Love from the Heavens

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man, that you care for him?

~ Psalm 8:3-4

In the last few decades, a major revolution has been taking place in physics and astronomy. On the subatomic level, the universe has become far more mysterious, complex, and variegated than we could have ever imagined. On the cosmic level, we have discovered to our amazement that our sun is only one of 100 billion other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, that our galaxy is a single member of a local cluster of galaxies, that this cluster of galaxies is but one unit in an immense supercluster of galactic systems, and that this supercluster is only the tiniest speck in comparison with the rest of the known universe.

When we consider the immensity of the heavens and the comparatively trivial scale of our own existence on this planet, who are we that the Creator of the universe should be mindful of us? We are often tempted to doubt that the Lord of glory loves and cares for us and is concerned about our hopes and fears, our joys and disappointments.

How can we know that God really loves us? This is no academic issue because all of us were created with a built-in need for love and acceptance. Eternity has been implanted in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and this desperate need for unconditional love cannot be fully met on the plane of human relationships.

Nature reveals the existence of God, but it takes the revelation of Scripture for us to know that we are the objects of his love. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

Love is not something static; it is dynamic. It acts for the benefit of the one loved. God didn’t merely tell us that he loves us but proved it by entering his own creation and bearing the suffering of humanity on his scourged back. This gives us a genuine basis for trusting God. “God is love” (1 John 4:8)—when he loves us he is simply being himself. F. B. Meyer wrote that the love of God is like “the Amazon River flowing down to water one daisy.”

When we come to know and believe the love which God has for us (1 John 4:16), there should be an initial and ongoing response. The initial response is to accept God’s costly gift of new life in Christ by trusting in him and in Him alone for salvation. The ongoing response is to abide in Christ by knowing him better, becoming like him, and reflecting on his love.

Because God loves us, we can love him. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). But John continued by saying that our love for God is best expressed in our love for others. “And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:21). When we realize that our need for love and acceptance is fully met in our position as members of God’s family, we are free for the first time to selflessly love others without milking those relationships to get our own needs met. We are free to love others unconditionally because we know we are unconditionally loved by our heavenly Father.

Lord, let me see Your love in all the wonders of the heavens. Amen.

Idle Words

 Matthew 12:36

Most people speak at an average speed of four to five syllables per second. Most words are two to three syllables long, giving you the answer that the average person speaks approximately 100 – 130 words per minute. A professional voice-over artist usually uses 150 to 160 words per minute. How much of that is idle [irrelevant or lies]? Jesus warns us that all our idle talk shall be questioned on Judgment Day. 

For sure, words are powerful things. God’s words were so powerful that they actually created everything (Genesis 1). But even the words of us humans can do powerful things. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 18:21 that “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” The power of life and death can be seen in jury trials, where witnesses and jury members can speak words that might literally determine whether a defendant lives or dies. Less extreme, but no less real, are the power of encouraging words to give hope and joy and the power of discouraging words to spark dismay and depression.

Jesus said, “I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken” (Matthew 12:36). The KJV translates “every empty word” as “every idle word”; the ESV says, “every careless word.” The Greek phrase is rema argos, meaning “careless or inactive or unprofitable words.” In context, Jesus is contrasting the “good things” within a good person with the “evil things” in the heart of an evil person. We are admonished to make the best use of our words, because words express what is in our hearts: “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Matthew 12:34).

In Matthew 12:37, the significance of words is that they will be used to gauge a person’s spiritual condition in the judgment: “For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Jesus was speaking to a group of Pharisees who had just accused Jesus of being demon-possessed (verse 24). Jesus calls them a “brood of vipers” and asks them, “How can you who are evil say anything good?” (verse 34). Just as vipers have a mouthful of poison, so the Pharisees had evil words concerning the Savior.

Then Jesus warns the Pharisees of the coming judgment, at which they will be held accountable for their words (Matthew 12:37). There is no better judge of a person’s heart than the words he allows to come forth from his mouth. Just like good trees produce good fruit and bad trees produce bad fruit, so does the mouth reveal the heart’s condition (verse 33).

But it’s not just evil words for which people must give account. Jesus said every “careless” or “idle” word can also be used as a judgment against the speaker. Even the slightest sin, the smallest deviation from God’s perfection, will condemn a person in God’s eyes. The Pharisees’ sin was great—they had blasphemed the Lord of glory with their words—but even seemingly insignificant words, sometimes excused as “slips of the tongue,” are considered sinful if they do not bring glory to God. According to verse 38, Jesus had the last word on this subject, for the scribes and Pharisees changed the subject immediately.

Other passages give additional insight. Ephesians 4:29 sets the standard: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” James 3:8 advises us on how hard it is to control the tongue: “No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Then in James 4:11–12, “Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?”

Given the weighty consequences of our words—even our “careless” ones—we must learn to yield our body’s members, including our tongues, to the control of the Holy Spirit—the only One who can tame the tongue. “Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3).

Reverential Fear of God

Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.

~ Psalm 33:8

When we come into this sweet relationship, we are beginning to learn astonished reverence, breathless adoration, awesome fascination, lofty admiration of the attributes of God and something of the breathless silence that we know when God is near.

You may never have realized it before, but all of those elements in our perception and consciousness of the divine Presence add up to what the Bible calls “the fear of God.”

There are very few unqualified things in our lives, but I believe that the reverential fear of God mixed with love and fascination and astonishment and admiration and devotion is the most enjoyable state and the most purifying emotion the human soul can know.

Oh Lord, let me reach these heights in my worship today— astonished reverence, breathless adoration, awesome fascination, lofty admiration, breathless silence—let me experience that “reverential fear of God” this morning. Amen.

~ from “Whatever Happened to Worship?” by A. W. Tozer

On Comfort

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

~ Matthew 10:34

God is the only comfort. He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion.

Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way. . . .

Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay.

In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.

Lord, let me not engage in wishful thinking, but know your Word as you have given it. Amen.

~ from “Mere Christianity” by C. S. Lewis

Spiritually Blind

To be spiritually blind is not to see Christ, and not to see Christ is not to see God (Colossians 1:15-16; 2 Corinthians 4:6). Spiritual blindness is a grievous condition experienced by those who do not believe in God, Jesus Christ, and His Word (Romans 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:12). Those who reject Christ are the lost (John 6:68-69). Being spiritually blind, they are perishing (2 Corinthians 4:3-4; Revelation 3:17). They choose not to accept the teachings of Christ and His authority in their lives (Matthew 28:18). They are blind to the manifestations of God as revealed throughout His Word and Jesus Christ (John 1:1; Acts 28:26-27). They are described as those who “do not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Peter spoke of such people as “scoffers [who] will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires” (2 Peter 3:3; see also Proverbs 21:24; Jude 1:18). Those who reject Christ and His Word are spiritually blind and cannot understand the truth of the Scriptures. The truth sounds foolish to them (Isaiah 37:23; 1 Corinthians 1:18). The Bible describes those denying God as fools (Psalm 14:1; Matthew 7:26). Because of their blindness and rejection of God and His Word, they are in a perilous, unsaved condition (John 12:48; Hebrews 2:2-4).

The spiritually blind are simply unable to understand God’s Word (Matthew 13:13; Deuteronomy 29:4). Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:15-17). Paul echoed this when he told the believers in Rome, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:8-9). Those outside of Christ are not of God because their lives are steeped in the things of the world with all its passions, their eyes blind to the Spirit of God. The Apostle John said, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” but that person’s love “is from the world” (1 John 2:15-16).

The cause of spiritual blindness is made quite clear in the Scriptures: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Paul refers to Satan as the “god of this world.” Extraordinarily evil (John 8:44), Satan destroys the flesh (1 Corinthians 5:5), masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), and is the cause of all temptations (Luke 4:2; Hebrews 4:15; 1 Corinthians 7:5). He revels in scheming against and trapping the unbelievers (2 Corinthians 2:11; Ephesians 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:26). Satan’s goal is to devour the weak who fall prey to temptation, fear, loneliness, worry, depression, and persecution (1 Peter 5:8-9).

Without God and left to ourselves, we easily succumb to the devil’s schemes. We can become so mired in the affairs of this world and its moral darkness that, in the end, God turns us over to spiritual blindness and eternal condemnation (John 12:40; Romans 1:24-32).

As believers, we have the Spirit of God reigning in our lives to ward off the debilitating effects of Satan’s power and the world’s influence (1 John 4:13). John tells us, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15). Satan wars within and without us. His weapons are deceitful and crafty schemes to make us doubt and stumble (2 Corinthians 2:11; Ephesians 4:14). Yet God has provided us with powerful weapons to ward off his flaming arrows (Ephesians 6:10-18). As believers we can overcome the evil one and remain in the Light and never become spiritually blind. For, in truth, Jesus has given us His wonderful promise: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).