Cleanliness Comes Before Usefulness

But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”

Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

2 Timothy 2:19-21

When I was twenty-one and first starting out in youth ministry, I once had a group of teens play a game where they had to bob for candy bars that were floating in Mt. Dew inside a potty training toilet. Yeah, you read that correctly. Subtlety doesn't exactly win points in youth ministry.

Even as a twenty-one year old youth leader, I had enough sense to make sure that toilet was CLEAN. It was a vessel intended for dishonorable use, but once it was properly (and thoroughly) cleansed it was perfectly suitable for a wacky youth game. This formerly dirty vessel was not only used to eat out of but it was actually used to help further the kingdom of God!

That's kind of the point this passage is making. We are all like vessels that God has an intended use for. Some vessels are more useful and have more honorable purposes than others. The key to being used by God is simply this: one has to keep themselves clean. If we cleanse ourselves from the wickedness of this world, we will be ready to be used by God "for every good work."

Are you ready to be useful to God? Are you holy?

If this idea strikes you as strange, it shouldn't. We all apply the same logic in our churches almost instinctively. We expect a higher level of personal holiness from the Pastor than we do from the average choir member. If a pastor's life is characterized by too much sin then we consider him no longer worthy of the honorable ministry to which he was called. But this principle doesn't just apply to pastors; it has import for all believers. Verse 19 says, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”

Notice that holiness often requires separation from something. We are admonished to depart from sin. Holiness requires "fleeing youthful passions" as well as "pursuing righteousness" (2:22). What sin do you need to separate yourself from right now? What righteousness do you need to pursue? 

Father, help me to flee sin, to run away from wickedness. Make me holy so that I can be useful to You. Use me, Lord, to advance your kingdom. Use me to tell others about Jesus. Help me to accomplish all you have for me to do. May I be considered a "workman approved, one who has no reason to be ashamed but who correctly handles the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

God's Not Like Me

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

I'm not very good at forgiveness. I haven't been deeply wronged by many people in my life, but the times I have felt mistreated I responded pretty poorly. Forgiveness, grace, and redemption are all easier to talk about than to live out. Thank goodness God is nothing like me! His ways and thoughts are infinitely higher and better than my ways and thoughts as He himself is infinitely higher and better than me.

This applies not just to God's personal holiness and perfection, but also in how He deals with wicked people like me. He not only beckons sinners to come to Him but He does so in incomparably beautiful terms.

"Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters; and you without money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost! Why do you spend money on what is not food, and your wages on what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest of foods. Pay attention and come to Me; listen, so that you will live. (Isaiah 55:1-3a)

What a God we serve! The thirsty drink, the bankrupt eat, the "good stuff" (i.e. wine and milk) are given away for free, and all are satisfied. He offers compassion and free forgiveness, but what must one do to take advantage of this offer?

Seek the Lord while He may be found; call to Him while He is near. Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, so He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will freely forgive. (Isaiah 55:6-7)

God freely forgives any who will come. No restrictions or requirements are placed on His offer beyond the person simply turning from their sin toward God. For the person thinking, "Getting God's forgiveness can't be that easy." God says, "I'm not like you. I'm different. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts."

Thank you, Heavenly Father for being different than me.

Death of a Loved One (W.o.W. Rewind)

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants. 

Psalm 116:15

(This was originally posted on 10/12/11. The suicide of a young teen in my community this week brought it back to my mind and I felt led to rerun it.)

JD Yopp (pictured above) passed away on Monday night around 9:30pm. That may not mean much to you, but JD was my grandfather. We called him Pop. With only an eighth grade education, he taught me more about life than almost anyone else. He taught me about hard work, family, how to drive a tractor (and a stick shift), how to split wood, and how to die gracefully. This brings me to the topic for today's post: death. How do we deal with the death of a loved one?

Scripture has quite a lot to say about death, yet the most basic truth that it conveys about the topic is also one of the least known. If we are to come to terms with death we must understand first that death is the result of sin. Romans 6:23 says "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." And Romans 5:12 says, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned." We are often told that death is a "natural" part of life. After all, every part of nature experiences death in some way or another. It's true that death is "natural" to the fallen nature we all experience, but that does not mean that it was "natural" before the Fall. Scripture teaches quite clearly that death came to humanity only after the Fall.* (A footnote for those who want to go deeper.)

But why does this matter? What difference does it make that death is the result of sin? Well, first of all, it helps us understand why the death of a loved one can be so hard for us to accept. We were not built to cope with death. We were not intended for death. Thus, we can expect death to be hard for us whether we are dying ourselves or mourning the loss of someone we loved. However there is good news. When God chose to do something about man's sin problem, He determined that He would undo not only the stain of sin but the effects of sin as well. This is why Jesus rose from the dead. Since death is the result of sin, by conquering death Jesus conquered the power of sin and the power of death in our lives (Hebrews 2:14-15 & I Corinthians 15:54-56). More than that, the Bible calls Jesus the firstfruits of the resurrection (I Corinthians 15:20-23). He was the first one to be resurrected to eternal life but He will not be the last. He opened a door that those who believe in Him will also walk through. That is why Scripture says that we should not mourn as those who have no hope (I Thessalonians 4:13). For Christians, death is leaving this world and going home. Christians are called to live as foreigners and exiles in this world (I Peter 2:11-12). We are supposed to be looking forward to the home that Jesus has been preparing for us ever since He rose from the dead (John 14:1-4).

That does not mean, however, that we do not mourn. Sometimes, Christians lose sight of that. We still mourn, but we do not mourn for the believer who has gone on to be with His Lord, we mourn for ourselves. We mourn the loss that we experience because that person is no longer around. But we mourn in hope. Hope that our believing loved ones are in a better place, hope that they will receive their full resurrection bodies like Jesus at His second coming, and hope that we will one day be reunited with them. And those believers who die, die in hope. Our great hope is to go be with Christ now (II Corinthians 5:8) and then to be resurrected physically like Him at His return (I Corinthians 15 especially verse 19). It is much harder to cope with the death of a loved one who rejected Christ. Then we truly mourn without hope. For Scripture teaches that it is appointed to man once to die and then to face the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). Those who die apart from Christ are also resurrected but not to eternal life (Revelation 20:13-15). They are resurrected to eternal judgment. It is a truly awful thing to consider their fate. The one hope in that situation is not for the deceased but for the living. We can only pray that their passing will serve as a warning to those who have yet to bow the knee to their Savior.

For further reading...

• Romans 6:1-14- Dead to sin but alive to God in Christ.
• I Corinthians 15- The resurrection chapter.
• I Thessalonians 4:13-18- The return of Jesus.
• I Samuel 2:6-7, Psalm 68:20, Psalm 118:18- God controls death.

*You might be thinking though, "How could we have life without death?" Well, this weekend my uncle, who is a pastor, commented to me that he thinks Enoch gives us a glimpse of what God's original plan for mankind may have been (Genesis 5:23-24). We wouldn't have died, we would have simply been taken to be with the Lord. I cannot be certain that is true, but I must say that it sounds good to me.

The Goodness of God's Wrath

Some like to think that the Old and New Testaments present two different gods. The Old Testament presents a God of wrath while the New Testament portrays God as being full of grace and mercy, or so the argument goes. These two images conflict and simply cannot be reconciled. But the God of the Bible is not schizophrenic or two-faced. A close reading of Scripture will yield a simple but powerful truth that helps us here.

God's wrath is mixed with grace.

God is not schizophrenic or two faced. His character is the same throughout Scripture, but God isn't simple either. Even humans are complicated mixtures of many different traits and characteristics all coming together to define who we are as individuals. So too God is one, yet He has wrath and grace... and patience and justice and gentleness and righteousness, and on and on. God has many attributes in his character and they are all in the perfect proportion and measure so that all come together in one perfect God. Since God's wrath and grace are in perfect proportion, they are not contrary to one another but often show up side-by side. They are intermingled. You will almost never see God's wrath presented in Scripture without an accompanying offer of grace.

This is what we see in the book of Zephaniah. The book starts out with an announcement of God's wrath.

"I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord. “I will sweep away both man and beast; I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea— and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble.” “When I destroy all mankind on the face of the earth,” declares the Lord. (Zephaniah 1:2-3)

This leads us to a couple of questions. Why is God angry? And what is the result of God's anger?

If you study the context of this passage you'll find that God had good reason to be angry. God's people have forsaken Him and run after false gods. They have set up idols in the temple that Solomon built in which God's Shekinah glory had dwelt. There was an Asherah idol in the Temple, altars on the roof, and even houses for male cult prostitutes alongside the temple where the people would practice sexual rituals in worship of these false gods. There were high places all over Judah where the people bowed down to the stars, sun, moon and planets. In the Valley of Topheth the people made sacrifices to Molek. This was particularly detestable to God because parents would sacrifice their own children in fire to this false god. 2 Kings 21:16 tells us that King Manasseh (who had recently reigned) "shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end." God's people were prideful, violent, deceitful and complacent. (The content of this paragraph is gleaned from the book of Zephaniah as well as 2 Kings 21-23 and 2 Chronicles 33-35.)

God will not stand by while His children worship false gods. The New Testament tells us that when people sacrifice to these idols they are really sacrificing to demons. This isn’t just wrong it is dangerous for us. God often uses the analogy of marriage to describe His relationship to His people. God will not share His worship any more than a good husband will share his wife or vice versa. God will not suffer an open marriage. He is a jealous God in the best way. We are rightfully His, He will not allow us to be stolen away by demons who intend to do us harm.

So it turns out that God should be angry! His wrath is just. A God who has no wrath is no good. I don't want to serve a god who has no anger over child sacrifices. I don't want a god who doesn't get angry when the weak are victimized and abused, when the poor are defrauded, or when his people worship demons. If God wasn’t angry at these things, if He didn’t punish these, then He wouldn’t be good! So, I'll say it again. A god with no wrath is no good.

What we find in the book of Zephaniah and throughout the Old Testament and the whole of the Bible though is not only that God's wrath is justified but that it is in fact intermingled with grace. God’s wrath is good and He can be trusted! We see this when we ask our second question: what is the result of God's anger? Consider the outcome in the book of Zephaniah.

Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”(Zephaniah 3:14-17)

Do you see what God has done? A book that began with fear and complete destruction ends with joy and singing. The punishment God brings results in singing, shouts of joy, rejoicing, and gladness for His people. His anger is turned to delight, forgiveness, love, and nearness to His people. As Matthew Henry puts it, “God’s design is not to drive them to despair but to drive them to God and to their duty- not to frighten them out of their wits, but to frighten them out of their sins” (quoted from Matthew Henry's Unabridged Commentary on the Whole Bible, notes on Zephaniah.)

God disciplines His children as a father disciplines the son He loves (Hebrews 12:5-7). The results He longs to bring for His children are restoration and joy! This isn’t a fickle, despotic God, but a fiercely loving, jealous and righteous God. So if you sense that you are under Gods wrath, under His discipline right now, then take comfort in this truth. It is not God’s pleasure to crush you, but to restore you! Even this is for your good. God is eager for your return. He pursues you for relationship and for restoration, not for destruction.

Praise God for His goodness that even His wrath is mixed with grace, even His judgment is consistent with mercy. God is a God of hope. Even in His fierce anger, he longs for us to turn to Him. Will you stop running away from God today? Will you turn toward Him? Will you repent and lay down your arms and surrender? If you will, then He will make you a beloved son or daughter today. That’s what a Christian is. We all used to be enemies of God. We hated Him and His ways. We rebelled against His authority, but He captured us with His love. We surrendered to His grace and He has adopted us and made us His very own sons and daughters.