Three of the Twelve - How God used a working man to dismantle the myth of bad things happening to good people.

I have always loved Amos as a character. Most prophets were recognized by the people and quite often had access to royalty. These prophets carried the title of Prophet, sometimes belonging to a small band, or guild, of prophets. In the first verse of the book of Amos, the text lays out a beginning unlike any other in the Bible. God gave prophetic words to a shepherd and farmer from Judah. Amos the shepherd then went to Israel, the northern kingdom, and began to prophesy. The name of my weblog sings of this idea. God uses the ordinary and unlearned to speak truth.

Amos 7:10-15 gives a good example of how the rulers in Israel felt about this blue-collar prophet. "Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent this message to Jeroboam king of Israel, 'Amos is conspiring against you there among the people of Israel, and the land can't bear all that he's saying. For Amos says: "Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will be led away from their land into exile".' Amaziah also said to Amos, 'Go away, seer! Go back to the land of Judah! Earn your living there; but don't prophesy any more at Bethel; for this is the king's sanctuary, a royal temple.' Amos gave this answer to Amaziah: 'I am not trained as a prophet, and I'm not one of the guild prophets - I own sheep and grow figs. But the Lord took me away from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, "Go, prophesy to my people Israel."'"

I like to imagine Amos as the classic John the Baptist looking-dude. Wild hair, hard features, uncommon clothes. It's fun to think of that kind of man walking around the streets of foreign cities talking about their coming destruction. But in actuality, Amos probably looked like an ordinary guy. It's more like a gas station attendant walking around the mall telling people of God's word. Not so romantic an image, but unusual all the same.

God likes to do this. He likes to take unexpected people and use them in unexpected places. I think this is why Jesus answered his critics in Luke 4:25-27, "But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." And just like Amaziah in Amos 7, Luke 4:28 says, "And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things."

But what was it that Amos said that so offended the king and high priest? A lot of things, probably. Here's one. Consider the possibility that God does allow "bad" things to happen to "good" people. Consider even the possibility that God does these "bad" things Himself. In Amos 1, God tells of coming punishment for several cities and nations because of their crimes. These crimes include horrors like cruelty in war, exile, and ripping open pregnant women. I can see it now, the Israelites hearing this prophecy and enjoying numb feelings of self-righteousness. Then in Chapter 2, Amos says, "For Judah's three crimes, no, four - I will not reverse it - because they rejected the Law of the Lord..." And later, "For Israel's three crimes..." Suddenly those self-righteous feelings turn cold. Israel has been indicted alongside their neighbors, their enemies. God was against them all. Sure, Israel and Judah didn't spill pregnant ladies' guts, but their sins were equally deserving of God's wrath. They didn't follow His commands. They took advantage of the poor for business opportunities. They gave in to sexual deviancy.

The past few conversations I've had with unbelievers about God usually start with, "If God were good, why would He let bad stuff happen to good people?" In the Old Testament, who was better than the people of Israel and Judah? They were God's chosen people, set apart from the other nations, enjoying His blessings. But Amos calls them out on their wickedness. The fact is, we've all committed the "three, no, four crimes." Our sin deserves the punishment of death that God promised Adam in Genesis 2. If this is true, and we all demonstrate the wickedness of our hearts to some degree, why doesn't the truly good, righteous, and holy God kill us on the spot? Why do any of us still have the ability to live and breathe?

Amos knows of Israel's sin. He talks about it at length before a series of visions in the beginning of chapter 7. God shows Amos His plan to punish His people. Amos pleads, "Lord God, forgive - please! How will tiny Jacob survive?" Twice, God promises to stay His hand and show mercy. Eventually, though, God tells the prophet how He will soon refuse to overlook Israel's offenses. For the time being, God demonstrates what theologians call "Common Grace". Even for those who God knows will not come to repentance and saving faith, He still blesses both by providing good things and withholding bad things from them. This is much harder for me to understand: God gives good things to bad people. But as we see in Amos, it won't last. Paul says of those who will remain unrepentant in Romans 2:5, "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God".

