Archive for December, 2009
But…also in this book it is very apparent that Mr. Bradley does not like Teddy Roosevelt. It is also apparent that Mr. Bradley hates Christians! Speaking of missionaries in Hawaii during the late 1800’s (which is another sad story), he states: “Missionary activity assumes the inferiority of its subject; for the missionary to bring civlization and light, there must be uncivlized darkness.” (The Imperial Cruise, pg149)
Let me explain why he is TOTALLY CORRECT!
I say that he is totally correct not because a missionary goes to a foreign land, or the an urban center, or the a rural, church-going community because that missionary thinks he is better than the people he goes to. Mission work is bound up, not in the missionary, but in The Mission itself, which Jesus Christ (God-man) gave to fallen, fallible people: “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matt. 28:18-20) This is not a statement given for people who think highly of themselves and their ideas to go an tell the “inferior” their “superior” ideas. It is a command from the living Christ to go and tell those who do not know that God has paved a way for all creation to be saved, and that is through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Again, The Mission and foundation of missionary work is not grounded in the goer (the missionary) but in the sender (Jesus Christ). So before I talk about why Mr. Bradley is correct, I wanted to point out where he falls short: He sees mission work as people going to cross cultures because they see themselves as better than the ones they are going to. Missionaries may see themselves this way because missionaries are sinners just like everyone else (and if they do see themselves this way they must repent or be fired). But The Mission itself “Go to all the nations…” is not about missionaries, but about the work of Christ. Now, let me explain…
Why Mr. Bradley is right!
1. Missionary activity assumes the inferiority of it’s subject
Missionary activity not only assumes the inferiority of it’s subjects, it goes to our own civilization and to other civilizations because The Mission seeks out people from all nations and peoples to know their utter inferiority (include the prideful white man). This inferiority is not a man-to-man inferiority, but it is a God-to-man inferiority, and missionary activity assumes that all of us (including the missionary) are eternally inferior to our Master, Jesus Christ the Lord! That is why missions exists. He is holy, we are not. He is just, we are not. He is righteous, we are not. He is worthy of worship, we are not. Words cannot fill enough books describing the vastness of difference between God and humanity. The only way we can come to God is through Jesus Christ, and that goes for all races, enthnicities and peoples. Missionaries and Governments claiming the name “Christian” have done much wrong in the history of the world, and have, at times, shown horrible displays of racism, yet The Mission does not hinge on them (thank God for that). It hinges on Jesus Christ! And Jesus Christ is far superior to any missionary, king, prince, governor, or slave that He will one day receive the worship due to Him from all peoples of all nations.
So just to be clear, missionary activity assumes the inferiority of its subjects because that inferority is between God-and-man, not man-and-man. We go, we share the gospel, we love people enough to share the Gospel and be uncomfortable, and possibly go hungry, and possibly persecuted because we know we are eternally inferior to God and so is the person we are speaking with. We want them to rejoice in their inferiority to God through the Gospel, not shudder in horror forever under His wrath. Only the gospel saves and causes one to rejoice that he or she is inferior, yet gloriously redeemed. People who do not have this message are in desparate need of it, just like every genuine Christian alive was in desparate need of it at one time, and every unbeliever alive is desparately in need of it, including Mr. Bradley.
2. For the missionary to bring civilization and light, there must be uncivlized darkness.
Jesus is the Light of the world that bring light into the darkness of the world. I will be short on this, but if we look to pastors and missionaries to be The Light instead of Jesus Christ to be The Light, we will be utterly dissappointed because all my light is is a dim reflection of His Light, and my dimmness sometimes looks very black. Many who have gone out to sea, claiming to be Christians, and becoming missionaries have gone simply for the adventure of it, and many have defamed the name of Christ among nations for their actions because of it. The missionary does not bring his light to a people. Christ brings His light to a people through His servants. When missionaries forget that they are Christ’s servants, that they do not bring a light of their own, and yet seek to do His mission work, they will do that work without the work of the Spirit behind or before them.
