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Romans 12:19, Various

Vengeance Is FINE

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 24, 2024

I’ve watched many revenge movies. They all draw the watchers into the depth of the pain of the innocent victim and bring some interesting satisfaction when the victim becomes the victor over those who have harmed him or his loved ones. I would argue that in today’s society and in the mass media (Movies & TV especially) that it believes the Bible says, “Vengeance is fine, sayeth the Lord.” But the truth is, the bible instructs us not to take matters into our own hands but to entrust vengeance to the authorities who are in the hands of the Lord Himself. God promises He’ll take care of it, either now or in the future.  The reminder that vengeance belongs to the Lord appears three times in the Bible, twice in the New Testament, and once in the Old Testament. Hebrews 10:30 reads, “For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” Romans 12:19 says, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” These are both references to Deuteronomy 32:35, where God first said, “Vengeance is mine.”

Vengeance becomes a prison cell with its own personal torture chamber for those who sentence themselves to such a fate. It might taste good for the moment, but, as C. S. Lewis said, at the feast of vengeance, the carcass we end up devouring “is ourselves.” It’s like the old Amos and Andy routine. Amos asks Andy what that little bottle is he’s wearing around his neck. “Nitroglycerine,” he answers. Amos is stunned that Andy would be wearing a necklace of nitro, so he asks for an explanation. Andy tells him about a fellow who has a bad habit of poking people in the chest while he’s speaking. “It drives me crazy,” Andy says. “I’m wearing this nitro, so the next time he pokes me, I’ll blow his finger off.” Job teaches us that “Anger (or resentment or revenge?) will kill the fool” (See Job 5:2).

In his usual creative wisdom, Max Lucado explains it this way: “Anger has a way of increasing in volume until it’s the only sound we hear. The louder it gets, the more desperate we become. When we are mistreated, our animalistic response is to go on the hunt. Instinctively, we double up our fists. Getting even is only natural. Which, incidentally, is precisely the problem. Revenge is natural, not spiritual. Getting even is the rule of the jungle. Giving grace is the rule of the kingdom? X-ray the soul of the vengeful and behold the tumor of bitterness: black, menacing, malignant. Carcinoma of the spirit. Its fatal fibers creep around the edge of the heart and ravage it. Yesterday, you can’t alter, but your reaction to yesterday you can. The past you cannot change, but your response to the past you can.”

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Ephesians 1:2

The Golden Age Of Harmony

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 23, 2024

In the book of Exodus, we read that God presented His Law to the children of Israel after delivering them from slavery in Egypt. Chapters 20 through 30 record the details of the covenant God was offering to the people of Israel. In Chapter 32, we read of Moses’ return from the Mountain, where God gave him the statutes of the covenant. Upon his return, He found the people violating the covenant in worshipping the golden calves. This story is not only recounts the sinfulness of Israel but of mankind as well. Coming right after the stipulations of the covenant gives this story a specific implication. In the story of Israel being God’s redeemed people, the golden calf story serves as the Genesis three story of the fall of all mankind. It is an act that defines Israel’s character, just as eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the act that defined all mankind’s character. It reinforces the truth that all people depend entirely on God’s forgiving grace. There never was a point in Israel’s history marked totally by faithful covenant-keeping. Even David, the man after God’s own heart, failed miserably. And there never has been a time in mankind’s history when God’s covenant was faithfully observed either. The golden age of man’s harmonious living with God in the garden of Eden before the fall has never returned.

The law, in its many forms, always accomplishes its purpose: To bring man to his knees before a perfect God in need of salvation based totally and completely on God’s marvelous grace. The New Testament takes the law, either in the instruction not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or not to worship idols, and tells us pointedly, “There is none righteous, no not one.” We have all sinned under the law and are totally dependent on God’s forgiving Grace.