Yet for all this, God promises in Amos 9:8-11, "'Look, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom. I will wipe it off the face of the earth, yet I will not completely destroy the house of Jacob,' says the Lord. 'For when I give the order, I will shake the house of Israel, there among all the nations, as one shakes with a sieve, letting no grain fall to the ground. All the sinners among my people who say, "disaster will never overtake us or confront us," will die by the sword. When that day comes, I will raise up the fallen tabernacle of David. I will close up its gaps, raise up its ruins and rebuild it as it used to be.'"

Amos tells of a day when God will restore the house of David to its kingship, which we now see in Jesus as Messiah, the King who will come again to rule the earth. Jesus will shake the sieve of humanity separating the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12). In Christ's kingdom, God will reestablish the people of Israel.

Common grace is all well and good, but it doesn't necessarily mean we have saving faith. God is good to everyone, but only those who put their trust in Jesus will stay in the sieve, so to speak. I know, in my heart, I have committed those three, no, four crimes. And I am so grateful to Jesus for paying the penalty for my crimes. I know that His grace, for me, is more than a mere demonstration of His goodness before the coming wrath. It's a taste of the joy I will one day experience when I am fully in His presence, secure, no more to be uprooted.

The Just and the Justifier - A look at God's justice through the cross.

“As far as I know.... Jesus's death on the cross is the pinnacle, the foundation of Christianity. Supposedly believing that he dies for our sins makes us Christians, grants us eternal life. But how does it make sense? They say God comes to earth as man and he dies not because he has to, but because he wants to. And that act of humbleness washes away our sin... cleanses us from this sin??? Right? It just doesn't sound right. Sounds like magic. I don't know enough probably. But I don’t see how one of many men dying on a cross helps me or anyone else anymore. I just don’t get it. A guy comes to earth lives a humble yet miraculous life, does great deeds, is persecuted, dies on a cross, frees men from evil.

Tell me what you know.”


(A friend of mine sent me the above message on Facebook. I thought I might share my answer to him in the form of a non-intrusive post.)


Dude,
Let me start by explaining why I appreciate your questions. First, I can see that you’ve asked these questions honestly. By that, I mean you didn’t ask questions in an attempt to confuse or frustrate, thereby “proving” Christianity as foolish. Some people use this approach as an attack and passive-aggressively disguise it as mere discourse.

Second, you at least recognize Jesus as a person who existed in human history. I can’t tell you how many people have debated this point with me, ignoring all of the historical data and presenting no opposing evidence. If you agree that Jesus was a man, then you’re halfway there, which saves me half the trouble of explaining this to you. Still, some other parts to your questions imply that you are uncertain of Jesus’s divinity. Explaining how Jesus is God would take another discussion, one I welcome, but for this response I want to focus on the significance of the cross.

Third, I appreciated the question of God’s motive in your message. Why would God choose to save us? Many people mistake the ultimate motive for salvation by saying it was purely because of His love for us. While John 3:16 clearly says God sent Jesus out of love for us, the motive goes much deeper. Psalm 115:3 says, “But our God is in Heaven, He does whatever He pleases.” While reading the book Desiring God by John Piper, I learned how God’s ultimate goal is to glorify Himself. So the purpose of Jesus’s crucifixion was to glorify God and please Him. Prophesying about the crucifixion, Isaiah 53:10 says, “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief.” Knowing this helped me to understand the why behind the crucifixion, because scripture is also clear that we don’t deserve salvation and God is not obligated (whether out of love, goodness, or otherwise) to offer salvation.

You were right in saying this is the foundation and pinnacle of Christianity. I recently read in Death By Love by Mark Driscoll and Gary Breshears (a book which I take much information from on this subject) “As important as Jesus’s teaching, kind deeds, and miracles are, surprisingly, it is Jesus’s death and resurrection that are emphasized in Scripture. Matthew devoted 33 percent of his Gospel to Jesus’s final week; Mark, 37 percent; Luke, 25 percent; and John, 42 percent. The rest of the New Testament builds on the reality and power of his death and resurrection, referring to the life of Jesus far less frequently.”

