The Command That Creates

Anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)

When Jesus commanded Lazarus to rise from the dead, how did he obey that command? John 11:43 says, “He [Jesus] cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’” That was a command to a dead man. The next verse says, “The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips” (John 11:44).

How did Lazarus do that? How does a dead man obey a command to live again? The answer seems to be: The command carries the power to create new life. Obedience to the command means doing what living people do.

This is extremely important. The command of God, “Rise from the dead!” carries in it the power we need to obey it. We do not obey it by creating that life. We obey it by doing what living people do — Lazarus came forth. He rose. He walked out to Jesus. The call of God creates life. We respond in the power of what the call creates.

In Ephesians 5:14, Paul says, “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” How do you obey a command to wake up from sleep? If your house has poisonous carbon monoxide in it, and someone cries out, “Wake up! Save yourself! Get out!” you don’t obey by waking yourself up. The loud, powerful command itself wakes you up. You obey by doing what wakeful people do in the face of danger. You get up and leave the house. The call creates the waking. You respond in the power of what the call created — wakefulness.

I believe this is the explanation for why the Bible says paradoxical things about new birth; namely, that we must get ourselves new hearts, but that it is God who creates the new heart. For example:

Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise your heart!”

Deuteronomy 30:6: “The Lord will circumcise your heart.”

Ezekiel 18:31: “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!”

Ezekiel 36:26: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.”

John 3:7: “You must be born again.”

1 Peter 1:3: “God caused us to be born again.”

The way to obey the command to be born is to first experience the divine gift of life and breath, and then to do what living, breathing people do: cry out to God in faith and gratitude and love. When the command of God comes with the creating, converting power of the Holy Spirit, it gives life. And we believe and rejoice and obey.

John Piper 

Is it okay with God to be a rebel?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isaiah 1:18

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Every rebel has a reason for his or her actions. You’ve probably heard a young person say, “Well, my dad drinks, so I smoke pot.” Do you know what kind of reasoning that is? Brute beast reasoning, like Peter mentions in 2 Peter 2:12.

“But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.”

This young person doesn’t think he has to obey his father. And he further reasons, “He’s not worthy of my obedience.” And it’s not only young people who think this way. We see it in adults too, and it’s rampant in entertainment and the media. But is this okay with God? Does He give us His permission to live this way?

Do you know the only people who can demand perfect parents? Perfect children. The only people who can demand a perfect pastor is a perfect church member. Only perfect citizens can demand a perfect politician! You don’t carry a license for rebellion. There are ways to reason together in a church, home, government and nation.

ACTION POINT:

A spirit of rebellion among its citizens will bring a nation to its knees. Jesus gave His life to reconcile us. Can you live otherwise?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Experiential Key

God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)

We know that faith in God’s future grace is the experiential key to generosity, because in 2 Corinthians, Paul holds out this wonderful promise: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

In other words, if you want to be free from the need to stash away your money, if you want to overflow with an abundance (of grace!) for every good work, then put your faith in future grace. Trust the promise that “God is able to make all grace abound to you” in every future moment for this very purpose.

I just called faith in future grace the “experiential key” to generosity, so as not to deny that there is a historical key as well. There is a key of experience, and a key of history. When talking about the grace they received, Paul reminds the Corinthians of the historical key of grace, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Without this historical work of grace, the door of Christ-exalting generosity would remain closed. That past grace is an indispensable key to love.

But notice how the past grace in this verse functions. It is made the foundation (Christ became poor) of future grace (that we might become rich). Thus the historical key to our generosity operates by putting a foundation under the experiential key of faith in future grace.

Thus, the experiential key to love and generosity is this: Put your faith firmly in future grace — namely, that “God is able (in the future) to make all (future) grace abound to you” — so that your needs are met, and so that you will be able to overflow with the love of generosity.

Freedom from greed comes from the deeply satisfying faith in God’s future grace.

John Piper 

What is your measure of faith?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Romans 10:17

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have so much faith, others have weak faith, and some have no faith at all? Is God unfair? No, God is no respecter of persons (see Acts 10:34). He has given to every man a measure of faith (see Romans 12:3).

And so, what is faith? Let me first say what it is not.

Faith is not positive thinking or optimism. It is not a feeling that you can do something. It is not a hunch or looking on the sunny side of the street.

Faith is getting a word from God and acting upon it. You see, you can get a word from God and believe that word. That is belief. But when you act upon it, that is faith. Faith is belief with legs on it.

ACTION POINT:

Today is the day that you put your foot of faith upon the promises of God and say, “That promise is mine!”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Passionate for God and Truth

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.” (Romans 3:3–4)

Our concern with truth is an inevitable expression of our concern with God. If God exists, then he is the measure of all things, and what he thinks about all things is the measure of what we should think.

Not to care about truth is not to care about God. To love God passionately is to love truth passionately. Being God-centered in life means being truth-driven in ministry. What is not true is not of God.

Ponder these four sets of texts on God and truth:

1) God Is the Truth

Romans 3:3–4 (God the Father): “What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar.”

John 14:6 (God the Son): Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

John 15:26 (God the Spirit): “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.”

2) Not Loving the Truth Is Eternally Ruinous

Second Thessalonians 2:10: The wicked will perish “because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.”

3) Christian Living Is Based on Knowledge of the Truth

First Corinthians 6:15–16: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?”

4) The Body of Christ Is Built with Truth in Love

Colossians 1:28: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

May God make us passionate for him and for truth.

John Piper 

Is the fire too hot?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Job 23:10

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

In order to refine gold, a goldsmith places gold over a fire until it bubbles and glows. He skims off the impurity from the top and knows that when he can see his reflection, the gold is pure.

That is what the Lord is doing when you go through trials. When He can see His likeness reproduced in your life, He’ll know that you have become gold fit for His use and for His glory.

But the fire is hot! Yes, but God controls it. No jeweler is more careful with his gold than a father with his children. He knows what He is doing.

But what about those things He is burning out of my life? You don’t need them. If you needed them, your loving Father would make sure you kept them.

ACTION POINT:

Anything that comes into your life today, whether good or bad, has had to pass through the grid of God’s sovereignty and His permission. Look to Him, for He is not only your refiner, but also your redeemer and a loving Father. He already sees the finished product He’s working on and perfecting in your life.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

How Believers Will Be Judged

I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. (Revelation 20:12)

What about the last judgment? Will our sins be remembered? Will they be revealed? Anthony Hoekema puts it wisely like this: “The failures and shortcomings of . . . believers . . . will enter into the picture on the Day of Judgment. But — and this is the important point — the sins and shortcomings of believers will be revealed in the judgment as forgiven sins, whose guilt has been totally covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Picture it like this. God has a file on every person (the “books” of Revelation 20:12). All you’ve ever done or said (Matthew 12:36) is recorded there with a grade (from “A” to “F”). When you stand before “the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10) to be judged “for what [you have] done in the body, whether good or evil,” God will open the file and lay out the tests with their grades. He will pull out all the “F’s” and put them in a pile. Then he will take all the “D’s” and “C’s” and pull the good parts of the test out and place them with the “A’s”, then put the bad with the “F’s.” Then he will take all the “B’s” and “A’s” and pull the bad parts out of them and put them in the “F” pile, and put all the good parts in the “A” pile.

Then he will open another file (“the book of life”) and find your name, because you are in Christ through faith. Behind your name will be a wood-stick match made from the cross of Jesus. He will take the match, light it, and set the “F” pile, with all your failures and deficiencies, on fire and burn them up. They will not condemn you, and they will not reward you.

Then he will take from your “book of life” file a sealed envelope marked “free and gracious bonus: life!” and put it on the “A” pile (see Mark 4:24 and Luke 6:38). Then he will hold up the entire pile and declare, “By this your life bears witness to the grace of my Father, the worth of my blood, and the fruit of my Spirit. These bear witness that your life is eternal. And according to these you will have your rewards. Enter into the everlasting joy of your Master.”

John Piper