A xenon lamp, called the “flashblaster,” is a highly focused laser beam. Since its discovery, many uses have been found, from delicate surgery to restoring ancient art pieces and buildings to their pristine state. It can peel away multiple layers of paint that have covered treasured murals where every other attempt has failed. It has been used to vaporize animal fat in the cracks of European statues. Radiation therapy, eye surgery, and many other applications have all proved its usefulness. God’s forgiving grace is like the “flashblaster.” It’s as sovereign over sin as the flasblaster is over numerous coats of paint. We try many things, but only God’s forgiving grace can do the job. What human efforts cannot accomplish, God’s forgiving grace can. Christ’s sacrifice obliterates sin’s power. In Christ, we find the golden age of harmony between God and man. The Amplified version of Ephesians 1:2 says, “May grace (God’s unmerited favor) and spiritual peace [which means peace with God and harmony, unity, and undisturbedness] be yours from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

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John 10:10, Colossians 2:13

The Post-Forgiven Life

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 22, 2024

Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, but being a Christian goes beyond that. Once you’re forgiven, there’s a life to be lived. Jesus also said that he came in order that we may have life, but not just life. We all have biological life (can you fog a mirror?), but Jesus said he came so that we might have “abundant life.” In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” This abundant life begins with our sins being forgiven. That happens at the cross of Calvary. However, the Gospel message must go beyond the cross to the resurrection. Just as He arose, we, too, arose to a new life as well. Paul tells us that we are “dead in our trespasses and sins” in Ephesians 2:1. We were not only sinners in need of forgiveness. We were corpses in need of life, His life, real life, abundant life.  In Romans 6:4, Paul explains, “We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Unlike the prosperity gospel being preached by many today, the abundant life that Jesus wants for us is one that transcends material prosperity. The most important things in life are NOT things at all. The most important things in life are relationships: our relationship with God and one another. It’s the healing of relationships through forgiveness that makes life “abundant.” Again, Paul tells us this in Colossians 2:13. He writes, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses…God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses…”

Even secular movies realize this truth. The movies like “Scrooge” (or Scrooged), “Pretty Woman,” “Wall Street” and many others teach us the futility of wealth in achieving an abundant life.  The common theme in these movies and others is the miserable man who tries to amass more and more wealth in order to amass even more wealth. But instead of providing “abundant life,” it actually destroys their lives instead. It takes away from them the very thing they are searching for. If the world recognizes this and writes stories about it, why do many Christians still subscribe to the “prosperity” gospel? Jesus put money and wealth in opposition to God when he talked about the impossibility of serving God and money. Wealth promises something that only Jesus can give us: a truly abundant life received by grace through faith. It’s the outcome of a “post-forgiven” life.

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Matthew 18:21-22

Forgiving Grace!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 21, 2024

When we discuss the Grace of God, we realize that it all begins with His saving grace. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It was an extreme act of undeserved Grace that God made the sacrifice through which we find forgiveness of sin. As Jesus was being sinned against in the most cruel manner imaginable, He said, “Father, forgive them.” Forgiveness is the key not only to a healthy relationship with God, our Father but also to any and every human relationship. Peter understood the focus on forgiveness in Christ’s ministry, but he didn’t understand the extent of it. That’s why he asked Jesus, “…how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” Then he added another question: “Should I forgive him as many as seven times?” Jesus’ answer was a bit surprising. He said, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven times” (See Matthew 18:21-22).

It’s the innocent one who suffered unbelievable abuse that teaches us about forgiveness. Many offenses and wrongs bring great pain, and forgiveness is the only way to stop the agony of an offense. The pain is taken away, and Christ, the pain bearer, bears the suffering for us. It goes to the one who understands perfectly the agony of betrayal and the anguish of rejection. As one whose sins lashed across the back of the Savior, drawing blood, I must always remember how much grace I have received in His forgiveness. It’s only when we appreciate the depth of our forgiveness we can truly forgive others.

In as much as God’s grace to us teaches us to forgive others, it should also teach us to forgive ourselves. I’ve counseled numerous times with people who have said, “I just can’t forgive myself.” Before I comment on that, I often live as if I cannot forgive myself also. The guilt that grabs us and won’t let go is like the cancer that metastasizes in one organ and then spreads its poison to the rest of the body. Its tentacles go deep and are extremely difficult to extricate. Only God’s grace can do it. Remembering that God has promised forgiveness of our sins, we must cling to God’s truth for healing. 1 John 1:9 not only promises forgiveness, it also promises cleansing. As the lepers in the gospels found forgiveness and cleansing, so too can we find forgiveness, healing, and cleansing in the amazing Grace of God’s forgiveness. God’s grace is the “balm of Gilead” that heals a sin-sick soul. If God can “cut away” the sins of our past, we must do likewise.

