Jesus is Perfect!!!

I'm going to diverge from the fear of God theme a moment and reflect on some truth about God. I had the pleasure of leading a short Bible study tonight with some sweet young kids at the MLK Rec Center, and I had 15ish minutes to talk about the truth that God is Perfect! Holy Cow, what a loaded truth, so simple and yet so amazing to reflect on, and so critical to understand. Let's think about this together...
So, perfect is very easily defined as lacking fault or defect. It's easier to think about perfection when we are describing something or someone, and so I started out asking these kids, when you hear that God is Perfect, what are some things you think of about God? I wanted to hear their thoughts, but this might have been one of the first times they had been asked to think about what that means. I heard God is Good, God is Faithful, God is True. And I added some of my own suggestions for them to ponder. God is trustworthy. God is righteous. God is just. Oh... one boy did say, God is Omniscient. :) So we started out with some descriptions of a perfect God.
Then I asked the kids to tell me about some of man's imperfections. At first the room was quiet... and I said, now I bet you all have heard of the "S" word before... and as I glanced out at the urban inner city kids, I quickly clarified that I was talking about "SIN." (Whew, be careful using letter abbreviations with inner city kids, they words they know might really surprise you, and probably don't need to be shared out loud in Bible study!) So, we talked about, what is sin? When you fail to live up to God's standard in life. When you fail to be perfect. That was a bit lofty, so I gave some examples. Has anyone in here ever told a lie? Ever cheated? Ever coveted? Those things are sins. And, I also hit on idolatry. I'd love to have had more time to let them sit and think about that, but I just said, any time we love something more than we love God, that becomes an Idol. I said, most of us here don't bow down and worship little statues, but we do love other things more than God, and that's idolatry. So, if you love your car and care about it more than Jesus, it can be an Idol. Or if you love money more than you love Jesus, that can become an idol. When I said money can be an idol, one boy said money's not bad, we need money to live! And I said, I know, you are right, money itself is not bad, it's only when we care more about money than Jesus that it becomes an idol.
At this point I had kids read some verses about God being perfect.
"This God, his way is Perfect - the word of the Lord proves true; he is a sheild for all those who take refuge in Him." 2 Samuel 22:31, Psalm 18:30
"The Rock, his work is Perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He." Deut. 32:4
And I said, Why do we need God to be perfect? Why is it important that we see that Jesus is perfect?
And we starting going deeper, and I tried to keep it simple, but well, who knows what they understood of what we said, what seeds will grow.
Because for our sins to be forgiven and wiped clean before a Perfect and Holy God, we need A PERFECT SACRIFICE.
Now, looking back I wish I had been better able to explain this, only 15 minutes sheesh! I said, back in Old Testament times, guess what the priests had to do before they could come to God? They had to offer sacrifices. (This was a new concept I think to these kids, at least some of them, because they asked, isn't killing wrong? Why would God want us to kill an animal?) I said, do you remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? (I really thought we did teach that story last semester, but you know, if we did, that might have been the only time those kids had heard it, and by now maybe they had forgotten it, they knew the names of them...) I said, so Abraham was this really really old guy, like 100! And he didn't have any kids, but God promised him he would have one even though he was WAY TOO OLD to have kids, and then his wife had his son Isaac. But the strange thing that happened was, God said, Abraham, I need you to sacrifice Isaac to me. So they go out and prepare to offer a sacrifice to God, and Isaac's like, dude, dad, what's up, where's the animal here? And a student read Genesis 22:8. "Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So, I told the kids, Abraham got everything ready and was just about to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, when God interrupts and says Abraham, there's a ram over in the bushes, sacrifice that ram instead. Then we read Leviticus 22:21 "and when anyone offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord... to be accepted it must be perfect; there shall be no blemish in it." Then a student read John 1:29, where John the Baptist shouts "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" about Jesus.
Yes this is very weighty and meaty. I said, the story of Abraham and Isaac shows us, we are in need of a Perfect Sacrifice, God provided a ram in that moment, but humanity needed something more. And so He provided Jesus, who happens to be the ONLY PERFECT PERSON WHO EVER LIVED! And therefore the ONLY one who could be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. And we talked about how we all have friends, but our friends aren't perfect, if they died, their death would only meet the punishment for their own sin. And wow, this is taking them deeper still... Our Salvation is Based on God's Grace at the Cross, He offered Jesus as a Perfect Sacrifice to pay for our sins! Last week's Bible verse was actually Ephesians 2:8- "for it is by Grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." I said, this is soooooo great! We could never be perfect ourselves, we can never be good enough to earn our salvation, so God provided His Son to make our salvation possible! And that is not only amazing, it distinguishes Christianity from every other religion in the world! I told these kids, every other religion out there that exists tells you you have to EARN your way into heaven, by doing good deeds, by praying enough times, by trying to be a good person... but followers of Jesus, we can rejoice because our salvation is based on the cross of Christ alone, the free gift of grace! Whoohoo for the Gospel! Thank you Jesus! And I had a student read Revelation 5:9 - "And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open it's seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation." I said, this is a picture of heaven, all the angels are rejoicing because only Jesus was worthy! (actually the child only read half of the verse outloud, but that's okay, we were already in way deeper than most of these kids have ever gone.)
So we read 1 John 4:12
"No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
Hebrews 10:14
"For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified."
Matthew 5:48
"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
So we said, three responses we can have to this lesson: love God, love people, even our enemies!, and also, love the Bible, God's truth, His Word, that has this incredible power to transform our lives. I mean, a few kids told me they read the Bible at home in the week, but most of them admitted they don't, and... I want them to start reading and seeing this for themselves!
We worked on the memory verse which was the verse the lesson started with. And then I prayed for the lesson and God's truth to sink in to our hearts, and for God to bless our dinner.
The kids listened to what I had to say. I don't know how much connected for them. I kept saying, "Why does this matter?" Because I know how I am, if I don't understand why it's important that God be Perfect, or that Jesus lived a perfect life, then it's just a trite phrase without meaning. But that truth, when you start unfolding it, it reveals the Gospel and it's so amazing! Which... even if the lesson was "over their heads..." in one sense, I think it was good to challenge these kids with some depth in thinking about God. I mean, truth, God is deep, and the more you get to know Him, the deeper you go. The gospel is so simple yet amazing and profound and... it's good. God is Good.
Our culture is very superficial in understanding our world. Consumerism and materialism (with the aid and indoctrination of the box called television...) are choking depth away... and too often we're never challenged to go deep. So, if I could help a few children, plant some seeds that give them a thirst and desire to go deeper, to see the Truth of the gospel is deeper, and is more relevant than we often realize... and meaty and real and good to dive into... then the Holy Spirit used me in a very gracious way. But really, I'm glad that I was able to stop and reflect on the truth of God's perfection this week, and allow it to lead me to the foot of the cross. That's what it's about, remembering the Gospel. God's grace is great, indeed.

Fear of God vs.Fear of Man Part 1

I'm reading through Matthew, the Psalms, Acts and Genesis at the same time with my yearly walk through the Bible plan, and each of these scriptures has been ripe with examples of those who have walked fearing the Lord, and those who have walked fearing man. It's a humorous contrast to read actually, and clearly shows which way of life is fruitful in Christ, and which way creates a mess. Let's take the beginning of Matthew, for example. Joseph chooses to believe and revere the revelation God brings him about Mary's pregnancy. I'm sure he had peers who snickered and mocked at his decision to go ahead and marry a girl that was "defiled," and who knows how many comments he heard over the years about the "bastard" child. People doubted the virgin birth of Jesus then, just like many question it now. But Joseph chose to believe the message from the angel he received, and obey the Lord's command. God's opinion mattered, not man's. He might have looked like a fool to the world, but he chose to value God's calling on his life, to marry Mary and... be the father of the savior of the world?! Whoa, that would be an intimidating task if any, father the one who will save his people from there sins? What would that look like? But Joseph walks in faith.
Then you have the wise men. They truly were wise, they were the only ones who recognized that the King of the Jews had been born, and traveled across continents to worship at His feet. (Besides some random shepherds that the angels proclaimed to...) But seriously, that star was out for all to see, and they were the only ones that recognized a divine sign. Why did everyone else miss it? What if they saw it, and then brushed off their sight as coincidence, because they feared friends would think it a little strange to wonder about a bright star. Big deal, it's a brighter, bigger star than normal... and it really was. I just wonder how many times God is trying to declare His beauty and Glory through signs all around us, and how often most of us miss it. And do we miss it, because we think others will think we are crazy to look for God, to expect God to speak to us through His Word and life around us? Because we fear what man thinks, not God? What a tragedy.
The wise men were also discerning, and knew God's voice in their dream, and obeyed God's command to not return to Herod with any information about Jesus but returned home another way entirely. In their initial encounter with Herod, we know he put on a good show, "Tell me where the king of the Jews is so I also can go worship." He was a good actor. And Herod was the king, you know, not returning to him, the wise men could have gotten into some trouble, I mean, we see the power he had to just give a command and have all the babies in Bethlehem killed. He was ruthless, and paranoid, and out for his own glory, not God's. The wise men feared the word of the Lord, and not the power of a man, even a powerful man, even a king.
Then I read through in Genesis about Noah. A righteous man, who also fears the Lord and lives in faith and obedience to His Word. God tells Noah to build a HUGE ark, that takes him and his sons years to work on, and you know that all the people around them thought that they were crazy. "That fool Noah, he's building that big wooden thing he's calling an ark, and talking something crazy about a flood destroying the earth. What a loon!" Now, Noah chose to ignore whatever mocking, teasing, and insulting he received over his building project. He didn't let men's opinions sway him in the least! And look who ends up being the fools - all those left on the flooding earth that drown in God's judgement. Thankfully, Noah chose to fear God, and live in obedience to Him, regardless of the crowd. And, he builds that same fear of God into his sons who help him build the ark.
Alright, there's a lot more to come, so stay tuned for part 2, we've got some exciting lessons to learn! (God repeats things in His Word a lot that He really wants us to get down, and these themes are rampant, so I'm going to dwell on them and let the lessons simmer in my soul a bit more...)