When Good Rules Go Bad...

I don’t know if you’ve ever stopped and really thought about it, but the average Christian lives his life by a lot of rules.

Some of those rules are straight from Scripture.

You’ve got Ephesians 5, “Don’t get drunk…”

Or anyone of the ten commandments, like for example commandment number 3 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…”

Some of the rules Christians live by though, don’t come directly from Scripture, they are more their own personal application of Scripture.

They take a principle like the importance of meditating on Scripture and they turn it into a rule, I need to read my Bible for thirty minutes every day. Or, the fact that we are supposed to take care of our bodies, and they say well that means I shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. Maybe it’s the need for fellowshipping with other believers and that becomes I’ve got to be at every meeting of the church.

In our day and age, a lot of people don’t like rules.

There are a lot of people who don’t like any sort of rule. But even beyond that, there are a lot of professing Christians who don’t really have a problem with the kind of rules that come directly from Scripture but do have a problem with rules that are based on the application of Scripture.

Some even have a word they use for anyone who has rules like that, they call them legalistic.

“Don’t talk to me about what I wear; don’t talk to me about what I watch; don’t talk to me about the things I do; because if you do, if you do suggest any rules in any one of those areas, well that would be legalistic.”

I on the other hand, happen to like rules.

I don’t like every rule of course, but there are a lot of rules that quite frankly that do a lot of good.

A good rule can keep you out of a lot of bad situations.

You may not have a Bible verse for example that says don’t go into an adult bookstore, but you do have plenty that say don’t lust, and if you are going to obey that, you’d be pretty foolish not to have a rule like don’t go into adult bookstores for yourself.

A good rule can help you maintain your testimony.

Unlike going into adult bookstores, there are some things that are not necessarily wrong to do in and of themselves. I think it would be pretty difficult to say for example that it is wrong in and of itself for a man to talk to a woman who is not his wife. But you know if a man talks to a certain woman who is not his wife a lot and he does so without his wife around, besides the fact that it can lead him into some serious trouble, (and usually does) even besides that, it can also cause people to start asking questions and not taking that person’s profession of faith seriously. A rule like I’m not going to have private drawn out conversations with women without my wife at least being somewhere around will save a man from getting into a lot of trouble and potentially ruining his testimony for Christ.

A good rule can keep you focused.

A rule like, I’m going to read my Bible every day – well that has potential of doing me a lot of spiritual good.

Just having rules isn’t in and of itself, legalistic. Rules can be helpful.

At the same time thought, it is true rules can also be hurtful.

I’m obviously not talking about the rules that come straight from Scripture, I’m talking the kind of rules we make on the application of Scripture. Those kind of rules can easily move from being helpful to being hurtful.

Take the Pharisees, for example.

The Pharisees were a group of boys who had a lot of rules. They were known for that. They had rules for almost everything. Thing is, if you had asked them why they had so many rules, their answer would have been good, I guarantee you, it would have been because they wanted to apply what the Scripture said to every area of life.

It’s been said the Pharisees viewed their rules like fences, they were designed to keep them from getting anywhere even close to disobeying one of God’s laws.

But by the time Jesus was walking the earth, I think you’d have to say that the Pharisees’ rules had gotten out of control and uh, actually their fixation on rules was one of the things that kept them from really ever truly accepting Jesus. Their fences became blinders, instead of helping them obey God, their little rules kept them from seeing Jesus.

And you know the same thing is happening to religious, church going, Bible reading people practically all the time today. They have their rules, lots of rules, they look great from the outside, but if you look a little more closely, those rules have become their religion, there’s no real heart for Jesus.

They may have started out well, on fire even; but without knowing it, as they added one spiritual rule on top of another, join a small group, read your entire Bible once a year, never miss Sunday school, those activities, those rules have shifted from “being a means of experiencing God’s grace to a means of earning God’s grace.”

Helpful rules have become hurtful.

Now it’s all very subtle, that’s the trick, which is why I want us to look together at Mark 2:23-28.

I want us to look together at this passage because I think what we find here in this story is a very effective way of telling whether or not your helpful rules have actually become hurtful to you when it comes to living out your Christian life.

“One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’ And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him; how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the Priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?’ And he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.’”

Rules move from being helpful to being hurtful when we focus so much on the rules that we forget the One who rules.

We see maybe the classic illustration of that here in this story with the Pharisees.

This is another one of those conflict stories. It’s actually the fifth out of six. If you’ve been tracking with us, you’ll notice each one is getting more intense. They started by objecting in their minds, then by coming to Jesus’ disciples, then to Jesus, now it’s like they are lodging a formal complaint, and in the next story we’ll see that they start coming up with plans to kill him.

Now spiritually that’s a pretty big mistake.

You actually couldn’t make a bigger mistake than that, but the interesting thing is, you’ll notice if you look at this story, their problems with Jesus all began with a pretty good rule.

The Pharisees were concerned about the Sabbath.

Sabbath if you’re not familiar with the word, it comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which basically means to rest, to cease from activity. In Jesus’ day, the term was applied to a day of the week – our Saturday. The Pharisees were very concerned that people Shabbat on the Sabbath. It was a big deal to them that people keep the Sabbath holy.

And you know what, rightly so, because keeping the Sabbath was a big deal to God. When Moses was talking to Israel about the way God wanted them to live, part of the top ten list was “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” It’s found five places in Exodus, once in Deuteronomy, and three times in Leviticus. It was something tied to the way God created the world, and also to the way He rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt. It’s something God takes seriously.

The prophet Ezekiel talks about God taking the Sabbath so seriously, that He actually brought judgment on Israel because they didn’t.

You see, the Sabbath was supposed to be a sign to Israel. “Above all…” God says in Exodus 31, “you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I the Lord, sanctify you.” It was to be this day that helped Israel remember what God had done for them. This is one of the key ways God intended to help Israel know they were different from the rest.

That’s why prophets like Isaiah said that keeping the Sabbath was one of the key characteristics of the kind of person who pleased God; that the kind of person who is serious about doing the will of God is going to be a person who is serious about keeping the Sabbath.

Whatever you are going to say about the Pharisees, looking at the Old Testament, you can’t fault the Pharisees for being serious about the Sabbath.

That’s why they had the rules they did. They knew God wanted them to rest on the Sabbath, and so they started making up all kinds of rules to help people think through exactly what it mean to do that.

Rest is kind of a general word after all, so they got specific. And when I say specific, I mean down to the smallest detail.

“One section of the Talmud, the major compilation of Jewish tradition has twenty four chapters listing Sabbath laws.”[1]

You could only travel 3000 feet on a Sabbath. Certain regulations stipulated you couldn’t carry anything heavier than a dry fig on a Sabbath, but if you happened to pick something up that weighed half that amount, well you could carry it twice. You could throw something up in the air, but you had to catch it with the hand you used to throw it. If you tossed it from one hand to the other, that was a no-no. You definitely couldn’t take a bath, because if you got into the tub or whatever they used, and some water splashed out on the floor, well someone might say that water cleaned the floor, which we all know would be work.

You couldn’t sow, plow, reap, grind, bake, thresh, winnow, sift, shear, spin, knead, tie or untie a knot, or sew stitches.[2] The religious teachers tried to come up with a rule for every possible situation, I mean they got as specific as saying, if a building fell down on a Sabbath, you could remove enough rubble to discover whether there was anyone left alive, if they were alive you could help them; but if you found any corpses, you’d have to leave them until after sunset. [3]

It was these kind of rules that sparked the controversy with Jesus. “One Sabbath, he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

I want you to understand there are like, a lot of ways that Jesus could have answered that.

One of the main ones being, says who?

You’re going to spend a lot of time looking in your Old Testament for a passage that says a person is not allowed to pluck a head of grain and eat it on the Sabbath because it’s not there.

Totally extra-biblical rule.

But Jesus doesn’t even go there. And you know, I think the reason is because he wants to get at what really is at the heart of the Pharisees problem.

They weren’t recognizing the authority of Jesus.

They had become so focused on their rules that they missed the One who rules.

That’s the point of the story here Jesus tells about David and what happened way back when in the time of Abiathar.

“Have you never read,” Jesus says, “what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to them?”

There are actually two ways we could take this story.

David did something technically that wasn’t lawful, we know that.

He was on the run from Saul, and he and his men went into the house of God and the priest at the time Ahimelech, (Jesus is just using the name of the most well-known priest in Samuel here Abiathar, like a point of reference) and Ahimelech allowed David and his men to eat something the letter of the law said they shouldn’t.

Yet, Scripture never condemns David for that act.

Why?