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Leviticus 19:18-19, Psalm 103

My Grudge Collection

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 20, 2024

God doesn’t hold grudges! Wow, that’s good to know because there are plenty of things in my life that offend God. But I’m pretty good at doing at holding grudges.  I know how to hold on to them and hold on to them and never let them go. When I was a child, my parents bought me a stamp book. Ever since then, I’ve been collecting stamps. I have albums full of stamps. They’re not worth a lot of money, but they are mine! I also have a coin collection. It’s not worth a lot of money, but it contains my father’s mercury dimes and flying eagle quarters, and I’ll never get rid of them. Unfortunately, I also collect grudges!  They are all mine also. They have sentimental value also because they are so personal. But they are the least valuable of my collections because they don’t add anything of value to my life at all; instead, they take value from my life.

God never collects wrongs or holds grudges. Psalm 103, verse 9 says, “God will not constantly accuse us…” The verb that the English Standard Version translates as “accuse,” as the United Bible Societies Handbook for Bible Translators says, “the verb, used only here in Psalms, means to hold a grudge against someone.” God never does that! We often forget that the greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is not a “new commandment” but rather is something that has its roots in the Old Testament. The command to love God is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6, and the command to love our neighbor is found in Leviticus 19.  In that chapter, verses 18 and 19 put together the idea of vengeance, grudge-holding, and love of neighbor. It says, “Never get revenge. Never hold a grudge… Instead, love your neighbor as you love yourself. I am the LORD.” Frequently, God ends exhortations with the phrase “I am the Lord.” I think it might mean something like “because that’s the way I am.” God never tells us to do something that He doesn’t do himself. Thus, Jesus lived his entire life without sin and without carrying a grudge, even against those who nailed him to the cross. He repeated, “Father, forgive them…” more than once from the cross.

A. W. Tozer puts it this way, “He forgives and forgets, burying your old load of guilt so that it no longer exists. God has promised, ‘I will not remember your guilt.’ Since God is able to remember everything, the only way to figure this out is that God beats that guilt and condemnation back out of being, so it does not even exist anymore! The sin that God pardons is no longer an entity—it is gone forever!” The same Psalm I quoted above (Psalm 103) goes on in verse 12 to say, “… as far as the east is from the west, so far does our Lord remove our sins from us.” Lord, help me become like you and throw out my grudge collections!

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Psalm 139:2-4, Hebrews 4:15-16

God’s Two Chairs

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 19, 2024

God is omniscient! That’s just a fancy way of saying that God knows everything. If God knows absolutely everything, then he knows absolutely everything about me. The Psalmist (139:2-4) wrote to God, “You know when I sit down and when I get up. You know what I’m thinking even though you are far away. You know when I go out to work and when I come back home. You know exactly how I live. LORD, even before I speak a word, you know all about it.” Yes, if the Psalmist is right, God knows everything about me. I’d argue that God knows me better than I know myself. He knows that my humility is just another form of pride. I’m glad that he does. We sometimes think that Satan is going to tell God something about us that He doesn’t know, and God is going to be disappointed in us when He learns the truth. But there’s nothing that Satan can say to condemn us regarding anything we’ve done, said, thought, or wished because God already knows about it. With God, we have no skeletons in our closets.

Hebrews 4:15 also makes it clear that God knows all “our weaknesses.” But His knowledge of us is not something foreign to him. He knows how we feel. It reads, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” He knows how we feel in the midst of suffering and temptation. God knows when I “sit down,” and I know where he sits down. He has two chairs. Hebrews 4:16 calls us to “draw near” with confidence to God’s seat. He calls it “the Throne of Grace.” It reads, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Although we often hate to admit it, we all need help! I can tell Him absolutely everything without fear of condemnation because He understands, and He is full of grace and mercy.

The other chair of God is referred to often in the Old Testament as the “Mercy seat.” It’s the place where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled and where the entire nation finds forgiveness and mercy instead of judgment and condemnation. We are often afraid of God because we know we’re sinners and we deserve His judgment. But when we confess our sins to God, we’re not telling Him anything He doesn’t already know. We don’t “confess” our sins to God for His benefit but for our own. When we open our hearts and lives to God and admit the things He already knows, we find mercy, not judgment. We find grace to help us through all our struggles in this life. We all need Grace and mercy. God sits on these two chairs: The throne of Grace and the seat of Mercy!