Apart from the light of Christ in anyone, we are in darkness. Not only in darkness but dead in our sins. So, the reality is that apart from Christ shining His light into our hearts, we don’t live in “uncivlized darkness”, we are darkness! We are dead in our sins! This goes for the banker on wall street to Natives in the Amazon jungle. The duty of the Christian is not to “civilize” but to love our fellow sinners by praying that God provide an opportunity to share the Gospel of Christ. Our goal is God save people, not that people become Americanized or civlized or modern.
Mr. Bradley is the common modern American who, most likely, sees himself as his own man, who probably would say to a person attempting to share the gospel with him, “Thanks, Jesus might be good for you, but not good for me.” He needs prayer by faithful, prayer-filled believers.
God, bring him across the path of a loving child of Yours who can reach out to him and love Him with Your love. He needs to know the true gospel of Christ, and will not know it unless told, and, it seems, will not hear unless he really trusts and has a good relation with the one who tells. God, bring. Bring the light of Christ into his heart!
For the next few blog posts, I will focus on the topic of condemnation.
2. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
3. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” 1. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Christian, you are under no condemnation. God does not hold wrath over you if you have placed your faith in Him. I was reading the book of Nahum recently and in that book, God threatens Ninevah with great threats of destruction. As I was reading it, I could not help but be in awe of the fact that God is Holy. In Isaiah 6:1-3, Isaiah beholds Gods holiness, and angels cry to God: “Holy, Holy, Holy…” The repeating of it emphasizes His holiness just like, whenever I was a kid, I would ask my parents for something by saying, “Please please please please please!” Each “please” re-emphasized the previous “please”.
Isaiah’s response to seeing the holiness of God is to fall on his face and wail: “Woe is me!” That is all a sinner can say as he stands before God in His holiness. In His holiness God cannot bear the presence of sin, not because God is weak, but because He is so much more glorious and holy than we can grasp, that sin cannot be in His presence without be eternally punished and ruined. That is why He can justly threaten (and destroy) Ninevah without sinning. I can’t do that without sinning because I’m not absolutely holy. God can because He is holy and worthy of all worship.
I was reading the book of Nahum in a Barnes and Noble bookstore and after I was finished reading, I got up to go to the bathroom and as I walked to the bathroom, God kindly gave me a taste of how merciful He right now. People are walking around the store looking at books, talking to each other, complaining about the coffee they had, etc. The grace that is present to keep us alive and out of hell is indescribable. I cannot think of words to describe it.
So when we read the words “no condemnation” we need to see them in their proper light, or else we will not be adequately amazed. What is that proper light? God is holy, we are sinful and therefore, right now, deserve to be suffering His eternally, unchained wrath. I don’t deserve a Social Security check. I don’t deserve a job. I don’t deserve a loving wife. I deserve holy, eternal anger.
The “no condemnation” says, “You deserve it, but it is covered and paid for, for you, right now!” God loves us intensely. Yet this love is not based on us or anything about us. We are not lovely to God. His love to us is pictured in the book of Hosea, where Hosea is called to love a very unlovely prostitute named Gomer. God loves us because He IS love. His love and holiness are intertwined in a way that, I believe, cannot be understood by us. They are intertwined in a way that must be pondered, awed over and stir us to worship Him. If His love could be understood by us, how little would our God be! Get comfortable with being bewildered by Him. It is a good thing.
I will get to the cross of Christ in point 3. Before I move onto point 2 I want to point out that God does NOT forget our sin. “No condemnation” means that that condemnation was cast onto Someone. It is not forgotten. It is, rather, moved and was placed on Another. Jeremiah, speaking of the Gospel, quotes God saying, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34). “But, Jeremiah, God cannot forget, can He? I mean, He is God.” Where it says that God will “remember their sin no more”, He means that He will not recall their sin any longer against them. He remembers our sin (scary), yet He does not count it against us because it was counted against Another, Jesus Christ (comfort). This makes grace all the more amazing! I do hope we are seeing more clearly why Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”.
