The narratives of the four gospels reveal to us many things, not only about Jesus Christ, but also about the people that encounter Jesus and encounter the gospel during its infancy in the early first century. Here in these stories we see people from every strata of mankind and from every circumstance. Kings and slaves, rich people and beggars, the prominent and the unknown, the strictly religious and the evidently wicked and many more pass before our eyes and allow us to identify with real humans who met the living Lord Jesus during His first advent. But as interesting as these other people are, there is One person who holds center stage wherever He is and whenever He is present. Jesus dominates every scene simply by His divine presence. All the other characters are mere mortals attempting to make some small impact on this world, but Jesus is the obvious King, the One who controls the action and who dictates the outcomes. Here is the central figure in all of human history interacting with men and women like us, and we get to listen in and hear what He said and how they responded.

This article intends to pose the question, “Has my life been radically altered by Jesus Christ?”

One of the many studies of Jesus in the Bible is to see how other people were affected by Him. What we find as we explore the Jesus of the New Testament is that, when people met Jesus, their lives were radically impacted.

The apostle Peter met Jesus and was immediately overwhelmed by his own sin such that he begged Jesus to leave (Luke 5:8). His life was forever changed, and he followed Jesus until he was crucified upside down as a martyr.

Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), told her about her sin and revealed to her that He was the promised Messiah. She became an instant evangelist and told her entire town of the mysterious Man who knew her darkest secrets.

The demoniac was screaming naked among the tombs and cutting himself on stones, breaking chains and terrorizing the region with his raving (Luke 8:26ff). Jesus sails through a ferocious storm (that He stills with a word) and crosses the Sea of Galilee to meet this one man and to free him from his legion of demons. The man is changed from a raving maniac to a man who is “clothed, in his right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus.” From maniac to evangelist, he obeys Jesus and proclaims Jesus to all the people in his hometown and beyond.

Zacchaeus is a cheating tax collector who is hated by his fellow Jews because he sides with the Roman government. He hears about Jesus and does everything he can to meet Him (Luke 19). Jesus calls him by name and goes to his house to eat. Zacchaeus vows to repay all the people he has cheated and declares his desire to do right. One encounter with Jesus radically changes his life.

A sinful woman, probably a prostitute, comes to Jesus when He is at the house of a Pharisee named Simon (Luke 7) and begins to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears and wipe His feet with her hair. Jesus honors this act of worship and forgives her of her sins. She leaves a changed woman.

At one point in His journey toward Jerusalem, Jesus’ disciples notice a man blind from birth and ask Jesus about him (John 9). Jesus spontaneously gives the man sight, thus changing the man’s life. But more than that, Jesus also revealed Himself to the man as the promised Messiah (Son of Man) and thus allowed the man to become one of His worshipers.

The apostle Paul was a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor as he sought to stamp out Christianity from Israel. He was imprisoning Christians and even having Christians put to death, until he met the risen Lord Jesus on the Damascus road (Acts 9). In an instant Paul is struck down and blinded by the glory of the Lord, and, after a few days of blindness, he regains his sight as a converted man. He immediately becomes a spokesman for the Lord Jesus and a proclaimer of the gospel of salvation and spends the rest of his life until his martyr’s death as a servant of Christ.

James and John, and Peter and Andrew leave their nets and their fathers and their fishing businesses and follow Jesus. Matthew leaves his tax office and follows Jesus. The centurion confesses Jesus as Lord and has his servant healed with a word from Jesus. Jesus casts seven demons from Mary Magdalene and changes her life. Lazarus is raised from the dead (John 11) after being in the tomb for four days. (Talk about changing your life! Jesus actually changed his death!) The widow of Nain saw her dead son raised to life when Jesus spoke a word (Luke 7). Jairus had his life changed when his dead daughter was raised to life and walked around the room. All these encountered the living Son of God and had their lives radically changed, because Jesus does that. Those who encounter Jesus and respond to Him have their lives radically changed.

There were, however, people who met the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who remained completely unchanged. The Pharisees and the scribes and chief priests encountered Jesus on numerous occasions and yet never acknowledged Him for who He was. Thus, they remained unchanged and died in their sins. Pontius Pilate had the chance to have a face to face conversation with Jesus the night He was betrayed and yet Pilate never acknowledged Jesus as the King to be worshiped. He was unchanged. The so-called rich, young ruler (Luke 18) heard from Jesus exactly how to obtain eternal life and yet he loved his money and could not follow Jesus. He left Jesus exactly as he had come to Him, having money but not having eternal life. Herod talked to Jesus, looking for entertainment. When Herod found out that Jesus would not play his games, he got bored and sent Him away. Herod was unchanged, so Herod perished.

APPLICATION: It is the same today as it was during Jesus’ earthly life. Those who have encountered Jesus Christ savingly have had their lives radically changed. If your life has not been changed by Jesus, there is a good possibility that you are not saved. Jesus radically changes lives. If you are a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), it will be obvious.

Question: Is there anything in your life that cannot be explained apart from your commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ? If your answer on this question is shaky or vague, please take a careful look at your spiritual condition.

There are many who encounter Jesus or who hear about Jesus and think that counts for becoming a follower of Jesus. They have an arm’s length association with Jesus, but they have never cried out to Him with unrestrained zeal and asked Him to save them. Theirs is a reserved salvation, somewhat sedate and controlled, but Jesus does not desire “sedate.” He requires an unreserved passion.

Jesus is the Son of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and when He comes into your life, He takes over. He cleans house and He calls you to follow Him wherever He leads with no conditions and no reservations. Make sure that is the kind of encounter that you have had with Jesus Christ.

