Unrighteous sinfulness and Sinful righteousness

An oft-repeated scene in the New Testament- Jesus is sitting down to dinner with an assorted group of people and He insists on hanging out with those tax collectors and sinners.... The Pharisees and scribes bust in with grumbling asking Jesus and His disciples why they keep doing this. In Luke 5:31-32, Jesus tells us His reasoning- "And Jesus answered them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." (See also what Jesus said in Matthew 21:31)
      This is precisely the point Jesus was trying to get across with His parables in Luke 15- The Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin and The Parable of the Lost Son. (Also known as The Parable of the Prodigal Son). That parable would be better called The Parable of the Lost Sons, for both the younger and elder brother were lost and needed Father's forgiveness.
      And the Good News is that God our Father offers us absolution absolutely free- before we do anything. He gives us amazing love and grace for free. It's there for the taking. To be sure, the repentance follows afterwards- but it never precedes the accepting of God's hand-out of amazing grace. But the two brothers had two different things to repent of in the parable.
The younger son needs to repent of his unrighteous sinfulness and the elder son needs to repent of his sinful righteousness. (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10-11, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Romans 5:8, Romans 10:9-13)

(* I would be extremely remiss if I didn't acknowledge Rev. Tim Keller and his book "The Prodigal God" for informing and inspiring these observations. This post is largely the crux of his book. Do yourself a favour and go read it! :-))

The "Good Ol' Days" and The Glorious Day

       Don't ask, "Why were the old days better than today?" It's not good to ask such things.... (see Ecclesiastes 7:10-18 and chapter 12).... As Acts 17:24-28 tells us, God set men and women in history at exactly when and where He wanted them to be for His purposes.... (which doesn't mean that God won't move you at some point too though ;-))- But part of finding our identity in Jesus as His follower means being happy with who God made us to be- boy or girl, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, African descent, Indian descent, Caucasian, mixed, etc., Spanish, Trinidadian, American, German, Swiss, South African, Ukrainian, Argentinan, Brazilian, Eritrean, Japanese, Chinese, Australian, Indian, Senegalese, Antarctican, etc.- whatever the social class- whatever other label we put on each other....... God made us above all those things in His image (Genesis 1:26-31). And when we're in Christ, none of those things matter anyway! (Galatians 2:20, Colossians 3:1-4, John 13:34-35, Galatians 3:25-29) And as Colossians 3:11 says, "Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all."
    We are all infinitely important and infinitely loved by God. (Jeremiah 31:3) And we are all valuable in His kingdom, where the elder learns to serve the younger and the younger cares for the elder- where each thinks of others as better than themselves and each seeks to love each other truly and forgive from the heart...
     No, these aren't the "good ol' days"- but as I like to say, the only good ol' days this planet has ever seen were Genesis 1-2. We won't have any more truly good ol' days until Revelation 21-22 come to pass. But Jesus makes the in-between time more abundant when we follow Him, as John 10:10 says. :-) And during our faith journey with Him, He shapes us to be more and more like Him in character and empowers us with spiritual gifts to bring a touch of The Divine to a fallen world so badly needing of redemption. To be sure, the final Redemption culminates with the coming of The Lord- but until then, we're like the Planeteers with our power rings, sent forth to bring God's restoration to the world through our love and good deeds and sharing of the Greatest Love of all shown to us on the cross and in the empty tomb (Romans 5:8). And way better than Captain Planet, and the Avengers who "have a Hulk"- we have Someone Real Who can do something about our situation (Hebrews 11:1-6)- we have a Savior- Jesus Christ- Whom we eagerly await to come back from Heaven! We have The One Who alone bears the title of King of Kings and Lord of Lords! We have The One God Who holds all things together and by Him all things exist!
    Like DC Talk said, "God is doing a nu thang"- through His followers- His agents of change upon the earth. (Habakkuk 1:5) And as Jesus said in Acts 1:8 (in essence)- The Power is yours! :-) (So use His gifts and be His witness in all the world.)

Look On Up

         I just had an observation today. It's not meant as an indictment against anyone who enjoys watching television and movies, etc. (particularly since this is coming from someone who LOVES watching a ton of [albeit usually older ;-)] television shows and movies). It just is funny to me how branded properties become verbs over time- as in the way that one can now apparently "Google" something (and/or "Wikipedia" something- though one does not seem to too often "Yahoo" or "Bing" something, much less "Encyclopedia Brittanica" something or "various reputable print book, magazine and professional journal sources" something). [1 Thessalonians 5:21-22....but that's a separate post in itself.] And particularly the way that one apparently can now "Netflix" something. This reference works if one actually has Netflix access and/or is aware of how it works.
        Since I currently do not have television access whatsoever, I can definitely say that I haven't missed it. Yes, there are a very select few things I might like to watch- but nothing I can't do without. I was wondering though, why Netflix releases an entire season's worth of shows on one day. I suppose there is some convenience to that and it doesn't necessarily follow that one will or should or must watch them all in one day. (Though some may enjoy such marathons- again, I understand that and I've done some limited television marathons myself.) I guess I'm just saying that I find it a bit disturbing when people speak of terms like "binge watching". It seems there are very few things we should binge on- if anything, why not binge on God's Word and His creation?
Let me reiterate that I say all this as one who struggles with this myself- I'm not perfect or always good at this either. There is a certain pleasure and comfort in getting lost in such bouts of entertainment. But I want to make sure that I'm not so tied to the things of the world that I lose sight of the things of God.
"The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things."- Rich Mullins in "If I Stand".
          May my heart always be attuned to the only Giver of all good things' heart- and seek Him above anything else. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions- or in the abundance of his time watching televisions. (Luke 12:13-21) Let's be rich toward God always first- before laying up any treasure for ourselves on earth....some treasure is okay- but as I like to misquote .38 Special- "Hold on loosely to earthly gold- if you cling too tightly- you're gonna lose your soul. First, baby- seek kingdom of Jesus- and all that you need will be given." :-)
Teach me to count the days aright, Lord, so that I may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalms 90:12)
Before I get lost again in the impermanence of the finite, let me remember the infinite and work for that imperishable crown....May my tongue stick like peanut butter to the roof of my mouth if I forget Jerusalem and don't make her my highest joy....The joy of The Lord is my strength. I as your spiritual Gomer to Your spiritual Hosea- keep drawing me back from my whoredoms and let me feast once more on your flesh and blood, as a spiritual cannibal vampire might (even though I know that's a contradiction in terms ;-)). Thank You for Your love and sacrifice and New Life that grants me real life and life more abundant.
Help me and us all to keep looking to You above all- make You our highest joy- and Look on Up. :-)

Relient K | Look On Up (Official Audio Stream)

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The "Good Ol' Days"

(NOTE:  Okay- just a forewarning for those who mightst darest to readest this collection of words and punctuation marks (hopefully in some semblance of order.) This particular collection of my next two posts is composed from various writings from different time periods and kinda thrown together. It is on a range of topics that I have thought on at different times and as usual, I have a creative output post following. And as always, I trust everything I say and do is seasoned with grace and whether the preaching is in season or out of season that I'm always proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and God and speaking and living His truth in love. :-)

        So here's a quick catch-you-up catechism for you. (Hopefully it will lead you to proper theology and doctrine, but you probably don't need to use it as such. And I should probably not be using Catholic terms that my Protestant understanding is not as familiar with- lol. But I love my Catholic/Anglican peeps too- they have a lot of cool liturgical practices that I think we can learn a lot from.) Speaking of which, I had kind of an ecumenical experience when I went to an Episcopal church a while back to see Handel's "The Messiah" performed. AWESOME! I don't know if you're supposed to do this at an Episcopal church (but since it is certainly Biblical- Psalms 134:2), I was raising my hands in worship on the Hallelujah Chorus! The LORD God omnipotent reigneth forever! Jesus Christ- The King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Amen! :-) (I was just imagining singing that with billions of others before the glorious throne of the only Holy God for all eternity! One day- one glorious day! :-))

       I've said this before, but it bears repeating. I heard someone on the radio say, "We need Jesus now more than ever." And that's not really true. It implies that there's been a time when we didn't need Jesus as much, and that's not true either. I'm not trying to be a wiseguy about this, but there is an important point here. Sometimes people lament the state of the world today and say things were better back in "the good ol' days". What days were that? The days of war? The days of civil unrest? The days of hatred and murder? The days of disease and natural disaster? The days of dishonesty and theft? The days of sexual immorality? I think it's easy to gloss over history sometimes, particularly our childhood, since we generally weren't paying much attention to the news as kids and so just remember things as being good. (And remember what Ecclesiastes 7:8-10 says about this.) The truth is- things have been bad and are still bad. We are still living in a fallen world that will never be totally fair and right until the day of The Lord Christ! The only "good ol' days" we've had were from Genesis 1-2. It's all been bad since then. We won't have truly "good ol' days" again until Revelation 21-22.
Oh, curse-reversing day of Jesus! He completed the work at Calvary through His death and Resurrection. Through our faith, hope and love in Him we can join Him in His great Kingdom of love and light.