Author: provref

What is my estimate of myself? What is your estimate of yourself? Is it high? Is it low? How can I both see myself as lowly and not become the person who is self-destructive?

In Luke 7, Jesus was traveling to heal a centurion’s servant. The Jews who knew the centurion told Jesus that this man was worthy to have Jesus do this for him, because the man had given much to the Jews. But as Jesus drew near, the centurion sent word to Jesus saying, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof” (Luke 7:6b). . Whose estimation of the centurion was right?

Later in the same chapter, a known sinful woman comes to Jesus with tears and worship. The religious leaders around Jesus think he should not allow himself to be touched by such a sinner. But Jesus reminds these men in verse 48 that the one forgiven much is the one who loves much; the one forgiven little loves little.

I wonder if we might learn and grow from the accounts that bookend this chapter about our own view of self. In the one case, we see a man thought to be worthy by others who knows himself not to be all that special. In the other, we see that the one who is forgiven much by Jesus loves Jesus much. Perhaps if we tie those together, we will have a safe place to stand when we think of our own esteem.

In our lives, we want to demonstrate the love of the lord toward others. That love should in fact be helpful to those around us. People around us should think that we are kind people, because kindness is a fruit of the Spirit. We should be caring, giving, and helpful. But sweetness from us toward others should not raise our esteem of ourselves to the place where we start thinking of ourselves as pretty special. Instead, as the centurion said, we should realize that we are still not worthy of Jesus.

But does this mean that we become people who are self-haters and depressed? Not at all. The forgiven woman knew where she stood before Jesus. She loved Jesus much and freely approached him. But she did not do so out of some sort of faulty self-regard. Instead, she approached Jesus out of gratitude, rejoicing in the forgiveness she had received. Her value was found, not in her goodness or badness, but in the fact that she was forgiven and welcomed by Jesus.

How do we have a properly low regard about ourselves without breaking ourselves? We remember both our sin and our Savior. We remember that, in the face of a holy God, we have fallen infinitely short. This is true whether we are the sinful woman of the end of the chapter or the seemingly sweet centurion at the beginning. We have earned by our failure nothing but justice from God—an infinite punishment to match the infinite offense of dishonoring an infinitely holy God. But, thanks be to Jesus, when we see our lowly estate, we can rejoice in grace. Jesus, the infinitely worthy one, died and paid the price for our sin and grants us his record of perfection so that we might be forgiven and adopted as children of God. When we get a glimpse of just how huge this mercy is, we will see self rightly. We will declare ourselves unworthy as did the centurion. We will weep tears of joy as we embrace the gift of grace in the Savior. Our worth will not be in our goodness or our accomplishments. Instead, our worth will be found in the gift of the Savior’s grace. Forgiven much, we will love much.

Why? How? When? All of us who know the Lord have questions for him. But are they OK? Is it right to question God?

Interestingly, the answer is not as simple as one might think. There is no clear yes or no. Sometimes in Scripture, people ask God questions and get the answer. Sometimes, questions earn judgment. The content of the question is not the primary issue. The issue is one of heart.

Consider two questions from Luke chapter 1. In this chapter, two people ask an angel rather comparable questions. Zechariah and Mary both have something they want to know. To the casual observer, it might even look like they are asking the same sort of thing. But Zechariah meets with displeasure and judgment while Mary has her question answered.

When the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah that he and his wife will soon have a son, the old priest cannot fathom how this might come to pass.

Luke 1:18-21 – 18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” 19 And the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

When Gabriel tells the virgin Mary that she will bear the Christ, she too cannot fathom how this will take place.

Luke 1:34-38 – 34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

What is the difference between the two questions? Faith. Zechariah is asking the angel to give him some sort of proof that his promise will come true. Mary is simply asking the angel a logistical question, how she, a virgin, can conceive. One doubts. The other believes and wonders how the Lord will do what he obviously will do. The first is offensive to the angel. The second pleases him.

In our lives, we have questions. How long, O Lord? Why did this happen? When will you change things? How will you help us make ends meet? Any of these questions can be pleasing to the Lord. Any of them can dishonor him. The heart behind the question, the faith behind the question, these are the issues that make the questions right or wrong.

When you have questions for God, check your heart. Are your questions born of doubt or of trust? Are your questions demanding that God answer you or are they simply asking for data? Are your questions accusing God or trusting him? Are your questions believing he is good but asking for help understanding, or are they demanding that God justify his actions to your satisfaction?

God is good. His ways are perfect. His methods are beyond our finite ability to grasp. Let us trust him. Let us know that what he does is right. Then, when we have questions about how, when, or why, we can ask them from a place of faith and trust.

Many in the faith are drawn to the mystical, the dramatic, the spectacular. Seldom do we see this more than when we discuss issues of spiritual warfare. One need only mention the supernatural, angels, demons, possession, exorcism, and the like before others get wide-eyed and fascinated.

