IF GOD KNEW HIS CREATION WOULD FALL WHY WOULD HE CREATE?

 If God is so loving and perfect, why would He create a world that is so fallen? A world that is so consumed by it's seemingly careless disposition towards Him?  Why did God create people who would ultimately reject Him?  Why wouldn't He create robots to love Him? For many years I struggled with this, and accounted it to the idea that God is so big it's impossible to understand.  So, I let the question slip from my study. A few years later, I remember listening to a sermon by pastor Timothy Keller, in which something Caught my attention.  He said, "God is LOVE",   boy did this hit me hard. I had heard this before, but it never caught my attention.  In this moment, I realized, that I had a fatal flaw in my understanding of God.  Love was not only an attribute of God, but God is Love. In almost all the major religions in the world, gods love is merely an action. But, the bible was claiming something completely unique to the Christian God. While God does love, He in fact is love. Not just an action, but also a "state of being". 

1 John 4:8 "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love"

1 John 4:16 "We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

Now, God is love, but we know that love is something that must be between two personal beings. If God is love, and love must be between two personal beings, then a problem arises. The problem becomes, if God is love, and love must be between to beings, then God was dependent on creating us for love.? Is God needy? This is where the TRINITY comes in, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit...three persons in one God. This is precisely where the beauty of "God is Love" comes into play. God is love, existing in three living loving personal relationships within Himself. God didn't create us to finally have someone to love Him. In fact, it's quite the contrary. God wasn't dependent on His creation for love, but the opposite is true, His creation was dependent on Him for love. God didn't create life in order to have love, He created life out of  love, that already existed within Himself.

As hard as we try, it is impossible to make someone love us. When God created the world, in order for the world to understand what love is,  He also created it with the possibility to rebel. For instance, God created Adam and Eve with the potential to sin, not with sin.  God knew the world would rebel against Him. We can see this clearly from Revelation 13:8 "All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain." This verse states that before the foundation of the world, God knew what is was going to cost Him in order to create us. And, in fact, before the foundation of the world the propitiation had already occurred.  So, God created us even knowing what it was going to cost Him, the ultimate highest price. So, if God knew that it was going to cost Him everything in order to create us, then why would he do it? God created us at such a high cost, so that we could have a relationship with Him, which would ultimately bring Glory to His Name. 

The beauty of the Gospel is incomparable...and the magnitude of this gift is unimaginable.  

Culturally Christian or Biblical Christian?

Over the past year as a nation we have seen a huge spike in the debate over marriage. It occurred to me some time ago when masses of people plastered their Facebook, twitter, and Instagram with pictures of the infamous = sign. For those of you who are unaware of the meaning of this sign, it was the HRC invention to get people to "paint the town red" with their = sign, in support of gay rights marriage. While the sheer number of people who partook in this campaign on social media shocked me. What really shocked me was "who" posted it in support. These so called supporters of the HRC campaign were also people who claimed Christianity as their worldview of "choice".


Before I continue, I want to make something incredible clear. I am by no means any better, or less in need of a savior than any person who adheres to homosexual activities. In fact, homosexual behavior is not some greater sin, but rather a sin resulting from a greater condition. This condition entered the world through Adam and Eve. God did not create sin, but rather created Adam and Eve with the potential to fall. And ultimately as a result of Adam and Eve's fall, sin entered the world, and in all creeping things that creep. So, just to be clear, I hold my homosexual friends to the same standard I hold myself to... because we both suffer from this condition of sin. We are not called to treat our homosexual friends any different than our non homosexual friends. But, that does not exclude them either, from being called into Church discipline. Matthew 18:15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother" the goal of this is to bring your brother or sisters sin to restoration.


The bible clearly teaches from beginning to end that marriage is between a man and a woman.


Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." 2:19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. 2:21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 2:22 The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. 2:23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." 2:24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. 2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.


So, why have so many people who claim Christianity to be true insist on siding with culture. Ravi Zacharias said it this way, "I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out." The Church has become complacent on ideas that are counter cultural. To the Christian, the bible should be his or her ultimate authority. But if you ask the common church goer today to give a brief overview of what it means to be a Christ follower, and be prepared to be shocked about how little they seem to know. A couple of days ago, I had the privilege of reading Martin Luther King's letter which he addressed to his clergymen while he was imprisoned in Birmingham. I was in tears at points when he talks about the complacency of the church.


Here is a brief look at what he had to say, "Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust."


Have we become a "irrelevant social club with no meaning"? As a Christ follower my plea to anyone who claims Christianity is pick up your bible and examine what the spoken word of God says. If we continue to bastardize the truth of the gospel, I'm uncertain that we ever really truly understood it. The reality is that even an atheist, pantheist, buddist, and agnostic can live as a cultural Christian. But, to live under the authority of Gods spoken word,  only a True Christ follower can assert. So as a group of believers we need to be ready to step aside from the culture, and suffer for what the gospel teaches us. Lets stop living as cultural Christians, and start living as biblical Christians. Paul says it best in Philippians 3:7-21




3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 3:10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 3:11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 3:15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; 3:16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

3:17 Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. 3:18 For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, 3:19 whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; 3:21 who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.




May all glory be to God on High

JD

Is there room for God in science?

For the past 10 years I've had the privilege of working with high school students through a ministry called Young Life. Young Life is a ministry where leaders build relationships in hope of sharing the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ with them. Through building relationships over the years I have been asked many questions...questions like who is God? where did I come from? who is the author of the Universe? what is my purpose? where did God come from?  Can these forever old questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny be explained exclusively by science? There is no question to how successful science has been over the years, and as a result we are seeing more and more people jumping on the new atheist train. Many leading scientists claim that as a result of today's science there is no need for God.  They say it is entirely possible to explain the cosmos if full through science.  There is obvious proof that God is surely misunderstood this day and age, but is new age science and atheism vastly misunderstood as well?  What I find extremely intriguing is the fact of history.  If we take a look back into the 16th and 17th centuries we see that most of the leading scientists were also believers in God. 

How C.S. Lewis viewed this very idea:

"Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in 

Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be 

interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant 

developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the 

claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we suppose to the end of the Scientific Age."

Today, we are taught that through science we can explain the universe. We can understand the truth of the universe by understanding the principles that science teaches us.  This unfortunate misunderstanding is so vast among people today.  For instance we are told that science explains what gravity, time, and energy are.  But if you begin to unpack this statement it's so clearly false.  Science doesn't actually know what gravity, time and energy are. Many of these new atheists believe that God limits science, but does it? Can science explain what to do when we see a person drowning in a river? No, but God can. Can science explain what is deserved of a child rapist? No, but God can. So in the realm of ultimate reality which stance limits our understanding of the universe? Which view is the reductionist view? I would argue that the full potential of science can only be understood from the biblical perspective of the God of the Bible.  For instance when we ask the atheist if science can explain what preceded space, time, energy, and matter...they respond well science can't explain that yet. And usually in response they ask the question, "Well if God created the universe what created this God?" they deduce that because God exists something had to create God, and  therefore its nonsense...God cannot exist. Now, lets take a deeper look at this.  What they assume by asking the question "what or who created the creator"...is that the creator must be created.  To almost all religions in the world this question would stump them...but to the God of the bible this question does not apply because He is an UN-created creator. As John puts it in John 1:1-3 "all things were made through him, and without him not anything was made." This implies that all things were made by God and without Him nothing was made...therefore making Him a God with no beginning. In other words if God is responsible for all things being made...and nothing that came into being was made without God, the deduction is that God could never come to be...and if God is and could never come to be, He must have always been with no beginning. So as we look back at the questions asked through the view of the Christian world view, the question isn't who created the creator because the God of the bible was never created...but to the atheistic worldview the question of what preceded is reduced to I don't know.  You see a world view that says science can answer all the questions...therefore there is no room for God is actually a very reductionist world view. While a world view that says science through the realm of the Christian God is actually magnified. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.(John 1:1-3, ESV)

Why atheism falls on its face!

A new trend is beginning to pick up amongst young people, Naturalism. Naturalism is the idea that the observable world is all there is. Naturalism rules out the possibility that any "supernatural" events exist within the universe. The most common school of thought that accompanies naturalism is the atheistic world view. Atheism by definition means, "not believing in a god or gods, knowing that there is no evidence for god(s) and no reason to believe in theism". There are many reasons why atheism is an absurd school of thought. First and foremost, to say there is no god would require infinite knowledge of all things. Dr. Ravi Zacharias puts it this way, "To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge." Saying this is a contradiction in itself, and beyond the contradiction it's perhaps the most narcissistic/ arrogant thing you could say.  Now, the true chink in the armor of atheism/naturalism  lies in the realm or morality. There is no moral law in atheism! You might be asking yourself, well why isn't there moral law in atheism? The reason there is no moral law in atheism, is because moral law invokes a moral law giver. Logic works this way, if you were to assume evil exists, then by default good must also exist. Therefore, if God doesn't exist neither does moral law. And if moral law doesn't exist, neither does good and evil.  Therefore, morality can only be real if there is a lawgiver. Many problems arise with a lack of morality. A morality-less society cannot discern what's permissible and what's not. Atheists have taken the view that if you want to be free life has to be meaningless. A well known atheist Aldous Huxley put it this way, "I wanted to be liberated therefore I had to adopt the philosophy of meaninglessness.". If life truly is meaningless, then the statement can be made that nothing is "absolutely wrong". Is murder always wrong? Is rape always wrong? Is it always wrong to run someone off the road because he's driving too slow? Without morality you don't have any basis for saying something is wrong. The truth is that most people know what's right and what's wrong...It's written on their hearts!!! Whether they admit it or not God has made it evident to all people what's right and wrong. Even though atheists take the view that life is meaningless...doesn't change the fact that life has meaning and purpose. Outside the truth of Jesus, there are no answers. He is the way the truth and the life, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" John 1:1.  Timothy Keller has a great sermon that highlights the loaded word "Logos" which is the Greek term John used for "Word" in John 1:1. Logos means the reason for something, so "In the beginning was the reason for life, and the reason for life was with God, and the reason for life was God". The reason for life was is and always will be God.  I'll conclude with yet another awesome Dr. Ravi Zacharias quote:

"I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest Universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts.
He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.”
I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?”
He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.”
I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?”
He said, “That is correct.”
I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?”
All of a sudden there was silence.
You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry"

Glory be to God

What is God about?

As a young Christ follower I  believed everything I heard. I never took the things I heard and tested them against scripture to see if they lined up...One of the most common phrases I heard was, "God is all about us".  Naturally I liked the sound of that...it had a good ring to it. I loved the idea that God was all about me, and that he obviously created me awesome so that I could boast of my awesomeness.  So as my new found life continued...a couple years and hundreds of Christian inspiration books later, I decided it might be a good idea to pick up my bible.  The idea of "God is all about me" now translated into how I read my bible. I would insert myself into almost every scenario I could put myself in. I found tons of scripture to support the idea of how "God is for me", but the interesting thing is somehow I felt so prideful.  I was so proud that God loved me...the more I inserted myself into scripture the more prideful I was becoming. The more I opened my bible the more the Holy Spirit began to reveal the truth to me. He revealed to me the bible is not about me, and for far too long I had been reading it that way. Yes, God is for me! Yes, God loves me! But there was a clear motive for why HE DOES. What I began to realize is that God is for God ultimately, and that His motive behind all of His love for me is for HIS NAMES SAKE. God created me for His glory!

Psalms 23  

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake."

John 7:18

"The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood."

Matthew 5:16
"In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

 Isaiah
God created us for His glory
God called Israel for His glory.
God rescued Israel for His glory.
God defeated Pharaoh, for his glory.
God spared Israel in the wilderness, for his glory.

Romans 25-27
"whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith."

 Rev 21:23-27

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. 

Again and again God reveals that all things are for His GLORY...including why He loves us so much.

 John Piper says it better than I ever could, "God’s God-centered Love Is the Greatest Love for Us
Why does God remind us over and over that he makes much of us in a way that is designed ultimately to make much of him?
The answer is this: Loving us this way is a greater love. God’s love for us, that makes much of us for his glory, is a greater love than if he ended by making us our greatest treasure, rather than himself. Making himself our end is a greater love than making us his end. The reason this is greater love is that self, no matter how glorified by God (Romans 8:30), will never satisfy a heart that is made for God.
God loves his people infinitely. He sent his Son to die that he might have us, and that we might have him (1 Peter 3:18). He will not let us settle for wonderful and happy thoughts of self. Not even a saved, glorified self. He will not let our glory, which he himself creates and delights in, replace his glory as our supreme treasure. That would not be love.
We are loved by God. We are precious to God, and the greatest gift he has for us is to not let our preciousness become our god. God will be our God. God alone, forever. And this is infinite love.
When we experience this love deeply—when we are compelled by this love in everything—God is greatly glorified."


TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!!