So why did God come to earth to die for our sins? Why was this the main topic of much of the New Testament? The cross, among other things, displays both His perfect justice and mercy. Justice is a massive theme in the Bible. At the beginning, God creates the world and calls it good. By chapter 3 of Genesis, man joins Satan’s rebellion and introduces sin to the world. From there, it seems, it’s a continuous cycle of stories where people sin and receive judgment.

Sin, essentially, is the same thing as crime. God set up law and order in the world when He created it. You and I have both sinned and committed crimes against His law. Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The punishment for these crimes is death. God said this in Genesis 2:16-17. Paul reminds us of this sentencing in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death”. We might not necessarily be killed on the spot when we break God’s law, but sin works out death in every area of our lives. Medical studies have proven angry, bitter, fearful, lazy, etc. people to have a higher likelihood of contracting disease. Lies, lust, jealousy, and resentment bring death to relationships. The examples just go on.

I’m not going to say my metaphors are perfect, but imagine that we commit these crimes and God the perfect judge rightly sentences us to a particular fine. Jesus, as perfectly innocent God, having no crime of His own to pay for, stands up and offers to pay for (or redeem us for) our crime. God the judge says that this would satisfy the court. This satisfaction of the law is called propitiation, and the legal declaration of innocence called justification. Because I accept Jesus’s offer, then I am free from the guilt and penalty of the law. If you don’t accept, then God will still hold you accountable for your crimes. He must demonstrate His law or else He would be an unrighteous judge, the kind we sometimes read about in the news and despise. Sadly, the just punishment is not a “fine” you could ever pay. It’s a death sentence.

Since “all have sinned”, nobody on Earth could pay for another’s sin. Everyone is guilty. It took God the Son coming down as a man, who could die, to live a life we couldn’t live and die in our place. I referred to Romans 3:23, but in addition to this look at verses 24-26. I’ll add some emphasis.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Before I finish, I want to touch on the point of eternal life since you mentioned it. The Bible tells of the eternal God who created everything including time. Eternity, as an attribute, means that He exists outside of time. He is not bound, as Cornelius Van Til says, by a temporal series of events. Otherwise He would have to wait for time to pass until His knowledge became complete. This is impossible in an omniscient God.

The eternal God existing outside of time can look at the whole of time at once. All of human history and mankind’s future are in His sight. The death of Jesus on the cross in history has immense meaning in the work of redemption. There are times that I still struggle with sin. But when I commit that crime against God, because I have put my trust in the work of Christ on the cross, God looks at the cross and continues to declare my forgiveness.

It does no good for God to merely “wipe the slate clean” when you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior. Clean slates have a tendency to get dirty again. However, the Bible teaches us about something called imputation. In this case, the word means an attribute of sin or righteousness is credited to all men by means of another. Paul best explains this in Romans 5 by saying God imputed Adam’s sin to all men born through him. Likewise, through Jesus, God imputes Christ’s righteousness to all who accept Him as their Lord and savior. By accepting Jesus in this way, not only does God legally forgive us of our sin, but He also considers us to have Christ’s righteousness.

This should astonish people. Every other world religion tells of a god requiring people to earn his favor by their good works and suffering. On the other hand, the Bible tells people how God knew of man’s inability to earn salvation. So He fulfilled the law by living a sinless life as a man, suffering, and dying on our behalf. Accepting this truth alone brings salvation and His favor. If sin brings death, and God forgives this sin in a person through Jesus, then the Christian has the promise of eternal life.

I know this might not have answered all the parts to your question and some of my points may have raised other questions. It’s hard to explain a whole doctrine within 2,000 words. But hopefully I’ve given you some understanding on why I believe in the significance of Jesus’s death on the cross.

God's Merciful Use Of His Mercy - Or, how a seven-year-old can slam-dunk.