I was reading a book called, Communion with God written by John Owen, a dead guy who lived in the 1600’s. He was writing about the love that God the Father has toward us. Under a subtitle of, “Consider what Kind of Love is the Father’s love” he writes:
The Gospel takes, “Who can stand before His indignation?” (Nahum 1:6) and “The Lord is good” (Nahum 1:7), and ties them together in full array at the cross.
The cross is where my sin was paid for. The cross is where I was bought by the shed blood of God, the Son. The cross is where Christ Jesus was crushed for my transgressions. The cross is where the furious indignation (anger; wrath) of God was unleashed without hinderance on the Son of God. He was killed and raised again bodily so that we would die to sin and live in Him forever. We will behold Him in joy, face to face, because Christ beheld and endured the wrath of God face to face.
God is good to us, and is loving and gracious to us because Christ was forsaken for a time. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” is a cry on our behalf so that we who believe in Him for salvation, would never cry that cry.
We have much to rejoice about in the gospel. My weakness in explaining things is so apparent when I try to explain or think about this glorious gospel. My prayer is that God would give us (give me, give you) a joy that His Growl and His Grace were unleashed all at once at the Cross of Christ!
Let us meditate on this. CJ Mahaney has said, “If there’s anything in life that we should be passionate about, it’s the gospel. And I don’t mean passionate only about sharing it with others. I mean passionate about thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world. Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be.” (The Cross Centered Life, 20-21)
In Him,
Jim
Merry Christmas!
Please join us today in rejoicing that God became flesh to bring into Him a people from all peoples and nations.
We hope you have a great time with family and friends.
Sincerely,
The Board of Gospel Haiti
The Grace of God is beyond my ability to explain it or describe it. The book of Nahum seems to stop and remind us: “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him.” (Nahum 1:7)
How His Grace is Displayed:
God’s grace is displayed everyday in sustaining our lives, giving us glorious blessings like the ability to see, hear, speak, communicate, read, etc. If I can only see, but I can’t hear or speak, I am blessed by God. When I get older and my hearing goes away, I am blessed by God. If I get throat cancer and cannot speak anymore, I am blessed by God. All these things will involve suffering, and I do not take them lightly, but they are surrounded and covered and engulfed by divine, sovereign grace. So when Nahum says, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble…” he means that God’s love is shown to us in our everyday lives by His desire that we find Him to be our stronghold, our strength, our go-to when life just sucks. 1 Peter puts it this way, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:6-7). Peter does not say, “Christians should not be anxious!” He says, “When you are anxious, humble yourself before God, and pour out your heart before Him, because He cares for you.” Those words “He cares for you” are eternally glorious, especially in light of what I deserve from Him. Again, I cannot rightly describe the awesomeness of this. So please stop and meditate on His grace and love for unworthy, undesireable sinners.
His goodness and grace is also seen in permitting, allowing and designing suffering in our lives as Christians. Nahum says that God is a stronghold for all who take refuge in Him. The fact that God has opened this door of refuge in Him is also indescribable. How often I forsake this door of refuge in God! It is sad. Thank God for forgiving grace! 1 Peter, again, says, “…let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” So it is God’s will that we suffer. Yet it is also God’s will that when we suffer we entrust ourselves to a faithful Creator, Himself. Or to put it another way, “Take refuge in Him when you suffer, because that is what your suffering is designed for” I am called to entrust myself to a faithful Creator.
What’s this have to do with Grace? God’s aim is that we find our refuge, our joy, our hope, our rest in Him. He is our Treasure. He is our Refuge. He is our Rest. He designs our suffering and our trouble and our struggles in life so that we would not just know that in our heads, but that we would know really know that God is our refuge and our stronghold.
The greatest display of His love for us is seen most gloriously in a Suffering Servant. This is done so that we would have eternal life and that He, our Savior, would bring us to God. Again, stop and meditate on this fact. God, Holy and Righteous, has freely brought us to Himself, which we will mention in the next post.
