July 18
1 Chron 26:12-27:34 | PS 14:1-7 | Prov 19:17 | Rom 4:13-5:5
We have a tendency to judge others by their worst actions but ourselves by our best intentions. Fairly recently someone from our Discipleship Home Group (DHG) invited a few of their friends who go to a nearby church to join one of our sessions. The pastor of that church had recently stepped down due to having an affair. These individuals were confused and started questioning everything from the faith of their former pastor, to their own faith, etc. Like most public figures who fall due to one sin or another, be it sexual, financial, etc., the person generally steps down. If they are on the radio, they are generally removed. If there are messages available, they are generally made unavailable. We read of the biblical concepts of grace, mercy, justification, etc., but why do we hold others to different standards than ourselves. I'm so thankful that those who put together our Bibles did not adhere to these same standards. If so, since David, who was described in 1 Samuel 13:14, "The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart,", fell mightily and publicly in the areas of murder and adultery. Yet from the ashes of this, David wrote Psalm 51. If we applied modern standards to David, some might question if he was ever a man after God's own heart, and remove most of the Psalms from our Bibles. His son, Solomon, did even worse by marrying 700 women, most of them foreign, then setting up shrines and temples to the false gods in Israel. Would this justify us removing Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon from Scripture. In fact, if human perfection was our qualification for writing a book of the Bible, the entire canon of Scripture would have to be eliminated, since Jesus alone is the only one who could measure up to such scrutiny.
Paul writes in Romans 3:1-4, "What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar." People make the mistake of judging Christ based on the actions of Christians, But that is the mistake of judging what is perfect based on the lives and examples of imperfection. The best person who walks this earth, besides Jesus, is nothing more than a sinner saved by grace. In chapter 4 of Romans, Paul makes his case using both Abraham and David, two pillars of the Jewish faith. As for Abraham, he quotes Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4:3, "For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Abraham was before the law given to Moses (around 700 years later), and righteousness was imputed to him before being circumcised. We read about David in Romans 4:6-8, "just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin." These two men of God were declared righteous, not by their works, but according to their faith.
The same applies to us. If salvation depended upon our goodness, we would all fail miserably. If God graded us on a curve, how would we ever know if we’re good enough? We read in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" The truth is God knows us 100%. We all know ourselves next best, but even we don't fully understand why we find ourselves doing and thinking certain things. Our spouses know us next best, then our children. Everyone else only sees what we choose to show them during our relatively brief encounters with them. We are in no position to judge anyone else. But if we take our masks off for a minute, and remove our pride for a minute, we can properly judge ourselves compared to an infinitely Holy God. If we were to do this, we would all declare ourselves guilty. But that is when the beauty of God's grace and our being recipients of justification are. Because salvation is simply by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), and we, not from any goodness of our own, have the assurance of salvation completely based on Jesus' finished work on the cross. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." We can take comfort in knowing that our salvation simply requires our repentance, and acceptance of the perfect, finished, work accomplished by our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: