Is God Ever UNfair?

Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. (Acts 12:18–19)

This story, so familiar to many Christians tells of Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison by an angel of the Lord. He is brought out of his cell without disturbing anything or anyone, doors or guards! He can't even believe it. Only after exiting the city via huge gates that opened of their own accord does he "come to himself." He then goes to John Mark's house where they won't let him in figuring the servant girl, Rhoda was merely seeing things. It's all stuff that makes Hollywood stories seem simplistic! Still, the above two verses are what is of interest here. Immediately following Peter's great escape, we read these seemingly forgettable details.

The Obvious & Not So Obvious

It's understandable that the guards would be beside themselves, they knew the rule--if someone escapes on your guard, you die. Period! Herod then meets their expectations. He checks it out, sees what to all appearances seems to have been an escape, and then promptly has the guards executed. As terrible a thing as it is given the fact that they did nothing wrong, we still are taken a bit aback by the contrasts of this incident. God has done a marvelous work in bringing Peter out of prison in order to preach again. The executed guards are collateral damage. But it seems so unnecessary, right? Still, the gospel moves onward, while some die (even James in verse one).

Herod would go down to Caesarea and "spend some time there," and eventually gives a speech that puffs him up and God takes him down. Now, Herod is dead along with the "innocent" guards! The close of the story is a typical Lukan transition, "But the Word of God increased and multiplied" (v. 24). No attempt is made here to justify the useless killing of the guards. But we do read why God took Herod. His pervasive hubris. Pride. Much in the Bible is not explained. What does that make us think of God? Shall we ever brashly blame HIM? Shall we call HIM into question? More importantly, CAN God ever do anything amiss, or, shall we just say it, "evil?" Of course, the answer is No, He cannot. 
  
God Is In Control
Mankind better get this right. Another king hundreds of years before this did get it right (after he was humbled for a season). “At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” ” (Daniel 4:34–35).

Not only is God NOT unfair, no one has the right to ask him, "What have you done?" The Word of God WILL makes progress with or without us. Where will we find ourselves?

The Danger of Christian Complacency - J. C. Ryle

J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

For those who may not be familiar with Ryle or have yet to find him online, I submit this for your perusal. Though a 19th Century minister, his insights have a strange contemporary value. Perhaps the real issue is that neither truth or error ever changes? He writes: 

The times require distinct and decided views of Christian doctrine. I cannot withhold my conviction that the professing Church is as much damaged by laxity and indistinctness about matters of doctrine within, as it is by skeptics and unbelievers without. Myriads of professing Christians nowadays seem utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with color–blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. If a preacher of religion is only clever and eloquent and earnest, they appear to think he is all right, however strange and heterogeneous his sermons may be. They are destitute of spiritual sense, apparently, and cannot detect error. The only positive thing about them is that they dislike distinctiveness and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong!

These people live in a kind of mist or fog. They see things unclearly, and do not know what they believe. They have not made up their minds about any great point in the Gospel, and seem content to be honorary members of all schools of thought. For their lives they could not tell you what they think is truth about justification, or regeneration, or sanctification, or the Lord's Supper, or baptism, or faith or conversion, or inspiration, or the future state. They are eaten up with a morbid dread of controversy and an ignorant dislike of party spirit; and yet they really cannot define what they mean by these phrases. And so they live on undecided; and too often undecided; they drift down to the grave, without comfort in their religion, and, I am afraid, often without hope.

The explanation of this boneless, nerveless, jelly–fish condition of soul is not difficult to find. To begin with, the heart of man is naturally in the dark about religion—has no intuitive sense of truth—and really needs instruction and illumination. Besides this, the natural heart in most men hates exertion in religion, and cordially dislikes patient, painstaking inquiry. Above all, the natural heart generally likes the praise of others, shrinks from collision, and loves to be thought charitable and liberal. The whole result is that a kind of broad religious "agnosticism" just suits an immense number of people, and specially suits young persons. They are content to shovel aside all disputed points as rubbish, and if you charge them with indecision, they will tell you: "I do not pretend to understand controversy; I decline to examine controverted points. I dare say it is all the same in the long run"—Who does not know that such people swarm and abound everywhere?