In love,
Jim
I’m going to post three postings about God, His grace and His wrath. These will be based on the Book of Nahum. I decided to read this book because I want to know God better. I was talking with someone yesterday and, as a result of the conversation, I walked away wanting to know God better through His word. It had nothing to do with the conversation I had with that person, but God put it on my heart as a result of the conversation. As I sat down to read the book of Nahum, I asked myself the question: “What does this tell me about God?” I can read the Old Testament and walk away confused, or wonder why God allowed (or designed) something seemingly evil to happen? The question, “What does this tell me about God?’ clears up those questions, filling them with a huge humbling before His majesty.
Today’s post will be about, what I call, the “Growl” of God. When a dog growls at me, I get the hint that he might be angry, so I stay away. The dog didn’t attack me with full force. He gave me a sign-warning about what will happen if I don’t stop what I’m doing. God shows Israel and Ninevah His divine Growl in that He does not cast them into hell immediately, but gives them warning-signs that are designed to bring them, and us, to repentance.
Here are a few verses that describe God in the book of Nahum:
“The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.” (Nahum 1:2)
“Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the heat of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by Him.” (Nahum 1:6)
“Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame.” (Nahum 3:5)
These are but a few of God’s threats against Ninevah. So my question is, “Why all the threats? How does God come off doing this and then telling us to worship Him?” The answer is found in the book of Isaiah: “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the tempt. Above Him stodd the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isa. 6:1-3)
God is holy! On my very best days, my thoughts and my actions make me worthy of burning in hell, under the HOLY wrath of God against my sin. It would be just for Him to do so. He can say, “I will pull up your skirts and the people will look at your nakedness and your shame” because I don’t deserve any better. Hell is shameful and real. I think Americans forget that.
I was reading the book of Nahum in a Barnes and Noble bookstore. When I got done reading it I got up to go to the bathroom, and as I walked, passing people, it came over me like a wave God, right now God is giving out grace, and right now and right now and right now. Everyone I see walking, buying books, complaining about the taste of their coffee, is being sustained by unfathomable grace. I cannot understand His grace that keeps me alive let alone saves me forever, gives me His righteousness and promises me that He will keep me to the end, guiltless in the day of Christ (1 Cor 1). That is amazing! I cannot think of a word to describe its awesomeness.
So when you read, “The Lord is an avenging God” or “The Lord takes vengeance of His adversaries”, don’t read that without remembering and being in awe of His holiness and our sinfulness. Do not read it, as well, without remembering the cross! Intermixed with threats of wrath are lovely promises, such as, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him.” (Nahum 1:7), which I will write about in tomorrow’s posting.
In Christ,
Jim
Another blog entitled, “Very Stupid Things” is not a blog I would encourage people to visit, but it reveals that the world of blogs is very random and can be “Stupid”.
So, in light of maze of blogs on the web, what is the goal and vision of the Gospel Haiti blog? The Board of Gospel Haiti has a vision to see God glorified through the support of ministries in Haiti and the founding of a school of education in Haiti. The purpose of the blog, in my view, is to help our readers see God as glorious and praise Him for His work in the spread of the Gospel around the world, and specifically to Haiti.
The blog itself will not focus solely on Haiti. Our goal is to help our readers have a high and lifted up vision of God, so not everything written will directly involve mention of Haiti, which is only a small piece of His work throughout the world.
Isaiah 26:8 says, “Your name and Your renown are the desire of our soul”. Why a blog for Gospel Haiti? So that many who read will come away saying, with Isaiah, “Your name, O Lord Christ, and Your fame throughout all the world, is the desire of my soul!”
Father, help me and those who write on this blog, be faithful to regularly keep up with this blog and pray that You use it to touch many lives for Your glory and Your praise in Haiti, the US and the world. Be glorified.
In Him,
Jim
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Serving Christ Through The Haitian Community