A man once approached me at a conference in Indiana and asked if I was Isaiah. When I told him that he’d found the right man, he held up a copy of Stark Raving Obedience and began to thumb through many highlighted pages. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” he said. “You talk a lot about both ‘Faith’ and ‘Belief’.” He read from a passage that talks about a person’s lack of faith versus unbelief. Then he asked, “I still don’t understand the difference between ‘Belief’ and ‘Faith’. You use the words interchangeably throughout the rest of the book. Could you explain this for me?” The best answer I could give him at the time was that he had a copy of the first edition, a three-year-old version full of hilarious typos and half-explanations. Which was more of a commercial for the second edition than an answer.

To be honest, it took a full two weeks before I could confidently define my use of the two words. Belief is when a person mentally ascribes themselves to a system of thought. Faith is when the person begins to apply that system of thought to their lives through action.

Many Christians have historically used the words “Grace” and “Mercy” interchangeably as well. I want to make sure you know what I mean when I say these words. As I understand it, grace is a gift freely given to one who did not earn or deserve the gift. A good example of this is how Boaz treated Ruth in the book of Ruth. She was a foreigner, a widow, and a woman. In that culture, she had no rights, and yet Boaz showed her favor without asking for anything in return. That’s grace.

I’ve heard a few people teach on God’s messy covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. I first heard it from Ray Vanderlaan, so my credit goes to him here. God promises Abraham that he and his descendants will possess the Promised Land. Abraham asks God, “How am I supposed to know you’re telling me the truth?” So God has Abraham split a cow, a goat, and a ram into halves, placing the halves opposite of each other. This would allow for the animals’ blood to run together and form a sort of path.

Vanderlaan taught that this was a common Bedouin custom for making a covenant. One man would walk through to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the deal, you can split me in two and walk in my blood.” The other man would do the same. An admittedly severe agreement, but this is what God asked of Abraham. Instead of allowing Abraham to walk through the bloody path, God caused Abraham to sleep and spoke His promise. When Abraham awoke, he saw a smoking pot, and then a flaming torch, pass through the halved animals. By doing this, God passed through the path Himself both times as if to say, “If I don’t keep my end of the agreement and uphold my promises, you can kill me and walk in my blood. And if you don’t keep your end of our agreement to follow me as your only God, you can kill me and walk in my blood.”

Of course, Abraham would be the one to break the covenant, but God’s promise was to take the punishment for our failure Himself. This promise was fulfilled with Jesus’s death on the cross. This is the free gift of grace, and it’s ours to accept or deny.

When we do accept Jesus and His forgiveness of our sin, Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Many sections of the New Testament teach that our righteousness, justification, and holiness are found in Jesus. This works because we’re hidden in Him. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our mistakes, our trauma, our sickness, our wounds, or any of that stuff. He sees Jesus. The Old Testament prophets, when telling of the coming Messiah, said He would suffer, be broken, bruised, striped, crushed, and slaughtered for our iniquity, sin, transgression, illness, and infirmity. God doesn’t want to punish us because He already punished Jesus. When we place ourselves under the covering of Jesus’s blood, we’re, well, covered. In 2 Timothy 2:11-13, Paul wrote, “It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

Of course, just because all of our sins are forgiven doesn’t mean we use grace as an excuse to live an intentional lifestyle of sin. Paul explains this gorgeously in Romans 6. To be sure of God’s grace is to be sure of our salvation in Jesus and this understanding is foundational to the life of every believer.

Mercy is more of a head-scratcher for people, I think. I see mercy as God’s affectionate attitude toward us, His goodwill, and the help He wants to offer. When explaining my idea of mercy to a close friend, I compared it to the brief period of my life when I wanted to play basketball. I was, I don’t know, seven or so, and I wanted to try dunking the ball. I don’t even know if I was four feet tall at the time, but I kept trying to dunk. And I mean repeatedly. I probably stuck my tongue out a few times thinking that was Michael Jordan's secret. My dad laughed as he watched, and I kept saying, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” But, come on, there was no way I would dunk that ball. So my dad stepped in and said, “Let me help you.” He lifted me up as I jumped and I was finally able to dunk the ball.

Now, I could have refused his help and insisted that I was going to dunk on my own. But it would have been pathetic of me to really commit to that kind of denial. And it would have been cruel of my dad, or at least way less cool of him, to watch me struggle in futility and demand that I do the impossible without his help. When I let him help me, though, I wanted him to help me over and over again. It was more fun for both of us.

Some people think that God is like the dad who forces the kid to dunk the ball on his own. They feel like failures when they can’t do everything right, or they imagine that God views them as failures, too. But Jesus didn’t come to make us feel like failures. The angels in Luke 2 proclaimed God’s pleasure for us when Jesus was born. God is pleased with us because we’re hidden in Jesus, His beloved son, with whom He is very pleased.

There are parts of scripture that tell us believers should spread the gospel, baptize people, make disciples, heal the sick, and yeah, sometimes, raise the dead. Many Christians don’t see that happening around them. It’s possible that when we try to do these things, we’re under four feet tall and trying to dunk, assuming we’re trying at all. We have to accept the truth that we can’t do it on our own.

But God is there, waiting for us to let Him help. As I read through the book of Isaiah last month, many passages reassured me of God’s mercy. In Isaiah 41:13 says, “For I am the LORD your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, Do not fear, I will help you.” Later in Isaiah 46:3-4, God tells His people, “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; and I will bear you and I will deliver you.” And still later in Isaiah 49:15-16 when Israel says God has forsaken them in a time of need, the Lord replies, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.”

God wants to help us, to carry us. And He won’t forget us. It’s not possible for Him to forget. Whatever situation you may struggle with, the problem is not on His end. I learned this recently while listening to a recording of John Wimbur. He’s the guy that started the Vineyard Fellowship. He spent a year in agony from the time he began to pray for healing to finally seeing someone healed.

“I mean, God was at every meeting,” he says toward the end of the message. “A wonderful presence. We would worship in total abandonment and weep. People would be converted. It was wonderful. The air would thicken up with His presence. God was with us! We knew it! But we would pray these pitiful prayers. ‘Oh God, if you’re up there, anywhere... If you’ve ever done anything at any time...Here is a worthy subject...’ Have you ever prayed prayers like that? You have too. You’ve prayed prayers just like that. You’re just like me.”

Finally, God miraculously and hilariously healed someone that he prayed for one morning. That day, he said, “I had a vision, a really graphic one. The first I’d ever had before. I was in my car driving. It was a beautiful morning, of course it would be. And all of a sudden, superimposed over the landscape, as far as I could see, is what looked like a cloud bank. It went all the way across the sky. As I looked at it, I realized it wasn’t a cloud bank, it was a honeycomb. It was dripping. And below the honeycomb are people. They were in all kinds of different postures. Some were reverent. They’re weeping. They’ve got their hands out catching this honey. Some are sharing with their friends while others come by and dipping their fingers other peoples’ honey. And still other people are really irritated. They’re trying to get out of this honey because they don’t like it. I pulled over to the side of the road to sit and look at it and said, ‘God, what is this?’ He said, ‘John, that’s my mercy. For some people, it’s a blessing. And for some people, it’s not. John, don’t ever beg me for healing again. Look at it. There’s plenty for everyone. The problem isn’t on my end. The problem is down there where you are.’ Our God sent mercy in His son. He sent His Word to heal them. The problem we have is receiving it.”

Our Father, God, is favorably disposed to us. He wants to help us live and thrive and walk with Him. Sometimes we don’t accept His help because we want to do it on our own. Sometimes He’s waiting for us to drop that victimized, weak sort of prayer that Wimbur described and come to Him confidently as His children, knowing that dad wants to help. Other times, He’s asking us to learn how to remain in Him through the Holy Spirit as Jesus taught in John 16 because that’s where our joy is made complete. But whatever your circumstances are, His grace is available to you through Jesus and His mercy is so abundant it drips down from heaven. It delights Him to lift you high in the air and let you hang on the rim.