I remember as a high school student going to a youth retreat where the topic of teaching was the armor of God. We took multiple sessions of study to examine each piece of the Roman soldier’s armor and see how each of those pieces symbolically applies to our Christian lives. I remember other settings where I heard of Christians who declared to me that they pray each morning to don each piece of the armor of God. And while I am grateful to God for the spiritual encouragement I gained from that retreat and for the sincerity of the believer “praying on their helmet,” I think there is a better way for us to think about this issue.

Ephesians 6:14–18a

14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

As Paul draws his letter to the Ephesians to a close, the imprisoned disciple seems to draw a metaphor from the battle uniform of a Roman soldier. Perhaps Paul is even looking across the room at one. All of these elements are metaphorical ways to look at doing spiritual rather than physical battle. After all, Paul tells us that our struggle is not one against flesh and blood.

What some may fine disappointing—what I as a teenager would have found dull—is the fact that this metaphor from Paul is a dramatic picture focusing believers on ordinary means of living for Jesus. Yes, the uniform is dramatic. But, no, the things it represents are not.

If you were to ask somebody, “How do I battle for my soul against the devil,” what would they tell you? First and foremost, let’s remember that our souls are secure in Christ because of his work and not based on our goodness. But with that said, how do we participate in spiritual warfare? Do we have to learn strategies against the devil? Do we have to learn MMA submission holds to make the demons tap out?

I’ll tell you what we have to do. But, before I do, let me warn you against a soft Gnosticism. Remember, in the late first and second centuries, Gnostics were folks that claimed to have found secret spiritual knowledge that would elevate them to the locked places of heavenly existence. And the Scripture, though written before Gnosticism flourished, warned sharply against such thinking. So, do not think that there is any value in you learning a spiritual secret. There are no good spiritual secrets for you to learn. What you should learn is Scripture. Learn to do the will of God by obeying and conforming to his holy word.

Now, let’s talk spiritual warfare. Particularly, let’s talk about the tools apart from the imagery. What do you use to defeat the devil and win the battle? God says to fight with these weapons and defenses: truth, righteousness, gospel, faith, salvation, Scripture, and prayer. I’m not even going to break those down. Just think about them. Do they sound like a secret? Are they extra dramatic? How would you classify living by truth, righteousness, gospel, faith, salvation, Scripture, and prayer?

The point that God is making for us in Ephesians 6 is not that there is a secret way to beat up the devil. Instead, the point is that you, believer, fight the spiritual battle by participating in ordinary means of grace, ordinary spiritual disciplines, ordinary methods of following Jesus. You trust Jesus. You love the word. You rely on the finished work of the Savior. You seek to grow based on Scripture. You seek to repent of sin. You pray. You share the gospel. You live an ordinary, faithful, Jesus-loving, Bible-saturated Christian life, and this is how you fight the spiritual war that rages.

You will never faithfully fight the spiritual war while embracing sin. You will never win the battle apart from the local church. You will never find victory seeking something outside of the Scripture. You will never find a secret code word to make the devil turn tail and run. You will never find a way to please God beyond trusting Jesus, repenting of Sin, and loving the Lord and your neighbor.

I know, ordinary sounds so, well, ordinary. But the ordinary way of living the true Christian life is a great joy. And the ordinary way of following Jesus is exactly how we play our role in the spiritual battle. Sure, there are things going on in the heavenly places we do not see. Sure, there are angels and demons doing battle. But the truth is, this is none of our business. God never called us to look for devils. God called us to love Jesus, love one another, love his word, and be faithful. Our God who is the Almighty, he will handle the invisible battlefield, and this should give us hope.

How dare you tell someone what they can and cannot do with their own body? How dare you tell someone that their desires are either acceptable or inappropriate. How dare you tell someone that what they feel deeply is not who they are? How dare you say to someone that their understanding of morality is wrong?

There is an answer to such questions: love. It is not hate; it is love. Love for the Lord and love for neighbor requires that those who follow the Lord tell the truth about issues that have society in a state of constant conflict.

Romans 13:8-10

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

God commands us to love. In fact, as Paul writes under inspiration to the Roman church, he calls on the church to owe no debt at all except the debt of love. Jesus himself said that the second greatest commandment, the one just after loving God with everything you’ve got, is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Sadly, we have become a society that cannot receive any limitation as love. We have developed a cultural mindset that suggests that any criticism of any person’s internal desires or any questioning of a person’s internal “reality’ is considered hateful and harmful. But we must grasp that such thinking is not old but new, not based on objective truth but on internal feeling, and certainly not from God.

While society around us would say that the way to love a person is to accept anything they believe about themselves and anything they desire to do, the word of God equates loving them with the law of God. Paul summarizes the latter portion of the Ten Commandments with a simple call to love your neighbor as yourself. This means that God sees limiting human behavior, even calling people to oppose sinful desires, as love, not hate. God’s laws, God’s ways, God’s standards are tied to the love of God. While many among mankind bristle at this truth, God has never changed it to accommodate our inborn rebellion against him.

