Because we experience God’s mercy everyday, most of us grow to take it for granted.

The following is an abbreviated version of a story from R.C. Sproul’s book The Holiness of God. While his words are better, I cut some detail to fit my self-imposed word count parameters.

“I had the assignment of teaching a freshman Old Testament course to 250 students at a Christian college. On the first day of class I went over the course assignments carefully. This course required three short papers. I explained . . . that the first paper was due on my desk by noon the last day of September. No extensions would be given except for students who were physically confined to the infirmary or who had deaths in their immediate family.”

“On the last day of September, 225 students dutifully handed in their term papers. Twenty-five students stood, quaking in terror, full of remorse. . . . I bowed to their pleas for mercy. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a break this time. But, remember, the next assignment is due the last day of October.’”

“The students were profuse in their gratitude and filled the air with solemn promises of being on time for the next assignment. Then came the last day of October. Two hundred students came with their papers. Fifty students came empty-handed. They were nervous but not in panic. When I asked for their papers, again they were contrite. Once more I relented. If you are late for the next paper, it will be an F.”

“[O]n the last day of November . . . one hundred and fifty students came with their term papers. The other hundred strolled into the lecture hall utterly unconcerned. . . . I picked up my lethal black grade book and began taking down names.” [He started marking an F for each student who did not have the paper.]

“The students reacted with unmitigated fury. They howled in protest, screaming, ‘That’s not fair!’”

[Sproul responded,] “I see. It’s justice you want? I seem to recall that you were late with your paper the last time. If you insist on justice, you will certainly get it. I’ll not only give you an F for this assignment, but I’ll change your last grade to the F you so richly deserved.”

“The student was stunned. He had no more arguments to make. He apologized for being so hasty and was suddenly happy to settle for one F instead of two. The student had quickly taken my mercy for granted. They assumed it. When justice suddenly fell, they were unprepared for it. It came as a shock, and they were outraged. This, after only two doses of mercy in the space of two months.

R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, 124-26.

Too many of us expect God’s mercy at every turn and protest in the face of justice. We forget that while God is bound by His holiness to maintain justice, He is never obligated to grant mercy. That’s precisely why it’s called mercy.

Take a moment to ponder the ways God has withheld (or is withholding) the F you deserved. And once again appreciate the wonder of God’s mercy.

So much of what Jesus said and did shattered the spiritual and religious concepts of 1^st century Judaism. Even a cursory reading of the Gospels reveals the enormous rift between Jesus and the Pharisees in the way they viewed God. Perhaps no aspect of Jesus’ understanding of God was more revolutionary than His insistence that God was His Father and could be our Father.

God as Father was foreign for them and it seems is somewhat foreign to many people today. But as J.I. Packer points out, our adoption as sons is a crucial aspect of our new relationship with God.

“If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 201.

Consider of few of Packer’s thoughts about adoption…

-         “Adoption… is the highest privilege that the gospel offers” (206).

-         Adoption provides the lens through which the “entire Christian life has to be understood” (209)

-         It “shows us the greatness of God’s love” (214).

-         It “shows us the glory of the Christian hope” (216).

-         It “gives us the key to understanding the ministry of the Holy Spirit” (219).

-         It “shows us the meaning and motives of “gospel holiness” (221).

-         It “gives the clue we need to see our way though the problem of assurance” (223).

-         “Adoption… is the basis of Christian conduct” (210).

-         “Adoption… is the basis of Christian prayer” (211).

-         “Adoption… is the basis of the life of faith” (212).

Much like the Pharisees, our struggle to live in right relationship to God may very well stem from our inability to grasp the magnitude of our adoption as children of God.

From the daily web devotional published from his writings, we get a gem regarding leadership. As my friend Curt suggested, think of the contrast between his view and the contemporary ideas about leadership.

“I believe that it might be accepted as a fairly reliable rule of thumb that the man who is ambitious to lead is disqualified as a leader. The Church of the Firstborn is no place for the demagogue or the petty religious dictator. The true leader will have no wish to lord it over God’s heritage, but will be humble, gentle, self-sacrificing and altogether as ready to follow as to lead when the Spirit makes it plain to him that a wiser and more gifted man than himself has appeared.

It is undoubtedly true, as I have said so often, that the church is languishing not for leaders but for the right kind of leaders; for the wrong kind is worse than none at all. Better to stand still than to follow a blind man over a precipice. History will show that the church has prospered most when blessed with strong leaders and suffered the greatest decline when her leaders were weak and time serving. The sheep rarely go much farther than the Shepherd.”

Read the full entry on the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s website.

From C.S. Lewis…

“It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began . . . Pride always means enmity - it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that a people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves so religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: Collier Books, 1986), 96.

That last description hits close to home as it sounds like the masses that flock to 21^st century churches.

Do you know anyone who seems religious and yet is eaten up with pride? They unashamedly pursue personal gain. They have contrived of a god who will accept and even glory in their pursuit of themselves. Ouch.

Do these statements describe you?

The following is a classic paragraph from C.S. Lewis great book, Mere Christianity. In it he provides a succinct objection to the position that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher.

If you have never read much of Lewis’ work, this quote exposes the genius and clarity of his writing. Perhaps better known in our culture for his The Chronicles of Narnia, modern readers would do well to invest several hours into digesting this book. I only hope this quote whets your appetite for more.

Enjoy.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Collier Books: New York, 1986), 40-41.

In case you have never heard them before, today I share some interesting thoughts about missions and its place in the order of life and ministry.

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.”

From John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, 2003, p. 17.

When worship is rightly understood, Piper argues, it becomes the fuel and goal of missions. Therefore, missions is secondary and worship is primary. So we might ask…

• What is the ultimate goal of our missions endeavors? Man’s salvation or God’s glory?
• What provides the fuel for our missions endeavors? Man’s salvation or God’s glory?

Today I return to Knowing God (the book by J.I. Packer that I pleaded with you to read a few days ago) to provide the 5 basic truths that form a foundation for our knowledge of God.

These truths are important in the same way an alphabet is important to written language. Without a common, objective foundation of symbols (we call them letters), written language is nonsense. In order for the words and sentences and paragraphs to carry meaning, the basic building block of letters must carry precise, universal meaning.

Likewise, without a common, objective foundation of truth, information about God is incomprehensible. In order for us to gain a proper understanding of his love and justice and wrath, we must grasp and trust the basic building block truths.

1. God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise to salvation.[1]
2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections is all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him.
3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly.
4. God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.
5. Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in light of God’s Word. This, and nothing else, is true religion.

Again, more than the alphabet for reading, these truths are essential for any pursuit of knowledge about God. Lay these truths aside and you cannot know Him. Manipulate or ignore any part of this foundation and you will find yourself seeking someone or something other than God. Because only on this foundation will the details of God’s nature and character become coherent.

Examine these statements. They are highly controversial in our culture. And know that if your view of God veers from these truths at any point, you do not know him accurately and you cannot know him well.

From one of the best books of our generation by one of the great theologians of our generation, the following quote reveals why this 30-year-old book is still so widely read and appreciated.

“It is not for us to imagine that we can prove the truth of Christianity by our arguments; nobody can prove the truth of Christianity except the Holy Spirit, by his own almighty work of renewing the blinded heart. It is the sovereign prerogative of Christ’s Spirit to convince men’s consciences of the truth of Christ’s gospel; and Christ’s human witnesses must learn to ground their hopes of success not on clever presentation of the truth by man, but on the powerful demonstration of the truth by the Spirit.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 71

Packer’s words about God’s sovereignty in salvation actually compel me to share the gospel every time I read them for at least two reasons.

First, God’s sovereignty eases the pressure I feel to “convert” people. I find great comfort in remembering and pondering “the sovereign prerogative of Christ’s Spirit” to save. I share and God saves.

Second, God’s sovereignty gives me great confidence. I am so thankful a person’s salvation is NOT dependent on my cleverness or ability to prove truth of the gospel. Again, I share and God saves.

Betsie ten Boom lived in Holland with her father and more well-known sister Corrie at the time of the Nazi occupation during World War II. All three were imprisoned and the ladies eventually taken to a concentration camp. Betsie and her father died in earthly captivity. After years of imprisonment, Corrie was released and later wrote much about her family’s experiences in the popular book, The Hiding Place.

Prior to their arrest, they lived out their Christian faith by providing refuge for people who were hiding from the Nazi oppressors. For more than a year this family housed as many as seven people illegally. As the ten Booms ministered to these Jews and members of the Dutch underground, they trusted God in remarkable ways.

One night Betsie and Corrie awoke as German and English planes were fighting over their city. They huddled downstairs drinking tea until the commotion subsided. As Corrie climbed back into bed she cut her hand on a piece of shrapnel that had fallen through the roof and landed on her pillow. Racing back downstairs to Betsie for help, she couldn’t help but think of what might have been.

But before she could finish her sentence, Betsie stopped her cold with the life-altering application of a powerful truth…

“There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety. . . . Let us pray that we may always know it!”

Betsie ten Boom, quoted from Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, 70

Do you worry about the ‘if’s’ in life? Or do you trust completely in the safety of God’s sovereignty?

The following paragraphs are pieced together from the opening pages of an amazing book.

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. . . . [Cheap] [g]race is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. . . .

“Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as a Christian ‘conception’ of God. . . . [Cheap grace] amounts to justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. . . .

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. . . .

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. . . .

“Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son. . . . Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. . . .

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1995, 3-5.

Cheap grace is wildly prevalent IN the Church today. Costly grace is wildly prevalent IN the Bible. Which grace is prevalent in your life?