One answer is to say it was because they were in a desperate condition. It wasn’t like David was coming in for a snack. The idea being the fact that David and his men were in such desperate need made the technicality of the law unimportant, just like it did here with Jesus and his disciples.

But that doesn’t seem to be the attitude of Jesus towards the law elsewhere. I mean, Jesus never says you can break the law if you really, really need to.

A second answer, and I think a better one is to note the parallel between David and Jesus. David was the king, God’s anointed. And what Jesus is saying is if the Pharisees didn’t condemn David and his men for breaking the law in this case, and they didn’t, because they recognized his authority and his unique position as King, it made absolutely no sense for them to condemn Jesus for the actions of His disciples, because He was even greater than David, as we’ve seen in the passages preceding this one, He was God Himself.

The point being while the Pharisees little fixation with rules may have started out with good intentions, we know it had become something twisted, because it brought them to the point where they were shaking their fingers and saying tsk, tsk, to the Ruler of the Universe Himself.

It sounds almost ridiculous to say really, but you know I think the same thing happens in many churches. You’ve got these people who so define their spirituality by the rules and regulations they have made up, that they wouldn’t recognize Jesus if they saw Him, and if He wanted to become of member of their church, you can be sure they wouldn’t let Him in.

The thing is, and this is where this whole discussion becomes more difficult. Nobody’s going to out and out admit that.

I mean this is a nice little principle, you know a helpful rule has become hurtful when you focus so much on the rule that you forget the One who rules, but who in their right mind is going to stand up and say, yep I’m living proof of that.

I guarantee you, the Pharisees wouldn’t.

I’m pretty sure if you asked them, the Pharisees wouldn’t have said they were focusing on the rules rather than on the One who rules.

And neither would most of us.

How can we tell when we’ve slipped into Pharisee mode then, with our little list, and lost focus?
I think we discover two ways in verses 27 and 28 where Mark records the final punch line to Jesus’ response.

“And he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The first way we can tell we’ve lost sight of Jesus is when our rule becomes more important to us than people.

I’m getting pretty specific here and I hope I’m not reading this principle into the text, but for sure, this is what had happened with the Pharisees and the Sabbath.
Their rules about the Sabbath had become more important to them than the needs of the people. Jesus’ disciples weren’t out plucking heads of grain for the fun of it, no, they had left everything to follow Jesus, were out I guarantee you, ministering to the needs of the people, and they needed something to eat.

But the Pharisees couldn’t see the person, the situation, what was going on in the disciple’s lives made no difference whatsoever to them, all they could see was their rule and how these people were breaking it.

They were acting as if man was made for the Sabbath, as if people existed for the rule, and had forgotten God’s whole intention in giving His law about the Sabbath in the first place was for man’s good.

It was right for the Pharisees to be concerned about people keeping God’s law. Jesus Himself was concerned about that. But the way the Pharisees went about enforcing their rules made it clear they were missing the intent of God’s law. They were acting as if God’s concern for His law was somehow separated from His concern for His people.

I may be treading on slippery ground here, but let me just give you one example of how I think we might do that.

Confrontation.

When you see a brother in sin, it’s a good thing to go and talk to him about it. But what I’ve seen often happen when people do, is that they become so focused on the rule the person broke that they basically forget they are talking to a person. They fail to remember that God’s goal in the confrontation process is not for the one person to prove they are right and that the other person is not, or to squash that person into the ground, but that person’s spiritual good.

Evidences?

They treat the person they are confronting totally different than the way they would want to be treated. They act as if the only thing God is concerned about is the law, not the person.

They take a good thing and use it as a weapon.

Just like the Pharisees.

A second way we can tell we’ve lost sight of Jesus in our focus on our rules is if we have disconnected the rule or regulation in our mind from the person of Jesus.

Let me explain what I mean.

You can be concerned about a rule, one because you are concerned about submitting to the rule of Jesus or two, you can be concerned about a rule because you are concerned about ruling over everybody else.

The Pharisees obviously weren’t concerned about their rules because they were concerned about submitting to God – we know they had disconnected the rule from the One who ruled- because when God Himself came in human form they acted as if they had the right to rule over Him.

What I’m trying to say is that the Pharisees weren’t concerned about their rules because they were concerned about their Lord…they were concerned about their rules because they wanted to be Lord.

They had disconnected their rule from the person of Jesus. That’s why they were arguing about how to keep the Sabbath with the one who actually if you look at verse 28 was the Lord of the Sabbath.

Rules are fine when they are your way of expressing your submission to the rule of Jesus, but rules are awful, when they become a way for to act as if you are Lord instead of Jesus.

The sad thing is that they have become that for a lot of people, and sometimes for a lot of us.

We have these rules and we are very concerned about them, and perhaps they are good rules, but really for us, what those good rules are is a way of masking our selfishness and expressing our arrogance.

I was reminded of that the other day.

I have kind of a rule for myself, I guess, when I’m at work I want to work. I feel bad when I’m at work and I’m not. But, a couple weeks ago the kids were here and I always feel torn when they are here at the church, because I want to be with them and I know I need to work. For some reason, they were hanging out in my office and I was trying to work, and I was getting a little bothered and a little grumpy. I mean, because after all I have a good rule, when I’m at work I need to work. But you know what was happening in my mind, I was using my good rule as an excuse for selfishness – a rationalization for being grumpy with the kids.

I wasn’t asking myself what Jesus wanted, I was using my rule to get what I wanted – just like the Pharisees.

It’s easy to see the Pharisees legalism. It’s more difficult to see ours. We’ve got lots of rules, many of them good, but I’d encourage you this week, to use what we’ve seen in Mark 2 to search your own soul, to see if any of your good rules have gone bad.
[1] John MacArthur, Matthew 8-15, p.281
[2] ibid
[3] Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark

Circuit Jammers

I haven't met too many people who would say they don't think listening is important. I have met alot of people who don't act like listening is important. If we all know that it is important to listen to others, why do we have such a hard time doing it?

I've been thinking about some of the things that keep us from really listening to others.

(Again, help me out...see if you can think of some more.)

1.) We talk too much. We don't give the other person a chance to share. By the time the other person is done listening to us, they are too tired to say anything about themselves. (Besides, we might be too interested in ourselves to listen to what's happening to them.)
2.) We talk too little. We don't ask enough good questions to draw information out of the other person.
3.) We are too focused on what the other person thinks of us to think much about how we can serve them. We're thinking about ourselves so much that we don't really pay much attention to the other person.
4.) We are not all that interested in the other person as a person. We're thinking more about what we can get out of them or how they can help us.
5.) We make getting things done a greater priority than loving others. We use our "busyness" as an excuse for not taking the time to really hear someone out.
6.) We like what we like and when someone is talking about something that really isn't something we like, well, we don't care enough about them to try to learn about what they like. If something is boring to us, then we think it's not worth listening to.
7.) We don't think of listening as an act of service. We think, I've got to pursue my own pleasure and if this conversation isn't the ultimate in pleasure, I need to cut it off and go do something that brings me more pleasure as quickly as possible.
8.) We assume that we know all that we need to know without the other person giving us more information.
9.) We read into things that people are saying without doing the hard work of figuring out what they really are saying. We assume that because we mean one thing when we say something, they must mean the exact same thing by it, when it could be that they don't.
10.) We don't focus. We allow our minds to run down a thousand different paths rather than being self-controlled and focusing on the other person.
11.) We think if we say something one way then other people should say it the same way and if they don't then they shouldn't expect us to listen. For example, we think if we don't use that many details in our conversation then other people shouldn't use that many details in their conversation and if they do use too many details in their conversation they can't expect us to actually pay attention as they talk about all those details.
12.) We're so focused on what we are going to say next that we don't hear what they're saying.
13.) We want to "win" the conversation. We want to show the other person how smart we are, how much we know, sometimes how much better we are than them.

I'd encourage you to think this week about the impact the gospel should have on the way you listen to others. If we have truly died to self and been made alive with Christ, that should make an impact on the way we go about having conversations with others!

Listen Up!

Most of us probably have taken a class in public speaking, but I doubt many of us have ever taken a class on listening. We often think about what we are going to say to someone, but I wonder if any of us spend much time thinking about how we are going to listen.

Listening's just not something we think much about.

Yet when it comes to every day life, and especially communicating with others, there's hardly anything more important we can do, than really listen to them. Since I know I'm so prone to talk too much and listen too little, I jotted down a few reminders to myself why it is important I work at listening to others.

(See if you can come up with some more...)