Love is the fulfillment of the law. But love is not the rejection of the standards of God in order to make a person feel better about themselves. No Christian can love another person and support them in actions or choices that lead to destruction. If it is true that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), then an application of the standards of God to point out that sin and to turn people from it is loving. Of course, we know that no person is saved through obedience to the law (Rom 3:20), but this does not mean we ignore the word of God. Instead, we bring the word and ways of God to bear on a life to help others see their deep need for a Savior and to help them to do less harm to themselves in this life. We believe that the God who created us knows what will harm us even when we do not agree. And we know that the God who made us has provided the only possible Savior who can rescue all of us from our sins.

Christian friends, do not be ashamed of the word and the ways of God. Even if proclaiming the word of God puts us out-of-step with a culture that celebrates wickedness. Never be cruel. Never be hateful. Never be nasty. Just tell the truth like Jesus. Just lift up the words of God like Jesus. Just call people to repent and believe like Jesus called them to do. You owe others a debt to love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot fulfill that debt without the gospel. And you cannot fulfill that debt ignoring the law of God.

For most modern Americans, reading a text like Leviticus is strange. We see so much about sacrifices and offerings, food restrictions and dress codes. Many people shut down, finding the book impossible to navigate. Many believe they simply cannot relate.

But, before we shut down from such a text, perhaps it would do us good to look at some powerful things we can learn in the law. After all, God inspired and preserved this text for our own sanctification (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16-17), even when we are not required to practice these things any longer.

In Leviticus 16, we read of the scapegoat and the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement was a sacred day when the high priest would make sacrifices for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He would use the blood of the slain animal to cleanse the tabernacle and later the temple in order that the Lord would continue to be present with his people, and the sacred objects would continue to be effective in the work they were made to do.

In the Day of Atonement, God commanded that two goats be brought forward and chosen at random for two different roles.

Leviticus 16:8-10

8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

Here we see that two goats are brought before the high priest. Each of them has a role to pay an atoning for the sins of the nation and keeping them as a people in the favor of God. One goat will be a sacrifice. The other will be the scapegoat.

As a quick note, because I’m using the ESV, the word “Azazel” appears in this passage. Other translations use the word “scapegoat.” This difference is simply the ESV translators not translating an obscure word. Azazel probably refers to a terrifying and lonely wilderness place, a place where demons are thought to dwell. The goat sent to such a place is the scapegoat.

Leviticus 16:15

“Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat.

The goat that was the sacrifice is easy for us to understand. It is killed. The blood of the sacrifice then can be used to show that the price of death has been paid for the sins of the people. Sprinkling the blood on the tabernacle furniture indicates that the atonement of that death has been applied to the sacred objects so that they can continue to function.

But what about the scapegoat?

Leviticus 16:20-22

20 “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

This second goat is brought to the priest and does not die. One might think this is showing the goats as opposites—one good and one bad. But this is not the case. The scapegoat has the sins of the people confessed over it, symbolically placed upon it. Then the goat is driven away from the people into the wilderness.

Now, all that history is fascinating. It is neat to know that this is how the people of Israel functioned on the Day of Atonement. But does this really say something to a Christian? After all, Jesus atoned for our sin. Unlike the high priest, Jesus did not need a sacrifice to be made for himself. Unlike the atonement offering, Jesus did not have to repeatedly make an offering. Jesus did this perfectly, once and for all. That is one of the key points of the book of Hebrews. So we do not go through this process anymore.

But consider for a moment the consequence of sin as we see it illustrated with the goats of Leviticus 16. Two things happen because of the sin of the people—death and exile. One goat is slaughtered, because the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). The other goat is driven away from the presence of God, because the Lord is holy and will not allow sin in his presence. Sin earns death. Sin drives people from their only hope for joy. And hell is the combination of both of these things. Hell is eternal death and eternal separation from any hope of life or joy.

When we see such things, two responses are appropriate. It is appropriate to see what is depicted here and understand the utter sinfulness of sin. We need to be a God-loving, sin-hating people. There is nothing about sin that is a small deal. While all of us are guilty of sin, this does not make its importance and impact any less. If sin kills us and drives us from God, we must learn to hate it.

Second, we should have incredible gratitude for the work of Jesus. Jesus came and did what we could never do. He came and played the role of the sacrifice and the scapegoat while on the cross. Jesus took the punishment of death and the pain of the wrath of God on our account. Jesus fully satisfied the wrath of God so that all who come to him may enter the presence of the Lord. Jesus makes it so that our failures which continue throughout our lives do not separate us from the love of God. Jesus made it so that, when God sees those who have come to him, God sees the record of Christ’s perfection clothing them in righteousness.

Yes, Levitical sacrifices seem strange in our world today. But if we look closely at them, we can find Jesus. We can find reason for gratitude. WE can find a call to sanctification. We can find life in the grace of the Savior.