Why do bad things happen to good people?

We strive for, hope for, a life without trials, problems.  A life as we dream it to be.  But that is an impossible goal that I actually don't want to reach - it is counterproductive to the spiritual growth God intends for me.  Problems, trials are a gift from the hand of God - always good (Romans 8:28), always to help me in some way be conformed to the image of Christ. Without problems, trials I would never turn to him, grow in my faith, exercise my faith...

Anxiety is a sign of unbelief.  It is unbelief in his sovereignty over my life, in his love towards me at all times in all things.  Strive towards contentment in all trials knowing it is my job to obey and his to provide, knowing that he loves me and only sends me what is good for me.  As Spurgeon says when you are anxious and troubled you are meddling in God's business.  God is in control of all details of my life.  I need to believe it and live it.  I need to live it showing I believe it.   Everything that happens to me is for a good purpose.  Live that by being content in the life he has given me.

 Is it so hard to trust a God who died and suffered for me when he had a choice?  My whole trust is in his blood.  It proved his love for me as nothing else could.  May I never take for granted the words "Christ died for ME." It is the supreme message of the universe.  It is the gift of all time.  The God of Heaven and Earth came, lived and died that I may live with him for eternity.  He bought and paid for my life  -  can I not then trust Him with all of it?  It is his anyway.

2/16/15  Hardships are part of the journey towards knowing Christ.  Do not recoil from this discipline of Christ because these are among his most favored gifts.  He disciplines whom he loves.  

Our baptism

Scripture tells us (Col. 2:12) that we were buried with him in baptism.  But does this mean our baptism should be being immersed under the water to picture being buried like Christ?  As I think about it he was not buried under the ground but was in a tomb above ground surrounded by rock.  He had been prepared for his burial by pouring when the woman poured the flask of ointment over his head (Mark 14:3,8) "...she has anointed my body beforehand for burial."

1 Peter 3:20 - while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirst from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience...

Scripture tells us that baptism corresponds to the "salvation" the ark provided.  Who was immersed?  Not the those who were saved but those who died.  Who was saved - a few.  The saved were "sprinkled" upon from above not immersed.

Col. 2:11 - "you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands..having been buried with him in baptism."  Here Scripture equates circumcision and baptism.  This is the direct connection between the two in the NT. In the OT Jewish baby boys were circumcised as a sign of the covenant.  That sign continues in baptism but it is open to male and female alike.  Just as in the OT Jewish adult converters were circumcised, adult converters are be baptized in the NT,  male and female alike.  But that does not change it into being a sign of belief.  God does not do that.  It is a sign of the covenant still and so is still appropriate for babies to be baptized. 

But what does it mean to glorify God?

What is the chief end of man?  Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.

Thomas Watson, the Puritan, gives me much needed insight into how I would do this in "A Body of Divinity."  Read the full work to get a full understanding of each of these entries:

We aim purely at God's glory:

-when we prefer God's glory above all other things.

-when we are content that God's will should take place though it might cross ours.

-when we are content to be outshined by others in gifts and esteem.

-when we make real confessions of sin.

-when we believe and know there are no impossibilities with God.

-when we exhibit fruitfulness of love and good works.

-when we are tender of his glory - if his glory suffers, we suffer.

-when we are content in that state in which Providence has placed us.

-when we are working out our salvation - while we are hearing his word and praying we are glorifying God.

-when we are living to God. "That they which live should not live to themselves, but unto him who die for them." Rom. 14:4

-when we are walking cheerfully through life because of their inner peace.

-when we stand up for His truths.  Truth is a beam that shines from God.

-when we praise Him - this is God exalting work.

-when we are zealous for his name (zeal is a compound of love and anger).

-when we have an eye to God in our natural and in our civil actions (temperance, honesty).

-when we labor to draw others to God.

-when we suffer for God

-when we give God the glory of all that we do.  When we have done anything praiseworthy, we must hide ourselves under the veil of humility, and transfer the glory of all we have done to God.

-when we live a holy life.  Though the main work of religion lies in the heart, yet our light must so shine that others may behold it.


By glorifying God I come to man's chief end and that is to enjoy God forever.

God created the universe.... Thoughts that come from readings of the early church fathers and other thoughtful men of the church

God created the universe and all that is in it as a manifestation of the fullness of His glory. (Future Grace, Piper p. 394 Jon.Edwards)

“God has a disposition to communicate himself, to spread abroad his own fullness.  His purpose was for his goodness to over-spill his own Being, as it were.  He chose to create the heavens and the earth so that his glory could come pouring out from himself in abundance.  He brought a physical reality into existence in order that it might experience his glory and be filled with it and reflect it – every atom, every second, every part and moment of creation.  He made human beings in his own image to reflect his glory, and he placed them in a perfect environment which also reflected it.” Jonathan Edwards The End for which God created the World.

All He created was good so he did not create evil. Gen. 1

God created man with a free will to choose.  Man brought evil into the world – absence of good – not God by choosing to disobey God.  [Augustine/Justin Martyr]

In the garden man was sinless, eternal, lived and talked with God.  Creation was also perfect.  After the fall sin sculpted the world into a fallen place.

Man no longer was able to choose good solely.

Man’s nature changed in the Garden of Eden.  The knowledge of good and evil Adam received was passed down to his children in his changed nature.

‘He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked.’  He must cleanse his creation of the sin that man brought into it by destroying those who are not his.  The ones who rejected him because of their corrupt nature.

[Thought:  1^st Adam failed, 2^nd Adam (Christ) succeeded.   The apostle who failed was Judas resulting in his death, but the apostle who replaced him, Paul, succeeded and attainted life and brought many to the life.  Paul was the apostle that God had chosen to replace Judas not the one chosen by the eleven.  God did not instruct them to do that.  He said go and wait.]

God put the picture of His son’s salvation (he choose the elect from the beginning) into the world at creation because there is no future to God.  All time is the present for him so he saw all “before” it happened.  Christ’s coming to earth in the flesh shows it was not our bodies that sinned but our nature.  He had a body but was sinless.

When Christ came he began the redemption of the world.  The elect were saved and brought back into a relationship with God, given a nature to allow them to be able to choose God again but still deal with sin and live in a fallen world.

Christ was begotten (appointed) not made. He was appointed by God the Father to be a son and a priest after the order of Melchizedek.  He suffered on earth as we do so that he could show his perfect obedience and that obedience declared him perfect so that, because God the Father had appointed him the role of a priest like Melchizedek, he could go beyond offering sacrifice for our sins regularly as an earthly priest did but he could offer himself as the perfect sacrifice that could actually take away sins once and for all. (Heb. 5:5-9)

But our failure allows us to see His glory – his justice, mercy, steadfastness, patience, love, etc.  In His justice all sin needs to be condemned by a Holy God.  In His mercy some are saved.  If all were saved that would be contrary to His justice.  In His mercy some are saved, in his justice not all are saved.

We are his sparkling jewel, we are made glorious, not because of anything we did, no matter how wretched, but because we are made glorious because of our wretchedness and what it took to make us glorious – His death for us.  We shine out as His effort, what He has done for us makes us glorious.

God’s choosing of Israel and subsequent dealings with Israel show what man in his corrupt nature, without the Holy Spirit, who redeems our nature, does even when he receives blessings and care from God.  Our natures are corrupt with sin, unable to choose correctly and live for His glory despite his blessings and care (Jer.32:33) constantly turning their backs on Him.  His sending of the Holy Spirit gave us a new nature so we could make the choices that he requires and live for Him and His Glory and thereby witness to the world of Him.

God has always had a dwelling place among men.  In man's sin he dwelt in places apartment from man:  Garden of Eden, in the tabernacle, temple, then he dwelt among men in Christ, sent the Holy Spirit when Christ left, Holy Spirit dwells in the church, and then the New Earth.  The Church is the temple on earth (Churches are not those buildings on corners with steeples but His people congregated together.)  The Spirit of God dwells in us/with us with Christ  as the cornerstone.

Jesus undertook to bring me to glory personally.  The Father promised that He would give me to the Son to be a part of the infinite reward of the travail of His soul. (10/28)

I am His by His own sovereign choice, totally apart from any goodness in me, and he ordained me for eternal life.  But He not only choose me but purchased me with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ so that I am fully redeemed, marked with His blood, invisible to human eye but known to Christ, for the Lord knoweth them that are His.  He laid seige to ours hearts so that we gave up the world to follow Him. (11/15)

Suffering in this world is allowing us to trust in Him and build relationship with Him.  It witnesses to the world of His glory.  We are the antithesis to the world.  It is preparing us for our role in heaven.

Heaven is only temporary.  Those who are in Him go to an intermediary heaven awaiting the final time when Christ comes back and renews heaven and earth to the final regenerated world with the final regenerated man.  This will be our final home.

In the new heavens and new earth we are back to a sinless world/earth/creation where we are eternal, sinless and dwell with God.  The difference now is the process that had to be gone through to get there.  From Eden to the New Jerusalem we have seen the glory of God exposed to mankind and all creation and the Creation at the end is far more glorious having experienced the full love and redemption by its God.

The worship in heaven by angels is glorious.  But how much greater and glorious will be the worship when each creature that is doing so has their own unique story of what He has done for them.  Multitudes witnessing to his grace and mercy in their redemption by His own blood.
 

If the Garden of Eden was the beginning so what?

Reading the book "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn enlarged my view of the importance of the beginning and what it tells us about the end.  It also deepened my view of Christ and his plan for his created world.  There are many great things to learn from that book but the important thing he does is go into Scripture to see what God tells us about heaven and what it is like and what it will be like.  There are many more details that God has revealed about heaven than people have paid attention to.  It is a much more exciting picture of heaven from Scripture than most of us believe it will be.

But back to the beginning.  What Randy Alcorn shows us from Scripture is that Christ did not come to redeem his people alone but also his creation.  To redeem His people alone would have given over his creation to Satan. He began the work he accomplished on the cross by redeeming a people for himself but he will complete the work by redeeming the creation back to its perfection in the Garden of Eden before the Fall.  The full scope of history will be from the Garden of Eden, the fall of man into sin and the corruption of the world from that, Christ's redemption of his people and bringing them back into fellowship with him, then the final judgment and a final redemption of the creation bringing it back to the its state before the fall by cleansing with fire to become the new heaven and new earth.

I am so thankful to be chosen of God before the foundation of the world to receive the privilege of being his child, his redeemed, with the hope of living in the perfect redeemed world in his presence daily.  What an excellent future to give us hope in this world.

Genesis - beginning of what?

We had a discussion last night that led me to thinking more deeply about Genesis 1 and the creation. Genesis 1 is important because it is a foundation for all the rest of Scripture. What you  do with Genesis 1 determines what you do with the rest of Scripture. If it is not taken literally then neither is the rest of Scripture. God builds upon a foundation of solid rock not sinking sand or chaotic thousands of years.  That is not to say the everything is literal in the Bible such as Jesus being the door.  But Genesis is meant to be the foundation, the beginning so it means what it says.

What is most important about Genesis is that it is the beginning.  The very first thing He says is "In the beginning..."Beginning of what?  We focus mainly on that creation the light and dark, heaven and earth, vegetation, etc. But what was created first was a beginning.  It was the beginning of time.  God is timeless and lives outside of time.  The past and future are present for him.  But the creation was first and most importantly about the creation of time.  There was a beginning for the first time.  When Scripture says that "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8) that means that God is timeless and for Him, not us, one day or a thousand years, they are all the same for him.  But at the creation he created time as we know it.  He took a chaos and brought order.  He created time that was ordered as a 24 hour day, a 7 day week. It has not changed since that first day and will not change until the last day.

Beginnings

This blog is mainly for myself to give me a place to keep track of my thoughts. These thoughts are about how to find closeness to God and holiness in today's world.  These thoughts will be random but hopefully helpful to finding the meaning of holiness in this world before I know it perfectly in the next.