Gospel Liberation
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by Jason Park
When God Says ‘No’
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by Jon Buck
Yea more, with His own hand He seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, humbled my heart, and laid me low. "Lord, why is this?" I, trembling, cried; "Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?" "Tis in this way," the Lord replied, "I answer prayer for grace and faith.” "These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set thee free, and break thy schemes of earthly joy that thou may’st find thy all in me."
John Newton’s old hymn ‘I Asked the Lord that I Might Grow’ (his other title was ‘Prayer Answered by Crosses’) tells the story of his growth as a Christian. He comes to the Lord seeking to grow in grace and faith, confident that God’s answer would be to simply grant the request in some miraculous way.
Instead, the song explains that the Lord continued to block every well-laid plan. Everything seemed to go wrong, and Newton found himself humbled to the dust, broken and helpless.
God’s answer seemed to always be ‘No’.
In his anguish, Newton cries out to God and asks why all his best dreams were broken.
In a profound reply, the Lord explains that His purpose is to break Newton’s pride. If those prayers for grace and faith were simply answered arbitrarily, Newton would have been tempted to take credit for his spiritual achievements. His pride would have quickly inflated.
But when he had been crushed, and found no where else to turn but to Christ, Newton found true humility. He no longer could rely on himself or on his prayers, and was left to rely on Christ alone. This, and only this, is the path to true humility.
The Apostle Paul understood this in the exact same way. He told the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 12:1-10 that he pleaded with God to remove the thorn in his flesh. God’s answer was to say no in order that Paul would learn to rely on God’s grace.
God loves His children. When He says no to us, it isn’t to hurt us and destroy us, but to break us, and help us to truly grow in grace and faith. We cannot understand the power of grace until we are left with nothing else to rely on. And yet, as both Paul and John Newton discovered, this was the best place for them both!
Thoughts about God from Psalm 81, Part 3
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by Jason Park
Our third thought about God from this psalm is this: God desires to satisfy us.
As this psalm was written to commemorate the Feast of Tabernacles (at the grape harvest), the promise that God would “fill” Israel’s mouth carries a lot of weight (v. 10). God promises to physically sustain Israel in lavish and delightful ways. Verse 16 conveys these promises in greater detail, promises which are originally found in Deut 32:13-14.
And the key to receiving this blessing is true, spiritual obedience – obedience that says “No” to idols and “Yes” to faith in and love for God, who saved them and loves them. Obedience that’s not “pretend” but faith-grounded, love-fueled obedience in light of His grace.
Through such obedience, God promised to fill Israel’s mouths. He would feed His people “with the finest of the wheat” and satisfy all of them “with honey from the rock” (v. 16). Now, Christian saints aren’t promised physical blessings like these. But we are promised eternal physical blessings – preeminently, the blessing of a new body (1 Cor 15; Phil 3:21). In that new body, we will be perfectly outfitted to be and do what we were always meant to be and do: sinless children of God who are filled, fed, and satisfied by our God and Savior alone and who perfectly do all things for the glory of God.
So, God desires to satisfy His people comprehensively, to fill our hearts with joy and to keep us safe from idols because they hinder us from enjoying the intimacy that God wants with us.
No other god could fill our hearts. They all promise satisfaction but prove dead in the end. But God promises and delivers satisfaction on a scale and to a depth impossible to fully comprehend. That’s how much God loves us.
And it’s through Christ that we have the privilege of experiencing full satisfaction in God alone. By His death and resurrection, we are brought near to God to be satisfied in Him – spiritually now in tasting His gospel-goodness (1 Pet 2:3) and spiritually and physically then, as we taste heaven’s banquet (Rev 19:9) in new bodies, satisfied in all His glory and goodness, worshiping Him in everything we do.
So right now, be satisfied in God, not in idols. How though? By believing in who He is and the wonders of his past, present, and future grace. Then let all those truths one by one melt your heart with love that constrains you to genuine obedience. And then you will be satisfied with honey sweeter than you can imagine.
Our Union with God
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by Jon Buck
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” - 2 Cor. 13:14
As a follow up to yesterday’s sermon, I thought it might be helpful to consider another trinitarian text that shows our fellowship with the fullness of God.