1. If I don't listen, I'm not really showing love to the other person.
2. If I don't listen, I'm acting like I'm more important than the other person.
3. If I don't listen, it's going to be really difficult to truly hear what the other person is saying.
4. If I don't listen, it's likely the other person won't listen to me.
5. If I don't listen, I may end up saying things that do not relate to the issue the person is talking to me about.
6. If I don't listen, it's going to be hard for me to know how to serve the other person.
7. If I don't listen, it's going to be hard for me to know what to say that will really help the other person.
8. If I don't listen, I'm not treating the other person the way that I would want to be treated if I were in their shoes.
9. If I don't listen, I'm not acting like Jesus, because I know he does an awful lot of listening to me.
10. If I don't listen, I'm treating the other person like a problem to be fixed rather than a person to be helped.

Are you Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing?

What is your life about?

Honestly.

What do you live for? What are you most passionate about? What gets you most excited? What do you most desire to understand? What do you most love to talk about?

What’s the main thing in your life?

There are many different ways you might answer that question...career, family, ministry...but ultimately, there’s only one right answer and it’s not hard to figure out what that answer is.

Want some help?

Think about the apostle Paul.

If you asked him, what do you live for?

His answer: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Phil.1:21)

If you asked him, what gets you most excited?

His answer, “…far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal.6:14)

If you asked him, what do you long to know and understand?

His answer, “…whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Jesus Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…” (Phil.3)

If you asked him, what do you love to talk about?

His answer, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor.2)

If you asked him, Paul, what’s the main thing in your life, what are you focused on, what defines you? I’m convinced it’s not difficult to figure out how he’d answer.

“I’m Paul. A servant of Christ. And I struggle, I labor, I give everything I’ve got that the elect of God might know Christ and understand the glory of the gospel.”

Paul was a man who clearly knew what was most important and lived his life in light of that. As Pastor C.J. Mahaney explains, Paul “…recognized the universal danger of forgetting what is most important. He refused to be pulled away from the gospel. The cross was the center-piece of Paul’s theology. It wasn’t merely one of Paul’s messages; it was the message.”

Everything that Paul did, everything that Paul said, everything that Paul was about, revolved around one holy passion. He was a man who focused his entire life on Jesus Christ. He was a man committed to living a cross-centered life.

The same should be true for each of us. Paul was to be the norm, not the exception. We’re to live our lives centered on the exact same thing. Whether we are pastors, businessmen, house-wives, soldiers, whatever we do, whoever we are, we are to be a people whose lives revolve around Jesus Christ.

The Christian life is all about making much of Jesus Christ.

Each one of us should be able to say with Paul - I live for one thing and that is “Christ…” Each one of us should be able to say with Paul – I boast in one thing and that is the “cross…” Each one of us should be able to say with Paul, I long to know one thing and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Each one of us should be able to say with Paul I proclaim one thing and that is the word of the cross. And each one of us should be able to say with Paul I am about one thing and that is glory of my wonderful Savior Jesus Christ.

As believers we should stand out for our unreserved, overwhelming passion to know Jesus, to think about Jesus, to worship Jesus, and to love Jesus with absolutely everything we've got.

Adventures in Self-Justification part two

I'm reminded how well God knows me every time I open the Bible. Studying, it becomes obvious that the Bible isn't simply a book written about people long ago, it's a book God uses to speak to me, today.

I've been reminded of that as we've thought about the ways the Bible says we justify ourselves. We've seen that even though we know we are supposed to love other people, we sometimes, o.k., often don't, and yet we don't feel convicted about it because we justify our behavior.

So far, we've looked at three ways we do that - we bring up technicalities, we flat out lie about what we are doing, and we blame other people.

Today, I want to think about three other ways the Bible shows us that we justify ourselves.

Sometimes we justify ourselves when confronted by (and this is actually more of a lifestyle than it is a response) emphasizing the commands that are easy for us to obey and minimize the commands that aren’t.

This was one of the Pharisees main tricks.

I think of the Pharisee who invited Jesus over to lunch and then got all upset that Jesus ddin't wash his hands. Luke 11:38, “And when the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that He had not first ceremonially washed before the meal…” Jesus uses this as an opportunity to point out what the Pharisees were missing. What was the Pharisees problem? Verse 42, “Woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are things you should have done without neglecting the other.” Jesus doesn’t have a problem with them tithing but what he does have a problem with is that they were only partially keeping God’s law. They weren’t concerned about the whole thing.

Pharisees aren't the only ones who do this with God’s Word. Many people treat God's Word like a buffet. They take what they like and leave what they don’t. When they are confronted with a command that hits them where they live, a command that would actually mean that they would have to change their lives, instead of repenting, they just minimize the importance of that command and rationalize to themselves that since they are doing this or that or this or that, that their flagrant, outright disobedience in this one area is no big deal.

We could even take this trick a step further. Sometimes it’s not a matter of emphasizing and minimizing, it’s a matter of flat out distorting God’s Word. People come to the Word of God and then they twist it into meaning something totally different than what it really means so that their lack of love is in their eyes justified.

I think of how in Luke 6:6, Jesus enters into a synagogue on Sunday and there is this man whose hand is withered and the scribes and Pharisees weren’t concerned about the man and his hand, but they were watching to see if Jesus would help him in order to accuse him of doing something wrong. Now what you’ve got to see is that if you talked to these Pharisees, who at this point were being so cold-hearted, they would have claimed to be biblical. Listen, we are just concerned about God’s law – He wants us to rest on the Sabbath. But Jesus points out that they were perverting the intention of God’s law. They were in the wrong because they had distorted God’s Word. What they were saying it meant, it didn’t mean. You notice in verse 9, “Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life, or to destroy it.” The answer’s obvious. But the Pharisees wouldn’t admit. So they got angry.

Jesus just exposes what they are doing back in Mark 7. He says, “You nicely set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.” Here they go again: emphasizing man-made rules over the Scripture. Why? They could look religious, while, since they made the rules, basically do what they want.

I hope you recognize that what the Pharisees were doing there, people, religious people, are still doing today...distorting Scripture and then using Scripture as an excuse for them to disobey what the Scripture clearly states.

Sometimes we justify ourselves when confronted by acting as if we had no other choice but to sin. We find Saul doing this in 1 Samuel 13. For the sake of time, I’ll skip the details of the story and skip right to the punchline in verse 11 where Samuel comes to Saul and he’s like “What have you done?” And Saul says, “Because I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the appointed days, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, therefore I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal and I have not asked the favor of the Lord.’ So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering.” Now that’s an excuse. This guy was prepared. The people made me do it, you messed up and made me do it, the Philistines made me do it, I was really in a tight spot, and I wanted to be humble and spiritual, so I forced myself to disobey God...in light of everything that had been done to me, and in light of the terrible circumstances God placed me in, I had no other choice.

Come on.

Now like Saul we’re pretty good at coming up with all sorts of different ways of saying that we just had to do what we did or why we have to be the way we are, instead of repenting.

One of the most common ways would have to be the old “woe is me” bit. Somebody is confronted with a command, it hits them the square between the eyes, and instead of falling down and confessing their sin and forsaking it, they start just blaming their personality, “Oh I’m such a terrible person. Woe is me.” Instead of repenting, they just wallow in a kind of pity party, acting as if the only choice they have is to just continue on in their sin, as if although they are Christians with the Spirit of God residing within them, that God hasn’t given them enough to overcome and deal with their sin.

Listen guys, man I hope you know that I’m not trying to be harsh here, I’m trying to be loving. When we are studying Scripture and we come across all the commands to love others, we waste so much time and we do ourselves such great harm by coming up with all these tricky ways around actually obeying it.

Really, what I’m trying to do here is just give you a warning.

We hear be loving all the time.

And it’s, and I don’t want this to happen in my life or yours, it’s so easy to hearall these exhortations and not benefit from them. That’s obviously a major issue because it’s something we see happening all throughout Scripture.

We need to do something more than hear these exhortations to love others, we need to put them into practice.

But one of the reasons we don’t is because we often spend so much energy trying to justify ourselves by excusing our behavior, blaming others, minimizing what we are doing, denying reality, “woe is me-ing” it, and using all our other little tricks to try to make ourselves feel good about what we’re doing wrong and look good in the eyes of others while we are doing it.

When you come to Scripture and you read about the importance of love and you begin to realize just how radically different the kind of love God wants you to pursue is from the way you are actually loving; when you begin to see the kind of changes that God wants you to make in the specifics, what it means for the way you treat your spouse, what it means for the way you speak, what it means for the way you treat that relative you just can’t stand, or what it means for the way you relate to other people at church, I’m begging you not to waste your time trying to find ways to get out of actually doing what God wants you to do, to waste your time justifying yourselves.

It's a waste of time because the wonderful amazing truth that the gospel tells us is we can’t. We can’t justify ourselves. Instead of pretending like we can by covering over our sin and hiding it, we need to repent.

