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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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Jeremiah 3:22

Who Would You Follow?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 16, 2024

It’s difficult for us to believe that God continues to love us while we are still sinners. Yet, that was the condition under which God demonstrated His love for us according to Romans 8:1, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” as a demonstration of God’s love for us. Isn’t God’s love like our own love for each other, conditioned by the way we give and take? No, it’s not. God’s love is totally unconditional. We treat Him poorly, but he never stops loving us. In the book of Lamentations, Israel was experiencing the consequences of turning their backs on God, but even then, God was preserving His people because of His love. Jeremiah writes in chapter 3, verse 22, “God’s compassion never ends.” It doesn’t matter how bad we’ve been or how much we’ve offended Him or hurt Him. He never stops loving us. The verse goes on, “It is only His mercies that have kept us from complete destruction.”

From Mike Greens’ Illustrations for Biblical Preaching comes this little story about unconditional love: One Sunday, a little boy looked up at his dad and asked, “Daddy, how does God love us?” His father answered, “Son, God loves us with an unconditional love.” The lad thought for a moment and then asked, “Daddy, what kind of love is unconditional love?” After a few minutes of silence, his father answered, “Do you remember the two boys who used to live next door to us and the cute little puppy they got last Christmas?” “Yes.” “Do you remember how they used to tease it, throw sticks, and even rocks at it?” “Yes.” “Do you also remember how the puppy would always greet them with a wagging tail and would try to lick their faces?” “Yes.” “Well, that puppy had an unconditional love for those two boys. They certainly didn’t deserve his love for them because they were mean to him. But, he loved them anyway.” The father then made his point: “God’s love for us is also unconditional. Men threw rocks at his Son, Jesus, and hit him with sticks. They even killed him. But Jesus loved them anyway.” Richard Halverson, former Senate Chaplain, put it this way, “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more! There is nothing you can do to make God love you less! His love is Unconditional, Impartial, Everlasting, Infinite, Perfect!”

If you’re linked up with new social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and probably others, you know what it means to “follow” someone.  You stay in touch with them and find out what they’re doing and are reminded frequently of their activities. Jesus said to those he called, “Follow me.” If you had to choose to follow one with the greatest analytical skills, the sharpest mind, the greatest set of gifts, the largest bank account, or a person who would love you unconditionally, whom would you choose? Me too! And guess what? The one who loves us unconditionally has all the rest as well.

 

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1 John 1:7, Hebrews 9:22

Cleansing Power!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 15, 2024

In 1 John 1:7, we read, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.” It has true cleansing power. The Greek word for “cleanse” is “Katharidzo.” I always thought this Greek word would make a great name for a laundry detergent. My wife’s name is “Kathy.” All forms of that name usually refer to the idea of “the pure one” or the “clean one.” It’s the word that’s used in the Gospels for “cleansing” lepers as well as external washing. The Pharisees, for example, “cleansed” the outside but left the inside rotting like a corpse in a tomb. Hebrews 9:22 says, “Under the law, everything was ‘cleansed’ with blood, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.” It’s also the word from which we take the medical term for “catheter.” It’s the tube that is attached to our urinary system to help cleanse the poisons from our system. The blood of Jesus can cleanse us from our sins and guilt. When we cauterize something, we purify it. When we speak of a catharsis, we’re talking about a cleansing.

One of the key identifying characteristics of a Christian cult is the blurring of the divine nature of Jesus. Whereas the New Testament makes it clear that Jesus’ conception and birth were miraculous, resulting in a divine presence of God “with us” and a unique physical composition of all man and all God at the same time. It was this miraculous birth and the nature of His being that made the shedding of His unique blood capable of cleansing us all of all our sins. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science movement, said, “The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business.” As with most cults, the true supernatural nature of Christ is denied or ignored, yet it’s that divine nature that provides the cleansing power for our sins. Just as Jesus calls the lepers, he calls all sinners to come to him for cleansing. He will wash away our sin and guilt! He will make us whole again. He can because of who He was and is!

The late James Boice wrote, “The gospel of the crucified Christ has been preached in palaces and halls of state, and the mighty of this world have come to him. It has been preached in the dirtiest and most dangerous of the back alleys of our cities, and the weak and outcasts of this world have come to him. It has been preached to Americans, and Americans have come. It has been preached in the nations of Africa and Asia and South America, and citizens of those nations have come. It has been preached to children, and children have come. It has been preached to the aged, and the aged have come. It has been preached to the intelligent and the not-so-intelligent, to the socially favored and to the socially disadvantaged, to blacks and whites, to Jews and Moslems and Buddhists and total pagans, and men and women from each of these groups have turned to Jesus as the One who is able to cleanse from sin and lead them in the way everlasting.” One of my favorite old hymns of the faith is “Are You Washed In The Blood Of The Lamb.” You won’t hear this song in churches very often today, unfortunately. The idea of “blood” is too offensive to some.

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

 

Are you washed in the blood,

In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?

Are your garments spotless?

Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

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1 John 1:9

God’s Wake-Up Call

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 14, 2024

Through our connection with Christ, the great judge finds us not guilty! In Romans 3:21-24 he writes, “Now God says he will accept and acquit us—declare us ‘not guilty’—if we trust Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way by coming to Christ, no matter who we are or what we have been like. Yes, all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious ideal; yet now God declares us ‘not guilty’ of offending him if we trust in Jesus Christ, who in his kindness freely takes away our sins.” Yet, the reality in our lives is that we still struggle with guilt often. Phantom guilt, guilt that comes when there really isn’t anything to be guilty about, is the product of too strenuous a self-standard or a failed attempt to live up to someone else’s standard. But there is still true guilt, even for a believer. True guilt is that sense of shame and sorrow when we do something we should feel guilty for. This guilt is truly God’s “wake-up call.” He uses His Spirit in various ways to open our consciences to the wrongs we do so that we get them right again. He has made a way, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). True guilt can only be “cleansed” with a true confession.

Guilt is God’s alarm clock. Chuck Smith used that illustration to explain how God moves his people to repentance when they need it. He uses three alarm clocks. The first one plays gentle music. The second goes off a little later and has a more disrupting sound. If he sleeps through that one, the third one will wake the dead! It makes “a horrendous sound.” He compares this to God’s work of His Spirit that arouses us to our guilt. At first, there’s a gentle tugging at our spirits to see our wrong. If we fail to “wake up,” the Holy Spirit will cause a less pleasant experience.  Chuck Smith explains, “That’s what God did with David. The king wasn’t listening to the Holy Spirit’s prompting in his conscience, so God revealed David’s secret sin of adultery to the prophet Nathan and sent him to speak to David. David’s sin was exposed. It became public knowledge, and at that point, David turned to God in repentance. If that’s what it takes, that is what God will do.” But it even gets worse.  If we ignore or resist the first two “wake-up calls,” God will move more drastically to get our attention. When Pharaoh hardened his heart against God’s confrontation, God took direct action against all of Egypt and its people.

Chuck asks, “Which of these three ways would you like God to use to stop you sinning?” I know I’d like to wake up to soft music. I don’t want to have to be stunned out of my lethargy to sin; I want to be sensitive and open to seeing my failures. I sometimes don’t want to wake up in the morning, and I usually struggle with waking up to my sin, but if we don’t respond to God’s gentle nudging in our consciences, He’ll wake us up in a more radical way. Guilt is God’s way of reaching out to us in the gentlest of ways. It’s always disturbing, of course, but when God speaks to us through the guilt he arouses in us, it’s another expression of God’s wonderful Grace.

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