Isaiah 55 Study: Introduction & Historical Background of the Prophet Isaiah

Isaiah 55 is often quoted — and for good reason. It’s filled with beautiful promises from God to His people. Over the next several weeks, I’ll walk through one verse at a time, slowly savoring this rich and meaty chapter. Before diving right into the chapter, we’ll unpack the preceding and receding ones to provide context. This week, we’ll simply set the scene for the chapters prior. It’s hard to grasp the beauty of this passage without understanding who’s talking, who they’re talking to and why. 

The book of Isaiah follows the prophet Isaiah as he describes both judgement and hope to be found despite Israel’s continual rebellion. Though this prophetic book speaks directly to Israel’s history and future, its message extends far beyond one nation. The book reads a prophetic message of one nation for all nations, from the beginning to the end of time.

God raised up Israel as a holy nation — His servant — to represent Him to all creation. Yet throughout this book, we see them not only abandoning this calling, but also turning their trust other nations, kings, and idols.  

The book is divided into sections: 

Chapters 1-12: Isaiah warns Israel of the judgement to come. Their rebellion has consequences, and powerful empires Assyria and Babylon will be God’s instruments of discipline. 

Chapters 13-27: Israel isn’t alone in facing judgement. Assyria’s reign will be overpowered by Babylon. The surrounding nations are just as corrupt and will face their own destruction. God remains sovereign over all nations, despite their refusal to depend on Him.

Chapters 28-39: Isaiah prophecies the rise and fall of Jerusalem under King Hezekiah. He foolishly aligns politically with Egypt for protection. Though he later repents and is spared immediate judgement, he ultimately makes an alliance with Babylon. 100 years later, this alliance will be the downfall of Israel and their eventual exile. 

Chapters 40-48: The tone shifts to one of comfort and redemption. Isaiah speaks prophetically 200 years into Israel’s future, when they will be rescued from exile and brought home. God will have mercy on them and will use King Cyrus of Persia to save them. 

Chapters 49-55: God will keep His promise of redemption — and if not through the original servant (Israel), then through a new one. This Servant, whom we now know as Jesus, will:

1) restore Israel back to God and

2) become a light to the nations
Isaiah foretells of the suffering the Servant will endure for the sake of a people who will reject Him. And yet through Him, God will bring redemption to the world. 

Chapters 56-66: This Servant will usher in a New Kingdom. Those who follow Him in humility and repentance will inherit the New Jerusalem and become part of the new creation.

Isaiah carries both judgement and hope — often side by side. Woven throughout every section is a call to return to the Lord. Instead of trusting in idols or alliances, God urges His people to trust in Him. He knows that their false hopes will bring them more suffering and will never help them. As Ray Ortlund writes in his commentary on Isaiah, “The most heart-breaking story in the universe is how much our Father loves his children, compared with how little they love and obey him.”

Even though Israel had seen God’s deliverance time and again, they continually looked elsewhere for their security. Their hearts grew dull and distant (Isaiah 1:3-4).

And yet, as Israel continually ran away from God, His love only deepened. Their rebellion didn’t deter the promises He made to them. Not even the wickedness of kings could interrupt His plan. God used both the wise and foolish to fulfill His purposes. Despite the mistakes and sin from humanity, God continually works it out for His ultimate good. And for ours, if we let Him. 

Let’s step inside Israel’s shoes for a moment. Their perspective is often shoved aside and chalked up to, “Typical Israel — always doubting God, ignoring all the good things He’s done for them.” But Israel reflects our own hearts. As much as we may not like to admit it, they’re more relatable than we think. We can see the redemption God wove through their suffering. We see how Christ delivers them and fulfills God’s ultimate promise. But they lived in the middle of it. All they saw was another day of waiting. Another day of suffering. 

They waited 400 years for deliverance from their oppressors in Egypt.

They waited 40 years to enter the Promised Land.

They waited 500 years through the rise and fall of kings, longing for the promised King.

They waited 70 years in exile before being brought home.

They waited centuries for the Messiah Isaiah promised.

They didn’t see the vantage point we do. They couldn’t see how God had been saving them — even from themselves. They couldn’t see how their alliances with Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon would only lead them to their own destruction. Their view of God blurred as they wandered from Him. They blamed Him for their suffering, unaware that He was protecting them from the destruction their choices would bring. 

As Israel, how often do we forget what God has done for us? How quickly we run to other things to give us comfort, whether it is people, food, entertainment. We reach for things that can never save us for our security — our own identity, our career, our family. We choose things that can never save us or give us what we really want. 

God chose us — and we continue to choose everything else. But that doesn’t stop Him from pursuing us. God doesn’t leave us in our rebellion of Him. Isaiah 30:18 captures His heart:

Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; how blessed are all those who long for Him.

He’s waiting to be gracious to us.

And so, God sent His Son to do what Israel could not do — to be the true Servant of all. To redeem the world, bring justice, and fulfill the promise of hope for every generation. 

Isaiah 55 is God’s final invitation in this section of the book. He pleads with us to choose Him over what will never satisfy. Our idols — the things we look to instead of God — will always fail us. Israel kept trusting kings and idols to save them, while their true King was already in control. 

How long will we keep waiting for our idols to give us what only God can? 

Will we see the comfort He offers us in this very moment? 

We’ll wait for next week to begin our walk — starting with verse 1 of Isaiah 55.

20 Lessons I Learned Before 30

September is staring me down as I near the closure of my twenties. It’s easy for me to find nostalgia in simple things, so the end of a decade carries weight for me. What a beautiful decade full of learning, growth, struggle, redemption, and so much joy. Reflecting on what these years have taught me, I jot down 20 things that stood out to me.

1. No one will do it for you. The life change you want to make, the book you want to write, the impact you want to make - it won’t happen on its own. 

2. If you want to know God, you have to prioritize Him. You can’t expect to grow in your knowledge of God or deepen in your love for Him by skimming the Bible every morning alongside a hurried prayer. You have to dig in, ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and see for yourself why He is good. 

3. There are seasonal friendships. Expectations in a relationship will kill it. Sometimes friendships are meant for a period of time. You’ll find more joy when you’re grateful for the time you’ve had with those people rather than focusing on what it could have been. 

4. It’s okay to be a cliche. I’ve been trying to be different for as long as I can remember. But sometimes, I would go against the grain even when it wasn’t something I really wanted. That’s just silly. It’s okay to embrace the cliche sometimes. We’re all different, whether we look like it or not.

5. Food and naps are important. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah felt in despair and God knew He didn’t need a Bible verse, or worship music. He just needed food and rest. I’ve found that to be true for myself, it isn’t always a hyper spiritual answer to our problems. God gives to us in our sleep (Psalm 127:2). 

6. What you put in your life will come out of you. What you choose to consume, what you think about and the words you speak will make up what you’re made of. Be careful what that content is. It will change how you view the world, yourself, and ultimately God. 

7. God is the only one you can truly depend on. Chances are, every single person will fail you at one point or another. You can’t wholly depend on any person or friendship to give you what you want and need. The longing we feel for an unconditional friendship can only be met with a God who never changes. If you try to receive that from anyone else, it will bring you both down. 

8. Expect the world to be broken. Sorrows are inevitable. Justice isn’t usually served. But we’re usually mourning the loss of our expectation of how life should be in addition to the loss itself which will compound our suffering. Sin is rampant in the world. God’s New Kingdom hasn’t come yet, so all of this is to be expected. But death won’t win. Justice is coming. And there’s so much hope to be found in that. 

9. Patience is a very under-appreciated skill. I know this because I’m extremely impatient. But I’m slowly learning how crucial this virtue is. Patience affects yourself and those around you. Things take time. Enjoy the ride.

10. Speaking of which, slow down. Time will fly by. Life is made up of little moments and while we’re anxiously anticipating one big milestone, we miss enjoying the millions of small ones. 

11. Say ‘no’ more. Not every outside life demand is worth giving energy towards or something you can fit into your life. Social media exposes us to every different way of living. You can’t do it all or  be everything to everyone. There are a lot of things we think are essential that really aren’t. Do less and you’ll experience more out of your day and life. You weren’t meant to be so stimulated. 

12. There will always be something to complain about. Joy is available if you look for it. You have to be active about noticing things around you, because it won’t come naturally to you. And it usually starts with gratitude. That’s why God asks us to praise His name and thank Him for all that He does. He knows it will give us joy as well as Him.

13. There will always be someone disappointed with you. No matter what you do, someone will have a bone to pick with you. As a healing people-pleaser, I’m finding a lot of freedom and joy in letting go of the urge to make someone feel comfortable with my opinion/presence. 

14. Your habits make you who you are. Time matters more than you know. 5 minutes is a long time. And mindless scrolling means you’re probably anxious or bored. Maybe you just need to go outside or take a nap instead. Remember, you’re training your brain with the habits you build whether you’re aware of it or not. It’s far easier to make them than to break them. 

15. Not everyone needs to understand you. (Just me?) This one is a big one for me, because I love to be understood. It’s exhausting and most of the time it’s just not necessary. When my goal is to be understood, I often lose sight of the point of the conversation. 

16. Words are so powerful. Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). One careless word could echo into someone’s brain forever. And you may never learn the effects of what you say. Listen more, talk less. This applies to words which you speak to yourself. They deeply impact the psychology of your brain. It’s no wonder Proverbs has so much to say about this – God knows and cares about what you say and think about. 

17. Good posture will save you so many aches and pains. It may sound minor, but bad posture could wreck your body. Is there such a thing as a posture doctor? 

18. It’s okay to not always know. Many times, anxiety is born out of confusion and not understanding what to do / make of something. You can’t process all the complex emotions and life scenarios on our own. Or erase your emotions. True peace only comes through trusting God with the unknown and facing your difficult emotions alongside Him. The more you resist this, the more anxious you will become.

19. Discipline and moderation stretches through all areas of your life - what you do, what you think about, and who you become. I’ve noticed that the more disciplined I am with exercise and diet, the more disciplined I am in spending time with God. We’re constantly training our brain to either choose comfort or growth. The more you resist what you feel like doing and choose what you should be doing, the more integrity you’ll build. 

20. Don’t be passive about small decisions, they accumulate into larger ones. The small choices you make will turn into repeated, learned habits. Passiveness is contagious and if left unchecked will slowly overtake all areas of your life. 

None of these I’ve come close to mastering, rather I’ve realized their importance. Did any of these resonate with you? Cheers to the next 30 years of learning, loving and growing!

Study of Peter: joy in the Lord

We’ve come to the final Christian attribute that Peter demonstrated for us in Lukewarm Church series. 

While this study hasn’t been an extensive list, it highlights a few important qualities that Peter learned and demonstrated. We’ll end with the joy in the Lord. 

Peter shares how joy is a response to God’s gift of salvation in 1 Peter 1. He describes it in verse 6, “in this you greatly rejoice” and 8, “you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible”. 

The reality of our world

Why in the world would we be able to find “joy inexpressible” in a world so broken and full of hurt? Of course not everyone has the same burdens, but we all live in the same reality that sin reigns freely, rippling chaos and destruction in its path.

Justice isn’t served. Disease spreads. Poverty prevails. The world is decaying. Death seems to be winning. 

The world is broken, and every living being feels it. 

Peter felt this deeper than most - if not all - Western Christians. Persecution was rampant, and living a consistent, comfortable life was not in the cards for his life-long ministry of spreading the Gospel.