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1 John 2:2

Already Paid!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 18, 2024

We are saints who still sin! According to the Apostle John, anyone who says otherwise is simply lying. We all sin, but for the believer, we know that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (See Romans 8:1). We will not be judged for our sins! The great white throne judgment will be for those who have chosen to pay for their own sins. Believers get a hall pass on that day.  But all sin must be paid for. We either pay for it ourselves on that day, or Jesus pays for it for us on the day he was nailed to the cross. For those in Christ, Jesus has taken our punishment. John again writes in 1 John 2:2, “When Jesus served as a sacrifice for our sins, He solved the sin problem for God – not only our sin problem but the whole world’s.”

We often sing, “Jesus Paid it All.” He certainly did! If we but accept the payment that was made for us on the cross, we are completely debt-free in this life. I’ve always been a little disappointed at the second line of the old hymn, which says, “All to Him I owe.” I understand what it means, but sometimes we simply transfer our “indebtedness” from one credit card to another. I don’t think Jesus paid the penalty for our sins to make us “indebted” to him. As a matter of fact, he frequently said he came to “set us free.” If we were to try to repay the debt to God, it would be such an insult. I gave my wife a nice set of earrings and a necklace for Valentine’s Day. Imagine how I’d feel if she tried to pay for it! I’d be insulted, and mostly, I’d be hurt. If she felt she had to repay me, it would ruin my gift of love. The scriptures are clear that God’s greatest gift is a love gift. John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave us” his son. We cannot pay Him back for such a marvelous gift. We can but accept it and thank Him for it and celebrate the greatest present ever!

Pete Winn tells about the time he went to the Post Office after his Christmas vacation when he visited his parents out of state. It was one of his most expensive Christmases ever because of the travel and all the presents involved. He recalls, “After helping me, the pleasant postal clerk uttered what is surely her standard line: “Is there anything else I can do for you?” I quipped, “Can you help me pay for Christmas?” Without missing a beat, she replied, “He has already paid for it.” I was stunned. Pleased, surprised, a tad embarrassed, but most of all, stunned. I murmured something profound in response—like, “He certainly did”—and left. A simple phrase had put everything in perspective.

 

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Philippians 3:3

The Performance Trap

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 17, 2024

Living by the flesh is to put my trust and confidence in my own strength. Living by the Spirit is putting my trust and confidence in the Lord. There are many hypnotists in the world today who will put us in a trance and cause us to act in ways contrary to our true identity as saints, the children of a loving God. It’s interesting that the Jews often referred to gentiles as goyim or dogs. In Philippians 3:2, Paul tells the believers to “look out for the dogs…” But his use of the term refers to those who would put you under the slavery of religious rituals. Because circumcision was the rite that identified Jews as the children of God, some insisted that all converts to Christianity had to be circumcised to be acceptable in the family of God. It was the same focus on “doing deeds” to win acceptance. But Paul says, “No! Those who insist on such and such a ritual or such and such of performance in order to be acceptable are the dogs, not those who are living by grace through faith.” He says in verse 3, “For we are the true circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

 Max Landers, in his commentary on this passage in Philippians, tells a great story and makes a powerful application. He writes: “A number of years ago, I was in Mexico City, visiting the central square. This huge paved square is surrounded by grand buildings on three sides. On the fourth side is a great cathedral. I saw something on that visit which, I understand, is not all that unusual but which made a deep impression on me. A peasant woman was crawling across the great square, palms, and knees being gouged by the ancient stones which pave the square. After she had crawled a while, she would stop, rise to her knees, pray a while, and then begin crawling a little farther. The slow, painful crawl seemed to take forever as she tried to appease God through her self-inflicted suffering. I saw a similar sight in Guatemala. People brought gifts to the church and lay them on the altar. They knocked on the wood of the altar, trying to get God to notice them. They lit candles and poured wine as an offering, seeking to merit God’s favor.”

Max continues: “These incidents are sad examples of how far people will go to win God’s favor and earn his grace. Yet, we often fall into similar bondages as we try to please God. We fear that if we get irregular in our Bible reading and prayer, God will punish us. Or we feel that if we don’t give money to the church, God will not bless us. Or we get into the performance trap in our efforts to be accepted by God. We volunteer for everything and never say no because we fear that God will not fully love and approve of us. If you have trouble believing that God accepts you, if you have difficulty resting in the fact that God loves you, if you feel you have to do something to earn acceptance in God’s eyes, then you have something in common with the woman in Mexico. You are crawling across the painful, rocky pavement, trying to earn God’s favor. These performances are a terrible burden because you can never know if you have done enough to appease him.” Hebrews tells us that only “faith” will please God.

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