Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-22-17

The worst prayer – the worst kind of prayer – that a Christian can pray begins from the attitude of “Forgive me, a poor sinner”; or “Unworthy!” or “Lord, I am not fit to approach Your Throne of Grace”…

We do need forgiveness, all the time. We are poor sinners. We are unworthy and not deserving of being in His presence. These things are true…

Except for the factor of Jesus. The Person of Jesus. We are less than worthy, but we are more than conquerors.

I do not contradict myself although, like Walt Whitman, I sometimes say, “Very well, I contradict myself!” But not as to what the Bible teaches – the core of Christianity. Above, I said that prayers offered with those ATTITUDES are mistaken. If we see ourselves in those relational positions, we reject the Truths of God to whom we pray. We insult the work of Jesus on the cross. We insult the Holy Spirit of God, who is sent to be our Helper, our Guide, our Counselor.

What do people think – what do Christians think – God sees when He looks at them?

Through history, many Christians have thought, hoped, and operated on the belief that He sees our good deeds. He does… but scarcely the totality of what He sees.

Many Christians take comfort that He sees their charitable activities, missions works, volunteer efforts, even the merciful acts performed. Surely the case… but, I submit, not the main things He looks for.

There are Christians who are confident, even in spiritual modesty, that their sacrifices and their service, their sweet spirits of forgiveness, please God. Of course these “fruits” please God… but we are told that such things are as dirty rags to a Just and Perfect God if we believe that they guarantee our home in Eternity once God sees them.

The Bible is full of believers who were at the other extreme of spiritual modesty: presumption. We know of “whited sepulchres”; of show-off givers; of those who pray loudly in the temple to be noticed; of hypocrites and vipers and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Of these types God will say… “Be gone, I never knew you! Depart from Me!”

So, what does God see when He looks down (or up, or over, or through) us? Many Christians will say, “He looks at our hearts.”

Yes, He does look at our hearts. He knows us better than we know ourselves. I happen to believe that if there is a choice – however, this is not a choice in life – but if there had to be one direction of “knowing the heart,” we should desire more that that we seek after God’s own Heart, and fear that He sees ours. Which is the point of this message.

Yes, when God sees us, He sees and knows our “hearts” – our thoughts, motives, desires. But that is STILL not what sees first, last, and most important when He looks at us.

I want us all to be reminded, and take comfort, and seize for dear life, the spiritual truth that when God looks at a Christian, a believer, a Christ-follower, those who believe in their hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, and confess with their mouths that God raised Him from the dead…

And when we are in that proper relationship with God… He does not see our deeds or our merciful works or our sacrifices or our forgiveness or our offerings or loud prayers or our memorials and names on church buildings or seminary dorms…

He sees these things, and He sees, yes, our hearts.

But what God sees first and, I believe, most importantly – He sees the Blood.

When we accept and confess Jesus, we are “covered in the Blood.” As surely as its foreshadowing – the blood on the doorposts of the pesach lambs, so the Angel of Death would Pass Over – the believers in Christ are shielded from judgment.

Those who truly believe on the Saviour can be free of guilt and shame and fear. Because when God sees you… He sees your elder brother Jesus, His only-begotten Son. The precious Blood was shed in order that God’s judgment would pass over your sins and shortcomings and failings. “Do not fear,” as Jesus so often said to people.

And the precious Blood also completes what you started, in faith and hope at your best times, in areas of charity and sacrifice and forgiveness. Jesus “finished” many things on the cross, among them the spiritual assignments we accepted when we first believed.

Thank God we did not conceive these things in our puny minds, but by the Great Commission He would have us undertake. We cannot really do them except by the teachings and directions of the Christ. We cannot find the required strength and wisdom but by His Holy Spirit.

Hallelujah, when He sees us, God rather sees the Person and the Blood of Jesus. What does God see in you? He sees the Blood covering you, and the Christ in you. The proper relational understanding of God, and the confidence we can gain, should give us confidence in the ATTITUDE of the prayers we raise to God!

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Click: Come Thou Fount of Blessing / Nothing But the Blood

3-23-15

Here is an anomaly – something like Winston Churchill once called, in another context, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: It is possible in America today, a “Christian” nation founded by Christians, many of them pilgrims and many who dedicated their lives, their lands, and their legacies to Jesus Christ; a country where churches dot the landscape and where sermons and Christian music are common on airwaves… it is the case that many people in America today grow up never hearing the gospel presented.

Multitudes reach adulthood, and live their lives, without the basics of the Christian faith being explained to them. America, “one nation under God,” land of the Pilgrims’ pride, of religious holidays, of the Ten Commandments?

This is certainly the case in Western Europe, despite some countries still having “state churches,” and where tax money is levied to support denominations. Many people are aware of churches, and traditional holidays, and have heard familiar hymn tunes without being at all aware of the tenets of faith.

When church attendance is a matter of indifference – or avoiding church is a matter of pride – and when rejecting every reference to Jesus, or every mention of the gospel is as easy as changing the radio dial or clicking the TV remote, millions in these “Christian” United States live in the spiritual condition of many savages from remote corners of the earth, and the vicious heathens of history. Strange. Seemingly unlikely. But true.

Believers throughout the millennia have endured torture to learn and savor the gospel of Jesus Christ – the Good News. Many believers have sacrificed their all in order to know and serve the Savior. Many believers have risked, and lost, their lives in order to share Christ.