Proverbs 28:13 puts it like this, “He who conceals his trangression will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.”

I’m not talking about a fake kind of repentance which is just all weepy and like oh I am such a terrible person I am so awful look at me, look at me; but instead a real falling down on your face before Jesus Christ as you sense that you are being exposed by His Word and crying out to Him saying Jesus I’ve failed you, I haven’t loved those around me the way you are calling me to, and Lord I am sorry, I am so sorry not just for the consequences of my sin, but also for the way I have grieved you, but Lord Jesus I come confidently before you now because I know the promise of 1 John 1:9 that if I confess my sin you are faithful and just to forgive me my sin and so I’m done blameshifting and excusing and I just cry out to your forgiveness because I need it, and I cry out for your help as well because I want to love you and love others the way the Bible describes and I know that I can’t do that on my own. Lord change me, make me the person you want me to be, show me my sin so that I can kill it and give me the strength to pursue you and put on true love day after day after day.

Adventures in Self-Justification...

I don't know if you read many "blogs."

There are a whole lot of good ones out there. There are also a lot of bad ones. Some of the bad ones are pretty sad ones, because it doesn't take much time reading many of those blogs, and we're talking about "Christian" blogs, to discover that sometimes people who know a whole lot about the Bible can be mean.

Obviously that shouldn't surprise us.

It shouldn't surprise us that people who know a whole lot about the Bible can act in mean ways, because for one thing, we know ourselves. We know what we know about the Bible and at the same time we know the kinds of things we think and the ways we relate to others.

The question we're thinking about is why is that?

We've seen that the Bible helps us understand how "spiritual" people who read the Bible frequently can talk about love while being unloving.

We "justify" ourselves.

I want us to think today about some of the differents ways the Bible says we have of doing that.

Sometimes people justify themselves when confronted with their sin by enmeshing the
themselves in technicalities and minutiae.

I think that’s probably what the lawyer who asked Jesus what the greatest commands was doing. After Jesus tells him to love God and love his neighbor with everything he's got, he asks Jesus “Who is my neighbor?”

"Well of course I know God says love my neighbor, but wait a second, slow down here, who exactly is my neighbor?”

Talk about missing the point.

Much of the confusion about what the Bible says is not about the Bible being difficult to understand, it’s about people wanting to find ways not to obey it. "Who is my neighbor? I would love him but I mean how can I if I don’t know who he is?"

What this question illustrates is that sometimes when a passage of Scripture exposes someone’s guilt they’ll seek to justify themselves by misdirecting their attention from important issues to secondary matters.

"I know who the white horse in Revelation is and if you don't you are just ignorant..."

Other times people seek to justify themselves when confronted by telling flat out lies.

This was Cain back in Genesis 4, God comes and says to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And Cain says, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” which was of course pure deceit. He was denying reality. He fully knew. I mean, he murdered him.

James talks about this over in James 3.

He says that there are people whose hearts are filled with selfish ambition and bitter conceit and yet who claim to know God and be wise. And you know what he says to them? “If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition and in your heart, do not be arrogant and lie against the truth.”

Don’t say you are one thing and pretend to be something that on the inside you are not. Don't lie.

We often do the same thing when confronted with the commands of Scripture.

Sometimes we lie outright to others or even to ourselves so that we don’t look or feel bad. “Oh yes, I need to love my brother. That’s powerful...” when we don’t intend on doing so.

Or we deny the reality. “Oh I didn’t really mean it. Oh it wasn’t that bad.”

Other times our lies are more subtle. We’ll embellish the facts, we’ll use innuendo, we’ll exaggerate, we’ll put a spin on what really is taking place. We try to explain away what we did or what we thought or what we said or why we failed to act, and some of us are so good at doing that, that we can actually get people to believe that we really did mean well when in our heart of hearts we know of course we didn’t.

Sometimes people justify themselves when confronted by blaming others.

This is what Adam and Eve did – it’s that woman you gave me. This is what Aaron did when Moses confronted him – it’s the people Moses. This is what Saul did when Samuel confronted him – same response it was the people Samuel. And it’s what we do so often instead of truly repenting.

We use other people as a scape-goat for our lack of love. “If only he hadn’t said that, they just really know how to push my buttons…” “If only that person hadn’t cut me off…”

We play the blame-game. Instead of really dealing with our own sin we’re constantly attacking others, bringing up all these different things that they have done. You see this in marriages all the time, a wife or husband, instead of seeking to really love their spouse the way God describes, justifies their lack of love by harboring all kinds of bitterness for the terrible things their spouse has done, and whenever they start to get convicted by the Scripture about failing to love their spouse, they just bring out that little laundry list and start work their way through all the terrible things their spouse has done through the years so they don’t feel so bad, so they don’t have to actually repent for their own sin.

We work so hard at justifying ourselves. Tomorrow we'll look at a couple more ways we go about it. I want to close today though by reminding you that in doing so, we miss the point. We can't. We can't justify ourselves. There is only one person who can justify us and that's Jesus Christ. When confronted with our lack of love, let's put down our excuses and silly attempts at self-justification, rejoice in the justification God has provided for us, and repent.

Love...Who Me?

We've seen that people who know they should be loving often aren't.

We've also seen it is sometimes amazing the mean things people will do, who know better. What is even more amazing is when they don't feel bad about it.

The question I want us to think about today:

Why is that?

The Bible reveals one of the primary ways we shield ourselves from really being challenged by all the calls to love. (You might say this is one of the ways we wriggle out of conviction...)

It's found in Luke 10.

Whether you know it or not, you are familiar with Luke 10. It contains one of the most popular stories Jesus ever told, the story of the Good Samaritan. We know the details of this story well. Sometimes though, we talk about the story of the Good Samaritan so much that we forget that there was a reason Jesus told it. He told it in the context of a conversation.

Actually, if you look at verse 25 he was responding to a very religious man. Luke says, “And behold a certain lawyer stood up…” When we hear lawyer we think some guy in a business suit who works downtown and goes to court. When Luke talks about lawyers he is talking about men who were experts in the Mosaic Law. This was a man who knew his stuff. This was not just some Joe Schmoe off the street.

You can imagine Jesus teaching when this lawyer stands up and the crowd just hushes. They might have been like wow, here’s a spiritual man, someone who knows it all. And you notice, this religious man does ask a very good question.

He says, “Teacher what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Sounds innocent even spiritual enough. But Jesus knows his intentions and turns the tables on him by responding to his question with a question, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?”

Now what I want you to see is that the lawyer knew the Law very well. He says, “Love God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself…” You remember that’s the same answer Jesus gave when someone came and asked him what were the greatest commandments. So this lawyer...he did know his stuff. But again Jesus sees right through him and confronts him with the standard he’s just described. “You have answered correctly, ‘Do this and you will live.’” The lawyer knew what Jesus was saying. He knew that he hadn’t done that. He knew that he couldn’t fully do that. He had been exposed. He could quote the law, but he couldn’t live up to it.

But verse 29, when confronted like that, how does he respond? “But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor…’”

It’s that phrase "wishing to justify himself" I want you to zone in on. Justify means here to prove that you are right.

So here’s a religious person who knew what the Word said who was confronted with his own failure to live up to what he claimed to know and how does he respond?

Does he repent?

No!

He looks for a way to prove that he’s o.k. “Wishing to justify himself…”

Luke records that for a reason. He’s giving an incredible insight into the way so many times we shield ourselves from really having to respond to what Jesus is telling us to do. Instead of repenting, we seek to justify ourselves.

Listen carefully...you have to hear this. The Bible makes it clear that the command to love is of supreme importance. And yet we look out at the church and we look into Scripture and we find that oftentimes real religious Bible carrying people aren’t putting this command into practice and you know that’s a big problem and you wonder why they can hear about love and not change and the Bible gives us one major reason why.

We are confronted with what Scripture says and how we are failing to obey and then instead of getting down on our knees crying out to God to help us change and working on changing, we come up with all kinds of excuses why what was said doesn’t apply to us. Instead of repenting, we rationalize. Instead of confessing and forsaking our sin, which is the right response, we seek to deflect the command from ever really hitting us where we are at.

This response is so deep rooted, it’s almost instinctive. And you know what – it comes out in so many different ways. In the next several days we'll look at a number of the ways the Bible shows us that people go about justifying their lack of love. But for now, I'd ask you to cry out to God and ask him to reveal to you the areas in your life where you need to be more loving...and specifically ask him to help you not make excuses when you are not!

Where's the love? Part two...

The Bible doesn't only tell us that supposedly spiritual people are often mean, it also provides us with all kinds of specific examples of how supposedly spiritual people fail to love their neighbor.

