If So Evil, Why So Good?

Pastor Dan's sermon from 3/11/2007

Scripture Reference: Jeremiah 17:9-10

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It really is hard to preach on some doctrines and teachings from Scripture. Not because these teachings are hard to prove but because I prove them every day in my own life. It is hard to get up and preach on total depravity when you know how depraved your own mind is. I am a great sinner but I have an extraordinary redeemer!

It is my hope that you were blessed this past Lord's Day. I hope that God used the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart to edify and strengthen you in the faith. I hope that the stories were able to open a window to the heart of the Gospel--we are sinners standing in grace.

Next week I will finish up a few points concerning Total Inability as we begin to take a look at the role of God's choosing in salvation. But before we can even touch on election we have to have a good understanding of God's sovereignty and His works of providence.

So many Christians ignore the doctrine of election out of ignorance rather than disagreement. When we understand the doctrine of election in the context of grace it becomes a blessing rather than a theological sticking point.

If you would like to prepare a bit for this week read some of the following Scriptures:
Ephesians 1:4-5, Romans 9-11, Matthew 1:21, John 10:11, John 6:37-44, Matthew 16:17. Revelation 4:11, Hebrews 1:1-3.

These are just a few verses that will help us to better understand the nature of election and what role it plays in God's sovereign will and works of providence. I can't wait to be with you all this Lord's Day. Until then, Grace and Peace be with you all.

Am I As Sinful As Possible part 2

Yesterday, I began a post on Jeremiah 17 as I share some of my thoughts on the chapter. By no means are these comments exhaustive nor are they infallible. These are just thoughts as I read through the passage for the first several go arounds. Of course these areas will be much more developed as we gather together on the Lord's Day as the Word is preached and the Holy Spirit moves. The whole idea is to give what readers I have for this blog a little bit of insight into the main passage of the day. Enjoy part 2....

Verses 3-4 tell us what would eventually happen to Judah. Exile. Babylon would come in and destroy the temple, carry off of the treasures of Jerusalem and ultimately enslave the people of God. They had placed their trust in man. They had placed their trust in themselves. This sounds strangely like the self-esteem prophets of the modern day. Just turn on Oprah Winfrey and her sidekick Dr. Phil to see a picture of ancient Judah. “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength!” But Jeremiah is not finished. When we turn to ourselves and put our trust in our sinful flesh our heart naturally turns away from the Lord. It is the exact opposite action of repentance! Repentance is turning from our flesh toward the Lord. When we are told to look in ourselves all we should find is what Paul found—total depravity and inability.

Paul says in Romans 7:16, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful flesh, for I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out.” Judah was looking toward themselves and trusting in the words of men’s wisdom rather than in the laws of God. As a result they had fallen away from the Lord into a pit of despair.

Jeremiah goes on to make the same comparison between the righteous and the wicked that the Psalmist makes in the first Psalm of the Psalter. Whereas the wicked man is dried up like chaff, like a bush in a desert wilderness, the righteous man is like a tree planted by a flowing stream. In verse 8 Jeremiah uses the Hebrew word and tense that indicate that the tree is planted not by the tree’s power but by some other power. A tree doesn’t plant itself it must be planted in order to grow. Judah had tried to plant itself in the world and became of the world when God had called them to be holy and set apart from the world. In the same way, God has called the Christian to be holy and set apart—a priestly people who are called out of darkness! But it is God who calls and plants.

You see, man is not able to answer that call unless God, in his wondrous grace, moves that person and enables him to answer the call of God’s Word. Man is totally depraved in all their body and soul. This is not to say that every person is as sinful as possible. No, rather it is the Holy Spirit that invades a person’s life and enlightens their minds and renews their will and convinces them of the message of the Cross. It is the Holy Spirit that implants new life into the person and firmly plants them by the stream of water that enables them to yield fruit.