There is no tit for tat for who has ‘suffered the most in their life’ award. The world’s aches impact each of us in different ways. The point is, it’s a universal fact. Suffering is not only expected but the norm.

Dane C. Ortlund put it like this in his book Deeper, “Pain is not the islands of our lives but the ocean; disappointment or letdown is the stage on which all of life unfolds, not an occasional blip on an otherwise comfortable and smooth life.”

“Why,” some may protest, “this sounds like an awful little world created by a cruel God then.” Except, this isn’t how He created it at all. We can go back to Genesis for that.

When we read through Genesis, we watch as the blueprints of the world are first laid out - all Creation is designed to find purpose and joy in their Creator. It’s only when we look to created things to give us what we can only find in God that we will always be left wanting. 

This truth is quite unsexy. It’s not nice, or convenient for living like we are generally good people. This is what makes the gospel so offensive to many. Let’s face it, we’re used to being our own little gods over our reality of the universe. 

And this is what keeps us from true, lasting joy. We only find temporary blips of happiness or moments of euphoria when we live rejecting the truth of who God is. Certainly, God created the world with lots of happiness - the beauty in music, the embrace of a loved one, sun-kissed daisies floating softly in the wind. So it comes as no surprise that these nuggets of joy embedded into the world would provide us slivers of happiness. 

But is there more? Yes, this is precisely my point. The reason I use the words “slivers of happiness” is because that’s just what it is. The joys we experience here on earth are fingerprints of His glory. And we can only dig deeper into those glorious joys when we dig deeper into the One who made them. 

Knowing God

So let’s dig deeper, shall we? The 'joy of the Lord’ we speak so often in church comes from knowing and enjoying Him. We can do this only in part here on earth simply because we’re still in this imperfect world. God made a way for us to partake in His holiness through His Son Jesus’ sacrifice. And as Christians, there are several things we can ‘partake in’ here and now. We don’t have to wait until Heaven for this. 

See, I grew hearing the phrase “I’m just praying for Jesus to come back”. While there’s nothing wrong with waiting eagerly for the day that all is made right on earth and we are back in perfect communion with God - it often stops there. There’s such an emphasis on Heaven and the idea that “Earth is just a rest stop, it’s not home” that we dismiss our time living here. 

God didn’t create us so that we could sit in our homes dutifully reading our Bibles, waiting for the day they go to Heaven. This ideology misses His mission for us completely. 

God didn’t have to create this world, but He did. He created us so that we might be able to enjoy Him. He didn’t force Himself on us, we have the option to choose Him or not. Instead, He sent His perfect Son to be a “man of sorrows” on our behalf. 

“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” - Isaiah 53:3

Jesus lived a perfect life so that we never had to rely on our own efforts to be “good enough” for God’s love. He was despised so we never have to live in shame. He was abandoned by God so we never have to be. He was acquainted with grief so we might find joy.

The more you reflect on these truths, the deeper you’ll discover the freedom of this joy. 

The beauty of joy

This is difficult to grasp because the joy we know of today is temperamental, circumstantial and temporary. It’s unrecognizable to the gift of joy that comes from God. Earthly joy comes and goes as our dopamines spike. Which means it depends on something that is most certainly not guaranteed.

This tends to result in frustration and anxiety when we don’t have it. As soon as something doesn’t go how we want it to, our joy evaporates. Its fragile, glass-cased existence is always a whisper away from completely collapsing.

And yet with Biblical joy, it grows stronger under stress and pressure. As life throws the worst pains and unfairness, joy only increases. The beauty of who God is and the love He has for you only shines brighter when the world looks dim.

It is only this joy which outweighs our sorrows that has the potential to allow us to live differently. To overlook offenses, to praise God in the midst of suffering, to have patience and grace with our enemies.

The problem is that we’ve become so accustomed to this version of the fickle, consistent highs and lows of earthly joy that we simply don’t know what to do with Biblical joy. And we only deprive ourselves from the source of joy when we look everywhere but God to find it.

Perhaps there’s joy untapped, awaiting our discovery if we would just look for it.

God’s love is designed to be replicated. It’s contagious. It’s not meant to stop in a dead still pond but rather shared with others. It’s a gushing waterfall cascading down a never-ending mountain. 

And we all seek out love, joy and fulfillment from the world. We crave it. We all feel the desire to be fully known and fully loved. 

As our Creator, He has designed us for His love and so no other love will fit properly within us. There will always be something missing. It will always spoil, disappoint us and never fully satiate us.

We were created to be partakers of His love, therefore nothing less will do. He’s created so much more for ourselves than we could ever imagine. And yet, we seem to be quite content with our temporary joys that never suffice.

But what if there’s more, so much more waiting for us. Will you go out and find it yourself?

Study of Peter: hope rested in God

While Judas missed the hope of Jesus entirely, Peter grasped onto it. The hope he held onto allowed him to see the beauty in the midst of pain and immense persecution. This same hope Peter cherished is freely given to those who love God.

This week in our Lukewarm Church series, we’re investigating the hope that Peter held onto.

Peter knew very well his own natural tendency to hope in other things. While with Jesus in His ministry, He hoped in the fighter, warrior and deliverer version of Jesus in his heart. He hoped for things that seemed to align with God’s mission and promises.

But thank God we didn’t get what Peter hoped for, the judgment of God that would have left us no way of salvation. God knew much better. And Peter had learned to put His trust in who Jesus said He was, loving, servant-hearted and yet all powerful and wholly good.

Like Peter, we tend to make Jesus out to be the version we feel most comfortable with. And we hope in that made up version of Jesus. So when life contradicts that version, we’re gutted. 

Suddenly, we don’t know if we can fully trust in who God is, because He’s failed to be who we believed Him to be. It’s not until we see what He says about Himself, regardless if it fits in our worldview that we are relinquishing our hold and control over who He is.

Although Peter was bewildered many times at what Jesus might be doing, he knew God was faithful every time. And slowly, he began to trust Jesus' words above his own understanding. When he didn’t know what God was doing, Peter clung to Him as his refuge. 

As a Christian, God promises to be our refuge (Psalm 46:1). 

God as our refuge

We all have a refuge of sorts. Somewhere where we run to as a baseline. A refuge is the place we feel the most unequivocally ourselves, we are our most comfortable and genuine self. When God is our refuge, we are actively putting our trust and hope in Him. But in order for Him to be our refuge we must first be comfortable with Him.

To get to the point of comfortability and vulnerability which enables us to experience God as a refuge, it takes time to build a natural pattern of running to Him and allowing Him to prove that He is who He says He is. But if we never run to Him and give Him the space to be our comfort and refuge, we’ll never experience this hope.

Ephesians 1:18 says, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”.

When we are able to trust that God is good and who He says He is, we get a beautiful taste of His ultimate glory and He becomes a foundational truth upon which we see the lens of the world. But if we don’t grasp onto this hope, it’s merely a concept for us. Like Judas, we’ll see it but hold tightly to what we hope in more than God and miss the promised hope found in God. 

Expecting goodness from God

But what is this promised hope? He promises eternal hope meant for our present as well as future. Almost everything on this side of Heaven is slowly decaying and fading away, making it difficult to grasp the concept of an inheritance that never, ever tarnishes. 

He promises to be good, always. 

This statement may immediately bring up doubts in your heart like,  “What is so good about God allowing this pain in my life?” The truth we don’t want to hear is that sometimes, we never know why God is doing something. We may never get to see the reason for pain or the justice dealt. But His goodness isn’t dependent on our understanding of it but on who He is.

In Acts 2, Peter is reminding the following around him that though Jesus died He was now more alive than ever. And that in His death, He was fulfilling His promise of salvation to us. He describes the hope we have access to now in verse 4, “wait for what the Father had promised.”

The word “promised” in Greek is Epangelia, which translates to “a promised good”. That same Hebrew word for hope is used again in Romans 5:4-5:

“and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

Hope isn’t something one simply has but rather something one gets to.

Hope directs our path

What we hope for is what we move towards. It informs everything else you do. As a compass, it directs your focus and direction on your life path. The hand can’t be facing nowhere, it’s focused in one direction one way or another. If we don’t put our trust in God, we’re putting our trust in something or someone else. And not in the non-trivial ways, but in the life-foundational way.

We all hope that certain things are true. A core, fundamental truth. We may fundamentally hope in ourselves and in our own goodness. Or we hope that humanity is overall generally good.

But if we hope that God is good and making His goodness our fundamental truth, it cannot help but change us. We hope that God is true and who He says He is and that hope will never disappoint us (Romans 5:5). 

And like the compass analogy, we can’t be facing north and south. We can’t put our ultimate hope in God, plus money, status or morality. It can be one or the other. 

God assures that we can completely depend on Him. So will you reach out and grasp onto this hope that is available to you right now?

Study of Peter: rooted in God’s love

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a Christian use the phrase to be “rooted in God’s love”? My hand is raised, even if you can’t see it. 

That sounds nice. But this truth often rushes over us in a haze, dissipating as quickly as it came. What is God’s love and how can we be rooted in it?

We’ll continue our Lukewarm Church series evaluating Peter’s Christian attributes with what it means to know God’s love. Peter knew and experienced God’s love first-hand. But how did He get about loving us in the first place? Why did God create this world and everything and everyone in it?

We have to understand a bit more of God’s heart to understand why He created us. And since He is Trinitarian, we must start there. 

Understanding the Trinity 

God exists in three persons, the Father, His Son and Holy Spirit. God is and always has been. The nature of His love is to give outwardly.

Hebrews 1:3 says “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

Because Their trinitarian love is reciprocal, it’s never ending. It depends on nothing. It simply exists. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirits’ love goes back and forth growing and bubbling over. For all eternity. 

So where does creation come in all of this? Since God’s love cannot be contained, He wanted to share that love through creation, so that we may join in and partake in God’s eternal, perfect love.

Michael Reeves in Delighting in the Trinity describes it beautifully, “And so, just as the Father decided to include us in His love for the Son, to share it with us, so the Son chose to include us in His love for the Father.”

Notice our role in this exchange: we do nothing. Our love for the Father and Son isn’t included in this loving exchange.

Meaning Their love for us isn’t dependent on our love for Them. And yet, as Reeves puts it, both the Father and Son include us in their reciprocal love. Joining in as a mere breath in their eternal loving exchange. 

How do we love

We have to know God’s love in order to give it. You can’t pour something out of you that isn’t inside of you. Thinking about how Peter radically spent his entire life dedicated to spreading the Gospel is incredible. But it’s only possible because Jesus sought Him first. Jesus loved Him first. And then Peter followed, and lived a life completely devoted to spreading that love to others.

One of the last recorded conversations between Jesus and Peter is found in John 21. Jesus shows through the use of repetition – which He uses frequently – the correlation between loving God and loving His people. Jesus repeatedly asks Peter, “Do you love Me?”.

The third time He asks him the same question, Peter takes it as a personal offense. There’s a poetic symbolism of Peter’s three-time denial and Jesus’ three-time question of whether or not he loved Him.

In verse 17, Peter answers again sadly, “you know that I do” to which Jesus says, “feed my sheep.” Jesus is saying, “if you love Me, you’ll love My sheep.” If you have the love of His Father, you’ll love others. As Jesus does. Jesus has His love from His Father and that’s how He’s able to love us. So He’s asking Peter to do the same. 

Shortly after Christs’ ascension, in Acts 2 we see Peter give a famous sermon the day they were given the Holy Spirit. He explains to the crowds surrounding them that the scriptures foretold what was to happen to Jesus. But, by their own choice they put the Son of God to death.

The crowds responded in verse 37, “what shall we do?” And just as Peter realized how quickly he could deny Jesus and yet be so graciously forgiven, he knows that same grace is extended to the crowds.

He explains in verse 38-39, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

I like to imagine Jesus smiling from Heaven seeing the beautiful redemption in this interaction. Peter’s sin was covered by God’s grace. And Peter obeys Jesus’ command to then shepherd His people (John 21) in a beautiful response to His love and grace. 

In Peter’s shoes, there must have been frustration and hurt by the crowds. The same people who came and were healed by Jesus, screamed for His crucifixion. Jesus was one of Peter’s closest friends, maybe even the closest. And he probably didn’t realize Jesus’ ministry on earth was going to be cut so short. And he missed Him greatly.

But Peter knew that Jesus called him to shepherd the very people who were responsible for his death. While understanding that Jesus’ death was all according to God’s plan, it still must have been very difficult for him and the other disciples to accept.

Peter easily could have given into his frustration and impatience for the crowds around them. Instead of giving into bitterness and resentfulness, he understood his own betrayal of Jesus - the weight of his own sin. This allowed him to turn around and extend that same love towards others and show them their great need for God’s grace.

A love like Jesus

God designed us to love like Him. But when we walk outside of His love, our roots are cut off from the life source only found in God. It begins to taint how we love others and we become spiteful, self-centered and greedy. And in doing so, it breeds discontentment, doubt, anxiety and opens ourselves to allow more sin to continue to grow. 

Peter is only able to extend his love because of the great love of God who loved him first. The roots of his love were firmly planted in the rich soil of God’s love. The greater Peter’s love for Jesus, the stronger he carried on His traits. The more we love Him, the more we become like Him. 

So what would it look like if we were those little sponges, where we would be walking and talking with God so much that we just absorb His words and become more like him?

Study of Peter: response to grace

When Peter betrayed Jesus, while he was overwhelmed with grief over his sin - it never crushed him. His love for God was greater than shame for himself. Through his repentance, it drew him closer to God and expanded his love for Him. 

Continuing our Lukewarm Church series with our study of Peter’s emulation of a Christian. We’ll talk this week about the response to grace.

In the Christian church, we talk about confessing sin a lot. But I wonder how often we take the time to reflect on who we are offending before we jump into conviction and confession.  

Know who you’re offending

Peter emphatically denied being associated with Jesus, declaring that he didn’t even know him. 

He was asked three times and each time he persisted more emphatically. In Matthew 26:74 reads:

“Then he began to curse and swear, ‘I do not know the man!’ and immediately a cock crowed.” 

Peter’s purview was unique - he saw first-hand Jesus receive punishment for the sin he just committed. His eyes met Jesus’ the moment he realized what he had done. He knew it grieved Jesus and so it grieved him too.

When Jesus was being tried and beaten, He never denied who He was. All the while Peter denied him at the first sight of danger. The very sin Peter is committing, Jesus later perfectly models how to withstand the temptation of denying God.

Jesus then goes on to get punished by not only an earthly perspective but from God. And at the pinnacle of pain, He gets abandoned by His own, loving Father. Peter gets a front-row seat, of grace played out in front of him. He sinned and watched as Jesus bore that sin on Himself, freeing Peter of his guilt.

We don’t get to see first-hand how our sin grieves Jesus like Peter did. It’s far easier to slide by and minimize or excuse our sin. No matter how much we minimize our sin, it will never reach perfection on its own. 

And, the longer we sit with our sin, the more comfortable we get with it. The more excuses we make for why we don’t obey Him. Many times, sin starts out as a good thing.

Perhaps we are only looking out for the best for our family, or trying to help a friend. And slowly it can shift further away from loving God and more on loving ourselves for our own good deeds. And we start to think we may just be good without God’s help after all. 

Grieving your sin is a crucial step to repentance. If you don’t recognize the hurt you cause someone, how can you authentically apologize and reconcile with them?

It must have been significant to Peter’s repentance knowing that Jesus knew he was going to deny Him and yet He loved him no differently while He was still with him. The realization of Jesus’ immovable and unconditional love is what pulled Peter out of his grief. And it was that love which gave Peter the confidence to not remain there.

The reason Peter was able to live in the freedom of grace was because he knew the heart of Jesus deeply. He understood His unconditional love. Which drove his heart closer to God and not further away as we see in Judas’ case. 

What makes the acceptance of grace so difficult is that it starts with the humility to see an accurate view of God.

View of God

Repentance of sin is absolutely critical in our relationship with God. When we understand the gift of our undeserved salvation, it makes our sin more personal. With a view of God as all powerful but not all loving, sin isn’t personal. You’re able to separate or dissociate it as a personal offense.

If we don’t have an accurately central view of God, our version of grace will be skewed and ultimately lead us astray. 

View of ourselves

And while our love is conditional, His love is not.

We believe that we’re worth being loved if we can measure up to the standards we’ve created. This puts a primary focus on ourselves, whether we’re consumed with our inadequacies or own morality. Not only do we miss God’s forgiveness but we miss His love. His gifts towards us suddenly don't feel like gifts, but rather they seem like our rights. 

The way you believe God feels about you, will project onto how you treat and feel about others. If you are free in His grace, you’ll freely extend grace to others. If you feel ashamed and disgusted by your sin, that will eventually be projected onto others. 

God waits to be gracious to us

The depth of God’s love isn’t to be compared to the weight of our sin. He is waiting for us to receive His forgiveness. 

Isaiah 30:18 says, “Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.”

Isn’t that the most incredibly sobering and wonderful thing you’ve heard? We sin against Him, willingly, repeatedly and often. And yet, He is waiting for us to receive His forgiveness. Because His love isn’t dependent on our love, it’s just continuing to bubble over. 

Sin separates us from God. And He’s desperate to close that gap. What did we do to deserve this perseverant pursuit of our love?

Study of Peter: fear of God

We’ve heard how Judas embodied many outwardly Christian characteristics. But like all the other lukewarmers in the modern church today, he never knew or loved God. Both Judas and Peter sinned, they both betrayed God.

Now we turn our attention to Peter, to study his betrayal of Jesus and what that revealed about the state of his heart. The two were similar in a lot of ways, but differed in these five areas. The first one we’ll go through is the basis of their fear, namely the fear of God.

In Matthew 14, we hear the story of Jesus asking Peter to walk on water in an act of faith. The night was long, and the disciples had been rowing in vain for hours. The strength of the roaring waves was persistent, while their arms were growing weaker by the second. When our fears are staring us in the eye, we can succumb to the waves or look to the One who controls the waves.

We see this happen in real-time when Peter shifts his fear from the crashing waves to a different type of fear, a fear of God, a fear that was full of awe and not terror. Fear and faith always comes with an action. 

Jesus called Peter to demonstrate his faith right then. He wanted Peter to walk out on the water, to show that God’s power and love know no limits. No human or nature act can get in His way. 

Out of fear of God, Peter responded in obedience. It’s when we can trust that God not only holds all power and control but that He loves us and knows what we need the very most that we are able to delight in Him. 

But let’s dig into living out this kind of fear a little deeper. 

Living out the fear of God

Michael Reeves speaks to the concept of the fear of God as a “theological guard dog stopping us thinking we are made for passionaless performance or a vague preference for God. Or detached knowledge of abstract truths.” 

Knowing God is fearing Him, it is the expression of the greatest magnitude of love. Reeves likens it to the way he’s weak in the knees when a groom first sees his bride. But with God, this is magnified to a degree we can’t even fully experience here on earth. We can only get glimpses. 

I’ve heard it said before that in conversation, the person your hips are faced towards is the person you are prioritizing in conversation. Who knows if this is true. But it’s not dissimilar to our Christian life. Who we are running towards is who we love and fear the most. When we fear God, He’s the object of our affection. 

We don’t begrudgingly fear God out of obligation. It’s not something which can be fabricated, it’s an organic response out of a love for our Father. How can one delight in the fear of God if He’s merely a “detached knowledge of abstract truths” to us? 

Loving someone isn’t something you can manufacture, you either love them or not. You either love them above everything else in your life at all. 

When it gets hard

There’s a line in the song Amazing Grace, by John Newton that beautifully describes the life-changing change in our hearts when we fear God.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

  And grace my fears relieved;

Only grace can teach our heart’s to love God the most, to fear His words above all else and let Him be what we ultimately treasure. And it’s when God is centered in our life that all other fears (dreams, ambitions, anxieties, etc.) pale in comparison. Not that they go away, but when you trust that God has your ultimate good, the details of life won’t determine your joy. 

Let’s be honest, as Christians, we don’t always fear God above all else. When we let another fear take over our heart, it will fail us time and time again. Because what we fear controls us. 

Since God created us for communion with Him, only He will satisfy us. When our other fears control us, it continuously leads to frustrating dead-ends. Dragged along the hoops of disappointments, we’ll keep searching for more while riddled with anxiety and eventually anger. 

Those fears are relieved when God’s grace weave’s us back in, fearing the only power in this world, the only immovable, unchangeable God. The God who doesn’t exist in part for our own existence, He just exists.

Because we are created for more. But only with the One who made our hearts beat to His. 

And when you fear and trust in a God who is immovable, you become immovable. You’ve attached yourself to a God worth trusting, a God you can have ultimate confidence in and not be shaken by the world.

Luke 6:47-49 says, “Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” 

When you trust in both God’s power and His goodness you know that whatever befalls you, your foundation in your relationship with God will always withstand and is assured. Even though the storms of life overtake you, and even take your earthly body.

But what if we don’t trust in His goodness? We may have questions or doubts in the pureness of His character. If our dependence on His love is dependent on our understanding of it, then it’s conditional. We’re trusting Him as long as we understand everything He’s doing.

When this happens, we’re fearing something else above God. We’re essentially saying that only we can determine what is good and evil whereas He doesn’t always get it right. That our moral understanding outweighs His.

Trusting in His goodness even when we don’t understand it takes faith only derived from a great grace. 

Fear exposes our heart’s true desire by revealing what we are the most afraid of losing or not having. If it’s ever dangled out of reach or feels precariously situated, we are in distress. It’s what we think about, it’s what drives us. It’s the motivation of what we do and why we do it.

If you fear what God thinks of you, all the other things pale in comparison. If you fear God you trust in who He is, that He is good and that He is just, He is right, He is sovereign, He makes no mistakes, He only gives you good things.

Study of Judas: follower of God’s law

We’ve come to our final article analyzing Judas’ life in our Lukewarm Church series, where we’ll turn our attention to Peter starting next week.

Our final week, we’ll discuss how we follow God’s law with a loveless heart. 

It goes without saying that Judas learned and followed God throughout his ministry and perhaps before. Beyond that, he answered Jesus’ call and followed Him into His ministry. We don’t know what sort of life he left behind, but he did make a self-sacrificial life-change.

A repeated theme throughout this series uncovers how while someone may appear, talk and act like a Christian, they may not be one. They can have loads of Christian attributes but it doesn’t spring out of a love and fear of God. After all, some of the most brilliant, kind and thoughtful people I know don’t claim Christianity at all.

In today’s climate, Christians have rightly been accused of hypocrisy and legalism. Many times people avoid Christians because of their judgment and self-righteousness.

