Did God Love Me Because He Saw What Others Couldn’t?

Mike Leake 2 Comments

I hate to admit that I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the guy who took down Don Zimmer, but it’s true. I always loved watching Pedro Martinez pitch. In an age when most pitchers seemed afraid to use the whole plate, Pedro refused to surrender the inside half. He pitched aggressive, and he pitched inside.

Given my penchant for biographies it was a given that I’d buy Pedro’s autobiography when Amazon put it on sale for $1.99. I was surprised to learn that many of the coaches in the Dodgers farm system didn’t like Pedro’s stuff. At the moment of decision, when the Dodgers were to decide if Pedro would ever make it to the big leagues, Martinez was standing outside a window listening in. This is what he heard:

Each time I heard one of the coaches find a new phrase to describe how I was a scraggly, no-good, never-amount-to-anything piece of nothing, it felt like a machete took another hack at the branch I was standing on….Then I heard a voice, a high-pitched voice, cut through the others and halt my fall.

“He’s got the heart of a lion.”

Eleodoro Arias was speaking. Unmistakably Eleodoro. (From Pedro, 15)

As I read through this I thought about how believers of all people should be like Eleodoro—seeing things in people that nobody else sees. I think of folks like the woman at the well. Everybody else had given up on her. She was a lost cause. But Jesus saw something other people didn’t see.

Or did he?

Is that really the story of the gospel? Is it really that Jesus sees things in believers that we cannot see? Or that he doesn’t give up on us because he can see that somewhere inside of us we’ve got the heart of a lion?

I just finished preaching through Ephesians 2 and one of the major points was that our redemption isn’t dependent upon our character—it’s founded upon who God is. That is really great news. Consider what Sam Storms says on this point:

When we say to Jesus: ‘Who were we that led you to do this for us? Jesus does not then says: ‘You were a treasure hidden to yourself but seen by Me. When we ask, “Who were we that led you to do this for us?” the only answer is: “You were hell-deserving rebels who had no claim on anything in Me other than to be the recipients and objects of eternal wrath. I did this for you not because you were a treasure or because of anything in you; indeed it was in spite of what was in you. I did this for you solely because of what was in Me, namely, sovereign and free and gracious love for those who deserved only to be hated.”

This is hard truth for us to swallow at first. I want to believe that God’s love for me is based upon things within me—things like my “heart of a lion”. But once I start to choke down this truth it become absolutely beautiful and liberating. My performance and my character is prone to change. My heart at times is prone to wander. But God’s character is unchanging. That my redemption is grounded in His character means that my redemption is firmly fixed. His affections for me aren’t going to wax and wane based upon my performance—instead it is based on who He is.

There is something to be said for being like Eleodoro and seeing character in folks when nobody else can see them. But that’s not grounded in some silly idea of the innate greatness of humanity. Such a thing is grounded in the unfathomable power of a God who awakens the dead—a God who takes hell-bent rebellious sinners and makes them joyously free worshippers.

God’s love is based in God—and this is phenomenal news.

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Photo source: here

On The Crucifixion

Nick Horton

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
See Him dying on the tree!
’Tis the Christ by man rejected;
Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He!

This past Sunday my Pastor preached on the crucifixion of Christ from the Gospel account of Matthew. I was struck by a few things in the account and Tim’s sermon that I think it worth dwelling on.

Darkness

For three hours while the Lord of Glory hung on that cross there was darkness over the land. This was no ordinary man who lay dying on a cross. Similarly it was no ordinary suffering that he experienced. We tend to dwell on the physical suffering of Christ which are drawn out more in the other gospels. We focus on the agony of the scourging and I’m sure many preachers have rightly expounded on the nature of scouring or the brutality of it in Roman punishment. We agonize over our Lord’s suffering and bleeding as he carried the cross after such rough treatment until Simon of Cyrene was made to help him.

Then we get to the actual crucifixion. The horror of having nails driven through hands and feet in order to affix Christ to a wooden cross. Can you imagine the agony? I wince at paper cuts or smashing my thumb with a hammer. How much more had I been nailed to a piece of wood? And then… as they raise the cross and it drops into a hole in the rock, to have your body tugging at those nails as your weight comes crashing down on them. I cannot bear the thought of it!

Yet that doesn’t scratch the surface of what Christ suffered that day. In ways we don’t fully understand or comprehend, Christ bore the wrath of God for the sins of all who would believe. If you have repented and believed on Christ, he bore your sins. He bore my sins. Whereas we deserve eternal punishment, he took the wrath reserved for us. I think that darkness signifies the wrath of God being poured out on Christ. A supernatural phenomena that could be observed that pointed to a spiritual event that could not.

Impact

Then, Christ died. The very Son of God physically died. Again, this was no ordinary death! God shook the Earth and split rocks. Has that ever happened when anyone you knew died? Don’t overlook it!

The curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. God tore the curtain which separated the holy of holies, God’s earthly throne, from the domain of man. The separation from God had been torn down! Christ, our great High Priest, opened the very presence of God to us through his atoning death. No longer do we need Earthly high priests who need atonement for their own sin to be our mediator with sacrifices that could not atone for our sin. Now, our High Priest, Jesus Christ the righteous, has atoned for our sins once for all and ever lives to intercede for us. (Read the book of Hebrews!)

The Centurion standing watch and those with him saw the events of that day and confessed.. “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27:54) No man ever before or since has died this way. All of creation attested by the mighty hand of God that this was the Son of God.

So What?

John Stott has three applications that are worth musing over. In light of the Cross;

  1. Our sin must be extremely horrible.
    • Our sin necessitated a punishment that we cannot bear and live. It is horrible. Do you hate your sin? Do you see what Jesus Christ endured to atone for it?
  2. God’s love must be wonderful beyond our comprehension.
    • How amazing that God endured it! He did not have to. What love! that our God bore our sins in his body on the tree.
  3. Christ’s salvation must be a free gift.
    • If it is not free, then why must he suffer and die for us? If we can earn it, why did he do anything on our behalf? We cannot earn it because he earned it. “It is finished.”

 

Do you believe?

Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed!
See Who bears the awful load!
’Tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of Man, and Son of God.

Here we have a firm foundation,
Here the refuge of the lost.
Christ the Rock of our salvation,
Christ the Name of which we boast.
Lamb of God for sinners wounded!
Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
Who on Him their hope have built.


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The quoted lines at the beginning and end are from Thomas Kelly’s hymn, “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted.”

Today in Blogworld 05.17.16

Mike Leake

Why #GiveElsaAGirlfriend Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

Already thinking through how we will explain this one to our daughter

10 of the Best Free Puritans Books for Kindle

Though he might stretch the word Puritan a bit far historically, these are really great books for free. I’ve actually read all ten of these. My favorite is Sibbes.

5 Questions to Ask of a Book Before You Read It

I appreciate the work that Tim has done here. I think it’s also really careful to understand what he is not saying. He’s not saying that if a book passes these “tests” that it should be blindly read. Nor is he saying that if a book fails it should never be read. His questions are helpful for placing the book.

Puritans on the Potomac

I enjoyed this article on Capitol Hill Baptist Church

Watching a LEGO get crushed by a hydraulic press is strangely fulfilling:

Thoughts on the Depression as Diabetes Metaphor

Mike Leake 1 Comment

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

I’ve shared with you my struggles with depression and darkness. It’s no fun when the lights begin flickering and my mind becomes an enemy. Eventually the lights come back on and I treasure the light even more. As I’ve written before, I’ve found that when the lights are on is the time to do fierce battle, so the times of darkness aren’t nearly as intense.

There is one metaphor that I’ve found to be incredibly unhelpful. It’s unhelpful because it is incomplete. It is the idea that depression is like diabetes. This metaphor is given in an attempt to help people not feel so bad about themselves for depression. You don’t shame someone with diabetes, you acknowledge that they’ve got a medical condition. You take medicine to help with the problem and you move on. That’s fair enough but the metaphor usually doesn’t stop there when you are battling depression.

Let’s set aside for a moment all the arguments about psychotropic medicine. Assume for the sake of argument that depression is a medical condition just like diabetes. What I’m arguing today is that if you use that depression is like diabetes metaphor you need to fill it out a bit more.

Imagine with me a woman who has been diagnosed with diabetes. She is now put on meds to get her disease under control. Is that the end of the story, though? What if she keeps eating Snickers candy bars, potato chips, and drinking Mountain Dew? Or rather than fighting the disease with things like exercise she develops an even more sedentary lifestyle? Is such a woman blame-free? Is diabetes the only problem—or is her very real biological problem compounded by lifestyle choices?

We must think of depression the same way. And while we make every effort not to shame people for having mental health issues we really need to be cautious in that we don’t at the same time give them permission to not fight it. Even if it is proven that things like depression are exactly like diabetes, it still does not mean that we don’t fight. It doesn’t mean that I’m somehow blame-free if I cave in to my desires for inactivity. Inactivity will kill a depressed person but it is the very thing that you’ll want to do. Just like a woman with diabetes might intensely crave the sugar that would kill her.

So, if you must use that diabetes metaphor at least encourage the depressed person to fight in the same way you’d encourage a diabetic to battle with their diet, exercise, etc.

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Photo source: here (Sorry I couldn’t miss the chance to use a photo of Wilford Brimley while talking about diabeetus)