Jeremiah proves this point of total inability in verse 9 when he says that a man’s heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. I like the way the New American Standard translates the Hebrew when it says that a man’s heart is desperately sick. It is a pretty desperate situation that the Prophet leaves man in. We are sick, beyond cure, and in need of help. WHO CAN SAVE US?

The prophet answers in verse 10. The Lord searches our heart and rewards a man according to his conduct. The Lord examines the mind. Well, if you are anything like me…this is a scary thought. I know what my mind is full of. I know what my deeds deserve.

But the message of the Gospel doesn’t stop with the depravity of man. God gave us his Son in our desperate hour. Jesus Christ makes intercession for those who have trusted him as their Savior and Lord. When God examines our heart he sees the heart of his Son. When God searches our thoughts He sees righteousness of Jesus Christ which has been imputed to us and received by faith alone. Of course this is such crude language to speaking of the God of the universe. But God has condescended to us so that we might know him.

Am I As Sinful As Possible?

I have finished a two part series on the nature of the Atonement. My original plan was to examine the doctrine of limited atonement so that we could see how special God's plan really is for each of his children. However, it is hard to preach on Limited Atonement without first addressing some of the other points of the Reformed doctrine of Salvation and what the roles of God and man are in God's saving plan.

So to that end, I am continuing the series on the Atonement by first examining our total inability to embrace the promises of God without His regenerating work in our hearts. We will take a look at Jeremiah 17:9-10 this week.

Every week as I prepare for my sermon, I write my own commentary, usually very brief, on the passage I am preaching from. This week, I am taking Jeremiah 17:1-10 into account as I place the sermon's text in it's context. I am posting some of those notes here for your own reading if you would like to see what is going through my mind as I read this great passage of Scripture. Here is part 1...

Jeremiah was a prophet in the 7th to 6th century who had been given divine revelation from God concerning the sins of Judah. Judah had fallen into the same sins of their northern brothers who had been exiled, never to be heard from again, in the late 8th century. Why hadn’t Judah learned a lesson? Why were they still turning to false gods? Why wouldn’t they rely on God’s promises and live their lives according to faith in the Covenant of God?

Jeremiah is known as “the weeping prophet”. He cared greatly for Jerusalem. It was heart breaking to watch God’s people once again fall into treacherous sin to their own peril. Once, while prophesying, Jeremiah claimed that the temple of Jerusalem was vulnerable to destruction (Jer. 7:14) because his fellow countrymen had made the Lord’s house a “den of robbers” (Jer. 711). Jeremiah’s faithfulness almost cost him his life during this famous temple sermon just as Jesus Christ would eventually lose his life on the charge of making similar claims.

Eventually, in 586 B.C. while Jeremiah was still prophesying, Judah would feel the weight of God’s wrath upon their depravity and as a result were exiled by Babylon. No one would return to rebuild the temple until Ezra would lead God’s people back into Jerusalem in 538 B.C. Now Jeremiah’s task was different. Jeremiah is unique among the prophets in that his time of ministry was not only before the exile, but during as well. Jeremiah’s message went from one of warning to a promise of a New Covenant (Jer. 31-32) that would be unbreakable with God’s people.

But one of the messages throughout Jeremiah is the depravity of man. Jeremiah 17 gives a picture of the sin of Judah. Furthermore, it is a mirror in which mankind can see their own sin. This message of depravity was not unique to Judah. It is a message for all humankind for all time. Many Reformed Theologians have wrapped much of their theology around Jeremiah 17.

Look first at verse 1. The sin of Judah is engraved! The prophet goes to great lengths to demonstrate the depth to which Israel’s depravity falls. Their sin has not only invaded their personal lives, but their worship as well. The horns of an altar may not mean much to us today but if meant everything to the Jew in the 6th century who worshipped at the Temple.

What is interesting about verse 1 is the progression which Jeremiah uses. The sin has been written down, even cut into, the tablet of their hearts. It is a permanent fixture in their lives. Yet their sin did not stop in their practical every day life. No, their sin has pervaded their religious worship. Where they once worshipped Yahweh, they now worshipped false gods.

When the Christian sins and does not confess this sin before the Lord the depravity invades every part of their life. Judah would not repent of their sin. What does it mean to “repent”? When the Bible speaks of repentance it means to “turn about” or to have a “change in the mind”. Repentance is threefold. It is an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, an understanding and sorrow of wickedness, and a turning toward new obedience.

Many apologize but never repent. Our knowledge, emotions and will are involved in repentance. In repentance we believe God’s promises of forgiveness and salvation, we believe it with all of heart and we act with our will to change towards God’s good purposes. Judah would not repent. They would not change and so their very heart of worship had been lost.

Not only had their sin infected their own worship but their children and the generations to follow had forsaken the Lord. All of Scripture speaks of the promises of God belonging not just to parents, but their children, and even their children after them (Deut. 6 etc). The sin of the parents had affected the following generations. Not only had Judah rejected Yahweh, but they had actively sought other gods and taught these gods to their children.

Don’t be too quick to judge! What has this current generation of “older” Christians taught the younger? Have we passed on the faith? Have we held firmly to the trustworthy message as it had been taught to us? Do our children know the promises of God and grace in Christ Jesus? In this day and age, when Christians think of their children, many think of their education, their marriage, the possibility of grandchildren, or success or happiness. Most parents only want their children to be happy even if it costs them all they have in Christ. Many Christians are perfectly content with tossing sound doctrine out the window if the answer of Jesus Christ doesn’t make our children happy. Judah had mistreated the doctrines of God and were about to face exile.

A Great Day of Reckoning - Part II

Pastor Dan's sermon from 3/04/2007

Scripture Reference: Leviticus 16:1-22

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God is My Best Friend

Ask someone you know, "What is God like?" and chances are they will answer that God is loving. Good answer. God is love (I John 4). But God is not ONLY love. God is also vengeful and just (Psalm 5:5). God has attributes or what John Calvin liked to call virtues (because attributes seem to assign something to God and we cannot assign anything to God). However, God is not more of one attribute than another. In other words, we can say that God is love and just. He is fully love and fully just. He is not mostly love or mostly just. He is perfectly just and perfectly love. God and His attributes are perfectly one. Pretty heady, I know. And to be honest, I don't fully understand it.

Throughout history, there have been many attempts to define God. Usually, these definitions end up in error because some theologian decides to present God is being more of one attribute than the other. This might sound like some kind of hair-splitting theological course, but the problem is that when the Church accepts these doctrines without question or examination heresy usually follows!

For instance, the 19th century rationalists and modern liberal theologians focus on the immanence of God. In other words, "God is my best best friend." However, many ignore the wrath of God. I heard a prominent pastor on an radio broadcast say recently in response to a question on preaching sin, "No. No. You can't say that word. You are going to hurt too many people." The funny thing is that when a preacher does proclaim the sinfulness of mankind it AMPLIFIES the LOVE OF GOD!

Paul amplified the holiness and love of God in Romans 5 when he wrote, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." We can't ignore the just and holy nature of God. We miss the point of the cross if we do! If God is our best friend, than who needs Jesus Christ?

You see, God is made favorable to us because God presented Jesus Christ as a "sacrifice of atonement". God is only our friend because his justice has been satisfied through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Is there any greater love than this? Is there any greater exercise of justice than this great act of God?

So, yes, God is love. He loved you so much that he gave his one and only son that you might be reconciled with his holiness. Do we have a true understanding of holiness? We can talk more about that later.

If you are planning on being at the 9:15am service this week. Read through Leviticus 16:1-22 and Romans 5:7-11 as well as Romans 3:23-28. Ask God to speak to you about his holiness through His Living Word.

"A Day of Reckoning"

Pastor Dan's sermon from 2/25/2007

Scripture Reference: Leviticus 16:1-22

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