No Other Boast

You’re not like those other piggy’s are you?  No, your house isn’t made of the straw of Hinduism, or the sticks of Buddhism, but it is made of solid “Christian bricks”.  “Satan, storms, and sin can’t touch me,” reason, “I’ve got bricks and a ceiling.”  Your wall is made up of bricks like Christian music, “Christian” fellowship, church attendance, baptism, a worship experience, and a prayer you said once.   But anchoring all your hopes to walls and ceilings means that when they are gone so are you.  Satan does not puff, he uses wrecking balls.  The storms or life sometimes contain violent tornados.  Sin is no small burden to your walls but a crushing one they cannot sustain.  If walls have been you anchor, or at least partially so, you may have found the book of Hebrews devastating so far.  But if all your hope is in the foundation, if your anchor, your hope is the high priesthood of Jesus Christ, then you stand after the wrecking ball has passed and the tornado has blown.  Also sin does not end you, because the burden has been born.

If you are God’s child you may have been shaken by the wonderful book so far, but you have been shaken so that you may realize your unshakable position in Christ.

If all you have are walls, be devastated.  If as Hebrews has been preached you see that the ceiling is no surety of your salvation and seemingly has been sucked into oblivion, or if the walls are seen as empty vain works if not built upon the one true foundation and thus they seemingly crumble; yet you look down and there is a foundation left, take great hope.  The ceiling and walls are gone so that you might take confidence in the only place where any can be found – Jesus Christ.

For the outsiders who read this blog please excuse me while I write pastorally.  I have counseled with many of you whose assurance is shaken, and I am desirous that you come to a full assurance of your standing in Christ.  There are others of you who seem absolutely confident, and I pray that for a moment your confidence may be shaken, because I am concerned that your confidence is not something rooted in the word of God, evident fruits of salvation, and the testimony of the Spirit.

Assurance does not grant liberty to make little of sin; rather persistent sin and a casual attitude toward sin should cause doubt, not assurance of our salvation.  Or to say it another way, assurance is not a doctrine that allows me to treat sin lightly, rather the biblical doctrine of sin is such that if persistent and casual sin is present in my life I should question my assurance.  When you sin, do you easily comfort yourself, or do you find no peace except in His word, promises and the inner testimony of the Spirit that they are real to you?  Do you look for the presence of fruit in your life bearing witness to God’s saving work in your life or do you easily gloss over sin?

A man who is in the act of secretly cheating on his wife is a fool to convince himself that his wife will never leave him.  In a similar way the “Christian” who continually and apathetically lives in sin is a fool to convince himself that he knows God savingly.  The streams of assurance flow into the Christians life not while they are living in darkness, but while walking in the light.   A man’s wife may indeed remain faithful, and an individual in sin for a season may be truly saved, but this is not when the streams of assurance flow.  If assurance flows at such a time is a false stream with a limited supply.

I pretty much loathe most books that fall under the genre “devotional”.   Please never buy me Chicken Soup for the Soul, or some Christianized equivalent.  I think too often people try to read the Bible like devotional material; that is they want a cute little story that will leave them felling encouraged, fuzzy, or confident.  My major fuss with devotional material is that they treat the text as a three year old does a piece of play dough; they want to say something fun and they contort the scripture so that it fits their scheme.  Devotionals are kool-aid, and pardon my analogy but I want a man-drink spiritually, give me a beer.  With devotionals the holy is absent, you don’t have to query the text, wrestle with the text, pray over the text, cry over the text.  No one ever remembers those ridiculous stories from Chicken Soup, they don’t impact your living in a profound lasting way; at least they don’t for me.  But there have been moments; holy moments where after thrusting myself into God’s Word by His grace I, like Jacob, deem that spot Bethel, for God was there. 

Don’t settle for Hallmark clichés that sound spiritual.  Invest in a good expensive bible, if ever you are going to spend over a hundred dollars on one book, make it a good Bible.  Consult commentaries, don’t scratch surfaces, dig into the depths and discover amazing underground worlds that lie beneath.  Get a concordance, and make sure you own a Bible with cross references, and look up other instances of key words.  Study through books, don’t play Russian roulette with the Bible; what God wanted to say was said within a structure, don’t violate that structure.  Set aside time, chip away bit by bit, day after day, don’t move on two quickly, chew slowly and savor all the flavors.  Stare at the text, and when it doesn’t makes sense, doesn’t stir your soul, keep staring, keep studying, keep praying, and beg God to ‘do’ that text in your heart.  Pray! Soak your study time with prayer.  Study that is not doused in prayer can quickly become dry archeology, arrogant academics, and flippant trivia.  When study ceases to be mixed with prayer it ceases to be worshipful communion with God.

So go, pick up you Bible, seek to make it the air you breathe, the water you swim in, the food you eat, and the lens through which you view the world.

The Hyundai is about to turn 100k miles.  The 100,000 mile power train warranty was never used.  My guess is that at 100,001 everything will blow, I say this not as a pessimist, it just seems humorous, that is until it happens.  The Santa Fe has been good to us, besides routine maintenance and body work after hitting a deer the only problem has been a bad battery.  When one calls a car good I think they generally mean that it has reliably gotten me from here to there.  Synonymously when a manly conversation ensues, which means men pretend to know what they are talking about, one might virtually say that their motor is a good one or their transmission hasn’t failed them unlike the lemon your friend is complaining about.  That a car has a good power train is implied when one deems it a good car.

When Christians are thinking correctly they realize that though the cross it central it is so because a couple of things are implied.  First, the Christ who died on the cross was first a Christ who lived to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15) in my place such that by his obedience I will be made righteous (Romans 5:18-21).  Second, the crucified Christ is the risen Christ.  The cross remains central, and his obedience and resurrection essential to a correct understating of it.

This is why I have no problem when Hebrews 5:8-9 speaks of Christ’s being made perfect through obedience being the source of my eternal salvation.  Also I do realize that the cross itself was an act of obedience; I just don’t think the context takes us that far.  I hope this clears up any vagueness on something I passed entirely too quickly over last night.