Whatever Things are Just

October 23, 2016 in Bible - NT - Philippians, Bible - OT - Deuteronomy, Bible - OT - Psalms, Judgment, Justification, Meditations
Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
In Philippians 1, Paul prays that we “may approve the things that are excellent” (1:9b). In order to do so, we must be able to identify these excellent things and, in our text, Paul catalogues some of them. He calls us to meditate on these things – to give them our attention, mull them over, and let them shape our attitude and actions.
So let us meditate on whatever things are just. The word in Greek is dikaios – righteous, upright, equitable. God is Himself the foundation of justice. “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He” (Dt 32:4). “The LORD is righteous in all His ways, Gracious in all His works” (Ps 145:17).
Because God is just, all that He does reflects His justice. He cannot be anything but just. So Paul calls us to meditate on God’s just dealings. Meditate on the worldwide flood, on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and on the gruesome death of Herod Agrippa who was eaten by worms. Meditate on the deliverance of Joseph, on the vindication of Joshua and Caleb, and on the exaltation of David. Meditate on the peg in Sisera’s head, on Samson’s blindness, and on Jezebel’s defenestration. Meditate on whatever things are just.
Of course the preeminent display of God’s justice is in Jesus Christ. Justice demands that our rebellion against God and His law be punished. Jesus took on human flesh that He might bear the guilt of our sin, that He might endure God’s just wrath. He did this because God so loved us that He would show His mercy toward us – but His mercy could not and cannot be unjust. Paul tells us in Romans 3:25-26 that Christ sacrificed Himself for us to demonstrate at the present time [God’s justice], that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. The Second Person of the Godhead took on human flesh and sacrificed His life in order that God might remain just and yet extend mercy and forgiveness to the one who has faith in Jesus. Such is God’s love of and commitment to justice even while showing mercy.
Because we worship the God of justice, we are also to delight in and practice justice ourselves. God’s mercy does not eradicate a concern for justice; it strengthens it. The just God delights in just weights and measures, rejoices in just judgments, and revels in just words – and we are to do likewise. “It is a joy for the just to do justice, But destruction will come to the workers of iniquity” (Prov 21:15). It is a joy for the just to execute a murderer, to demand that a thief make restitution, and to uncover and punish a false witness. It is a joy for parents to spank a disobedient toddler, for elders to excommunicate an unrepentant church member, and for employers to fire an unfaithful worker. Meditate on whatever things are just.
So what of you? Do you delight in justice? Are you aware that there are times it is sinful to show pity? God warned Israel:
“If a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, then both men in the controversy shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who serve in those days. And the judges shall make careful inquiry, and indeed, if the witness is a false witness, who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil from among you. And those who remain shall hear and fear, and hereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity: life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Dt 19:16–21)

God delights in justice and so judges, priests, and people are to imitate Him. So reminded of our call to meditate on whatever things are just, let us confess that we often gravitate toward that which is unjust instead. And, as you are able, let us kneel as we confess our sins to the Lord. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Whatever Things are Noble

October 17, 2016 in Bible - NT - Philippians, Depravity, King Jesus, Meditations, Politics, Sanctification, Sexuality, Sin
Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
In Philippians 1, Paul prays that we “may approve the things that are excellent” (1:9b). In order to do so, we must be able to identify these excellent things and, in our text, Paul catalogues some of them. He calls us to meditate on these things – to give them our attention, mull them over, and let them shape our attitude and actions.
So let us meditate on whatever things are noble. This word noble is “used in classical Greek in the sense of ‘venerable, inviting reverence, worthy of reverence.’ The word exhorts here to a due appreciation of such things as produce a noble seriousness.” (Wuest) Other translations endeavor to capture the meaning with the English word “honorable.”
P.T. Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, once remarked, “No man ever went broke underestimating the public taste.” His remark reflects a sober truth: our sinful nature lends itself to that which is base. Taking advantage of this sinful corruption, much of the entertainment industry has become horribly degenerate, appealing to our baser instincts.
Yet even though our sinful nature gravitates toward that which is base and corrupt, we still possess a longing for nobility, a longing for that which is honorable and upright. Because we have been created in the image of God, we still retain a sense of the divine and, at times, long for those things which reflect His glory, long for nobility. This longing is cleverly expressed in an old poem of unknown authorship:

  I have three tame ducks in my back yard,
  Who wallow in the mud, and try real hard
  To get their share and even more
  of the overflowing backyard store.
  They’re fairly content with the task they’re at
  Of eating and sleeping and getting fat.
  But when the wild ducks fly by
  In a streaming line across the sky,
  They cast a wishful and quizzical eye
  And flap their wings and attempt to fly.
  I think my soul is a tame old duck
  Wallowing around in the barnyard muck,
  It’s fat and lazy with useless wings
  But, once in awhile when the north wind sings
  And the wild ducks hurtle overhead
  It remembers something lost and almost dead,
  And it casts a wistful eye
  And flaps its wings and tries to fly.
  It’s fairly content with the state that it’s in

  But it isn’t the duck that it might have been![1]

Paul calls us, in our passage, to follow those wild ducks; to meditate on what we were created to be; to delight in that which is noble, honorable, and glorious. He calls us to delight in the boy who opens the door for his sister; to rejoice in the wife who honors her husband and shields his faults; to esteem the man who keeps himself free from pornography; to admire the businessman who pays his employees well; to honor the soldier who lays down his life for his friends; to worship the Lord Christ who sacrificed Himself for us all. “That’s what I want to be like,” we should say, “that’s who I want to be.”
So reminded of our call to meditate on whatever things are noble, let us confess that we often gravitate toward that which is base instead. And, as you are able, let us kneel as we confess our sins to the Lord. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.


[1] http://www.christians.org/grow/grow13.html

Whatever Things are True

October 9, 2016 in Apologetics, Bible - NT - Philippians, Bible - NT - Romans, Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Politics, Sanctification, Sexuality
Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
In Philippians 1, Paul prays that we “may approve the things that are excellent” (1:9b). In order to do so, we must be able to identify these excellent things and, in our text, Paul catalogues some of them. He calls us to meditate on these things – to give them our attention, mull them over, and let them shape our attitude and actions.
So let us meditate on whatever things are true. “Truth is an attribute of God. As such the term speaks of His integrity, His trustworthiness, His faithfulness” (Holmes, 827). As the psalmist declares in Psalm 89:14, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before Your face.” The Triune God is the true and living God, not a mere idol, not a figment of the imagination, not a pipe dream.
Because God is true, the world which He has created reflects His nature and, therefore, it has a distinct and definite nature. Our calling as human beings, is to understand the way God has made us and the world and to conform ourselves to this reality. We are to live truly not falsely – to live in accord with the way the universe really is. This implies, of course, that the world has a fixed nature, reflecting God’s own nature. This fixed reality characterizes empirical observations, intellectual and mathematical principles, and moral obligations. Boys are boys; girls are girls; animals are animals; gravity is real; 1+1 does in fact equal 2; multiplying the length times the width of a rectangle tells you its area; if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then it follows necessarily that Socrates is mortal; murder, adultery, and theft are grievous crimes; love suffers long and is kind.
All these statements are true, and Paul calls us to meditate deeply on these things. He summons us to rejoice in the regularity of the world that God has made. We are to rejoice in empirical truths, intellectual truths, and moral truths. And we are to rejoice in these truths wherever and by whomever they are discovered. All truth is God’s truth and we are called to meditate upon it; indeed, to rejoice in it.
However, when we are in rebellion against God, we don’t like to acknowledge the truth. Paul declares in Romans 1:25 that in rebelling against God, we “exchange the truth of God for a lie.” Having given ourselves over to this first-order lie, we find ourselves tempted to lie in other areas. We try to hide from the truth – for truth points us inevitably to the Truth Giver. As Jesus declares, “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth come to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God” (Jn 3:20-21).
This is why our culture has increasingly embraced the folly of relativism – whatever is true for you is true for you and whatever is true for me is true for me. There is no such thing as absolute truth – except, of course, for the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth. So we have begun calling evil good and good evil; justifying to ourselves our sexual licentiousness, our slaughter of the unborn, our greed, our loss of a moral compass. We have set ourselves up as the standard of truth. The result? We can no longer tell the difference between male and female; we have announced that men are able to wed one another; we have declared that a woman can be trapped in a male body; soon we shall claim that pigs fly.

But all this is folly, all this is falsehood, all this is lies and deceit and a sham. And Paul calls us to see it as such and to meditate instead on whatever things are true. So have you? Are you meditating deeply on what is true, are you being transformed by the renewing of your mind, or are you being conformed to this world by meditating on falsehood and filth? Reminded of our call to meditate on whatever things are true, let us confess that we often embrace what is false. And, as you are able, let us kneel as we confess our sins to the Lord. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Meditate on These Things

October 3, 2016 in Bible - NT - Philippians, Bible - NT - Romans, Meditations, Truth, Word of God
Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
As we begin to preach through the book of Philippians, I decided to begin a simultaneous series of exhortations from Paul’s words here in the fourth chapter of that book. Paul is keenly aware that believers are ever susceptible to false ideas, doubts, sinful attitudes, and Satanic lies. Even as our tastebuds can, over time, become accustomed to foods that at first offend our palate, so our souls can become accustomed to filth that at first violate our conscience. Consequently, Paul commands us to meditate on those things that will build us up in the faith and empower us to excel still more in the service of Christ.
In Philippians 1, Paul prays that the Philippians “may approve the things that are excellent” (1:9b). Clearly if they are to “approve the things that are excellent”, then they must acquaint themselves with what qualifies as excellence. They must develop a taste for what is truly worthwhile. So Paul gives them a list here in Philippians 4 and urges them and, by implication, us to meditate on these things.
Before we consider the specific things, however, let us first consider Paul’s call to meditateupon them. He commands us, meditate on these things – in other words, give them your attention, mull them over, and let them shape your attitude and actions. Paul’s summons reminds us that meditation takes considerable time and effort. In the Scriptures to meditate is to consider deeply, to turn over in the mind, to reflect carefully. It engages the mind, the heart, the imagination, the emotions. While eastern religions like Buddhism liken meditation to emptying the mind, purging one’s passions, the Scriptures liken it to filling the mind or perhaps cleansing the mind of deficient ideas, thoughts, and assumptions, and shaping one’s passions.
So Paul exhorts us in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Paul wants us as Christians to be distinct, to have our character transformed into that of the Lord Jesus Christ so that in any situation we can discern what God would have us do. He wants us to be able to prove, to test, to approve the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. This will only happen if we do not permit ourselves to be conformed to this world but instead find ourselves transformed by the grace of God. So how does God go about transforming us? By renewing our minds. And how are our minds renewed? By meditation on whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy.
So what of you? Have you been filling your heart and mind with what is excellent so that you can approve what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God? Have you been meditating on these things, turning them over, mulling on them, glorying in them? What are you permitting to shape your thoughts? Are you regularly singing the psalms and chewing on them? Are you regularly reading the Word, memorizing it, and meditating upon it? Are the things of God filling your soul? Or have you instead been meditating on evil things? Turning the sin of another over and over in your head? Anxiously worrying about the future? Assiduously feeding your doubts and fears? Becoming consumed with your social media feed? Conforming your thoughts to Hollywood’s view of the world?

Paul exhorts us to meditate on excellent things that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Reminded of our frequent failure to do so, let us confess our tendency to be conformed to this world. And, as you are able, let us kneel as we confess our sins to the Lord. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

The Necessity of Holiness

September 19, 2016 in Bible - NT - Hebrews, Holy Spirit, Meditations, Sanctification
Hebrews 12:14 (NKJV)
14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.
Back when I was in college a nefarious idea was spreading itself through Christian circles and continues to exist even to this day. The idea was that one could receive Jesus as their personal savior while refusing to submit to His Lordship; that one could be delivered from eternal destruction and yet have no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in his life.
The text today belies such a notion and informs us in no uncertain terms that the pursuit of holiness is not optional. We are to pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.
Notice first that we are to pursueit. To pursue means to strive to do something with an intense effort to a goal, to press forward, to follow in haste. In other contexts this same word is used to describe persecution – to hound someone so that they cannot escape your clutches. And so, Paul tells us, this is to be our approach to holiness. We are to hunt it down, seek it out, latch onto it, press forward as to a goal.
And what is the goal? Holinessor, as it is called in other places, sanctification. To be holymeans to be separated to the Lord’s service, distinct from the world. And so the temple in the OT was called holy – a sanctuary, a place set apart for the worship of God. Holiness, therefore, is dedication to the Lord, manifesting itself particularly in moral purity. The goal, in other words, is to be living sacrifices, set apart for the worship and service of the Lord.
And so, Hebrews tells us, we are to pursue this holiness. We are to hunt it down. Bring out the blood hounds and find it. And he appends a warning to his admonition to prod us in the posterior lest we become complacent – without this holiness, we won’t see the Lord.
So, how are you doing? Are you hungering and thirsting for righteousness? Are you seeking first the kingdom of God? Are you selling everything to buy the pearl of great price? Are you scouring the house to find the lost coin?
None of us, of course, are adequate for such things. And this is why we stand in such need of the Spirit of grace who creates within us this very holiness, who cultivates within us the desire to pursue.

And so, as we come into the presence of our Lord this day, let us confess that we have not pursued sanctification as we ought and let us kneel and call upon His mercy to receive us and forgive us for the sake of Christ. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Meditating on 9/11

September 12, 2016 in Bible - OT - Amos, Coeur d'Alene Issues, Judgment, Meditations, Politics, Providence
Amos 3:6 (NKJV)
6 If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it?
Amos reminds us today that as certainly as a trumpet gains the attention of those who hear it, so calamity that strikes a people comes from the hand of Yahweh, the Sovereign Lord. Providentially we find ourselves worshiping today on September 11th – the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. It is appropriate, therefore, to remember that events such as these are not random or haphazard. They don’t come because of chance or random mutation.
Calamities such as this are the result of two quite different wills – the will of sinful man and the will of Almighty God. On the one hand, the attack on the World Trade Centers was the result of cowardly and sinful Islamic terrorists whose conception of justice and service for Allah is perverse and damnable. Their willingness to strike civilian targets highlights their barbaric cruelty, a cruelty which mimics that of Simeon and Levi against the inhabitants of Shechem, a cruelty which will end in judgment and destruction.
Alongside this sinful and criminal will of the terrorists is the holy and righteous will of God. God struck America. God used the wicked and inexcusable actions of sinful men to accomplish His holy and righteous purposes. Even as God long ago used the nation of Assyria to strike His people Israel for their wickedness (cf. Is 10:5ff), so He has used these terrorists to strike us. So why has He done so? What are His purposes? Calamities of this sort are sent by God to remind us of our collective sin, to warn us of the inevitability of judgment when we turn away from Him, and to call us to repentance and the practice of righteousness.
So in the last fifteen years have we given heed to God’s warning, to God’s call? Not at all. We have continued in our headstrong way, despising God, despising His law, sanctioning wickedness. In the last fifteen years we have continued to worship other gods; we have continued to practice no-fault divorce; we have continued to slaughter our unborn; we have continued to permit and even celebrate sexual perversity. We slander our neighbors, give heed to the proud and the haugty, and have candidates for the highest office in the land who are both known for their deceitfulness. Rather than destroying all the wicked of the land, we have begun officially leading boys and girls astray by saying that male and female are malleable. Many of our states and even our own city have extended public protections to perverse behaviors and our federal government has imposed same sex unions upon us. In the last fifteen years, we have doubled down in rebellion against God, calling good evil and evil good.

So what ought we to do as the people of God? We ought to cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” We ought to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, confess our own sins and the sins of our people, plead with Him to forgive our sins through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and petition Him to deliver us from our rebellion by the power of His Spirit. As we come into the presence of God this morning, therefore, let us begin by kneeling and confessing our sins to the Lord. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Seeking the Lord in Times of Trouble

September 5, 2016 in Bible - NT - Matthew, Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Trials
Psalm 13:1-4
 “How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?
         How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
         Having sorrow in my heart daily?
         How long will my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and hear me, O LORD my God;
         Enlighten my eyes,
         Lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Lest my enemy say,
         “I have prevailed against him”;
         Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
David lived a difficult life and seldom enjoyed long periods of peace and prosperity. It was left to his son Solomon to enjoy such things while he himself was a man of war. Because he was a man of war, David routinely found himself in tight spots. Mocked by his brothers; harrassed by Saul; despised by Abimelech; scorned by his wife; pursued by his son Absalom; David often found himself facing enemies – some outside his house and some, tragically, inside.
Psalm 13 was composed in just such a circumstance. David was in trouble, his enemies were surrounding him, his defeat at their hands seemed nigh at hand.
Imagine, if you will, the turmoil that struck David in each of these circumstances. The pain and fear that must have confronted him. Well – we need not imagine. For we find his fears, pains, and anxieties expressed in the psalm before us today.
“How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?
         How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
         Having sorrow in my heart daily?
         How long will my enemy be exalted over me?”

Now consider your own circumstances. What troubles are you facing? Which enemies are surrounding you? What fears, pains, and anxieties are troubling you?
One last question: what are you doing with those fears? Notice what David does with his fears: he brings his anxious longings into the very presence of God. He does not suppress them; he does not fester over them; he does not wallow in them. He gathers them together and puts them in the best hands possible – the Lord’s.
“Consider and hear me, O LORD my God;
         Enlighten my eyes,
         Lest I sleep the sleep of death;”
Our Lord Jesus counseled us:
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?”

Jesus calls us to be like David – to place our fears, our anxieties, our worries in the hands of our Faithful Father who cares for us and promises to protect us. But often we fail to do so, do we not? So reminded of our failure to entrust our worries into the Lord’s hands, let us kneel and confess our sins in Christ’s name, seeking the forgiveness of our Heavenly Father. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

The God of Revelation

August 29, 2016 in Apologetics, Bible - NT - Colossians, Meditations, Worship
Colossians 2:6-10
8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
The variety of religious beliefs in the world is staggering. As a result of our rebellion against our Creator in the beginning, we have tried to hide from Him while retaining a vestige of religiosity. From the Tower of Babel to the modern secular state, we have sought out false gods to soothe our guilty conscience and receive our adoration.
Paul warns us in our text today that we need to beware falling prey to these false belief systems – systems that may have the appearance of wisdom in the traditions of men but which in fact rob us of wisdom and knowledge. Paul characterizes all non-Christian worldviews as empty deceit or vanity – emptiness. False religions make alluring promises to ensnare unsuspecting men and women – peace with god, peace with your neighbor, enlightenment, reabsorption into the One, freedom from the body, or even indulgence of bodily lusts. Like a hologram, these promises sometimes look solid; however, they are really empty and hollow. Why? Because all these philosophies are based on the traditions and speculations of men – men like you and me. Men who wet their beds when they’re little and start going senile when they’re old. Men who get sick and die. Men who have headaches and have a hard time thinking. Men who are prejudiced and make unwarranted assumptions. Men who are anything but omniscient and accurate describers of the world around them. Men who fall under Solomon’s judgment, Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity.
So what makes Christianity different from all these systems? Aren’t Christians subject to the same limitations? Yes and were we dependent upon our ability to search out and discover the truth we too would be lost. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Our Almighty and Eternal Father considered our lost estate and sent His only Son to become flesh and dwell among us that He might seek out and save us – revealing to us His person and paying the penalty for our folly that we might not be left in futility. The Christian faith finds its origin not in the vain speculations of finite men but in the solid revelation of the infinite God in the face of Jesus Christ.
So Paul warns us – beware lest anyone take you captive through empty deceit – religious speculations which are based on the opinions and traditions of men rather than the revelation of Almighty God.

Reminded of our propensity as sinners to turn away from God’s revelation and substitute in its place our own fancies and imaginations, let us kneel before the Triune God and confess our sin to Him. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

An Everlasting Inheritance

August 24, 2016 in Bible - OT - Genesis, Dispensationalism, Ecclesiology, Israel, John Calvin, Postmillennialism, Quotations

“For an everlasting possession (Gen 48:4). We have elsewhere shown the meaning of this expression: namely, that the Israelites should be perpetual heirs of the land until the coming of Christ, by which the world was renewed… For that portion of land was promised to the ancient people of God, until the renovation introduced by Christ: and now, ever since the Lord has assigned the whole world to his people, a fuller fruition of the inheritance belongs to us.”

John Calvin, Commentary upon the Book of Genesis