Once, I was looking up what it was like to live in a new town I was to move to. On a Reddit thread, I read someone say that ‘you’d be okay so long as you stay away from the Christians, everyone else was nice’.

My stomach sank. But I knew they were right.

Law without love in the modern church

Collectively, the church has difficulty with loving God. Most have split into three directions. 

1. Those infatuated with God’s laws and wrapped their identity in being associated with morally good.

2. Those who have lost sight of God’s goodness, distracted by either their woes or joys of the world and become apathetic towards God.

3. The third tier of people either fall in the first or second group, but they don’t love God. Blind in their religion, their genuine motives are hidden - and many times, even to themselves.

This love anemic condition the modern church is suffering from is damaging to all parties. To the ones who are struggling in their faith, they are missing out on the glorious gifts of being a child of God. They have all the power and righteousness available at their fingertips, but still have difficulty seeing that God is more worthy of their attention.

They circle the first pathway steps of Christianity, unaware of the depths of the glorious truths to be had in a matured relationship with God down a long, rich path forward.

Every school year, my mom made me take piano lessons. Throughout the year, I’d practice every day, completing my lessons. But I really had no desire to learn and get better.

Sure, I liked the idea of it. But not enough to actually put in the work and dedication. Year after year, I did the same lessons over and over. And year after year, I kept playing at the same level.

Did I know how to play piano? Yes, but only the bare bone basics. Looking back, I wished I had put in the work to improve so that I could reap the benefits of a fine-tuned skill of a beautiful, foundational instrument. I could have grown from the simple, basic chords that I continually re-learned and progressed into playing complex, intricately composed songs.

Similarly, our relationship to God has the potential to beautifully flourish and grow. But we’ll keep hanging around the basics, the fundamentals of Christianity unless we actually pursue knowing God. Sacrificing your time to build a deeper relationship with Jesus is the best investment you’ll ever make, far greater than any instrument.

As Christians, we should feel the weighted responsibility for representing God and His church to the rest of the world. We not only fail God when we misrepresent Him, we fail ourselves in our own personal relationship with Him. And we certainly fail those around us. And yet we actively participate in the individualistic society we live in today and choose comfort instead.

Maybe we like the idea of being known as someone who is godly, or we’ve been laissez-faire in our pursuit of knowing God. Perhaps we don’t know Him at all. We’ve burdened ourselves with our own standards instead of finding freedom in letting God lift them off our shoulders and realize grace instead. 

When we buy into our hypocrisy or absent-minded faith, we spend our dollars feeding into the false religion conglomerate that is not only stealing from joy in your relationship with God but from others knowing who He really is. 

What we cultivate

Galatians describes what someone who has the Holy Spirit would look like:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” - Galatians 5:22-23

Notice that none of the things on the list are actions but rather heart characteristics. Attributes we can only attain through Jesus. In fact, the fruit in this passage is singular because it is personified through Jesus Christ as the best example of what it means to live out a Christian life. Fruit is the character built through a changed heart, it doesn’t start with works it ends with them. Otherwise, everyone who does any act of kindness must be a Christian. 

When you obey God without love you simply won’t grow. You may be doing good things and even making impacts on other people. But your relationship with God will remain the same, distant and maybe non-existent. Organic growth is gradual and comes through a continual, faithful trust in God. As in any other earthly relationship, growing in the depth of that relationship takes time, experiences and many times hardship.

But as in a garden, when we obediently tear out the weeds (sin) that snuff the life out of our small plants (growth in God), three things will happen:

1. It will be more difficult for weeds to grow back in. Not indefinitely. They will always find a way back in to rear their head and burst through the ground again. But as you rack through the ground and make way for something else to grow, you create an environment that is more difficult for weeds to burst through.

   When you dedicate your time to studying God’s Word, even memorizing scriptures and daily conversational prayer, it’s far more difficult for either your flesh or the devil to provide an opportunity for temptation.

2. It’s easier to spot new weeds that pop up. When you’ve cleared out the weeds and toiled the soil, you’ll have a clear vision for anything that isn’t of God. When your garden is littered with weeds, it’s harder to identify things that are not of God and easy to confuse it with the other good fruits amongst the foliage.

   They mix together and begin to be distinguished. If it’s clear, you’ll have full visibility into the weeds that spring up and can either take action on it or not.

3. It will make it easier for you to cultivate the fruits of the spirit when you’ve spent time cultivating your soil. What you choose to cultivate will produce fruit. If you are choosing the fruit of the Spirit, you will grow. As seasons change, your fruit may take longer or shorter to flourish. But when you obey God and are faithful in the small things, He will bless you in harvest time.

But why does God require us to obey Him? Isn’t that demanding or cruel of Him to force people to do what He tells us, even if it doesn’t make sense to us? It would be cruel if it weren’t that God knows that apart from Him you will continue your path to death. Your only path to fullness of life is through Him. When we are disobeying God, we cannot abide with Him. Our sin obstructs our view of God.

God doesn’t ever force His way into your top priority, you have to choose Him. 

If He is the only thing in our life that will give us joy, satisfaction and true life, why wouldn’t He want that for us? To get His fullness, He asks obedience of us. Because in our obedience to Him, it’s our actions that will refine us to become more like Him.

Study of Judas: serving God

Serving God is an act of worship. It’s our response to His love that He first gave us. But as we see in Judas, while he appeared very sacrificially devoted to Jesus, He was not the object of his affection.

Continuing our Lukewarm Church series, we’ll see how serving God doesn’t mean you love Him. 

If we attempt to serve God or others from an earthly love, we end up making it about ourselves. There’s a conditional and transactional component to it. Our heart is motivated to gain some type of benefit that we will ultimately be pleased with.

When we please God, we don’t always feel good about it. And sometimes God asks us to do difficult things that we may never see the benefit of or receive any gain on earth for. If our motivation for doing this is to please and glorify God, then whether or not we receive anything out of it won’t matter. Afterall, if the object of our devotion to Him is to give Him glory, then we will be satisfied with just that. We’ve done what we set out to do: please God.

Before we go further, let’s break down what it means to serve. So often we give of ourselves in one way or another and never stop to reflect on what our motivations are. When you serve, you’re a part of something else which gives something for someone to accomplish something. Let’s break it down.

What are you a part of?

As a Christian, ‘what you’re a part of’ is God’s kingdom. And His mission for Christians, as His servants, is to bring the gospel to every nation. Jesus came down to earth not only to bring about the gift of Salvation, but to start a chain reaction. And that chain reaction starts with Him. As God loves Jesus, He wanted us to join in on that love.

God didn’t intend for us to live a comfortable life to merely revel in our confidence of assurance in one day being whole in Heaven, but to let that revelation ignite a fire in our hearts that can’t help but extend to others. 

What are you giving?

As Jesus, we give of ourselves. And since it’s organic, serving isn’t something you do separate from your life, it’s embedded into it.

God calls each of us to a unique calling and ministry. He made me the youngest of four with two wonderful parents. He gave me my amazing husband, Sunny and his wonderful family that I’m now a part of. He also uses negative experiences in my life too. Hardships I’ve experienced, relationships I’ve learned from, internal wars I’ve battled, all uniquely made me who I am today. 

The point is, my life is different than anyone else's. Which means I have a distinct way in which I can be used by God. What we have to give will be different for everyone. But in whatever God does call us into, we respond to His loving grace by being faithfully obedient in that.

Who are you serving?

God tells us specifically who we are to serve: our neighbor. Our neighbor is anyone who is in our sphere of influence in our life. 

The people I pass by at the grocery store are in my sphere of influence. I’m not living in Switzerland, on my way to eat the most deliciously fresh cheese. Although that sounds pretty amazing. I’m going to my local grocery in Seattle, WA for fresh fish instead. God put me right where I am, next to the people around me for a reason. 

It may mean loving people who may be unlovable in some way or who have hurt us. We may be uncomfortable or have to give something up that we really wanted. 

Important distinction is that God doesn’t ask you to get walked over, that doesn’t glorify Him at all. And the church has many times greatly abused the meaning of being the ‘hands and feet of Jesus’ in the name of enabling abusive behavior. I could go on, but that is a much longer topic than this blog can manage. 

What do you accomplish?

What you accomplish depends on who you’re doing it for. If you’re doing this for God, you serve out of worship to God, giving Him all the glory. We accomplish what God would have us accomplish. 

This is so much bigger than us. We often live in an obstructed view of life, not able to think outside of ourselves and our own experience. What we are a part of as Christians, is God’s mission to reconcile those to Himself. And we get to be a part of that. 

Self-glorifying service

When you serve others out of your own personal desire, while you may be doing it in the name of God, you won’t really be doing it for Him and your true intentions will eventually reveal itself. 

If you’re doing it for yourself, you usually expect something in return. Their appreciation, a return service, perhaps in equal value, respect, validation or approval.

You may have good intentions along with selfish ones, but they are either for God or not. A way that your true intentions seep out is how you treat others. When you think you’re owed something you’re not doing it out of a love for God. In our self-glorifying service we’ve tainted a good thing from God to an evil and selfish thing. 

Joys of serving

Of course Jesus is the greatest example of being a servant. On the night of His betrayal during the Last Supper, He washes the disciples feet. Though He knew He would be betrayed and abandoned by each of them the very next day, He served them.

This washing of feet symbolized how no one else had the power to cleanse away their sins. And as He stooped down to do what one of the lowest slaves would do, He loved them. He didn’t love them because of anything they did, each would later prove their loyalty through abandoning Him. 

He loved them when it wasn’t convenient for Him - which is an understatement. He was in mental anguish in preparation for the torture He knew He was facing the next day. And yet, He humbly served them despite what He was going through and despite how they would treat Him afterwards.

John 13:14, “ Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” 

Now as Christians, we are called to do the same. I encourage you to reflect on the motivations of what you do. Does your love come with strings attached to it? 

Study of Judas: conviction of sin

In the modern church, we tend to demonize Judas to the point where he’s completely unrelatable. And yet, if we don’t do anything with our convictions, we are just like him. 

Continuing our Lukewarm Church series, starting with the breakdown of Judas’ character as an unbeliever, we’ll cover how he felt the conviction of his sin.

Both Judas and Peter betrayed Jesus, but their response to the guilt of their sin revealed how they truly viewed God.

And their distinct views of God informed how they viewed themselves and what they did next. While both felt the weight of their sin, Judas let it crush him while Peter let Jesus lift it off through the freedom of God’s saving grace. 

What we do with our conviction

After Judas betrayed Jesus, he certainly felt convicted. He knew what he had done was deplorable. His response was to throw away the meaningless coins he reserved for his betrayal and end his life. He was driven so mad with remorse for what he had done that he couldn’t stand to live any longer.

When you feel convicted, ask yourself why you feel bad. Did you grieve God or did you grieve yourself? Whom have you offended more?

If we’ve downgraded God in our lives to the point that we feel moral superiority, our sin only slaps our ego we’ve built up. And grieving God will be secondary at best. 

When our egos are offended, we may turn to self-pity. The longer we wallow, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we’re bearing the cross of humility.

This can lead to self-loathing and a completely isolated, self-absorbed life. Judas’ life demonstrates exactly where that lie can take us. 

Or maybe, we’ve deadened our spiritual convictions to the point where we feel no remorse at all. Conviction of our sin comes from the Holy Spirit, which leads to repentance and not guilt and shame. But if we’ve built our convictions based on our own moral compass and in comparison to those around us, it’s not convictions at all. Rather our own moral standards we’ve set for ourselves. 

