Micah 6:7-8

How do we please God? According to the prophet Micah, the answer is actually very simple: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him.

Micah cut through all of the God-pleasing practices that were going on at the time and gets right down to the heart of the matter: You want to know how to please God? Don't give Him the usual sacrifices: rams, oil, firstborn children, or even your own body. You really want to please God? Merely act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Years later, it'll be said a different way: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27). Different words, same message: pleasing God is about these simple things: act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God (v.8). Simple, right? Of course, God has spent the years between Adam and Eve and John the Baptist being displeased with His chosen people. They rarely do what He wants. They always complain. They have not acted justly. They have not loved mercy. They have not walked humbly with their God.

Apparently, being told how to please God doesn't make us any more able to do it. And guess what? We proudly continue our ancestors' tradition. Act justly? Love mercy? Walk humbly with our God? This life we're living, if we're honest, is far from the perfection that God requires to be fully pleased.

Many Christians believe that the good news is that Jesus enables them to please God. And He does. But the real good news is so much better than that! If that's the good news, then I've got great news: Jesus perfectly pleased God for us. God did not tell Jesus, "You are my Son, the Beloved; You will give these others the ability to please Me." No. he said, "You are My Son. With You I am pleased." For those who are united to Christ and clothed in His perfect robe of righteousness, God is pleased with you.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Job 33:28 - God has delivered me from going down to the pit, and I shall live to enjoy the light of life.’

The Wall Street journal ran a piece in the wake of Lance Armstrong's confession to using performance-enhancing drugs call "Behind Lance Armstrong's Decision to Talk," which describes

a meeting between Armstrong and Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the man who pointed to himself and said, "You don't hold the keys to my redemption. There's one person who holds the keys to my redemption, and that's me." The fascinating thing about this quote isn't the brazenness; it's the common nature of the refrain.

Everyone thinks that their redemption is up to them. Except, maybe, for Travis Tygart. Upon hearing Armstrong's claim, Tygart allegedly responded, "That's (expletive)." Tygart is right: the idea that we hold the keys to our own redemption is total (expletive).

That Armstrong might believe that baring his soul (or, at least, the contents of his medicine cabinet) to Oprah would lead to his redemption is, at worst, cynical in the extreme and, at best, evidence of a woefully weak definition of redemption.

When Christians talk about redemption, we don't refer to a return to a prior state of good standing. Some do, actually, but such thinking, as Gerhard Forde points out in his book On Being a Theologian of the Cross, hinges on the unbiblical notion of a "fall." We imagine that we were once at a certain place in our relationship with God, we messed that up, and Jesus gave us the ability to get back. That is, according to Forde, a theology that "uses" Jesus and the cross as the end of us, and our resurrection. The truth is so much better. In our redemption - in real redemption - we are saved to a state higher than we ever had before: we are regarded as one with Christ, as God's own Son.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

John 3:16

While the gospel is very big and multifaceted, I fear that some believers tend to make it a sort of catch-all word for anything that has to do with God. The most common way I've heard it misused is in the context of the phrase "living out the gospel." What people generally mean by the is "doing good things for other people." So the gospel must be translated, in this instance, to "good things for others." I submit to you that this is a gross misunderstanding of what the gospel is.

First of all, gospel is a word that comes from an old English translation of the Greek word euangelion, which means "good news." More specifically, the gospel is an announcement. But it has to be a good announcement. The announcement that you must "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" is news, but it's not particularly good if you're a human being like me. Historically, Christian have defined the gospel as the announcement that Jesus has died to save sinners. So the phrase "living out the gospel" makes no sense when the gospel is understood in this way: an announcement of good news.

If you watch newscasts, you know you can't "live out" the news. You can react to it, certainly, and knowledge of it may well influence the things you do. The gospel is the same way. It will, no doubt, impact your life. But that impact is not the gospel. It can't be. It's the impact of the gospel. And it should be noted that the gospel itself does not demand a certain response. It makes no demand at all. Remember, it is an announcement. Hearers of the gospel, from the apostle Paul to the atheist Richard Dawkins, have recommended responses, but again, these responses are not the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus has died to save sinners like me, and like you.

