’s dominion…not only is righteousness (law-keeping) both possible and prescribed fro Christians, but it is also a fact that no Christian can go on sinning as before, for union with Christ has changed his nature so that now his heart (his inner man) desires righteousness as before it desired sin, and only obedience to God can satisfy his deepest inner craving.  He hates the sin that he finds in himself, and gets no pleasure from lapsing into it.  Such is the state of mind of the man who is reed from sin’s dominion…He knows that his freedom has ennobled him and brought hi both the desire and the strength for right living, and for this he is endlessly thankful.”(Packer,107)

3.“Finally, the Christian under grace is free from bondage to fear—fear, that is, of the unknown future, or of meeting God (as one day we all must do), or of being destroyed by hostile forces or horrific experiences of one sort or another.  He knows himself to be God’s child, adopted, beloved, secure, with his inheritance awaiting him and eternal joy guaranteed. He knows that nothing can separate him from the love of God in Christ, nor dash him from His Saviour’s hand, and that nothing can happen to him which is not for his long-term good, making him more like Jesus and bringing him ultimately closer to his God.” (Packer,107)

“Relax and exult in your appointed feast.  I will take responsibility for tomorrow’s obedience.” (Piper,49)

Good Gracious!

Now there’s an expression I haven’t heard in a long while!  Apparently it dates back to the 1700’s.  And though it alludes to the goodness and grace of God it is used commonly as an expression of surprise, dismay or alarm. 

I would like to reclaim it as an expression of actual appreciation for God’s grace—GOOD GRACIOUS!—He has been so gracious to one so lacking in grace.  I see this from fresh vantage points every passing year.  I stumbled upon an old post just now, written just over a year ago.  I was wrestling with the damning sense of ‘falling short’, and grasping for freedom to live out God’s design for me without this stifling condemnation.  This seems to be a recurring theme for me. But God keeps on pursuing, keeps on wooing me to rest in grace and to relax in the freedom He has purchased for me.

• This week it came through a missions conference—a thoroughly winsome and passionate appeal by a young lady mesmerized and transformed by God’s grace. 
• God spoke too through other well-timed testimonies—simple evidences of God at work through ordinary people for His Kingdom’s sake.
• Through fragmentary texting and conversations over tea I saw His grace at work in others.
• And always through His Word He sets grace before me as not only the means of my salvation but of my walk before Him in this world.  I need grace and His is enough for all my lack.  No, God hasn’t given up on teaching my stony heart what grace is about.

He sees the mode I live from.  Though an heir to Christ’s righteousness I act as though my life depended on my own goodness?   I live as though avoiding mistakes and messes and sins and ‘scenes’ were the main thing. I  readily confine myself to the ‘tried and true’, things I think I can competently manage.  Or in lieu of that, to at least keeping up appearances, which demands limiting opportunities to fail. 

It’s a grace-less and confining way to live.  And I’m sick of living in a cage!  God is too good and too GRACIOUS and life is too short for this. I want to fly!

The way out of this cage is more elusive.  It’s one thing to evaluate the cage you’re in and to see how you got there, but quite another to get the latch undone and fly free!  Pride has wired it tightly shut.  My life may not depend on limiting myself to known areas of competence, but my pride certainly does!!  I think it must be part of the human condition to want to be good enough to merit something!   But in this place how shall we ever know life-transforming grace? 

There is no parable that displays this problem more clearly than the story of the King settling accounts with his indebted servants. (Mt.18:23ff) Before him stood a servant that owed him more money than could be earned in a thousand lifetimes as a common laborer!  

The fellow is about to be thrown in prison for life, so what does he do? You’d think he’d throw himself at the King’s feet and plead for mercy, right?  But no, he has his pride.  Instead he asks for time--for the king’s patience while he pays back his debt. Patience?  Is that really all he needed?  Does he really think he owes so little that he can make it up in a few short years? Never mind, the king took pity on this conceited servant, released him from prison and forgave his debt. It was sheer grace.

But was the debtor grateful? No, he was too proud to accept handouts.  This was no time for gratitude.  All he could think of was the fellow who owed him money. It was just a day’s wages but oh, how he throttled him, demanding that what was owed be paid back.  There was no place for grace. This servant of the king needed cash badly. He was intent on paying back the king.  This might be admirable in some other context but in light of the horrific debt he owed, and the King’s life-sparing offer, it was an insult to His gracious King. And because he had failed to comprehend the magnitude of what he had been forgiven, this servant was unable to extend grace to others.

He ended up back in prison, a permanent debtor to the king, only because he could not admit his own bankruptcy and welcome the King’s gracious offer:

“You have nothing. I have everything.
Here, I gift you your freedom from the debt you owe.”

I need this parable. It reminds me of the immense grace of God in which I stand. Grace which cost Jesus His life. Surely I have been forgiven much. But only to the extent that it sinks into those self-righteous sinkholes in my soul will it be truly transformative in my day-to-day encounters with real people.  And I am brought again to repentance—the starting place for grace to work its wonders and to free us from our self-serving confines.

We have been set free. 

Freed from--sin’s domination,  the Law’s condemnation and our pre-occupation with falling short.

Freed to--live a life of love, led by the Spirit and governed by faith, not rules.

And there really is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus—though we bungle, though we stumble, though we fail to reach our own ideals…If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed!

Good gracious!  That’s a  liberating reality to fly with!