When this happens, it affects our view of God. 

How sin affects our view of God

Whether we down-play our sin, excuse it, or shrink in horror of it, if our response is not repentance then our view of God is skewed. We may feel remorse for sin’s consequences but we don’t feel the primary consequence: the barrier it creates between us and God. 

That's why He hates it so much, He longs for a flourishing relationship with you. 

When we do nothing with our convictions, we’re essentially saying that we know more than God and we’re okay with the level of sin in our life, despite what He has to say about it. We put ourselves ahead of God.  

As long as you put yourself ahead of God, it’s impossible to repent. You can’t repent of a sin you don’t think you’re committing. You’ll either be stuck paying penance until your ego is satisfied or you’ll become more and more comfortable with the sin you’ve left unattended to. 

If sin is left all to itself, it will grow and spread. And it obstructs our view of God. We may start to feel that God is distant. Blinded by the sin blocking our view of God, we’ll be unable to recognize that God never moved at all. We just chose something over Him. 

It’s important to note that God feeling distant isn’t always the result of unrepentant sin. While it can lead to that, sometimes God is teaching us to rest in His goodness in His quiet shadows. 

Sin inhibits our worship of God. But as humans, we all worship something. So, what are we worshipping?  

Our sin-response reveals who we worship

Judas’ foundation was set on something other than God and when he was faced with his inadequacies, his guilt crippled him.

When the waves come crashing down on our houses built of man-made straw, we’ll be swept underneath the water. When things go wrong in our life, whether sin or a difficult time, what we’ve been holding onto all this time will become apparent. The idols you’ve been worshipping will always fail you.

And like Judas, we’ll cast away our coins we used to treasure because they’ll do us no good anymore. 

All the time he invested in Jesus’ ministry and years of toiling alongside Jesus, all for nothing. While serving Jesus, he loved other things greater than Him.

Judas' response revealed that he didn’t really trust in Jesus or really love Him. Coming to utter despair, he chose death for himself, making the state of his soul blatantly apparent. Although less apparent, many in the modern church today do exactly as Judas.

They feel safe and protected under the umbrella of Christianity. And the longer they stay, the more difficult to distinguish within themselves and for others around them. Even the disciples didn’t recognize Judas wasn’t a Christian after doing ministry with him for years. 

When we choose repentance

Timothy Keller speaks on conviction, “Remorse brings you to hate yourself and repentance brings you to hate your sin”. 

When we remain in our remorse or conviction we remain in our sin. Convicted, we continue our lives, unchanged. But if we let repentance lead us to the cross of Christ, His love will draw you in as your shame melts away. You see sin for what it is, something which pulls you away from a relationship with God. 

I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin. - Psalm 18:23 

As a Christian, the best news is that we don’t have to remain in the shame of our sin. Christ’s blood shed on the cross to pay for our debt. And we can live in the freedom of Christ in the righteousness He gives us, not from ourselves.

And like the psalmist, it should bring your heart overwhelming joy and gratitude to the Lord for His forgiveness and pure humility that He actually had in humanity that overcomes our own sinfulness. 

My friend, are you still sitting in shame of your sin? Let the beauty of salvation transform your heart and live in freedom of His grace. 

Study of Judas: acknowledging God

We don’t hear a lot about Judas, and never read a first-hand account from him. But we know that the experience of being one of Jesus’ disciples wasn’t always rainbows, fame and butterflies. It was often difficult and grueling.

And yet, despite not really loving God, he stayed. We know he was charged with managing the money and frequently skimmed from the top in secret. Did he stay for fame or the money? 

Not to imply that he only served Jesus for those goals. Rather, his love of material gains became his idol. He loved something more than Jesus and he had other heart motivations to serve Him. Underneath the surface of his servitude, something else was pulling his heart-strings. Something else was more important than God to him. 

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We’re in the second week of our new Lukewarm Church series. Today, we’ll see how Judas acknowledged Jesus as God, just not over his life.

With more knowledge about Jesus and time spent with Him than most Christians have today, there was a disconnect with what he cognitively knew and what he wholeheartedly believed.

He reveled in Jesus’ power. He marveled at His teachings. He received Jesus’ love. At the very least, he knew who Jesus was.

But when those same crowds eventually turned on Him, so did Judas. In fact, it’s possible that his love of money and man’s approval intertwined together as what ultimately led him to betray Jesus. He had a choice: choose his idols or choose Jesus.

And he chose 30 silver pieces.

One could wonder why he made this choice. From an outside perspective, it appeared rash and shortsighted in comparison to his 3-year-long investment into Jesus’ ministry. 

But, isn’t that what we do when we choose idols above God?

As Judas, some in the lukewarm church acknowledge God’s existence but are unwilling to be fully committed to Him. They know of God, but they don’t know His heart. 

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ - Matthew 7:21-23

Like Jesus preached in Matthew, many will call after Him ‘Lord, Lord’. He knew of them too. But He never had a relationship with them.

Lukewarmers have knowledge of His existence; however, the life change of being fully devoted to Him requires too many sacrifices to their deserved way of life. While they appear to worship God at church, they go home and worship comfort, approval of others or success. Or anything that is more important to them than God. 

The reality is, the Christian life requires sacrificial devotions to God that are often mundane, boring, uncomfortable and unattractive. Cherry picking the parts of the Christian life that seem doable, they will only give up the parts of their life to God that feel comfortable and safe. It’s easier to leave all of the unpleasant tasks of a Christian and save it for the “super Christian people”.

Only giving parts of yourself to God isn’t enough, He requires you to give Him your whole life. 

Does that make you uncomfortable to hear? It has for me too.

God transforms our whole life and not part of it because He knows He’s the only One who can satisfy you. He created you to be loved by Him, to be fully satisfied by Him. He made you to glorify Him. When we seek other things to our satisfaction, it will always come up short. We’ll always be grasping for more, feeling hungry but never satiated. He wants to give you more. He wants to give you Himself. 

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. - John 10:10

It’s this abundant life that God is offering you in exchange for the temporal joys we often chose. Captured by the beautiful gifts God gives us, we look to them to give us our full satisfaction. And this can happen very, very subtly.

We can be doing all the Christianly things and yet be living a spiritually complacent life.  

Stagnant spiritual life

We may believe that we’ve done enough to get by. That we’re “Christian enough”. We repent enough. We tithe enough. We’re kind enough. We go to church enough. We read the Bible enough. We love others enough. 

Just because you aren’t moving forward in your spiritual life doesn’t mean you go nowhere. We’re all moving somewhere in life - either towards God or away from Him. Living apathetically affects you in many ways:

• How you view God. You’ve minimized God to the point where He’s not a God worth sacrificing much for. You’re not moved by the gift of Salvation given by Jesus dying for your sins. His sacrifice isn’t life changing enough for you. It doesn’t compel you to live differently.

  It can also bring about boredom in your relationship with God. You don’t understand when people talk about delighting in the Lord. You may be too disinterested enough to not even try to find out.

  If you’re honest with yourself, you might not care all that much about knowing who God is at all. “Why bother?” you may think. You’ll be up in Heaven and figure out more details later. You have life to live now.

• How you work. You don’t go to work to glorify God. You may have heard of the phrase “glorify God in everything” and understand the sentiment. But on Monday morning, you’re back on the grind and switch to auto-pilot. Unmoved by God. He doesn’t change your decision making, your thoughts, dreams and plans.

• How you value other things. You look to other things to give you satisfaction in life because God doesn’t bring you satisfaction. You’re confident that you can get along well enough by following what you feel is best to do.

• Blinds you to the affects of your complacency. The danger of complacency is that it can hide behind the lie that consistency in your spiritual life is enough. Which can lead to glazing over your Bible reading and mindlessly reciting prayer language. And slowly, knowing God becomes checking off a to-do list. 

  Worst of all, it deadens you. You may feel convicted of your sin but then you don’t care to change your life and do anything about it. Judas very likely believed he was a Christian, but his complacent walk led him to never identify what was keeping Him from a truly joyful relationship with God. 

Is there something keeping you from enjoying God? I would argue that there is nothing else more important than figuring out what that might be. 

Complacency hides in the corners of the church, masked behind faithful church goers. It looks and feels familiar. While it quietly creeps into your life, it gradually muffels God and cuts you off from your life-source.

Although unaware, it will slowly deplete you. God so deeply desires to give you life in Him. To wake you up and have you seek Him above all else. Because only He can satisfy what our hearts long for. 

Have you become too comfortable? I encourage you to reflect on ways in which complacency has stolen your joy.

Study of Judas: being near to God

Peter and Judas were two of Jesus’ disciples during His ministry on earth. Both followed Him through fame and persecution. But we know how this story ends, Judas betrayed Jesus. But so did Peter - by denying Him three times.

Judas loved the idea of God, but He didn’t really love Him. When the right opportunity arose, He chose a bribe over the life of Jesus. Guilt-ridden, he ended his life afterwards. Peter, on the other hand, had a much different ending to his story. His betrayal led him to godly repentance and he lived the rest of His life telling people about Jesus. 

What made their walks so different? While Judas appeared to be a devoted Christian, his heart was far away from God. Similarly, there are many today who would walk, talk and act like a Christian, but in reality don’t know or love God at all.

Judas gave us a perfect example of the life of one in the lukewarm church. Lukewarm, being those who appear as Christians and often believe themselves to be, but lack a relationship with Him. They love His stuff, His church, His love, His people. But they don’t love Him. 

Through the Lukewarm Church blog series, I’ll analyze the differences between the life of Peter and Judas and what their respective betrayals revealed about their true love for God.

A little on how this 10-part blog series will work: 

• 1st half: Aspects of the life Judas which we typically associate with a Christian

• 2nd half: Christian qualities embodied through the life of Peter

Beginning with the first aspect of Judas’ life: how close to God he was and yet his heart was far away.

If you grew up in the South like me, just about everyone “goes to church”. There are many things that draw people into the idea of God and going to church.

Loving the idea of God

On the surface, Judas seemed more devoted to Christ than many Christians today. He left his profession, his family, his friends, all to pursue a life of ministry with Jesus.

His commitment to Christ seemed so evident that his own peers were perplexed when Jesus told the disciples one of them would betray Him (Luke 22:21-23). No one suspected Judas, he seemed as dedicated and virtuous as the rest.

Eleven of Jesus’ closest friends couldn’t recognize someone who wasn’t actually a Christian. 

Which begs the question, why was Judas in ministry with Jesus? Most likely, he believed that he loved Him. Liking the idea of God, but only up to a certain point.

Many of us are drawn into church and the idea of God, but we can’t get behind all of Him. We are aligned with 30%, 50% or even 95% of God, but we keep control over the rest. 

Why? Our perception of God is limited to our own pre-fixed ideas of what it means to be a “good God”. And the moment God doesn’t fit within those guidelines we’ve created, we’re disinterested. 

Even though many in the church can’t get behind everything about God, they remain in church. One reason that keeps them active in the church is the appeal of being a part of a community. 

Enjoying the comforts of Christian community 

Jesus was very likeable in those days. He performed many miracles and attracted crowds by the thousands. To be one of Jesus’ closest friends must have been invigorating and a high honor initially.

The moment Judas was chosen by Jesus to be His disciple was likely a beautiful feeling. “This powerful man chose me to have a front-seat view of His life and ministry?” he must have thought. 

You can be around those who love God, without truly knowing Him yourself. Even Judas couldn't have been more close-knit to the best community.  

