“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
John 1:1
“The Gospel of John, indeed the whole Christian faith, stands or falls with John’s opening sentence. Christ as deity, God as Trinity, man’s salvation – all depend on John’s first words.”
~ Sinclair Ferguson, In Christ Alone, 24
The Brazil Team has been working through AW Tozer’s life vows for our evening devotions the past five evenings. I’ve included the Scriptures that we studied as a team. God has shown us so much about our hearts and our idols! Pray for us as we take a look at vow #5 tonight… Never Accept Any Glory, because God gets it all!! Personally, I hope this is one we all learn more about and implement more and more every day!
#1 – Deal Thoroughly With Sin [Romans 8.5-13, Ezekiel 18.4, 20, Joshua 7]
#2 – Never Own Anything [1 Chronicles 29.10-13, Psalm 24, Matthew 19.16-30]
#3 – Never Defend Yourself [2 Samuel 16.5-14]
#4 – Never Pass On Anything About Anyone Else That Will Hurt Them [James 3.8-13, Proverbs 20.19, Galatians 5.22-26]
#5 – Never Accept Any Glory [1 Corinthians 10.31, Isaiah 43.6-7, 1 Peter 2.9-12]
“Affliction can sometimes prove a blessing to a person’s soul… There is nothing that shows our ignorance more than impatience under troubles. We forget that every cross is a message from God and intended to do us good in the end. Trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees. Health is a good thing, but sickness is far better if it drives us to God. Anything, anything is better than living in carelessness and dying in sin.”
~ JC Ryle
Our mission trip in Brasil is quickly coming to a close. We have two days left of our VBS at the Igreja Batista De Castro Alves here in south Sao Paulo. The words above are from our morning team devotions. God is doing great things in our team and many students are seeing Him “wean us from the world”! We pray that God changes our hearts. Without Him doing the work only He can do, we will come back unchanged. Pray with us and for us during these last few days that our eyes will see and our ears would hear, God would grant repentance and we would have hearts and affections that are truly changed.
“‘Come unto me,’ he says, ‘and I will give you.’ You say, ‘Lord, I cannot give you anything.’ He does not want anything. Come to Jesus, and he says, ‘I will give you.’ Not what you give to God, but what he gives to you, will be your salvation. ‘I will give you‘ — that is the gospel in four words.
Will you come and have it? It lies open before you.”
~ C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament, I:175. Italics original
(HT: Ray Ortlund)
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
1 Timothy 2:5
Jonathan Edwards says this about our great mediator:
The redeemed are dependent on God for all. All that we have–wisdom, the pardon of sin, deliverance, acceptance in God’s favor, grace, holiness, true comfort and happiness, eternal life and glory–we have from God by a Mediator; and this Mediator is God. God not only gives us the Mediator, and accepts His mediation, and of His power and grace bestows the things purchased by the Mediator, but He is the Mediator. Our blessings are what we have by purchase; and the purchase is made of God; the blessings are purchased of Him; and not only so, but God is the purchaser. Yes, God is both the purchaser and the price; for Christ, who is God, purchased these blessings by offering Himself as the price of our salvation.
(HT: Tim Challies)
Do you remember when life first entered your dead heart, when the chains of sin were broken, when the dungeon of your sin-dead life flamed with light? In those first days, weeks, months, Andrew Murray in Abide in Christ says, “you experienced that His word was truth; all His promises fulfilled; He made you partakers of the blessings and the joy of His love. Was not His welcome most hearty, His pardon full and free, His love most sweet and precious?”
Yet many lose the blessings they once enjoyed and the love and joy of their first days with their Savior becomes “faint and feeble”. Listen to Murray explain why:
“Often you have wondered what the reason could be, that with such a Savior, so mighty and so loving, your experience of salvation should not have been a fuller one. The answer is very simple. You wandered from Him.”
If your affections for our Savior are faint and feeble, if your joy in His saving love has waned, put off everything you are abiding in and abide in Christ. The power of sin has been broken, so take hold of the everything spiritual blessing God has gracious given His people in Christ. The gospel is not only the door to life with Christ, but also the power to abide in Him every day. We cannot do this in our own strength… all “this Jesus Christ himself alone must do by His Holy Spirit. But what I would fain by the grace of God be permitted to do is, to repeat day by day the Master’s blessed command, ‘Abide in me’”.
Let us abide in our great and glorious Savior today through the power of the gospel and with the help of the Spirit.
“God is the ultimate focus of Christ’s death on the cross. Yes, Jesus died for sins and for the unrighteous, but ultimately Jesus died for God and his glory. For when Christ brings us to God, he brings us into a right relationship with God. It’s as if the universe is set back where it should be – a relationship in which he is the center and we orbit around him in a safe proximity and nearness, a relationship in which his glory is the point and we find our joy and meaning in being a display of his worth rather than our own.”
~ Michael Lawrence, It Is Well, 215
When we find our joy and meaning in living as “a display of his worth rather than our own”, we do what we were created to do. We find ultimate joy when we decrease and He increases because He is the ultimate focus of everything. Though everything around us and everything within us tells us to put ourselves on display for all to see, Christ died so we could live for Our Father and His glory. When He is the center, everything is as it should be… even when thinking about the ultimate purpose of the cross.
“God creates everything for his glory… All of life and history is about glorifying God. My very reason for drawing breath today is to glorify God.”
~ Michael Lawrence, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church, 124-125
Why are you breathing today?
“He [Satan] would have us think that we’re better off without God, that our best interests are served by pursuing our own desires and enlarging our liberty from anything that would restrict us from fulfilling those desires. But Satan was lying on that day when he deceived Adam and Eve, and he is still lying. Satan intends our enslavement, not our freedom. He doesn’t intend to enhance our lives; he intends to hasten our death… Our ears need to be saturated with the Bible and our minds shaped by the worldview the Bible creates, so that we will recognize the lie when it’s whispered softly and sweetly in our ear.”
~Michael Lawrence, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church, 134
“Jesus’ body bore our sins on the tree, and it was a horrible, bloody, fatal, and physical reality. The New Testament tells us this to underscore the extent of the servant’s service on our behalf (cf. Phil. 2:5-11). Not only did he take the form of a man and humble himself to wear the garb of a servant, but he also became obedient. He even became obedient unto the ghastly death of the cross for our sakes. We see that the whole point was to emphasize how full, complete, and extensive was the servant’s obedience to the Father on our behalf. Even when his body is marred beyond human semblance, he bows himself down and says, “For the sake of the salvation of sinners, my Father, let your will be done.”
~ Sinclair Ferguson; Christ, the Sin-Bearer, in Atonement, 113-114