Now I do beseech all to beware of this undecided state of mind in religion. It is a pestilence which walketh in darkness, and a destruction that wasteth at noonday. It is a lazy, idle frame of soul which, doubtless, saves man the trouble of thought and investigation but it is a frame of soul for which there is no warrant in the Bible. For your own soul's sake, dare to make up your mind what you believe, and dare to have positive, distinct views of truth and error. Never, never be afraid to hold decided doctrinal opinions; and let no fear of man and no morbid dread of being thought party–spirited, narrow, or controversial, make you rest contented with a bloodless, boneless, tasteless, colorless, lukewarm, undogmatic Christianity.

Mark what I say. If you want to do good in these times, you must throw aside indecision, and take up a distinct, sharply–cut, doctrinal religion. If you believe little, those to whom you try to do good will believe nothing. The victories of Christianity, wherever they have been won, have been won by distinct doctrinal theology; by telling men roundly of Christ's vicarious death and sacrifice; by showing them Christ's substitution on the cross, and His precious blood; by teaching them justification by faith, and bidding them believe on a crucified Savior; by preaching ruin by sin, redemption by Christ, regeneration by the Spirit; by lifting up the brazen serpent; by telling them to look and live—to believe, repent, and be converted. This—this is the only teaching which for centuries God had honored with success, and is honoring at the present day both at home and abroad.

It is doctrine—doctrine, clear, ringing doctrine which, like the ram's horn at Jericho casts down the opposition of the devil and sin. Let us cling to decided doctrinal views, whatever some may please to say in these times, and we shall do well for ourselves, well for others, and well for Christ's cause in the world.

J. C. Ryle on Religious Toleration

Once for all, I must protest against the modern notion that it does not matter the least what religious opinions a man holds, so long as he is in earnest about them--that one creed is just as good as another, and that all earnest men will somehow or other at last find themselves in heaven. I cannot hold such an opinion, so long as I believe that the Bible is a revelation from God. I would extend to everyone the widest liberty and toleration. I abhor the idea of persecuting anyone for his opinions. I would "think and let think." But so long as I have breath in my body, I shall always contend that there is such a thing as revealed truth; that men may find out what truth is if they will honestly seek for it; and that mere earnestness and zeal, without scriptural knowledge, will never give anyone comfort in life, peace in death, or boldness in the day of judgment. (Knots Untied, "The Thirty-Nine Articles"), p. 65.

The Discipline of Disappointments

I must confess that while I receive daily devotional thoughts from the Octavius Winslow site, I do not always read them through. So, why not just un-subscribe and not encumber my email further? The following reading is why. PLEASE read through this. He brings us home to a very important aspect of love to Christ which no believer would want to miss. 

“Without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5.

Oh, that the Church of Christ, and each individual member, would but realize this truth; that simpler, closer, more experimental views of Jesus would essentially strengthen the tone of inward spirituality and comfort! The great secret of all comfort in seasons of affliction is to take the affliction, as it comes, simply to Christ; and the great secret of all holiness is to take the corruption, as it rises, simply to Christ. It is this living upon Christ for all he needs, this going to Christ under all circumstances, and at all seasons, which forms the happy and holy life of a child of God. There is no other path for him to walk in.

The moment he turns from Christ he becomes like a vessel loosed from its moorings, and driven at the mercy of the winds from billow to billow. Christ must be all in all to him; friends, domestic comforts, Church privileges, ordinances, means of grace, nothing must suffice for Jesus. And why does the Lord so frequently discipline the soul? Why remove friends, why blight domestic comforts, why rob us of Church privileges, why close up the ordinances, and write death upon the means of grace? Oh, why? but to open a way through which He Himself might enter the believer, and convince that lonely, bereaved, and desolate heart that He is a substitute for everything, while nothing shall ever be a substitute for Him.

He will have the supreme affection of His saints; they shall find their all in Him; and to this end He sends afflictions, crosses, and disappointments, but to wean them from their idols and draw them to Himself.

JESUS CHRIST: The Watershed Doctrine

There are, no doubt, many important doctrines (teachings) in the Word of God. And we must not keep too loose a grip on any one of them. But above all the others, under-girding all others, and bringing all other doctrines into a perfect unity is the doctrine of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. On this point all other "religions" and cults fall down. Only one brings the true focus on Jesus Christ where the Bible puts it. We have to be very careful how we define any doctrine. J. C. Ryle writes:

It may be laid down as a rule, with tolerable confidence, that the absence of accurate definitions is the very life of religious controversy. If men would only define with precision the theological terms which they use, many disputes would die.

And one of the most important factors necessary to defining our terms is that we get our beliefs from a source outside of our own imaginations, namely the supreme authority in matters of life and faith, the Bible. I will not go into any detail on this point, for it requires a post of its own. But let me state this and appeal to our reason, if nothing else. If we do not pin all our beliefs on the Scripture, then we are relegated to placing our hopes in a man or a group of men who are at best still sinners. We dare not pin our eternal aspirations to the opinions of any man or "church." We turn to Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the Scriptures. And while many willingly discuss God in general, they will hedge when confronted with the claims of Jesus Christ. And why is that? Listen again to J. C. Ryle from Knots Untied: 

We hold most firmly that the true doctrine about Christ is precisely that which the natural heart most dislikes. The religion which man craves after is one of sight and sense, and not of faith. An external religion, of which the essence is “doing something,”—and not an inward and spiritual one, of which the essence is “believing,” this is the religion that man naturally loves. Hence we maintain that people ought to be continually warned not to make a Christ of the Church, or of the ministry, or of the forms of worship, or of baptism, or of the Lord’s Supper. We say that life eternal is to know Christ, believe in Christ, abide in Christ, have daily heart communion with Christ, by simple personal faith,—and that everything in religion is useful so far as it helps forward that life of faith, but no further.

Precision here on this point, the Person of Jesus Christ is vital to gaining eternal life. Would to God more would see this. Lord, open the eyes of many, many people to the beauty of who you really are, to what you will do for all who turn to you in faith believing.
 

My Deceitfulness Drains Me!

It is one of the strongest inducements to man's deceitful nature that somehow he thinks to profit by it. But that is NOT the case. Listen closely to David's wording in Psalm 32,

“Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah ” (vv. 2–4) 

Do you see it there? Blessed (happy) is the man . . . in whose spirit there is no deceit. First, what is deceit? According to my desktop dictionary, deceit is "the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth." Now, whenever we lie to others or to ourselves, we do so with the understanding that we will be the better for it. This must be so, otherwise why would we do it? OK, the Psalmist is saying that that man is truly happy not just because he does not deceive, but because it is not in him to do so. That is what it means when he says, "in whose spirit there is no deceit." It's not in his nature to do so. This man (or woman) is as true as the day is long. What they are in public, they are as well at home in the confines of their house. Their integrity does not allow them to be one thing here and another thing there.

Deceit Drains Us

Read on . . . For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. "When I kept silent," presumably, when he refused to admit his deceitfulness. He doesn't "come clean," but keeps up the ruse, living in the deceit. This, he affirms is what causes him to "waste away" internally. It eats up the one doing the deceiving. God created us for our hearts and minds to work in sympathetic unity. When they go at odds with one another, doing in practice what our minds know to be wrong, we invite internal warfare, an offended conscience, and eventually even physical illness. Yet, for so many this is their life! It is a shame, for we were designed for so much better . . . consonance, a peaceful union . . . rest.