The modern church has changed tremendously and reasons for entering and staying have grown some nuances. In a cultural setting where there’s little to no social drawbacks or consequences in being labeled a Christian (in Western society), it’s often considered an attractive trait or symbolic of possessing some sort of moral goodness.

Depending on where you live, it may be more comfortable to be associated with the church than not to be. 

Apart from appearances, there’s also a sense of security being near people you’re familiar with, perhaps grown up with or grown close to over time. It feels safe to find a consistent fellowship with other people who think, act and maybe even look like you.

There’s a safety in numbers and even more comforting when your world is confined to only this Christian circle, a safe bubble away from the worries and woes of the “world”.

Many choose God based on the association with the church, not God Himself. When the church inevitably fails them in some way, they may fail the church. Or at least have serious doubts and concerns which they may or may not ever confront. 

This usually happens when the church or God doesn’t measure up to the moral standard of goodness.

Wanting to be good without wanting God

We all want to be good. No doubt Judas could feel the difference in how Jesus loved others. Perhaps he desired to be like Him.

If we desire God’s goodness but not Himself, we fool ourselves into thinking we’re becoming more like Him. If we wish to fly a plane in the air, we can’t simply sit in the plane and will it to go. It needs power, to be filled with gas to make it lift off. Similarly, our imitations of Christ will be sedentary until we understand the God who owns these traits. Otherwise, we’ll end up hurting ourselves and others. 

Apart from God, our minds will - to the best of our ability - conjure up what it means to be “good”. But our knowledge only goes so far. Not far at all, actually. We’re thinking through our human lens, which only has visibility to a very small, zoomed in piece of the frame. God’s view sees everything. He has knowledge of everything. So when we try to make sense of His traits, we won’t be able to accurately do it with our small scope.

We must know Him first for Him to slowly expand our view.

But when we separate His goodness from His character, we put ourselves in the driver's seat. We believe that we get to decide what His traits are. The Potter’s clay screams from the table to her Creator, “you’re doing it wrong!”

As with Judas and many of the Jews in that day, when you decide who God is and don’t allow Him to define Himself, you’ve put yourself in a dangerous place. You’ve created your own god. Which the Bible describes as an idol. 

***

So, why are you going to church? Why do you believe you have a relationship with God? 

Many who consider themselves to be a Christian haven’t asked themselves this question with much sincerity. As Judas invested years of his life to Jesus’ ministry, maybe you’ve invested more. Or maybe you’ve invested the bare minimum.

In any case, what motivates you to do so? Is it out of a love for God?

Proverbs study: 31

The final chapter of Proverbs encapsulates the pursuit of wisdom put into practice, envisioned through a woman.

I couldn’t help myself to take a stab at this infamous chapter. I think it limits the richness and significance to only see it as a go-to for what a godly wife looks like. Rather, a description of a godly woman. 

Why a woman and not a man, you say? Good question, I’m not sure. But, it’s beautifully significant as in those days, women weren’t highly valued and rarely acknowledged. This is one of many ways that God uses the Bible to highlight the marginalized in those times.  

I spotted a few themes in what Proverbs has to say about a wise woman: 

1. She’s discerning

2. She’s disciplined 

3. She’s known for her kindness

Before you dive straight into this list, take a deep breath. If you’re a perfectionist or feel overwhelmed with life as it is, this list isn’t meant to haunt you like a grouchy to-do list. 

Remember, the Proverbs 31 woman is a fictional character in the Bible meant to visualize what your life would look like living a perfectly wise life. Straight out the gate, we know we aren’t perfectly wise. Otherwise, we’d be God. Which of course, we’re not. 

Breathe, and please \proceed.

A wise woman is discerning 

She considers a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard. (verse 16)

She takes time, she doesn’t rush through her decisions. She invests wisely and plans with intention in how it will be used. In other words, she’s discerning with her resources. She spends her time investing in building up her family, helping the poor and speaking wisely. Both earthly and eternal investments. 

We all have resources: our time, money, possessions. Do we consider how we are investing our resources for ourselves or for God? And she doesn’t spend all her resources on everything and everyone. God doesn’t ask us to be a million places, all at once.

We often conflate a godly woman with a very busy woman. As women, we easily stretch ourselves thin with never ending demands that we and society put on us. We are pulled in a million different directions all the time.

We may be tempted to think that if we’re juggling 24 balls that we’re somehow more successful or godly. But God knows we are limited, He will never give you too much for you to handle. 

Notice how she takes care of her immediate family first (verse 15), then she cares for other people (verse 20). A wise woman assesses her resources carefully and discerns how to best utilize them.

A wise woman is disciplined in all areas of life

She wakes up early (verse 15)

She works out (verse 17)

She works hard for her family (verse 24)

She’s not lazy (verse 27)

Proverbs 31 woman knows how to manage her time. In our westernized society, we have more distractions nagging for our attention than ever before. Turning down comforts and entertainment has become a whole discipline within itself. 

This may mean you need to re-prioritize how you spend your time. According to a recent study conducted by Harmony Healthcare IT, Americans spend a staggering average of 5 hours and 16 minutes a day on their phones. I think it’s safe to say that most of us could be more disciplined with how we use social media and our phones in general. 

Like our phones, many things distract us from other disciplines in our life. I took time off social media recently. I was 100% more productive and that discipline spilled itself into other areas of my life. When I reduced the distractions around me, my time was more focused and I got a lot more efficient. 

Everyone operates differently and has their own unique life and circumstances. So discipline for you may look different than discipline for your neighbor.

But frankly? Discipline is a rarely appreciated trait that is overshadowed by our indulgent society. 

In an effort to better manage your time, you may need to step down from leading a small group at church. Or, you may need a fitness membership because you can’t bring yourself to complete an at-home class. Maybe you’re reading too many books. Or you aren’t fitting in enough time with God every day. The point is, it’s different for everyone. 

A wise woman is known for her kindness

She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. (verse 26)

This verse doesn’t just refer to the wise woman as being a nice person. Because if we read through Proverbs and try to pick out characteristics and mimic them, we’ll be constantly chasing our tails. Instead, we have to pursue what Proverbs is all about: wisdom. And the only source for wisdom is from God. 

Our words reflect what’s going on in our heart. And when the wise woman speaks, she’s revealing her wisdom-centered heart. Wisdom is so ingrained in her, she speaks what she knows. And she knows wisdom well. 

She doesn’t shove truth in your face or speak rashly or proudly. She speaks with kindness. By the way, that word is translated in Hebrew as ‘checed’ or ‘hesed’, or another word for God’s covenantal love. Out of wisdom pours out love.

That same word is used in Proverbs 3:3: Do not let kindness and truth leave you. Those two go hand and hand. Like God’s wisdom and His love. The wiser you become, the closer you get to His deep, loving kindness. His hesed love. 

***

For me, I can tend to be a perfectionist. I’m tempted to read through lists like this and think, “okay, I’ll work on being kind or disciplined”. But I can’t seek God’s traits to become like Him, I’ll just want the traits themselves. I’ll never be those good things until it’s Him who I desire the most.

In order to be wise, we have to know God, the author of wisdom. And the more we know Him, the more we will naturally take on His kind, loving, gentle traits. 

Proverbs study: working wisely

He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully. - Proverbs 10:5

What we do now on earth impacts our eternity - including our work. In our career, in our home management, in our child rearing and in our ministry, all of this work matters.

Our time on earth is an investment. What we sow (or put our time, money or sweat into) will reap dividends for us in eternity (Galatians 6:7). 

I grew up hearing a lot about Heaven, to the point where sometimes it felt like it didn’t matter what we did on earth. It was going to be “gone soon anyway”. This type of unhealthy mentality stunts our critically important growth while here on earth.

God made us stewards of His grace (1 Peter 4:10), time and money. If we sit and make no change to how we live our lives than our unbelieving neighbor, we will have quietly tucked away the greatest gift ever given. Which hinders our growth as well as disables us from being a tool used in the growth of others. 

I’ll say it louder for those in the back, what we do here on earth matters. Critically.

Why we work

Why do we do what we do every day? To make money, of course. 

Work means something different for each of us. Some of you may be owners of a business, manager of a team, a nurse, a parent, a teacher, a student, or a million different professions. Regardless of what you do, God asks us to glorify Him in it (1 Corinthians 10:31). 

But our work stretches further than that. As Christians, we’re working for God’s kingdom. Now, some of us may be half-way doing this, or slacking completely. But if you’re a Christian, you’re also employed by God.

We very often, myself included, don’t look at it like this. We slip into living our daily lives, just getting by. Jumping from one thing to the next like we’re on a never-ending obstacle course.

Because that’s what life can feel like sometimes, right? We forget who we are as God’s son or daughter and assign ourselves our own identity and end up working for ourselves. Self-employed.

So, we start to separate out our work or day-jobs with our work as a child of God. 

Now, there’s a time and place for everything. God probably isn’t wanting you to preach a sermon to your coworkers every day. 

But our identity should remain the same no matter if we’re working at home or working at work - or relaxing on the beach for that matter. That means that as we seek God and His wisdom and become more like Him, those characteristics will carry into everything we do. 

What keeps us from doing this? So many things. But I’ll cover one: what we desire.

What we desire

All day long he is craving, while the righteous gives and does not hold back. - Proverbs 21:26

It’s okay and good to desire good things. God created us to desire the good things around us. Our desires drive what we work towards. But when we let those good things become ultimate things for us - or things we value greater than God - they move our goal-post.

You may have really good, God-given desires. Like being a mom or dad. But we have to consider where this desire stems from. You have to ask yourself why you want to be a good parent. Is it because your identity is rooted in God and you want to follow His wisdom of being a good parent and loving your children the way He loves His?

Or maybe your desire to be a good parent has become an idol (something you treasure/love more than God). And you want to be a good parent so you feel like you’re successful in life, are a good person or you enjoy being loved or revered by others. Or, insert here anything other than out of a love for God.

The problem when we start to work or do anything that doesn’t stem from our love for God is that we tarnish it. 

Because when we start out of a love for God, we are fully fulfilled by His love. So we don’t turn to other things to give us any fulfillment.

And as Proverbs 21:26 says, “all day long he is craving”. All day long, you’ll keep searching for more. You won’t be satisfied with just one promotion, you’ll need more recognition, more money and more affirmation for what you do. You’ll be constantly dissatisfied with yourself as a parent because you are aware of your imperfections and inevitable failings (as in all other humans).

Why? Because you are working for your own validation rather than seeking it fully from God first.

After all, being a child of the literal God of the universe who happens to love us more than we can even fathom should give us a child-like giddiness. It’s when we reflect on who God is and therefore who we are as His son or daughter that we don’t look to our work on earth to give us fulfillment.

Proverbs study: Who are your friends?

Proverbs has insight into how you choose your friends. King Solomon argues that who you surround yourself with matters a lot.

Proverbs 1:15 says, “My son, do not walk in the way with them. Keep your feet from their path.” This text is referring to sinners (verse 10) or those who aren’t Christians. Of course, we’re all sinners; until and unless we let God make us righteous and holy through His righteousness and holiness.

Now, this in no way means you shouldn’t have friends who aren’t Christians. The Bible is filled with proving otherwise. How else are we supposed to be the hands of feet of Jesus toward unbelievers? Jesus continually surrounded Himself around unbelievers while on earth.

