“Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens,
You who have done great things.
Who is like you, God?”
Psalms 71:19
The answer to that question, who is righteous like God, is an easy one. No one. The fact that God is righteous means that He will always do what is morally right. He has not only created a law to rule the universe, but He is also able to perfectly follow it. Righteousness can be understood as living up to the standard set by God’s own person and nature.
Read MoreIt’s not for nothing that we refer to Jeremiah as “The Weeping Prophet.”
Born and raised on the brink of calamity, Jeremiah’s life’s calling was threefold. First, he was to warn God’s people to turn from their sin, which is summarized in Jeremiah 2 as an idolatrous rejection of God—the “fountain of living waters”—in exchange for the busted and cracked water jugs of false gods.
Tragically, God’s people continued in their rebellion despite Jeremiah’s warnings, which led to his second message: God was sending unspeakable disaster to His stiff-necked people in the form of a barbaric, ruthless enemy Babylon, who would enslave His people for 70 years.
Read More“Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.”
Psalm 32:1
In the Old Testament, certain English translations use the word “lovingkindness” for the Hebrew word “hesed” or the Greek word “charis.” Although it’s a sort of archaic, clunky-sounding word, it does well in communicating both a beneficial, intimate kind of action (“loving”) and a positive, gentle state of being (“kindness”). God’s grace is more than an absence of bad consequences; it is a proactive enacting of God’s goodness and love towards His people. One local minister appropriately likened God’s grace to His “operating system.”
Read MoreNow to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Jude 24–25
I’ve always connected the word sovereignty with a picture of a king, one ruling from an opulent throne room, complete with servants, advisors, and maybe even a magician in a long robe. While the leftovers of a young boy’s imagination, this picture describes sovereignty fairly well. Sovereignty designates one’s power and right over people, possessions, and land.
Read MoreHave you ever in your life commanded the morning,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
And the wicked be shaken out of it?
Job 38:12-13 NASB
I do not know anyone who can answer that question affirmatively. In fact, there are things far less extreme than the sun or judgment of the wicked that I would like to be able to control, but have absolutely no power to command. While none of us could possibly tell the sun what to do, God created it using only His word, and He causes it to rise faithfully with the seasons. Our God is powerful, indeed.
Read MoreYears ago, before GPS, the Navy trained Heather and me to navigate aircraft across the oceans using celestial navigation. Yep, just like Magellan, we navigated using observed stars and lots of math. The foundation of celestial navigation is assuming all stars are the same distance from the Earth. While astronomers tell us differently, the distances are so huge that they are all practically an infinite distance away. The stars become fixed points from which we can measure angles to calculate a position.
A fixed point gives us assurance of our place over a vast desert of featureless ocean. It not only tells us where we are, but also which direction to find safety.
Read MoreThe God of the universe is wrathful. He is filled with fury and indignation. He burns with white hot anger, and a day has been appointed that He will release every bit of that anger on humanity.
Such language sounds ridiculous if not offensive to our modern ears. A god of wrath and anger is the god of less civilized societies, the god of former barbaric eras where the anger and violence of humans was projected onto a creator of their own making.
As a result, modern professing Christians have done much to eradicate the wrath of God from our consciousness. From Presbyterian songwriters modifying “In Christ Alone” lyrics from reading, “the wrath of God was satisfied,” to a more pleasant sounding, “the love of God was magnified.” But it's not just liberal denominations who have moved in this direction. I consider myself a conservative Bible-believing pastor. But as I evaluate my own ministry, I’m struck with the fact that I rarely address this subject and how even preparing a blog on it makes me somewhat hesitant.
Read MoreWe’re all familiar with cries for justice. A bereaved mother calls for the prosecution of her son’s killer, swindled stockholders demand that corporate executives be held accountable, and civil rights advocates call on a nation to live up to its creed that “all men are created equal.”
Ever since Adam’s sin in the Garden, the world has not been as it should be. Our nations are not what they should be. Our families are not what they should be. We are not as we should be.
Read MoreWhat does it mean that the LORD- the Creator and Ruler of all things- is love? How are we supposed to think about this? It can be tricky because some people have gotten a picture of “God” as being an abstract, philosophical representation of affection, approval, or enjoyment. An unfortunate implication of this thinking is that “love” becomes synonymous with “God” which leads to many false conclusions. To avoid this, it’s best to remember that attributes go one way; “God is love” is not the same as “Love is God.” It is God who gives the definition and substance to His attributes, not the other way around.
Read MoreThe Webster’s Dictionary definition of mercy is “kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly; kindness or help given to people who are in a very bad or desperate situation.” God’s mercy has provided forgiveness for us who are in a desperate situation because of our sin.
Read More“If you grew up in church, too, read it out loud with me: God is good...all the time. And all the time...God is good.
This is such a comfort, especially “in the day of trouble” as mentioned in Nahum 1:7. When you’re living in a day of trouble, there’s so much to be discouraged by. Have you ever had one of those days? It was bad news on top of anxiety, spilled milk on top of forgetting an important assignment. It was being ignored on top of feeling like a failure. It was an argument in your closest relationship that came out of nowhere after yet another day of the same ol’ routine. A day of trouble.
The Lord is good on that day.”
Exodus 15:11 proclaims that God is majestic in holiness, but what does that word “holy” mean? The answer is actually found in the rhetorical questions stated previously in the verse.
Who is like you, O Lord? The answer is absolutely no one. That is what it means to be holy--completely and utterly unique, unlike anything or anyone in the rest of creation.
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