What To Do?

The Psalm tells us. Confess it calling it what it is. NOTE: The worse thing to do is to continue on in your deceitful ways so long that after a while you grow to accept them as the norm. Then anyone who tries to tell you otherwise will seem to you to be completely wrong! Then once confessed, God will forgive, deliver, hide and preserve us. All these words are used to describe victory over deceitfulness.

Gladness Replaces Deep Sorrow

God will instruct us and counsel us and cause his steadfast love to surround us. Then the last verse closes out with the happiest of victories! “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart! ” Now, who wouldn't want that kind of life as opposed to deceitfulness. Let us watch out that we do not subtly deceive ourselves. Pray that God would "lead in paths of righteousness for His name's sake." That's what it's really all about.

That's where I want to be!

Plan "NOBLE" Things. Live a Higher Life!

“But he who is noble plans noble things, and on noble things he stands. ” (Isaiah 32:8) 

This is one of the verses the Adult Sunday School class discussed this past Sunday. Since my wife, Phyllis and I have the privilege of teaching the H.S./Jr.High S/S class, we miss these lessons in one of the greatest of all the prophets, Isaiah. Thanks to my brothers, Gary & Dan who pray with me on Tuesday mornings (as well other days), I am kept somewhat "up" on what they're doing. The above verse is one of those that they mentioned this morning. I felt it good to write a little something on it because it has been a concern of mine over the years. 

What is it to be ENNOBLED?

There are many books, movies and events which after we have experienced them leave us feeling degraded, or dragged down, right? On the other hand, there is the occasional movie which after viewing, you come away feeling strengthened, encouraged to live honorably, to not allow anything to dissuade you from persevering through the hard times. Unfortunately, many movies today have the opposite effect, they tend to denigrate, plunging us into the mundane, the banal. Christians, of all people, should practice putting themselves before that which ennobles. 

NOBLE Defined.

Noble (besides when applied to royalty) refers to that which is "magnificent, relating to high moral principles, having excellent moral character." So, anything which promotes this we say is ennobling. QUESTION 1: How often are you placing yourself before ennobling things, discussing things of high moral principle, that which is calculated to build you up and not tear you down? QUESTION 2: How many are ennobled by being around you? Obviously, the former must be well in place before the later will have any effect.

Scripture Support

Let me give you at least two Scriptures besides Isaiah that reinforce this truth. First, King Lemuel's mother had wise words for her son in Proverbs 31:1-9. She warns him in essence, don't throw yourself away on loose women, or drink alcohol thus losing a grip on good judgment and opening yourself to unjust decisions. Don't lower yourself, in other words. Others may lower themselves. Don't YOU do it. Rather, do what is right. Defend the weak, speak up for those who are too poor to get a good lawyer. Second, Paul urges the Philippian Christians to rise above needless worry and fretting care by soaking in the assurance of God's loving guidance over them. Let this, he says, "guard your hearts and minds." But then he goes on to add to this foundation how they are to ponder ennobling thoughts. You know the verse most likely. But take time to read it slowly, pronouncing each word aloud to let it's fullness sink into your heart.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ” (Philippians 4:8)

There it is! Think on that which is "honorable, lovely, excellent," anything worthy of praise. We cannot help the sins which we encounter in others, but we can stop focusing our attention unduly upon them. Martin Luther rightly said, "We cannot keep the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from building a nest in our hair." 

Now, we might hear some skeptic say of us Christians, "Well, how can you live ennobling lives when from the very start you are telling people what sinners they are!" The answer is in the question. Knowing truly what we are paves the way for us to become what Christ died to secure for us, namely that we are "kings" unto God (1 Peter 2:9; Rev. 1:6). How much more ennobling can you get than that? Let us, dear fellow Christian, learn to live on the heights and not be dragged down by sin's degrading ways. Live above where Christ is (Col. 3). 

Amen.