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

John 19:18 There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

Jesus had been sentenced to death by crucifixion on Golgotha. His cross is between two others, both of whom were thieves and criminals, and in this final moment of life, they have become his only companions - "numbered with the transgressors," as Isaiah said. Their sin becomes his. This is the scandal of the cross.

We may wrongly protect against the depth of this scandal, perhaps seeking to excuse ourselves as the transgressors that we are. But such pretense no longer remains concealed on Christ's cross. Indeed, what is revealed here is the deep truth of our sin, which he has claimed as his own. The veneer of our own righteousness is stripped from us, depriving us of any smooth surfaces we may have sought to keep in order to preserve a good standing or reputation in the world. Christ's cross is not polished. It bears all our painful coarseness and splinters. It exposes us for the sinful people we really are.

But Christ's cross reveals so much more. He is not ashamed to suffer and die in the midst of our own scandalous life and death. He reveals that he chooses to regard us, transgressors that we are, as his companions and friends. And here on the cross, all of us transgressors are made righteous through him in his loving outstretched arms. By his righteousness, we are healed

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Luke 22:19-20 - And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

As we eat and drink at our Lord's table, we remember his death as the good news that we are now delivered from all sin, death and evil. The promise of his new covenant is that it is not something we must earn to make ourselves right with God - as if we could! Instead, we trust that through his death we are joined together with him and with one another at his table in the fellowship of his grace, mercy and forgiveness.

He is the Passover Lamb whose body and blood is given for us and for our forgiveness. His blood is upon the lintels of our lives, even in the greatest of trial and troubles. As alluded to in the parable of the prodigal son, Christ is the lamb who is sacrificed at the feast for sinners who are now welcomed home and get to celebrate. Paul also reminds us of the significance of this sacred meal for the whole community of faith: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it nt a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16).

As we eat and drink at our Lord's table, we eat and drink to the newness of life we have in Christ!

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Psalm 118:22  The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

When it comes to buildings, or anything we build, there are decisions to be made in the process. Builders choose the prize stones for their building. They are dissatisfied with stones that are less qualified, and some stones they outwardly reject.

Such building seems to match the events of Holy Week. All the cheers at the entry gates of Jerusalem in hopes of building a future of messianic promise would soo give way to jeers in a matter of days, tearing down the very fabric of that messianic hope in Jesus. Instead of the crowds shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David" before the week is out, they would be shouting "Crucify him! Crucify him!" (Matthew 27:16-26) How quickly it all moves from Jesus being honored and praised as a leader to him being cast out as a blasphemer!

Yes, Jesus was the Rejected Stone on the cross. But for us as Christ-trusters, his place as the Rejected One is the chief cornerstone of our faith. As Jesus bears his cross and is crucified on Golgotha, rejected by all, we follow him in repentance and hope. For he bore our unworthiness on his weakened shoulders in order to build us up as the church! We cannot help but say with the psalmists in response: "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalm 118:23).

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Matthew 21:9-11  The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."

Hosanna means "save us, we pray!" The acclamation expresses the fervent hope that the people of Israel had for the coming of the Messiah who would deliver them. And with Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred into turmoil asking, "Who is this?" The initial answer of the crowds to that question is quite understated: a prophet from Nazareth.

As Matthew tells it, Jesus is so much more than a prophet from Nazareth, of course. When Jesus died on the cross, there was a tearing apart of the curtain in the temple, opening the glory of God's promise to all. And with that, there was a stirring of the ground, with rocks splitting apart and tombs being opened and with the saints rising from the dead. (Matthew 27:51-52).

Who is this? This is Jesus Christ, the One who has come to save us and give us life beyond all death! We trust in him, even as we cry joyously, "Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,