--LS

“…for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace…” Heb13:9

“For you were called to freedom, brothers.  Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Gal.5:13

“For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus….only faith working through love [counts].” Gal.5:6

Who shall bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.  Who is he that condemns? Rom. 8:33,34

Rooted and Grounded in Love

I had a silly dream the other night--the kind you wake up from shaking your head at the preposterous suspension of good sense and logic in dreams. Anybody knows you cannot sustain a cut tree by periodic submersion in water, and yet this was the challenge that beset me in my dream: how to keep this silly ornamental fig propped up in a bucket long enough to give it a drink. Weird. Upon waking the solution was obvious—a Christmas tree stand of course! That took me off on another tangent—how strange the tradition of propping up dying trees and dressing them all pretty to celebrate the birth of a Life-giving Savior. All the while the tree is dying, if not dead. The charade is prolonged as long as needles remain (or until the housewife cannot stand the quantity of needles on the rug, or her firefighter husband recognizes the fire hazard this no-longer-evergreen is presenting…)

But I assure you we still haul in Christmas trees year-by-year. They are a beloved tradition. Now we grow and cut our own, a readily renewable resource. They grow like weeds along the roadside here, readily transplantable and voila, in a few years time, your own Charlie Brown tree! With more patience and a little trimming, a more refined look. Still, once that tree is severed from its roots, it becomes unstable and as good as dead. There will be no more growth, only a delayed wilt if we dig out the Christmas tree stand and water it well… And it occurs to me that this is my life in Christ—

I am rooted and grounded in Love (Eph.3:17). As I come to comprehend the extent of this perfect Love it will be to me a stabilizing, energizing, sufficient supply for life. Apart from it I am vulnerable to wilt. I reel from harsh words. I cringe when misunderstood. I slump and drop needles… But rooted and grounded in Love I can be like the tree planted by a stream "and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit" Jer.17:8. I'm thinking on these things this week--this love beyond measure, this love that extends forgiveness and acceptance.

I guess I am still reeling from a wound unwittingly delivered—I didn't see it coming. It hurt. It still hurts. Yet I am forgiven so that I may extend forgiveness. It is the overflow of Love. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…this love that is not easily provoked and refuses to assume the worst…(I Cor.13) This is the Love I have been shown. This is the Love that I can extend because I am rooted and grounded in Love.

Forgiveness is a much hashed-over topic. Is there anything new to say? I thought I understood it pretty well. But it never becomes quite so clear as when it is required of you… A friend pointed me to this clarification of the nature of true forgiveness written years ago by George MacDonald. He suggests there are forms of 'forgiveness' which do not truly 'send away' the offence but only refrain from revenge. We say we 'can't forget' when what we are doing is holding onto the memory in case we need to substantiate our claim to having been wronged. We hang onto the evidence, just in case… It bolsters our ego to be the one in the right. We hold hostage the wrongdoer to serve our pride. Is this true forgiveness? Is it the sort we have been shown?

God instead sends our sins as far away as the East is from the West. He removes all that would prevent our fellowship with Him. Restoration is the aim of forgiveness, not merely a refusal to retain resentment or take revenge. Is this my ideal? Or does my smug 'I forgive you' backhandedly imply 'but I'm not forgetting what you've done!'

George MacDonald explains the ideal forgiveness as one that hates the sin, not because it hurt me, but because it has broken fellowship with my brother…

One more will say: "He has wronged me grievously. It is a dreadful thing to me, and more dreadful still to him, that he should have done it. He has hurt me, but he has nearly killed himself. He shall have no more injury from it that I can save him. I cannot feel the same towards him yet; but I will try to make him acknowledge the wrong he has done me, and so put it away from him. Then, perhaps, I shall be able to feel towards him as I used to feel. For this end I will show him all the kindness I can, not forcing it upon him, but seizing every fit opportunity; not, I hope, from a wish to make myself great through bounty to him, but because I love him so much that I want to love him more in reconciling him to his true self. I would destroy this evil deed that has come between us. I send it away. And I would have him destroy it from between us too, by abjuring it utterly." [Unspoken Sermons I, "It shall not be forgiven"]

And here I am brought back to consider the poor fig tree. The truth is, there is more to its need to be rooted and grounded in love than merely allowing it to extend love and forgiveness to others who are in the wrong! This smacks of the noble-sounding sentiments of the Pharisee gone down to the temple to pray: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men…’ Lk.18:11 No, the greater reason for needing such grounding is that I need to be forgiven, continuously. I have been the one to do the hurting. It has done costly damage. Perhaps these wounds I reel from are nothing compared to the ones I have myself inflicted. Could it be I have unwittingly offended, worse yet stabbed, ones who had not seen it coming? Could it be they are reeling from my callous thoughtlessness? Yes, I know this to be true. And for this reason, I need more than a temporary dip in water to reinvigorate my leafy tips. This will take more than a Christmas tree stand. I must be rooted and grounded in love. There is no other hope for this old fig tree. I have been forgiven and continue to need forgiveness at least as much as anyone I perceive as having wronged me. I'm so glad a Savior has been born to us—One who took the initiative to seek and to save that which was lost before they had even come to their senses. (Lk.15)

We, without Him are feeble trees, parched and quaking, Charlie Brown trees, if you will. We carry about in these bodies the death of Jesus "so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies…in our mortal flesh". II Cor.4:10 But rooted and grounded in a living supply of water, there is life, forgiveness, grace! This is why I need this living supply of water.

There was once another tree, cut and formed into a Cross. For this, Jesus was born. "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." Why? "that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." I Pet.2:24 Yes! I can string the lights and celebrate! I am rooted and grounded in love.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! II Cor.9:15

'It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.' Lk.15:32

--LS

"…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Rom.5:8

Blessed [is] the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. Jer.17:7

He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, [so] great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, [so] far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Ps.103:10-12

"…according to the riches of his glory [may He] grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.Eph.3:15-19

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph.3:20-21

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This beautiful song sums it all up:

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure