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Snippets: Low Self-Esteem is Not Humility (1 Samuel 15)

Note particularly vv. 17 and 24:

17 And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. 18 And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ 19 Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” 20 And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. 21 But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” 22 And Samuel said,

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has also rejected you from being king.”

24 Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. 25 Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord.” 26 And Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you. For you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:17-26).

Saul had low self-esteem. Yet he was not humble. In fact, his low self-esteem inspired him to exalt himself in a heinous act of disobedience. Because he thought of himself in low terms he was a people-pleaser. He ‘feared the people and obeyed their voice’ rather than obeying God.

You make think that you are being humble by patting people on the back and giving them what they want, when, in fact, you are actually exalting yourself to the heavens.

You may think that you are making great sacrifices by giving others what they want, when you are in fact disobeying God. This is no true humility. By thinking little of yourself in terms of esteem, you are actually thinking much of yourself in terms of the desired outcome.

Christ was and is no people-pleaser. He said hard words. He made hard demands. But he was and is the humblest man who ever lived. True humility is conformity to the image of Christ – not living in fear of people, but doing what is best for them even when it is going to hurt (and you will likely be the one hurting).

If you are a king, acknowledge that you are king and live like it. That doesn’t make you proud, it makes you honest. Letting others get their way isn’t necessarily humility. It may simply be cowardice.

Meeting God in the Dirt: Toward a Biblical Theology of Jesus and Dirt

Genesis 32:24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

The Hebrew word אָבָק (abaq), translated ‘wrestled,’ literally means to ‘get dusty.’ When you wrestle you roll around in the dirt. In order for the sun to rise on Jacob (Gen. 32:31) he had to have a true, heart-changing meeting with the living God. Such meetings with God only occur if God chooses to condescend to man – God must get dirty.

Man is made of dirt:

  • Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

God became a man, and therefore took on a body made of dirt:

  • John 1:14 ¶ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

He was born in a dirty place (caves/barns are dirty):

  • Luke 2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

He did the dirty work of a carpenter:

  • Mark 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

As he writes the law in the human soul, he wrote in the dirt with his finger:

  • John 8:6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

He spit on the ground and made a mud pie to heal a blind man:

  • John 9:6 Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud…

His feet needed washing:

  • John 12:3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

He washed the feet of others:

  • John 13:14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

He embraces you, as dirt, by taking your literal dirt (flesh) upon himself and by taking your spiritual dirt (sin) upon himself on the cross:

  • 2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

When he rejects your dirt, he is rejecting your form of sinful humanity:

  • Luke 10:11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’

He gets dirty so that you, as dirt, can be clean dirt. He loves our dirt, that is our humanity, but rejects our spiritual filth that ruins our humanity.

C.S. Lewis said that Aslan was not a tame lion. We might say that Jesus is no clean God. He is clean in the sense that he is pure, and perfect, and holy to be sure. But he’s not afraid to roll around in the dirt. He touches the dirt and he sanctifies it. Rather than it polluting him, he purifies it. That’s why you’re a Christian.

Parables: Truth Rolling Around In The Dirt

Chesterton once wrote that a paradox is ‘the truth standing on her head to get attention.’

The Bible teaches that Jesus is the Truth in flesh.

Perhaps a parable is the truth rolling around in the dirt.

Parables deal with the stuff of earth – soil, seeds, wheat, buried treasure, jewels, vineyards, wine, cloth, fish, feasts, trees, coins, sheep, goats, etc. The Truth in flesh (Jesus) gives truth in flesh (parables) by incarnating the truth into stories that display the quality of the world and life as it actually is. This makes it all the more striking that Jesus’ contemporaries did not have eyes to see the truth. They could not see what was right in front of them all the time. They had no truth to bring to the images, so the images meant nothing to them.

To be continued.

Wanderers in the Wilderness though we be…

Psalm 90 is a portion of Scripture that I return to over and over again. The inspired wisdom of Moses is distilled in this psalm to, perhaps, its most potent form. The words of verse one inspired Isaac Watts to write,

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home.

C.H. Spurgeon  comments on verse one (read the whole thing HERE):

Verse 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

We must consider the whole Psalm as written for the tribes in the desert, and then we shall see the primary meaning of each verse. Moses, in effect, says – wanderers though we be in the howling wilderness, yet we find a home in thee, even as our forefathers did when they came out of Ur of the Chaldees and dwelt in tents among the Canaanites.

Years ago I rearranged the words of that Spurgeon a bit and formed a sentence that I constantly repeat:

Wanderers in the wilderness though we be, yet we find a home in thee.

Justification: You are Washed, You are Welcome

Romans 8:30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

I came across this quote during my sermon preparation this week. John Stott references these words of Marcus Loane in his commentary on Romans. The quote eloquently summarizes the importance, and effect, of the active obedience of Christ in our justification. Christ’s passive obedience, his cross-work, procures forgiveness for our sins. His active obedience in positively keeping, and fulfilling, the law of God, ensures our complete acceptance as those counted as positively righteous before the Father through faith in Christ:

The voice that spells forgiveness will say: ‘You may go: you have been left off the penalty which your sin deserves.’ But the verdict which means acceptance will say: ‘You may come; you are welcome to all my love and presence.’

You could paraphrase this a number of ways, here’s my best shot at it, taking forgiveness and acceptance as the flip sides of the coin of justification:

  • Forgiveness says, ‘Go and sin no more.’ Acceptance says, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’
  • Forgiveness says, ‘Go, your sins are forgiven.’ Acceptance says, ‘draw near with confidence.’
  • Forgiveness says, ‘You are washed.’ Acceptance says, ‘You are welcome.’
  • Forgiveness says, ‘You are cleansed by his blood.’ Acceptance says, ‘You are counted as righteous.’
  • The forgiven one says, ‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!’ The accepted one says, ‘Bold I approach th’ eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own. Amazing love!’

Him that is Unjust, Let Him be Unjust Still: What does it mean? (Revelation 22:11)

Revelation 22:11 Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.
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Johnny Cash quotes this verse in the good old English of the Authorized Version in The Man Comes Around:

  • He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

But what does it mean?

My pastor once used a couple of things to explain it, and I find them helpful. One is Romans 1. God, in his judgment, ‘gives over’ the wicked to their wicked ways that their evil deeds should multiply and condemn them all the more: ‘Let the evildoer still do evil’ and let that evil increase. Or take the words of Jesus Christ in Mark 4:25:

  • For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

Think of this in terms of righteousness, love, purity, gifts, and graces.

My pastor also used the famous quote of C.S. Lewis to illustrate the point:

The doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free (The Problem of Pain, chapter 8).

Let the evildoer still do evil – and do so willingly. Let the filthy be filthy still – and let him get so used to his stench that he thinks it is normal. That is one aspect of the great judgment of God. He allows the wicked man to lock himself up in his wickedness.

The good news left to be stated is that Jesus Christ takes the wrath of God upon himself for such evil and filth that we might be counted as righteous and clean before God. If you have found your righteousness in him, that righteousness will abide. But if you are locked in your wickedness and filth, don’t be surprised when you stay that way. You may have been saying for years, ‘I can change when I want to, just give me time.’ This verse calls you to reconsider, and reconsider now.