As Paul closes one of his final letters, he speaks about the union that believers share with God. The sentence shows Paul’s understanding of each of the members of the Trinity in their relation to God’s people.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is an expression that Paul uses in Romans 16:20, and earlier in this book in 2 Cor. 8:9. Jesus shows grace to His people by offering Himself as a substitute for their sins, and caring for them.
The love of God is spoken of in many places in the NT. Paul speaks about the love of God being poured out in our hearts through the Spirit in Romans 5:5, and Jude appeals to his readers to remain in that love.
The fellowship of the Spirit is spoken of by Paul in Phil. 2:1, and expresses our awareness and enjoyment of the Spirit’s presence in our hearts.
All of these are offered freely to those who are God’s people. But what does it mean that Paul prays that these blessings would be ‘with you all’? If they’re freely offered, isn't that a foregone conclusion?
On the contrary, while Christ is always gracious toward His people, and God always loves His people, and the Spirit is always pursuing fellowship with His people, these things aren’t always experienced by us!
The issue, of course, is faith. These blessings are always flowing to us from God, but our experience of them (them being ‘with’ us) is contingent on our faith. We must believe these things, if we are to walk in them.
So - ask yourself: do I believe in the grace that Jesus has for me today? Do I trust that God loves me today? Am I conscience of the fellowship that the Spirit desires to have with me today?
Paul prays this, knowing that faith in these truths is the path to freedom, joy, and holiness.
Thoughts about God from Psalm 81, Part 2
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by Jason Park
The majority of Psalm 81 is God’s speaking to Israel, “My people” (vv. 8, 11, 13). His people had gone astray from the Law. His people had stopped listening to God and worshiped strange or foreign gods (v. 9). Israel had broken the first two commandments of the Decalogue.
And in breaking God’s law, they had also broken God’s heart. Whenever God’s people – whether Israel or the church – sin, it grieves Him. Psalm 78:41 says that Israel’s disobedience in the wilderness “pained” the Lord. Eph 4:30 says that our sins grieve the indwelling Holy Spirit. It pains Him so for many reasons – His holiness being one of them – but the language of pain and grief, lament-language, tells us how deeply God loves His people. So that when we sin against His goodness revealed in His Word, it hurts Him as a husband would be hurt if His wife betrayed Him. And that marital reality is the deeper truth behind our relationship to God. That’s why verses like Jeremiah 3:8-9 and Ezekiel 23 call sin, especially the sin of idolatry, “adultery.”
The God of the universe, eternal, self-existent, infinitely perfect in His character…this God sees us as His bride. Christ, of course, picks this up throughout the Gospels (cf. Matt 9:15; 25:1ff). And in Revelation 19:7-9, the heavenly assembly with the Lamb and all the saints (called “the bride”) is called a “marriage supper.”
Consider how deeply and intimately Christ loves us, identifies with us, and invests in us that we would be called His bride. The marital intimate love of the Father and the Son applied to our hearts by the Spirit secures us in joy, peace, and confidence before our Triune God forever.
So, this is why our disobedience stings His heart so. This is why in Psalm 81:8, 13, God pleads with His people to listen to His voice and obey Him, to hear His admonition (lit. “testimony”) against them and believingly obey Him. And this is God’s same heart sounding forth through the NT commands today: calling the Lamb’s bride, His beloved people, to not be stubborn in heart but to believe in Him and humbly and gladly walk in His ways.
It is our pleasure to do that for our Bridegroom. Christ has married us to Himself by dying for us on the cross so that we might be a purified bride beautiful in His sight and zealous for good deeds. Let this gospel-truth fill our hearts till we can’t help but do whatever it takes to not grieve His heart but to please Him.
Devotional on Love, Part 11 - Love is Not Irritated
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By Jon Buck
Thoughts about God from Psalm 81, Part 1
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by Jason Park
Puritan pastor Thomas Wilcox has a wonderful, gospel-rich sermon on v. 16 of this psalm. You can find it here: https://www.chapellibrary.org:8443/pdf/books/hoot.pdf
For my next few posts I want to focus on what Psalm 81 has to teach us about God and our relationship with Him. Why this Psalm? Because I just read it for my quiet time. And second, because it deals with idolatry, listening and obedience, and satisfaction in God – all of which seem so much more apt to our current season than ever before as we’re all being tested in our faith. Will we draw strength from Christ in our weakness or seek refuge in false substitutes? Psalm 81 points us to our Savior, especially when we find it hard to point ourselves.
So, the first thought about God that Psalm 81 offers us is this: It is only fitting and right to joyfully sing to God (vv. 1-3).
Asaph begins with a string of commands to praise God – to praise Him joyfully and with musical instruments (vv. 1-3). He specifically points to the trumpet-blowing statute for a feast day (vv. 3-5). Most likely, this was the Feast of Tabernacles (cf. Lev 23:33-36, 39-43; Deut 16:13-15).
The Feast of Tabernacles was associated with the grape harvest and marked the end of summer and the beginning of the rains. It was the last of the three great harvest festivals. It involved giving thanks not only for the harvest but for God’s delivering Israel out of Egypt. In commemorating God’s strength for them, it also reminded the Jews of how they were sustained by God in the wilderness.
So, in response to God being “our strength,” Israel was called to “shout joyfully to the God of Jacob” (v. 1). It’s a statute established by God as a testimony of God’s faithful power exercised graciously on Israel’s behalf (vv. 4-5). A command, yes. But one that was eagerly carried out by all who savingly trusted in God and remembered all He had done for them.
He delivered them, He sustained them…through countless trials and recurring sins. He was always their strength. What else could they, should they, do but out of glad love in their hearts, sing for joy to God? Not just sing about Him, but worship Him, love Him, enjoy Him? Praise befits such a God. And we know that because we’ve been delivered out of our sins and sustained in our salvation. Christ sanctified us, His people, through His own blood so that we might dwell with Him forever (Heb 13:12, 14)!
So then, what is the fitting and right response. It is this: “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that. Give thanks to His name” (Heb 13:15). It’s a command. But when you know Christ as your strength, it’s effortless to obey.
God’s Glorious Provision
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by Jon Buck
“He waters the mountains from His upper chambers; The earth is satisfied with the fruit of His works.” ~ Psalm 104:13
Yesterday I drove from California to Denver, CO. It was a beautiful trip, filled with a wide variety of landscapes.
The desert across much of California and Utah is filled with beauty—steep bluffs, distant views, and Joshua trees. This gives way to the western slope of Colorado, with beautiful views and steep canyons cut through by the Colorado river. Then come the Rockies, covered with pine forests with rocky peaks jutting out into the sky.
And beyond all this, in every location there is wildlife. Bugs, small reptiles, small mammals, larger predators. The earth is teeming with life—often life that no one will ever see.
The entire trip—all 1000 miles—is truly lovely. I spent the time admiring the views, and being stunned by God’s glory on display in creation. From massive panoramic views, down to the smallest bugs on tiny plants, He is majestically creative.
But these are not still images! The most marvelous thing is that He is constantly providing for all His creation. The earth finds its sustenance from His hand. This is, of course, clearly seen in the mountains, where the snow provides the moisture for so much plant life. David says that God waters the mountains from His chambers.
But even in the desserts, He is providing for the life He has created there. In fact, David tells us the earth and all that is in it is satisfied by His works. There are places that no human eye will ever see, but the Lord is providing for them every day.
God’s stunning provision all around us should remind us that the Lord will provide for us. Jesus reminded His followers of the same—God’s goodness and provision for the flowers and the birds are displaying His care for us as well. If He can do these majestic things with ease, how much more meet our needs day by day?
Devotional on Love, Part 10 - Love Doesn't Seek Its Own
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By Jon Buck
A Brief Theology of Work
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by Jon Buck
“…and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you…” ~ 1 Thess. 4:11
We are trained by our culture that we work in order to get something else. We work for the purpose of being able to afford rest.
This view of the world is incredibly broken, and it leads to a culture that idolizes rest. Vacations, breaks, time off, and maintaining are all important and good things. But the culture around us has made these things something to be pursued, and even at times, demanded.
In fact, the great ambition of our culture is to work hard enough, or earn enough to stop working.
Paul, on the other hand, appealed to the church in Thessalonica with a very different ambition. He instructed the church to aim at a quiet and humble life that was filled with work. The work was the ambition, so that there would be no needs.
Paul wasn’t condemning retirement or rest. He was showing the blessing of work.
Man was designed by God to work—Adam had responsibilities in the Garden of Eden. The pollution of sin tainted work, and made it hard, but didn’t remove the blessing of God upon it.
While rest, relaxation, and breaks are important, we need to guard our hearts against idolizing these things. God has designed us to be working beings, and we can aim to rejoice in our work for His glory!
God’s blessing and smiles are upon our vocation just as much as they are upon our vacation.
Unchanging
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by Jason Park
I can’t stand change. I like things “the way they are.” So, my idol is control, and God has been exposing just how deep my idolatry runs.
It seems as though nearly every week during this Covid-19 season there have been changes; changes to schooling, to dining out, to shopping, to church…changes abound. And it can be so taxing to the soul to have to navigate through all of them.
But it’s to my shame that I can be so burdened by change because God never guaranteed a change-free life. In fact, in a fallen world, I should expect change. Yet, I so easily believe that things will remain static, that once life is set a certain way, it’ll stay that way. And life may stay a certain way for a while, but inevitably, change comes. Decay happens. Death ensues.
In such a world, it can be deeply troubling to plant a spiritual flag in this life and build my little kingdom here. That just leads to disappointment at best, despair at worst. And this all surges in my heart when I forget that God is in control of all things and that He doesn’t change. In Psa 77, Asaph, in despair during a season of suffering, wondered if God had withdrawn His love and compassion. And when he thought that way, he says in v. 10 that it was his grief to believe that “the hand of the Most High has changed.”
What steadied his heart was to go back into personal and national history and remember God’s “wonders of old.” The holy God had worked wonders for His people: He redeemed them from Egypt, and He led them like flock through the seabed.
And so, Asaph teaches us that when changes interrupt your life and you’re tempted to fear, take a moment to consider the power and love of God for you. The same power and love that conspired to redeem your life from sin. The same power and love that always sustains us, moment by moment. God is unchanging. When you consider His promises to work all things together for our good, to never forsake us, and to love us, consider that these are unchanging. Rest your heart in them and experience His peace.
God’s gracious promises are the only sure things in an unsure world.
Paul’s Morning Routine
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by Jon Buck
“…the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” ~ Gal 2:20
Have you ever wondered what Paul’s life must have been like on a day to day basis? I sometimes find myself thinking about his morning routine, and what life on the road must have been like for him.
The New Testament doesn’t tell us much about what Paul did on a day to day basis. We know quite a bit about his travels. We also know that he preached long sermons (Acts 20:7-12). We know that he worked as a tent maker. But we don’t know much about his daily routine.
However, there’s one place where we hear something important about what protected Paul’s heart on a day to day basis.
In Gal 2:20, Paul talks about the life he lived ‘in the flesh’. In this context, Paul is referring to his daily life in his body.
Paul describes his daily physical life in spiritual terms. For him, what happened in his heart was the groundwork for his daily life. We know that because he says that every day was lived ‘by faith in the Son of God’.
He lived his daily life trusting in the Son of God and walking closely with Him.
And what was Paul specifically believing moment by moment of his earthly life? Two things—that Jesus loved him, and that Jesus died on the cross for him. Those two realities anchored Paul’s heart day by day.
We may not know what Paul’s daily external life was like, but we do know Paul’s daily internal life. He lived reminding himself every day of His Savior’s love, displayed through His death on the cross.
Devotional on Love, Part 8 - Love Is Not Arrogant
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By Jon Buck
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
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by Jon Buck
“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
~ Gal 6:14
We live in an age of substantial drama. Issues come at us 100 miles per hour, whether on social media, the news, or sound bites on the radio. We’re forced to consider and deal with a host of complex moral and societal realities in quick time succession. Often, we’re left with little time to process the event that has just flown by, before another one confronts us.
As we navigate these turbulent times, we may often find ourselves standing firmly on opinions we’ve formed on various issues. While this can be helpful, and is certainly important, Paul makes a remarkable point in Gal. 6:14.
He tells the Galatian church that, on the cross, he was crucified to the world, and the world to him. What’s his point here?
Paul is describing how he views the world around him. There were certainly political opinions in Paul’s day. There were riots. There were racial tensions. There were false ideologies swirling all around.
But Paul saw himself as dead to all those things. Nothing affects a dead man, and a dead man has little or no effect on the world. In other words, Paul saw himself as severed forever from all the intrigue of his day.
He wasn’t overly concerned about who the next Caesar would be. He wasn’t extremely concerned about the events that were around him, generally. Instead, Paul lived his life with a central aim—to proclaim and live out the cross of Christ.
For Paul, everything else took a FAR distant second place. Of course, he probably had a host of opinions about many topics. But those things were almost entirely unimportant in his eyes compared to the Gospel, the Church, and the Glory of Christ.
So…as we wade through the muck of our time, we need to ask ourselves, “Is the main thing still the main thing FOR ME?” If not, let’s look back to the realities of the cross, and remind ourselves that the world is dead to us, and we to it!
Remembering Their End
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by Jon Buck
“Then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched; and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.” ~ Isa. 66:24
During polarizing political times, we need to keep in mind the stunning reality that those who die without Christ will spend eternity in hell.
Notice - it isn’t those who die Democrat or Republican. It isn’t about your stance on any single political issue. While those things are important, the question is far simpler and more profound. The question is regarding the state of their soul.
Anger or Pity?
When we see unbelievers acting in really obnoxious ways, it can be easy to feel anger toward them for their failures. We can feel we have the political and moral high ground, and then act out that self-righteousness in anger.
However, the reality of Isa. 66:24 should always be in our minds. Their worm will never die. Their fire will never be quenched.
Just listen to that reality again and again. They will suffer pain and punishment for their sins FOREVER. Ought we not feel more pity for them than anger, no matter how distasteful their political views?
This doesn’t mean we can’t voice our disagreement. But our heart attitudes are important when it comes to expressing our opinions on political matters. Are we angry and disgusted? Or do we remember that without the Spirit, we were in the same boat, and instead feel pity?
Devotional on Love, Part 7 - Love Doesn't Boast
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By Jon Buck
Is God everything to me?
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by Jason Park
Sufferings reveal whether He is or He isn’t. When I suffer, I either doubt His goodness or I trust in it. I think Him far off, indifferent toward me or I sense His nearness and compassion. And if I’m not careful, I can feel as though living for God is all in vain, that being pure in heart is futile because…what good does that do me now.
Asaph felt all of that. He tells us as much in Psalm 73. He was envious of unbelievers who were living the good life while he and other believers were “stricken all day long” (v. 14) by the taunts, blasphemies, and evil actions of wicked men (vv. 6-9).
How did he get out of that downward spiral into unbelief and flight from God? He did it through worship; He came into the “sanctuary of God” and meditated on biblical truth. Truth about the end of all unbelievers. And truth about God’s grace and mercy toward him, even while he was acting like a senseless beast in his doubt and unbelief.
He realized by faith what was always true: he was continually with God, God was holding onto him and guiding his life, and God would take him to glory afterward. The circumstances and people didn’t change. Asaph’s perspective did. It changed by worship – by focusing his heart’s eyes on God. That led to his repentance from unbelief and faith in the goodness of God.
So, he ends Psalm 73 by declaring that God is all that He has and that besides Him, he desires – he takes pleasure in, he is satisfied by – God alone. He further declares that God is the strength (lit. “rock”) of his heart and his portion (“share” or “allotment” in life) forever…that the nearness of God is his good…and that he has made God his refuge so that he can tell everyone about God’s works, including helping him out of this spiritual rut.
If your heart and your flesh were to fail tomorrow, would you say that you have nothing but God? Would you say that You desire Him alone? Could you say that His nearness is the highest good? Psalm 73 says that you would…if you took your heart before the Lord, confessed your sin of unbelief, and by even the smallest and weakest faith worshiped God as you considered who He is and what He has done for you.
And He has done wonders for us, hasn’t He? He gave us His Son who died, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to Himself, not only as our God but also as our Father (1 Pet 3:18). There’s nothing sweeter and more radically soul-satisfying than that.
Crying Out
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by Jason Park