These facts are yet true today. In lands where it is most difficult and dangerous, there are martyrs we hear about. We read of secret house churches in China, meeting in whispers and in danger, yet boldly reading the Bible one page at a time each meeting. We know of imprisoned believers in North Korea and Cuba and Iran. We read where, in the face of persecution and death, hundreds and thousands from other faith traditions convert to Christianity, in places like Egypt and Syria.

Yet in the Christian West, so-called, millions are indifferent to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Worse, our culture grows hostile to the faith.

In an ironic way, many people who are skeptics and rejectionists – agnostics and atheists – cannot be faulted as nonbelievers if the culture has conspired to shield them from the gospel, from Christ’s gentle invitation. How can they believe unless they hear?

I do not have to tell those who HAVE accepted that invitation some time in their lives, who know the life-changing and soul-cleansing New Life offered by Jesus, that the day they made that decision is the most important day of their lives. We have the knowledge that “our lives,” after that encounter with the risen Savior, means eternity, not just the days we shuffle around here.

And the second most important day in someone’s life, although it is of course the other side of the same metaphorical and significant coin, would be the day a person rejects Christ. But… just as consequential.

One might say that people can’t be accountable for things they have not heard; and we have agreed that this unlikely scenario is possible in our secular society. It might be the case that people have heard sermons, but sermons that encourage people to, say, be nice to others… and not about the crisis of sin and rebellion, and the fatality of separation from the Savior. Very possible.

But at some time, I believe the Holy Spirit will arrange events so that every person at least one time hears the simple message of the Messiah, and the challenge of the Cross. And will have the opportunity to open ears, mind, and heart. Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance, one Day, will not be an excuse.

It might be a word of a friend. It might be a stray gospel song or random TV preacher. It might be messages like this. Maybe you are reading this by “accident”; maybe a friend has forwarded it to you. But by any of these happenstances, you can no longer, ever, say that you never really heard the gospel explained to you. The personal invitation from the Lover of your Soul –

There is one God, creator of the universe; who always was and always will be. He created vast domains of the heavens, yet counts the hairs on your head.

In love He created the human race and our bountiful earth. In love He granted humankind free will; and we all have gone astray. We rebel, we sin, we think our puny selves sufficient; and that grieves God.

Through His inspiration, in writings and through prophets, He has offered rules of conduct; He delivered miracles, chastisements and blessings; and yet His children sin. We all have gone our own way, and God, not having created robots, grieved.

As only an awesome God would do, He emptied Himself and became human, walking amongst us and posterity, sharing Truth, showing His power by miracles, and showering us with His love through teaching and by example. He was incarnate so we might be assured that He knows our suffering and sorrows. He offers the mere acknowledgement of Him to be our path to reconciliation. That is what God yearns for in us.

Because He is so holy, and we are sinners, we cannot otherwise be reconciled. How can we approach the presence of One so holy, except, once offered, through justification, by faith, in Jesus? When – true to form for humankind – the Christ was once again rejected and was betrayed, tortured, and put to death, prophecy was fulfilled. But at that turning-point of history, Christ overcame death and the grave, and rose from the dead.

Miracle of His many miracles, He lived again, ministered and preached, all this in ways that His contemporary skeptics reported and no other founder of another religion can claim. Confirming His divinity, this man born of a virgin then ascended bodily to Heaven, where He lives today, interceding for the believers. The blood He shed at Calvary is what paid for our sins that separated us from God.

We are “covered in the Blood,” so that when God sees us, he no longer sees rebellious children, but the precious blood sacrifice of His Son. We form the Blood-bought church. Too special for you to treat with indifference.

And in the place of Jesus on earth, the third incarnation of God was sent to live in every believer’s heart. The Holy Spirit empowers, inspires, and encourages Christians today. Healings; deliverance from sin and addictions; restoration of relationships; new beginnings – these are what the Holy Spirit accomplishes. I have been the recipient of the born-again experience. So have millions. So can you be.

So… there. If this is the first time you have read the Gospel message, or maybe the first time you have heard it so simply reduced, you cannot claim, when your life on earth is judged, that “you never knew.”

You can say the Bible is a book of fairy tales… you can say that man created God and not that God created man… you can say that Jesus never lived or that the Resurrection was a plot… you can say that billions of believers are deceived and have been, for 2000 years… you can wrestle with the fact that uncountable Christ-followers have known the Truth so completely that they have endured torture and death, refusing to deny His existence… you can spend sleepless nights trying to comprehend how this or that person’s life has been amazingly transformed… you will scoff, perhaps, at displays of love and sacrifice that seem crazy to you… you might still think that you know better than this “God” and the preponderance of history and the evidence in writings and cathedrals and chapels and art and music and in changed lives. Transformed natures. New births. Joy unspeakable.

… but you cannot claim that you have never heard the message of the Gospel, the Good News. The details will follow later – when you accept Christ, you become hungry and thirsty for them, no worries. But to believe Jesus was the Son of God, and that God raised Him from the dead: believe it in your heart, and confess it with your mouth (in a prayer; to a friend) and you have satisfactorily accepted God’s simple invitation.

God honors sincere seeking, and never lets the yearning prayer of a hungry soul go unanswered. In the midst of a sinful and secular society, a culture of cold churches, people can still move on this or any day from the second most important day of their lives (as dangerous as rejecting Christ is) to feeling like they have arrived at that most important day. Welcome home.

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The first time in almost six years of Monday Morning Music Ministry that we share a video from Family Worship Center, but this infectious performance by Nancy Harmon of her classic gospel song says it all about the role of Christ’s shed blood in our salvation:

Click: The Blood-Bought Church