Take Cain to begin with. He becomes jealous and then goes out and actually gets physically violent with his own brother.

Jealousy is a pretty big problem for spiritual people. That was one of Saul’s main issues.

You remember how Saul started hating David when David started getting popular with his fellow Israelites. After that, Saul started strategizing to bring David down, got angry with his own family members who sided with David, began throwing spears, thinking irrationally about what was going on with David, and all sorts of other crazy stuff.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan the religious people are condemned not so much by what they do, but by what? What they fail to do.

When they walked by the man who was beaten on the side of the road, does Jesus say they stepped on him? That They spit on him? No, they just walked by him. And by doing so, Jesus says they didn’t fulfill the command to love their neighbor.

So get this, we don’t only break the command to love by doing something like with Saul and Cain, we can also break the command by not doing something, by our inaction, by seeing someone in need and failing to have compassion and reach out to them.

We could give so many examples of ways in which the gospels tell us Pharisees, the religious elite of Jesus’ days failed to show love.

One of the most graphic to me has to be in Luke 13. There is this woman who had been sick for eighteen years, Luke says she was actually doubled over and couldn’t even straighten up, and Jesus heals her, but the synagogue official, instead of getting all excited, he freaks out and starts ranting and raving because Jesus healed her on the Sabbath. He had so distorted the purpose of God’s commands that he couldn’t even see the woman who was hurting and in desperate need right in front of him.

In the story of the Pharisee and the Publican, what does Jesus say the Pharisee was doing? Treating other people with contempt. He was looking down on the people all around him.

Paul in Romans 14, he’s dealing with Christians who rightfully think they can eat certain foods but are so committed to eating those foods that they run right over their weaker brother who doesn’t understand that it’s all right for them to eat those certain foods. They’ve got this biblical conviction but then they are using it as a hammer to pound on their brother and Paul’s like if you are doing that you are not walking according to love, in verse 15.

In James, the church member were showing partiality, which means that they were relating to people on the basis of what they could get from them. And then later, James says that they were blessing God and at the same time cursing their brothers. So you’ve got two examples of ways that religious people fail to love their brother there, favoritism and slander.

John talks about someone who sees his brother in need, has the means to help him, but just closes his heart and fails to reach out. He says how could a person like that how the love of God within him. Again, what we’ve got there is inaction. He doesn’t say the person walks all over the person in need, doesn’t say that he says nasty things about the person in need, but instead says that he doesn’t reach out and help the person that he sees is in need when he has the means to do so. And then he closes up with a very general example of a person who says he loves God while in his heart just hating his brother.

Those are just a few of the examples the Bible gives of ways in which supposedly spiritual people go about breaking the command to love their neighbor. But even these few illustrations give us a great checklist to examine our lives by.

We say we know what the Bible teaches about love but do we?

...come to worship while we are just infuriated with someone else.

...pray to God and then get physically violent with someone who does something we don’t like.

...go through the motions of worship when there is someone in our life who is hurting and we have totally closed our heart to them and we are not willing to reach out to them and help them.

...claim to be a religious person yet when we see someone closing your heart and failing to act. Mark that down, failing to act. Remember we’re not just talking about action here. We’re talking about inaction. We’re talking about the lazy person, the person who doesn’t devote his life to helping others.

...go to church,pray and then go home and on the way home talk about how terrible we think someone else is.

...study the Bible, learn what’s right and becoming so proud over what we know that we use it to hurt and bash our brother.

...claim to be amazed by the gospel, yet in our personal relationships with others, base how we treat them on how they treat us or what they have to give us.

...sing hymns and say all kinds of great things about God and then go home and yell nasty things at our spouse.

...pretend to be all spiritual while having all sorts of bitterness in our heart, an unwillingness to forgive someone else, an unwillingness to reach out and love someone else, to look all good on the outside, but inside to be filled with hateful, unkind, unloving thoughts.

Obviously, that list is just a beginning, but I think if most of us were going to be honest it does help expose some ways in which we need to work harder at obeying Paul’s command to put on love.

Now the real scary thing about that list though, is that from what we can tell, many of those who were pretending to worship and pretending to be all spiritual, who knew what God commanded about love and yet were flagrantly disobeying Him, don’t seem all that convicted about it.

And so you wonder how could a person be going to church, hear sermons on love, read passages on love, talk about love, and yet go out and live with himself while breaking all those commands?

Well, the Bible is such a spotlight. It doesn’t only tell us that religious people are often unloving, and it doesn’t only show us ways in which religious people are often unloving, it also reveals ways in which religious people often respond when confronted by the flat-out straight-commands of Scripture that they are disobeying. We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Soul Searching Questions...

It's helpful to stop on a regular basis and think about what God is doing in your life. I'd encourage you to ask yourself the following questions, then get together with your husband, wife or friend and talk about your answers.

1.) What Scripture has God been using to teach you lately? What spiritual truth is He teaching you?

2.) What are some of the ways God has answered prayers in your life lately? What specific things are you thankful to God about?

3.) What has caused you to shout out, "God you are great" recently?

4.) Is there something new or perhaps old that you have learned about who Jesus is recently that has refreshed your heart and caused you to think more about how great He is?

5.) What comfort has the gospel given you in recent days?

6.) What are some of the specific areas in your walk with God that you have been challenged about lately? What are you repenting of and by God's grace trying to change?

(I'll get back to the "where's the love" discussion later today)

Where's the Love?

The Bible is filled with examples of people who were very "spiritual" and at the same time very mean.

You can start all the way back at the beginning.

Think about Adam’s boy, Cain.

It'd probably be too much to say Cain was a very religious person because we don’t know that. We can say though that the first time we meet him he is 'worshiping.' Genesis 4 tells us that Cain became very angry and that he became angry, this is what is so fascinating, after doing what? Presenting his offering to God.

Immediately after supposedly going to worship and honor God Cain becomes infuriated with his brother...so infuriated that he actually takes him out to a field and murders him.

Fast forward thousands of years to the reign of King Saul.

Now again, Saul is not someone we would normally consider very spiritual, but if you flip over to 1 Samuel 10:24, we do find Samuel saying that he was the man God had chosen to lead his people, and reading the rest of the story we discover throughout Saul’s life he received godly counsel from great men of God, in fact he heard the Word of the Lord on several occasions, and on some occasions it appears Saul did at least pretend to be about what God wanted.

Yet in spite of all those privileges by the end of his life he was a man literally consumed by rage, bitterness and hatred.

Perhaps a better example would be the Israelites themselves.

If we just keep moving on in our Bibles to Isaiah 1, we find the Israelites are very spiritual. They, verse 11, are multiplying sacrifices, verse 13 are observing all sorts of solemn assemblies, going through the motions of presenting their offerings before God, verse 14, celebrating the festivals God had commanded, and even verse 15, spreading out their hands in prayer; yet at the same time, verse 21 God says many of them are murderers, and verse 23 they don’t defend the orphan and they don’t look out for the helpless widow.

Jesus tells a story about people like that in Luke 10.

He talks about a priest and a Levite who just walked by a man who had been beaten and left by the side of the road. The terms priest and Levite don’t mean much to us, but Jesus is talking about very religious people. He’s talking about people who knew their Scriptures, knew what it said about loving their neighbor, men who were respected and admired by others for their spirituality, and yet at the same time, men who when someone in desperate need was staring them right in the face, completely failed to show him love.

In Luke 18 Jesus tells another story about a religious man.

The scene for this story is actually the temple. We come upon a religious man in the temple supposedly worshiping God. He’s actually praying. And what's he doing as he prays? Lambasting and despising someone else who came to worship. Coming before God, pretending like he’s praying, hating his neighbor.

Amazing.

How about Matthew 25?

I’m bombarding you with these Scriptures for a reason. I want you to be overwhelmed with what a problem this is. Jesus, beginning in verse 31 is talking about judgment day. He’s describing how he’s going to separate and distinguish between people on that day, the picture being like a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats. Now the thing about this passage, and I just want to focus on the goats for a minute, look down at 44, they are surprised. Jesus condemns them and they say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you…” Here they are calling Jesus Lord so they are religious people who are surprised that they are being condemned and yet Jesus still condemns them why? Ultimately here it is their failure to truly obey his command to love.

If you are still tracking with me, think about Romans 14.

Paul’s talking in this chapter to Christians who are concerned about doing what is right. In fact, they have developed deep heartfelt convictions about right and wrong. They just disagree. And what’s happening here is that their convictions about right and wrong are turning into something ugly, because if you look at verse 10, we find that they are judging their brother and they are going so far as to regard their brother with contempt.

James, James 2.

James is talking about a group of believers gathering together to worship God. In verse 2 he says, “For if a man comes into your assembly…” Assembly indicating that here a group of professing Christians had gathered together most likely for a worship service. And yet even though they came together to worship God like this, look what they were doing, they were showing favoritism, verse 4, they “made distinctions among themselves, and became judges with evil motives.” Specifically verse 9, they were showing partiality and as a result were convicted by the law as transgressors. They were verse 8, failing to love their neighbor as themselves.

Two more.

1 John 3:17. John is writing to professing Christians and says “whoever has the world’s good and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?”

And then I think John clinches the case I’m trying to make here, in 1 John 5:20 where says “If someone says ‘I love God’ and hates his brother he is a liar…” As far as I can tell John is describing something he expects will actually happen. This is not something far removed from reality. There are going to be people who stand up and say that they love God and yet who at the same time hate their brother.

We all know it's important to be a loving person.

But are we?

That's the question.

We aren't loving simply because we know what the Bible says about love.

We have to be careful we don't fool ourselves into thinking that we are loving just because we can quote 1 Corinthians 13 or because we know the meaning of the word agape. It's good to know what the Bible says about love - how we can be loving if we don't? We just have to realize that if we're not acting on what we know, we're completely missing the point. We just have to realize that sometimes people use what they know about love as a mask to disguise the fact that in actuality they are not.

I think this is a big problem, and because of that I want us to look a little more closely at it together tomorrow...what are some of the ways spiritual people typically fail to show love?

Never give up!

One of the most important lessons to be learned from George Mueller's prayer life is how to respond when prayer requests are not quickly answered. For the thousands of Mueller's prayer requests God answered quickly, there were thousands which He delayed in answering. As one reads through Mueller's narratives it is striking how often God made George wait for an answer. How did Mueller respond when God delayed? Through prayer. If God is slow in answering prayer, do not give up. Rather, pray more often.

Mueller writes, "One or the other might suppose that all my prayers have been thus promptly answered. No, not all of them. Sometimes I have had to wait weeks, months or years, sometimes many years . . . During the first six weeks of the year 1866 I heard of the conversion of six person for whom I had been praying a long time. For one I had been praying between two and three years. For another between three and four years; for another above seven years, for the fourth above ten years, for the fifth above fifteen years, and for the sixth above twenty years. In one instance my faith has been tried even more than this. In November 1844,I began to pray for the conversion of five individuals. I prayed every day without one single intermission, whether in sick or in health, on the land or on the sea, and whatever the pressure of my engagements may be... two remain unconverted . . . But I hope in God, I pray on, and I look yet for the answer." (Steer, p.266,267)

On one of Muellers many missionary tours, a man who was greatly discouraged came up to him for counsel. This man had six sons for whom he had been praying many years. His sons, in spite of all his prayers showed no interest in God or their souls. He wanted George to tell him what to do. Mueller simply replied, "Continue to pray for your sons, and expect and answer to your prayers, and you will have to praise God." (Brooks, p.73)

When Mueller desired to increase the number of orphans from three hundred to one thousand, he began to pray for God's help in the matter. He kept on praying day after day for eleven years until God answered his prayer.

When Mueller was opening a new home and needed more helpers for the orphan homes he sought the Lord in prayer. Yet when the home was about to open, he did not have enough applicants to fill the position. How did Mueller respond? By thanking God for previous answered prayers, and deciding not to pray just once a day for this
matter, but to pray three times a day for helpers. He did this daily for four months, and was pleased to see God answer his prayers in an incredible way.” (Brooks,p.50)

Mueller sums up his attitude by simply saying, "When once I am persuaded that a thing is right and for the glory of God, I go on praying until the answer comes. George Mueller never gives up." (Steer, p.310)

Mueller was persistent in prayer for several reasons.

First, he truly believed that God did answer prayer. God's slowness did not shake Mueller's faith. Before Mueller opened his first orphan house he prayed daily for fourteen months and three weeks. "Never during all that time had I the least doubt that I should have all that is needed." (Brooks, p.46)

Many of us have a difficult time continuing in prayer because in our heart of hearts we aren't sure whether God is really listening to our prayers. We must feed our faith with the promises of God. When we become discouraged we must remind ourselves that Jesus himself tells us, "What man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone. Or if he shall ask for a fish, he will not give him a snake will he. If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him." (Mat.7:9-11)

Mueller was confident in this promise and because of that he did not doubt the Father's goodness. "For through grace my mind is so fully assured of the faithfulness of the Lord, that in the midst of the greatest need, I am able to go about my other work. Indeed, if God did not give me this [this confidence in the faithfulness of God] . . . I should scarcely be able to work at all." (Miller, p.57)

Second, he believed that God had good reasons for being slow to answer certain
prayers. Mueller could actually rejoice when prayers were not immediately answered because of his complete trust in the wise purposes of God. When God did not immediately answer his prayers, George took it as a sign of His love, because by doing so, God was strengthening Mueller's faith. "Truly it is worth being poor and
greatly tried in faith for the sake of having day by day such precious proofs of the loving interest which our kind Father takes in everything that concerns us. And how should our Father do otherwise. He that has given us the greatest possible proof of His love which He could have done, in giving His own Son, surely will He with Him freely give us all things." (Brooks, 25,26)

Mueller taught that God would often wait to answer prayer in order to strengthen the believer's faith. When a believer's prayer are not answered quickly, rather than trying to take the matter into one's own hands, they should continually look to God for help and wait upon Him for His deliverance. This does not mean that the Christian should do nothing. Mueller believed that a do-nothing attitude was a "counterfeit of faith." (Steer, p.331) Instead the believer should persistently cry out to God and act in obedience to the Scriptures.

Third, Mueller kept praying even when he wasn't seeing 'results' because he believed that God delighted in His people's earnest prayers. The parable of the widow and the unjust judge gave Mueller great encouragement to continually bring His concerns before His gracious God. God wants His people to pray persistently.

Fourthly, Mueller was persistent in prayer because he longed for the glory of God above all else. "His glory was my chief aim . . . i.e that it might be seen that it is not a vain thing to trust in the living God." (Brooks, p.15) He puts it simply, "The glory of God should always be before the children of God, in what they desire at His hands . . ." (Pierson, p.456) The Christian's patience under trial can bring glory and honor to God. Mueller wasn't primarily concerned about Mueller, therefore he was content in all circumstances.

He had the attitude of the apostle Paul who said, "Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in all circumstances." Why could Paul say this? Because Paul was not living for Paul - Paul's life was hidden with Christ, and therefore it did not matter what his life circumstances were like so long as God was glorified. One of the primary reasons many of us have difficulties being persistent in prayer is that we pray with selfish motives, "You ask and you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures." (James
4:3)

A person who is primarily motivated by the glory of God will not become overly discouraged when his prayer requests are not immediately answered, instead he will rest in the promise of Romans 8:28, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

We must follow Mueller's example and continue in prayer even when it is most difficult. "Therefore beloved brethren and sisters, go on waiting upon God, go on praying, only be sure you ask for things which are according to the mind of God . . ." (Steer, p.257)Never give up!

Till I Don't Like You Anymore?

Marriage vows...ain't what they used to be.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163251,00.html

Prayer...story by an unknown author

“Once upon a time, the king of Jerusalem left his city in the custody of an eminent Captain, whose name was Zeal. He gave to Zeal many choice warriors, to assist him in the protection of the city. Zeal was a right hearted man, one who never wearied in the day of battle, but would fight all day, and all night, even though his sword did cleave to his hand as the blood ran down his arm. But it happened upon this time, that the king of Arabia, getting unto himself exceeding great hosts and armies, surrounded the city, and prevented any introduction of food for the soldiers, or of ammunition to support the war. Driven to the last extremity, Captain Zeal called a council of war, and asked them what course they should take. Many things were proposed, but they all failed to effect the purpose, and they came to the sad conclusion that nothing was before them but the surrender of the city, although upon the hardest terms. Zeal took the resolution of the council of war, but when he read it, he could not bear it. His soul abhorred it. “Better” he said “to be cut in pieces than to surrender. Better for us to be destroyed while we are faithful than to give up the keys of this royal city.” In his great distress, he met a friend of his, called Prayer, and Prayer said to him, “Oh! Captain I can deliver this city.” Now, Prayer was not a soldier, at least he did not look as if he were a warrior, for he wore the garments of a priest. In fact he was the king’s chaplain, and was a priest of the holy city of Jerusalem. But nevertheless Prayer was a valiant man and wore armor beneath his robes. “Oh! Captain,” said he, “give me three companions and I will deliver this city – their names must be Sincerity, Importunity, and Faith.” Now these four brave men went out of the city at the dead of night when the prospects of Jerusalem were the very blackest, they cut their way right through the hosts that surrounded the city. With many wounds and much smuggling they made their escape, and traveled all night long as quickly as they could across the plain, to reach the camp of the king of Jerusalem. When they flagged a little, Importunity would hasten them on; and when at any time they grew faint, Faith would give them a drink from his bottle, and they would recover. They came at last to the palace of the great king, the door was shut, but Importunity knocked long, and at last it was opened. Sincerity threw himself on his face before the throne of the great king and Prayer began to speak. He told the king of the great straits in which the beloved city was now placed, the dangers surrounding it, and the almost certainty that all the brave warriors would be cut in pieces by the morrow. Importunity repeated again and again the wants of the city, Faith pleaded hard the royal promise and the covenant. At last the king said to Captain Prayer, “Take with thee soldiers and go back, lo I am with Thee to deliver this city.” At morning light, just when the day broke for they had returned more swiftly than could have been expected, for though the journey seemed long in going there it was short in coming back, in fact they seemed to have gained time on the road, they arrived early in the morning, fell upon the hosts of the king of Arabia, took him prisoner, defeated his army, divided the spoil, and entered the gates of Jerusalem in triumph. Zeal put a crown of gold upon the head of Prayer, and decreed henceforth that whenever zeal went forth to battle, prayer should be the standard bearer, and should lead the army into the fray.”

Top priority...

It is absolutely impossible to read the life of George Mueller and miss this simple point: He made prayer a top priority.
He prayed privately. He prayed publicly. He began his days with prayer, sometimes he'd pray for hours. He lived his days in prayer. He would often go for long walks with his New Testament spending the entire time reading his Bible and crying out to God. He led his family with prayer. He had a daily time of prayer with his wife. He led his ministry in prayer. He had a regularly scheduled prayer time with his staff. He devoted himself to prayer. When asked if he spent much time on his knees in prayer, Mueller replied, "More or less every day. But I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down, when I rise up." (Steer, p.130)
Some may object and say that they are too busy to pray. Mueller, "used to say to brethren who had 'too much to do' to spend proper time with God that four hours of work for which one hour of prayer prepares is better than five hours of work with the praying left out." (Mudge, p.112)Mueller did not just teach this principle, he lived it. In spite of his preaching schedule, providing care for thousands of orphans, managing a large staff, and taking care of countless details, He always made time for prayer. He explains, "Here is the great secret of success. Work with all your might, but trust not the least in your work . . . pray and then work." (Pierson, p.458)
Still others might complain that prayer and study of the Scripture are not enjoyable. Mueller warned against giving in to feelings when it comes to prayer and urged believers to continue to pray and study even when they don't feel like it. We will never feel like praying and studying the Scripture unless there are times when we refuse to give into our feelings and instead work hard at praying and studying the Scripture.
If we are going to grow to become more like Christ we must recognize that there is hardly anything if anything that is more important for us to do today than to pray. We must make prayer a top priority. Mueller would tolerate no excuses for a lack of prayer, and neither should we!

Freebie Friday...J.C. Ryle on Prayer

“I ask whether you pray, because prayer is an act in religion to which there is great encouragement. There is everything on God’s part to make prayer easy, if men will only attempt it. All things are ready on his side. Every objection is anticipated. Every difficulty is provided for. The crooked places are made straight and the rough places are made smooth. There is no excuse left for the prayerless man. There is a way by which any man however sinful and unworthy may draw near to God the Father. Jesus Christ has opened that way by the sacrifice he made for us on the cross…There is an Advocate and Intercessor always waiting to present the prayers of those who come to God through him. That advocate is Jesus Christ. He mingles our prayers with the incense of His own almighty intercession. So mingled, they go up as a sweet savor before the throne of God…There is the Holy Spirit ever ready to help our infirmities in prayer. It is one of his special office to assist us in our endeavor to speak with God. We need not be cast down and distressed by the fear of not knowing what to say. The Spirit will give us words if we seek his aid…There are exceeding great and precious promises to those who pray…There are wonderful examples in Scripture of the power of prayer. Nothing seems to be too great, too hard, or too difficult for prayer to do. It has obtained things that seemed impossible and out of reach. It has won victories over fire, air, earth and water. Prayer opened the Red Sea. Prayer brought water from the rock and bread from heaven. Prayer made the Sun stand still…Well might Mary Queen of Scots say, ‘I fear John Knox’s prayers more than an army of ten thousand men…’ What more can a man want to lead him to take any step in religion, than the things I have just told him about prayer. What more could be done to make the path to the mercy seat easy, and to remove all occasions of stumbling from the sinner’s way?”

A Biblical Prayer Life

If we want to be people of prayer, we must be people of the Word. If we want to be people of the Word we must be people of prayer. We see this exemplified in the life of George Mueller. Mueller's prayer life helped him in his study the Word, and his study of the Word helped him in his prayer life.
He often emphasized the importance of reading the Scripture prayerfully. When he sat down to study the Bible, he refused to do so without seeking God's help. He continually came to God as he was studying, asking God to teach him what the passage meant. He was concerned that people often looked to other humans for help understanding the Scripture before they went to God for help. He often warned against becoming too devoted to Christian books and commentators instead of being devoted to the Scripture and crying out to the Holy Spirit for wisdom. (Brooks. p.117)
To Mueller prayerful reading of Scripture was essential for effective times of prayer. He believed that studying God's Word should result in praying to the God of the Word. During the last twenty years of his life, Mueller read the entire Bible approximately four to five times every year. By the end of his life, he had read the entire Bible almost two hundred times. Because he read the Scriptures prayerfully he could pray scripturally. He prayed Bible. James Mudge writes that, "No secret lies nearer to the root of Mueller's success than this devout meditation and continual refection upon Scripture." (Mudge, p119)
He began to practice this principle early in his Christian life. Before he prayed in the morning he would meditate upon a portion of Scripture. As he would meditate upon Scripture, his soul was drawn to prayer. He would then begin to pray Scripturally. He writes, "...after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned out almost immediately more or less into prayer." (Steer,p.109)
He emphasized the importance of the Word of God in prayer for several reasons.
First, praying Scripturally helps the believer develop a proper understanding of who God is and this will strengthen his faith. As the Christian reads of God's mercy and God's power and sees the wondrous workings of God in the past, he will grow in his faith and thus have greater confidence in the God to whom he prays. (Brooks, p33,34)
Second, praying Scripturally produces courage during difficult times. When trials come and our circumstances seem difficult we must rest in the promises of God. Mueller writes, "Further, when sometimes all has been dark, exceedingly dark, with reference to my service among the saints, judging from natural appearances; yea, when I should have been overwhelmed indeed in grief and despair, had I looked at these thingsafter outward appearance; at such times I have sought to encourage myself in God by laying hold in faith of His mighty power, His unchangeable love, and His infinite wisdom...for it is written 'He that spared His one son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?' Rom.8:32
Thirdly, praying Scripturally informs the believer's prayers. Mueller emphasized the importance of not praying according to our own will but according to God's will. He would often evaluate his prayer requests in light of Scripture in order to make sure that what he was asking was according to God's will. How can we know God's will so we can pray it? We learn God's will through the study of God's Word.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Getting Specific...

We often pray in generalities.

Sometimes we pray like that because we don't want to expect "too much" from God. Other times it is because we don't want to do the hard work of getting specific.

George Mueller prayed specifically.

He prayed to God about financial matters.

One time, George wanted to buy a certain piece of land to build an orphan house on. Unfortunately, the owner wanted to sell it at a much greater cost than he could afford, so he went to prayer. He prayed several times a day about this specific matter. After several weeks of prayer, the owner consented to sell the land at the cost George had been praying for. (Steer, p.183)

He cried out to God for physical needs. When he lost a key, he would pray to God to help him find it. When someone did not show up for an appointment, he prayed that the person would come quickly. (Answers to Prayer, p.32)

He did not view anything as too small to pray for. One of his favorite young friends once came to him and told him that she wished God would answer her prayers like He did his. He repeated to her God's promise to listen to His children. So she sat on his knee and he asked her what she wanted to pray for. He prayed with her that God would send her some wool. She ran outside to play, but then realized that she hadn't asked God what kind of wool she wanted. She ran back inside to Mueller. 'I want to pray again.' 'Not now, dear, I am busy.' 'But I forgot to tell God what color I wanted.' Taking her up on his knee again, Mueller said, 'That's right, be definite, my child, now tell God what you want." That was Mueller's practice in prayer: He was definite and he told God what he wanted.

We have every reason to do the same.

We can and should pray about specific issues, even about small issues because we serve a God who tells us He is concerned about the small specific issues of life. To prove that, Jesus tells us to think about birds. What could be more inconsequential than a sparrow? Who has ever woken up in the middle of the night crying out, "Oh no, there is one less sparrow in the world today?" Sparrows seem much too small and unimportant for us to be concerned about. Yet, Jesus tells, God is intimately involved in the life and death of the everyday sparrow. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."

We can and should pray about specific issues, even about small issues because by doing so we demonstrate our trust in God for all things. We claim to have trusted God with our eternal salvation, yet we often don't trust God with the minor issues of life. If we believe God is able to take care of something as big a problem as our eternal salvation, we should demonstrate that faith by trusting him to take care of the smaller problems throughout our life in this world. One way we prove that we believe He is able to do so is by taking all of our concerns to Him in prayer.

We can and should pray about specific issues, even about small issues because in doing so we are following in the footsteps of great men of the faith. Jesus taught his disciples to pray about things as practical as their daily bread. The apostle Paul asked people to pray for him about things as specific as being able to speak clearly or to be released from prison or having confidence.

We can and should pray about specific issues, even about small issues because doing so will creat opportunities to give thanks to God for the ways He has answered prayers. When we pray in vague generalities we often don't "see" answers to our prayers. "God help me to be more loving..." Well, yes I can kind of see how I am becoming more loving. But it is a whole lot easier to see an answer to a prayer like, "God help me to be speak compassionately to...today as I talk with her on the phone..."

It certainly is not wrong to pray in generalities, but we shouldn't only pray in generalities. Let's follow Mueller's example today as we pray, and get specific!

Relying on God Alone

One of the distinguishing marks of George's Mueller's life was his absolute dependence upon God for all things.

"By the grace of God, I desire that my faith in God should extend towards everything, the smallest of my own temporal and spiritual concerns, and the smallest of the temporal and spiritual concerns of my family, towards the saints among whom I labor, the church at large, etc." (Mueller, p.31)

He demonstrated this dependence by taking all his concerns to God in prayer. Mueller sought never to resolve a problem by leaning upon man or upon human methods, but instead by leaning wholly upon God. Thus, he made it a rule never to reveal the financial state of the orphanage to anyone or to ask for funds.

(Though we don't have to imitate Mueller in all the specifics of the way he did things - we certainly should be challenged by his willingness to depend upon God alone in all things.)

He began his work with the orphans by depending upon God for guidance and strength. His journals make it clear that he continually cried out to God to provide the means to open the orphanage, the staff to run it, and the money to support it. He writes, "So far as I remember, I brought even the most minute circumstances concerning the Orphanage House before the Lord in my petitions, being conscious of my own weakness and ignorance." (Mueller, 14,15) He ran the orphanages with an attitude of absolute dependence upon God. Story after story illustrates his humble attitude. For example, in November of 1838, he did not even have a single half-penny to pay for food for any one of the three orphan houses. What did George do? He did not get anxious, rather he took the matter to His father in prayer. He was confident that God would provide, even though he didn't know how. He began to walk home after praying with his staff, but since he felt he needed exercise, he walked the long way home. Only twenty yards from his home he met a friend who gave him twenty pounds to meet his needs. Had George been one half minute late, he would have missed him. George always depended upon God, and God always provided. This attitude gave George great hope and confidence. He writes, "They that trust in the Lord shall never be confounded! Some who helped for a while may fall asleep in Jesus; others may grow cold in the service of the Lord; others may be as desirous as ever to help, but have no longer the means . . . were we to lean upon man, we should surely be confounded; but, in the leaning upon the living God alone, we are beyond disappointment, and beyond being forsaken because of death, or want of means, or want of love, or because of the claims of other work. How precious to have learned in any measure to stand with God alone in the world, and yet to be happy, and to know that surely no good thing shall be withheld from us whilst we walk uprightly." (Mueller, p.19)

George often demonstrated his absolute trust in God. One of his biographers tells of an occasion when a rich man and some of his lady friends were visiting the orphanages. Amazed at the care the orphans were receiving, they looked at George and asked him if he had a large bank account so that he could provide for all these children. George simply answered, "Our funds are deposited in a bank which cannot break." This was quite a statement, as George did not have a penny at the time to provide for the children. (George Mueller of Bristol, Pierson, p.158)

George longed for all believers to depend upon God entirely. He did not want anyone to think that his situation was unique, but instead constantly exhorted Christians to take all their concerns to God in prayer. He often told Christians to make everything a subject of prayer, and to expect answers to requests they have made according to God's will, and in the name of Jesus. We live in a day and age - where it is easy to forget our dependence upon God - after all, we have credit cards, money in the bank account, etc. We must be very careful never to substitute dependence upon human things for dependence upon God. We need to folow in Mueller's footsteps and rely on God for everything, demonstrating our attitude of complete dependence by making a habit of constant prayer.

A Life of Trust

It is good to have heros.

One of mine is George Mueller.

George Mueller's life stands as a testimony to the power and faithfulness of our Almighty God. Is there someone who doubts whether God still answers prayer? Let them learn from George Mueller. Does anyone doubt whether God is able to accomplish beyond what they could ask or think? Introduce them to George Mueller.Here is a man who desired to live his life so that "men and women might see that God is faithful still and hears prayer still." (Pierson, 10) By God's grace, that is exactly the kind of life George Mueller lived.He was born in Prussia in September of 1805. There certainly wasn't anything special about his youth which would make one think that he was going to grow up to be a great man of God. In fact, by looking at his childhood, one would think just the opposite. He wasn't born into a godly home. His father "educated his children on worldly principles."(Mueller, p.47)For the first twenty years of his life, George lived an extremely sinful lifestyle. He was a thief. By the age of ten, he was consistently stealing money from his father. He was sent to prison at just sixteen for deception and theft. He stole from his friends, and even took money from his pastor. George wasn't only a thief, he was alsoa hypocrite. His father sent him to school to train to be a pastor because he knew pastors were paid well. While at school, George studied hard, but continued in his sin. He participated in the form of religion, but he had no heart for Christ. "Three or four days before I was confirmed, and thus admitted to partake of the Lord's Supper, I was guilty of gross immorality; and the very day before my confirmation, when I was in the vestry with the clergyman to confess my sins, after a formal manner, I defrauded him . . ." (Mueller, p.48) He would often resolve to live a better life, but to no avail. He didn't care about the Word of God. He writes, "I had no Bible, and had not read it for years. I wentto church but seldom; but from custom, I took the Lord's Supper twice a year. I had never heard the gospel preached. I had never met with a person who told me that he meant by the help of God, to live according to the Holy Scriptures. In short, I had not the least idea that there were any persons really different from me." (Mueller, p.54)

Many would have assumed George a hopeless case. Not for God. Around the age of twenty one, George's life was radically changed. One of his friends took him to a small Bible Study held in the home of a true Christian. There he heard the Word preached for the first time, and was never the same again. As he walked home after the Bible study had concluded, he remarked to his friend, "All we have seen on our journey to Switzerland, and all our former pleasures, are as nothing in comparison with this evening." (Mueller, p.55) He began to love studying the Scriptures and praying. Slowly but surely, he worked at putting off his old sinful practices, and putting on righteousness. He developed a greatpassion for witnessing and had a craving for fellowship with believers.During this time, God gave George a great desire to be a missionary. Eventually he was sent to London as a missionary to the Jews. Over the course of a few years, George became the pastor of a small church. He was wholeheartedly devoted to the authority of Scriptures, and his preaching and life was a testimony to that. He lived in complete obedience to the Bible and trusted God for his daily needs.Not too long after his move to England, God led George to establish a Scripture Knowledge Society for the purpose of teaching the lost about God. God used the Society to pass out two million Bibles and one hundred and eleven million tracts, to instruct one hundred twenty one thousand six hundred and eighty three students, and to aid one hundred and fifteen missionaries at a total of cost of over one million dollars.

George is most remembered, though, for the orphanages he established. He founded these orphanages for the express purpose of encouraging believers to trust and obey God no matter what the cost. He wrote, " My spirit longed to be instrumental in strengthening their faith, by giving them not only instances from the Word of God, of His willingness and ability to help all those who rely on Him, but to show them by proofs, that He is the same in our day. " (Brooks, p.9) Therefore, he refused to ever ask for money or to let anyone besides God know of his financial needs. Over the course of his life, God provided almost five million dollars for these orphanages which housed over ten thousand orphans. We can learn a great deal from George Mueller. He was a man of the Word. He dared to be obedient in all that he did. But perhaps we can learn the most from Mueller in the area of prayer.

He was a man whose life was saturated with prayer. Over the next several days I want to draw 7 principles that we can learn from Mueller's example of prayer.