Rather, what Proverbs is warning against is a close relationship with those not walking with God that draws you into their path of life. Notice that the text says to not “walk with them”. This means you aren’t following what they’re following after, you’re still following God.

Jesus was the most radical person ever to be on earth. He didn’t conform to His friends who didn’t love God, He remained radical. Romans 12:2 tells us to be in the world but not conformed to it. Meaning, we love people around us but don’t let our identity in Christ change.

You’re either walking towards God or away from Him in another life path. There is no inbetween. 

Discerning your close-knit relationships

How does this look in practice? I don’t believe this is black and white. It’s dependent on the person and their walk with God. This is where discernment and seeking God’s wisdom comes in.

Reflect where you’re at with God right now - whether you’re struggling in your faith, a new Christian or a long-standing Christian battling the basics of who God is and what it means to be a Christian. You may be in a stage where you’re more easily influenced. Perhaps, taking a step back from friends you once lived a life apart from God is the healthy move for you. 

This is where you would need to discern whether or not someone is drawing you closer or further away from God. Maybe boundaries need to be placed in order to have a healthier relationship.

This does not preclude those who are more spiritually “mature”. They can be susceptible to being influenced by people and things other than God easily as well. Anyone can be. And to believe you’re immune from this, would put you in a great disadvantage. 

In very extreme and many times rare instances, you may need to cut ties with someone. I say this with great caution, as I believe our current climate is trigger-happy when it comes to cutting people out. This doesn’t leave room for grace or growth in someone’s life. But there are times when this may apply.

Ask God for wisdom and seek counsel from healthy, godly people in your life if you think this may apply to you. This is what makes living life closely with a Godly, healthy community so important. Those who are more spiritually mature can speak into your life and help you with that discernment.

So take inventory of who your friends are. Do you have a close knit community of Christian friends who can lovingly speak into your life? Are any of your closest friends Christians? If you don’t, prayerfully consider prioritizing a close, godly community. 

Virtual friends

One thing I’ll add here is the influence of friends or acquaintances on social media. While we may not be friends with everyone we follow on social media, we can sometimes feel that way. We’re able to get a front-row seat into other people’s lives through the rise of vlogger influencers. Which can be a wonderful thing. Or, it could be slowly influencing your life to care less about what God cares about and more about temporal joys of this world.

I know, I am very well aware of how antiquated I sound. But life is really important. It matters what you do with it. Every little moment adds up collectively to this life we live. Are we investing in the salvation God gave us? Or are we distracted by other beautiful, small joys of this life? Our friends, whether in life or virtual, can be deeply instrumental into how much or little we care about God. 

Who is influencing you in your life right now? 

Proverbs study: the words we say

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. - Proverbs 18:21

Have you ever been deeply impacted by what someone else said to you? I think everyone would answer ‘yes’ to that. 

Our words are the most powerful thing about us. What we say can bring someone down or build them up. The Proverbs emphasizes the significance of our words in light of living a wise, godly life. 

I am very familiar with this. I love to talk and my passions come through my words and body language. Which can be wonderful and horrible at the same time.

When I let my passion slip into anger, I start to lose control over what I’m saying and how I’m saying it. My anger is controlling me instead of me controlling my anger. Oof. That’s when I remember just how sinful I am and there truly is no good in me. In my natural self, I can be very mean sometimes. 

Recently, I lost my patience. And it happened so quickly. I was tired, irritated and had been traveling all day. And just like that, I forgot who I was. The love and grace that was extended to me by God so freely and so undeservingly flew out of my brain. I was just someone who wanted something, right then and there. The world needed to cater to my needs right away.

Selfish, right? Very. And you guessed it, I hurt someone I loved while doing so. 

What we choose to say reflects what’s going on in our heart. It mirrors how we think of God, ourselves and others. Like what happened to me, my view of myself was completely distorted. I shrunk God and elevated myself, shrinking those around me as well.

Now, hold on. Does this mean that the righteous (those who follow after God) are the only ones who can “speak life” (Proverbs 18:21)  into someone? As if to say that those who don’t believe in God won’t have anything good to say? Of course not. 

What Proverbs is alluding to is that our words can either bring someone towards God or away from Him. Notice the verse differentiates that “death and life” are held in the tongue. Death = path facing away from God. And life = path facing towards God. 

Slow to speak

There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. - Proverbs 12:18

Our words are critically important. And yet we’re so prone to spilling out what we have to say without stopping to think about what we’re saying.

The moment I let my self-proclaimed passion leave humility in the backseat of the car and hit the gas-pedal on my own truth, I will steam-roll over others. So busy talking, I’m unable to see my increasing speed and am aware of others around me who are or will be impacted by my words. And this is where people can get hurt. And on this side of Heaven, sometimes irrevocably. 

Slow to anger

He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is quick-tempered exalts folly. - Proverbs 14:29 

When we take time to thoughtfully reflect our words, this allows us to slow down our anger response as well. Notice, the text doesn’t say we shouldn’t get angry. There are numerous examples of righteous-anger in the Bible, including Jesus Himself (Matthew 21:12 to name one).

The key word here is slow. When we don’t let the blood rush to our brain too quickly and instead take a deep breath then we have time to consider what is going on. We have time to consult God, asking for Him to give you discernment and wisdom as to how to respond. And depending on the situation, we may have time to seek counsel from others wiser than us (Proverbs 12:15). 

And maybe, if we use this space to reflect on the grace that’s been extended towards us, our hearts may change from anger to patience. 

There is still a place for anger. When we align our heart with God, we align with the injustices that hurt His heart. But when we fly off on our own, without holding onto God’s wisdom, we turn a just-fight into a self-serving one. Leaving people hurt, including ourselves. And usually justice is left in the dust since we’ve turned it to be about ourselves. 

Arrogant or humble?

The fear of the Lord is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility. - Proverbs 15:33

When we seek God and pursue His wisdom, we are denying our own wisdom. We’re denying our own perceived ideas of what is right. We’re denying ourselves. We can only do this if we humbly fear God first and foremost in our life. 

If we don’t do this, we’ll fall into the thinking that we know better than God. And maybe better than most others as well. 

We all want to be the person who can take credit for something great. It feels good to be looked at and revered for your talent. Which is what makes it so difficult to live a life as an arrow pointing to God’s goodness and not your own. 

So we use and abuse our words, twisting them to make ourselves feel better. Not pointing to God at all. 

***

Words can be very powerful and used in incredible ways that glorify God. How do our words impact others? And what does that say about the state of our own heart towards God?

Proverbs study: reasons for reproof

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light; and reproofs for discipline are the way of life. - Proverbs 6:23

The concept of reproof or discipline is speckled all throughout the Proverbs.

The Hebrew word, ‘towkechah’, which translates to ‘reproof’, is mentioned 23 times in Proverbs. It means to correct or rebuke, specifically within the pursuit of wisdom and righteousness. Then there’s the word discipline, or ‘musar’ in Hebrew. This word is used 51 times in Proverbs. It refers to restraint or heeding to instruction or teaching. There are many other Hebrew words for similar words for correcting, reproving and disciplining.

Notice that none of these definitions mean to punish. While reproof feels critical, negative and harsh, godly reproof is intended to reign you back onto the path of life. And away from what would destroy you, a life towards sin and death.

We have to remind ourselves of this truth because being “drug” back into living for God while we’re happily, comfortably living for ourselves is hard and painful. But with godly reproof, we’re pushed towards God, who means good for us. Even if we don’t feel it at that moment. 

Sadly, this term has been widely abused and misused amongst the church. If a rebuke doesn’t bring us back to God’s feet in loving grace, it’s not godly reproof at all but something else entirely. 

In Proverbs 6:23 we see both those Hebrew words again to describe both reproof and discipline as the “way to life”. Meaning, we aren’t talking about your average correction. It’s ultimate wisdom, the wisdom of God. That leads you to life in Himself. That is to say, this is life and death importance-level correction. 

Then Proverbs 10:17, “He is on the path of life who heeds instruction, but he who ignores reproof goes astray.” We see this a lot in Proverbs, the option to take one of two paths. One towards life in God and the others toward foolishness and death. Foolishness being the opposition of wisdom.

Wisdom teaches us that when we accept godly discipline we not only find the source of all life, but we avoid the path towards foolishness and away from God.  

I’ll end with Proverbs 1:25, “And you neglected all my counsel, and did not want my reproof;”. We see the Hebrew word ‘azab’ again. Meaning, we are actively ignoring what is freely offered to us at every corner. Wisdom isn’t hiding (Proverbs 1:20). It’s not as though we just haven’t quite found it yet, we are ignoring what is in front of us if we reject wisdom.

---

What is blocking your vision from seeing God’s wisdom? Is it your own “wisdom”? Is it that the walk God calls you to is too difficult and uncomfortable, so instead you stay in our comfort zone?

Everyone has a choice. Will we accept and even love God’s loving discipline and grow in our knowledge of Him? Or will we reject it and continue living our lives how we feel is best being “right in our own eyes” (Proverbs 12:15)? The choice is yours.

Proverbs study: who is a fool?

The Proverbs describes a fool as someone who lives a life contrary to or in denial of God. I know - it’s easy to assume that the use of this title belittles a whole group of people. This is why it’s important to dig into the historical context for how it was used.

This is another great example of how so much in the Bible gets misconstrued. It makes sense, right? Even one generation from the next has difficulty understanding how the other behaves, talks and thinks. Things change really quickly over even one generation of time. You can imagine a 1,500-year gap would require a much deeper dive into understanding the history, culture and context of the time it was written. 

Today, we use this word to refer to people who are dumb or lacking foresight. It’s used as an insult. 

Psalm 1:22b says, “And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge? The word ‘fools’ here is translated in Hebrew as ‘kesil’, which means someone who lacks wisdom. 

Solomon certainly is not using this verbiage as a demeaning insult, rather He uses it to describe someone who doesn’t know God. We know from this study so far that to know God is to know wisdom, therefore to not know God is the opposite of wisdom: foolishness.

Remember, Solomon is passing along insight to his sons on how to navigate through life avoiding foolishness and instead pursuing godly wisdom. He categorizes a few different ways people walk into folly when they turn away from God that gets them into trouble. We’ll go through just a few: the perverse, simple and scoffer.

Perverse or Twisted

The foolishness of man ruins his way, and his heart rages against the Lord. - Proverbs 19:3

The word “ruin” means to twist or pervert, or ‘seleph’ in Hebrew. In fact, “perverted” is mentioned many times in Proverbs. Upon closer look, their Hebrew meanings aren’t all the same. There’s several different Hebrew words used for it, but they all refer to someone who has turned away from wisdom.

Both ‘seleph’ and ‘iqqesh’, have a similar meaning: to distort or twist. Meaning, taking truth and bending it to fit their own desire. Other similar translations stem from this idea of distortion, how it affects our desires (avah), deceit (kizev) and general moral corruption (rish-ah). 

As Christians, we are tempted to twist God’s truth to fit our own wishes. We live in foolish things instead of the righteousness that God breathes in us. We do this because we’ve forgotten who God is and start to assume His role when we pause our pursuit of His wisdom (Proverbs 4:5).

The Proverbs describe how this perverse or twisted spiritual state only leads us further away from God and deeper entangled into foolishness. Making what is right and wrong difficult to distinguish. 

Don’t be fooled. Bended truth ceases to be true at all. And is worse than being outright false, it’s deceptively cloaked in a trusting exterior. 

This takes shape when the people who seem to have God all figured out have twisted His character and created their own false and poisoned fruit. And although more hidden than those who are more outwardly living a life apart from God, they will deceive themselves into a relationship with Him. Most of the time, this isn’t intentional. They’ve lost their way, clinging to the assurance they’re sure they have. 

To be honest with you, this person is one big motivator for why I write. My heart aches to show them the beauty they’re missing in who God is. My heart also aches for those they’ve influenced to leave God because of their loud, false and sometimes hypocritical religion. 

I digress. 

Simple-Minded (post: Proverbs 1:32 and draw comparison between Psalm 19:7)

How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? - Proverbs 1:22a

Solomon is saying that those who don’t listen to God’s wisdom are lovers of simplicity. Both the words ‘naive’ and ‘simple-minded’ are the same word in Hebrew: ‘pthiy’. Which describes someone who is easily persuaded and lacking discernment or foresight. 

Isn’t it so much simpler to not listen to God? Isn’t it so much nicer to enjoy our lives without thinking about having to live it for someone else that makes us do hard and uncomfortable things?

It’s so much easier to simply ignore it. To be at peace with our own apathy. When we choose this, we’re merely coasting in the world without a care to think through what life means and why we’re in it.

We’re content to “live and let be”. Never rocking the boat. 

You may live a life that looks like you’re following God but deep down, this is your mindset. You’ll listen to God so long as He doesn’t make you think about or do anything too difficult. So you may end up floating from group to group, or place of ideas that suits your own level of comfortability. But this complacent mindset has a shelf life that can only go on for so long without dying those uncomfortable truths.

Later on in chapter 1 verse 32, “the waywardness of the naive shall kill them, and the complacency of fools shall destroy them.” God cannot be ignored. If you chose to ignore His wisdom, you will one day have to come to terms with those decisions. 

Scoffer 

A scoffer does not love one who reproves him, he will not go to the wise. - Proverbs 15:12

‘Luts’ is the Hebrew word for ‘scoffing’. It refers to someone who ridicules or mocks God.It often refers to an arrogant or boastful claim against godly wisdom. It’s used only 27 times in the Bible, 18 of which comes from Proverbs alone.

Ah, yes those who scoff God. There’s many very obvious people and groups of people you may instantly think of. Less apparent, are those who boldly claim Jesus’ love while directly disregarding His wisdom. They’ve made God about themselves. 

So damaging to both parties, the scoffer and those impacted by them. The moment we make God about ourselves, we miss Him entirely. And we start to believe that we had something to do with our righteousness as a Christian. 

We learn from Proverbs that a scoffer isn’t teachable. Their arrogance has made them completely blind to wisdom coming anywhere other than themselves. They may listen to wisdom, but they won’t regard it. Scoffers hate reproof. In fact, Solomon advises we not even engage with the scoffer in Proverbs 9:8.

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Will you choose to ‘love simplicity’ or ‘scoff’ at the truth? If you choose to swim into the depths of the knowledge of God, fasten up. It will truly be the most rewarding pursuit of your life.

We have to reflect within ourselves to see if we say we’re open to godly wisdom or maybe we’re completely shut off to it completely. We’ll talk more on the value of reproof next week - stay tuned. 

Proverbs study: righteous vs. wicked

Let’s be honest, Proverbs can be sort of brutal sometimes. The author, Solomon, says it how it is and doesn’t sugar-coat anything. This makes it sometimes hard to read and incredibly easy to misunderstand. And frankly, it’s hard to read and understand it sometimes. It can seem very harsh and critical.

Many if not most verses have a flow and symmetry to them where there’s often black and white comparisons. One common one being the comparison between the righteous and the wicked.

The uncomfortable truth about the gospel is there are some very hard-to-hear, black and white truths that simply cannot be avoided. In our society, that’s not attractive in the least. 

Many people who would call themselves Christians would want a softer version so as to make it more palpable to themselves and others. Proverbs pounds over and over in various different ways the importance of either following a life towards God and life or you’re not. When it describes the “righteous”, Solomon’s describing Christians. Not that they themselves are righteous, but have taken on the righteousness of God. Apart from God, there is no good in us. 

This may sound radical and offensive. But if you start to believe that there is good in you then you start to believe that being a Christian had something to do with you and that God wasn’t quite “god” or “good” enough. And when we start being the judge of God Himself, we are in a very dangerous place.

The problem with self-righteousness 

This doesn’t mean those who aren’t Christians are horrible people. It’s the total opposite. Everyone, I’ll say again, everyone is precious in God’s sight. He treasures and values everyone more than we could fathom, Christian or not. He deeply desires a relationship with every single person on this earth. And the moment we start to think that as Christians we are “more righteous” then we simply don’t get and maybe aren’t a Christian at all.

Sadly, I believe this idea has seeped into the DNA of the modern church today and uprooted in great destruction. Certainly to those outside the church but inside the church as well. This isn’t God. This is a self-righteous version of God that we’ve created in our hearts that is blinding us from who God is and hurting those who don’t know Him.

I’ve talked to so many people who can get onboard with God, just not His people and the church. This is a problem. A deep one. And one we need to deeply consider our part in enabling it within the church.

The problem with complacency 

I get it, I grew up with people who are leaving the church in droves due to destructive, pharisaical ideologies and even false-gospels. But you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

When you swing the other direction it’s easy to be very tolerant of sin and become complacent in your walk with God. You’re either living for you, or for God. There is no in-between, you are either walking in a life towards God or not.

This isn’t to say that you’re living a completely perfect walk with God, we all know that’s impossible. But we can’t believe the lie that we can have a “little bit of Jesus”, an amount of Jesus that we’re comfortable with in our life.

Hope of the righteous vs. expectation of the wicked

But why does God ask us to do this? It’s because He knows that this radical love for Him to transform your entire life, not just part of it, is necessary to have a relationship with Him. And He designed you to have that relationship, it’s what your heart has always been longing for. What will give you hope and lasting joy. He doesn’t ask us to do something that He didn’t think was the absolute best for us.

Proverbs 11:28 says, “He who trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like the green leaf.” When we trust in anything other than God, we will eventually fall. But what will give us life is choosing to trust Him instead. To trust in His righteousness, not our own. 

Proverbs 10:28 describes the difference between the righteous and wicked, “The hope of the righteous is gladness, but the expectation of the wicked perishes.” The word “hope” in Hebrew is tocheleth, which means to wait expectantly. I speak on hope in this blog here if you want to learn more. There is present salvation and eternal future that we can hope in as Christians. That hope isn’t dependent on any of our goodness, which means we can’t ever do anything to make it go away. It’s dependent on God’s righteousness.

But the hope of the wicked (those who aren’t pursuing God), doesn’t end in that assurance. It doesn’t end in a life with God, but apart from Him. And since God is the source of all love, truth and holiness, that is a very dark place. Interestingly, the word “expectation” here is another word for hope, the Hebrew translation is tiqvah. The meanings of both Hebrew words tocheleth and tiqvah are extremely similar. They both refer to not wishful thinking but a confident assurance that something will happen. Historically, it was used in a covenantal sense. 

What does this mean? We all hope for something. We all put our trust in some type of assurance, no matter our view of God.

Our choice in life

The point is, we all have a choice in how we live our lives and are accountable for the path we decide to go on. No matter who you are or where you come from, the choice to seek wisdom is all yours.

Our lives don’t go aimlessly in no particular direction, we are all tugged along by some ultimate love in our life. If it’s God, our love for Him will draw us towards Him. If it’s anything other than God, we’ll be dragged along by them with their empty promises. This leads us away from God. 

This Proverbs study is a mere dusting of the magnitude of the treasure of His wisdom. So, explore it for yourself. Dig into historical contexts for verses you’re questioning, ask other people who are wiser than you to help you in your journey. And above all else, prayerfully approach your quest for truth. Because as we’ve learned, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7).

Proverbs study: acquiring wisdom

In last week’s blog, we covered what it looks like to seek wisdom. But what happens when you find it? What are we supposed to do with it? 

Proverbs 4:5-7 speaks about this as acquiring wisdom, “Acquire wisdom! Acquire understanding! Do not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will guard you; love her, and she will watch over you. The beginning of wisdom is: acquire wisdom; and with all your acquiring, get understanding.”

Defining ‘acquire’

The word ‘acquire’ doesn’t simply mean to attain something. It refers to a specific acquisition of a possession or property that has value. In the times when this was written, property was considered a monument of wealth, indicating prosperity and social status.

The word basically means owning a valuable asset. Think of the last time you bought something that was valuable. Did you invest in insurance for it, or protect it in any way? Likely, you did.

When we attain a valuable asset, we invest in them. We protect them and expect a return on them based on their value. It may be monetary, personal enjoyment or something else. Either way, you expect something in return. 

Proverbs 2:1 describes it another way, “My son, if you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you.” We treasure this asset. 

When you treasure something, you love it. You protect it. You make sure nothing compromises it. When you receive wisdom, then you will “discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:5).

Fear and knowledge of God go together. If you fear Him, you revere Him and therefore know and understand His character of being both good and all powerful. And the more you know God the more you grow in His knowledge. 

When this happens, just get ready.

Suddenly, your view of everything else will change. The world will start to infiltrate with color in our previous black and white vision. God’s wisdom brings life and light into all else.

I’ve talked a lot about how we can’t just seek the idea of God, or our version of who we think He should be. But rather we need to seek Himself based on who He says He is. So with this knowledge of Him we are better able to see what His characteristics are based on how He defines Himself (Proverbs 2:9). 

Forsaking vs. ignoring wisdom

Proverbs 4:5-7 outlines for us to not forsake or ignore wisdom. 

The word forsake is ‘azab’ in Hebrew; it means to abandon, leave or reject. Someone will see wisdom, but won’t want any part of it. This can either be a physical abandonment, such as leaving God and the church altogether. Or it could be an emotional one, where you are mentally checked out. Your priorities in life have already shifted, and for whatever reason, knowing God is an idea to you that you’ve abandoned.

Whereas the word ignore is ‘shaqah’ in Hebrew means turn away or neglect. You stop paying attention to wisdom, your focus is elsewhere. If you neglect your pursuit of wisdom, you’ll easily let it be forgotten in your life. Absent from your life, it will be replaced with something else. This one I think is trickier since you’re not outright denying it, you’re just silently letting wisdom drift into the background. You haven’t necessarily rejected the idea of God, but you aren’t actively pursuing Him either. You live your life moderately as a Christian, going to church when you can, but you don’t pursue a relationship or knowledge of Him. 

Neglecting wisdom can also take a different shape, where it appears that you’re pursuing wisdom but you aren’t. You’re pursuing your version of who God is and you’re ignoring His actual character. You’ve made your own gospel. This could hurt many people along the way. Particularly if you’re loudly proclaiming Christianity while spinning up your own version, misusing and even abusing the gospel. In this example, you’ve made it about yourself and not God. 

Wisdom is accessible

In the first chapter of Proverbs, it visualizes wisdom as a woman calling in the streets. At every corner, she shouts. Wisdom is accessible, we just don’t try or want to try to look for her. It’s easier to abandon wisdom altogether for a more comfortable option where we feel more in control. 

We may feel as though God’s wisdom is hidden, but far from it. Godly wisdom warns us at every corner of the street (Proverbs 1:20). 

What ways do we think we’re pursuing knowing God, but instead pursue our own idea of Him? When we do this, we neglect or ignore wisdom altogether.