SDG                 rmb                 10/2/2019

“Bring an offering and come into His courts.

Worship the LORD in holy attire;

Tremble before Him, all the earth.” Psalm 96:8b-9 (NASB)

In Psalm 96, the psalmist presents to us images that foreshadow the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The purpose of this article is to see how this brief passage presents Jesus and His gospel.

In the second half of verse 8, we read that we are to “bring an offering and come into His (the LORD’s) courts.” The ‘offering’ here is speaking of an acceptable sacrifice that is our required “admission ticket” into the LORD’s courts. We are allowed into the LORD’s courts only if we bring with us an acceptable offering. Here, then, the gospel is foretold, for the only acceptable offering that anyone can bring to the LORD is the offering that Jesus Christ gave on the cross. If you will bring Christ’s death on the cross as your own offering, and if you will confess Christ as Lord, then you will be allowed into the Lord’s courts because of the imputed righteousness of Christ. The blood of Christ, then, is the offering we bring.

Verse 9 of this psalm presents for us two groups of people. One group worships the LORD is holy attire and the other group trembles before the LORD.

The first group is to “worship the LORD in holy attire.” What is this “holy attire?” And who are those who wear this “holy attire?” Here again we encounter the threads of the gospel, for from the Bible we know that no one is righteous and, therefore, no one is worthy to wear holy attire. If, then, there are those who do wear holy attire, it is only because they have been dressed in this holy attire by the Lord. But first, what is “holy attire?”

In Isaiah 61:10 we read that the LORD “has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness.” This is holy attire, the garments of salvation and the LORD’s robe of righteousness.

In Luke 15:22, in the parable of the lost son, the father in the story, who represents God the Father, welcomes his repentant son home and clothes him with the best robe. This is a picture of what happens when any sinner repents (Luke 15:7, 10). This is holy attire, the robe of repentance.

In Revelation 6:11, the martyrs underneath the altar are each given a white robe by the Lord and are told to wait a little longer. This white robe is holy attire, given by the Lord because of their faithfulness even unto death (Rev. 2:10).

In Zechariah 3:1-5 there is a crystal-clear picture of what happens when the Lord takes away our sin. Joshua the high priest is standing before the LORD in filthy garments. The angel of the LORD commands that the filthy garments be removed, and pure vestments be put on, because He has removed Joshua’s iniquity. The sinner’s iniquity is removed, and he is clothed with clean vestments. This is holy attire.

In Revelation 7:9 there is “a great multitude which no one could count from every nation . . . clothed in white robes.” The worshipers of Jesus are gathered before the throne of the Lamb at the end of the age to praise the Lord forever and they are clothed in white robes. This is holy attire. And who are these so clothed? These are the ones who “have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb (7:14).” And what are they doing? They are worshiping the Lord in holy attire. In this life, the followers of Jesus who have been spiritually dressed in the holy attire of righteousness will worship the Lord, but even more significantly, on the day of judgment and into eternity they will continue to worship the Lord in holy attire.

But there is a second group in view in the second half of Psalm 96:9, and these “Tremble before Him (the LORD), all the earth.” And who are these that tremble before the LORD? These are all those who have not been wrapped with a robe of righteousness and who have not washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. And why do they tremble before the LORD? They tremble before the LORD because they await His terrifying judgment. Having rejected the LORD in their earthly life, they now await the just recompense of the Lord’s eternal and irrevocable condemnation.

In this brief passage, then, two groups are displayed, with two dramatically different destinies. One group eternally worshiping the Lord in the splendor of holiness, and the other group eternally separated from God in the torment of the lake of fire. And what is the distinction between these two groups? Christ! Christ is the One who divides mankind into these two groups. In Luke 12:51-53, the Lord Jesus Christ declares that He has come to bring division on the earth. All the earth will be divided on the basis of how each person relates to the Lord Jesus. He is the One who separates the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31ff). That means there are those who worship and all the rest tremble. Jesus Himself declared, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters (Matthew 12:30).” Every single person either worships the Lord in holy attire or they await the final judgment with trembling.

What we have seen, then, is that the psalmist in Psalm 96 presents the gospel in poetic form. Bring to the Lord the acceptable offering of the blood of Christ, then worship the Lord in the holy attire of His imputed righteousness.

SDG       rmb       7/20/2019

Jesus borrowed the grave of Joseph of Arimethea, used it for three days and then gave it back to Joseph just as empty as it had been before He used it.

Because that is the case, in all likelihood Joseph of Arimethea was buried in the grave that Jesus vacated. After all, it was Joseph’s grave. One reason why we have no real idea where Jesus had been temporarily buried after His crucifixion is because, when joseph died, his body occupied that grave and this lost all its uniqueness.

But also realize that the early church, after Easter morning, never once so much as glanced back to the empty tomb in Jerusalem, but rather charged out to the ends of the earth with the gospel of the glorious resurrection of King Jesus. Jesus had risen from the dead and had conquered the grave and now, for His disciples, death has lost its ability to threaten. Just as Jesus Christ temporarily occupied a grave and then was gloriously resurrected, so all those who have died in Christ will temporarily occupy a grave and then will be gloriously resurrected at Christ’s return. Jesus Christ has conquered every grave, not just the grave of Joseph of Arimethea. Now the grave of every follower of Jesus is temporarily occupied by a saint who has fallen asleep, but on that day, when the Rider on the white horse appears from heaven (Revelation 19:11-16) with a deafening shout and with a trumpet blast, all these graves will surrender their occupants in the resurrection of the righteous. And so we await the day when the dead in Christ shall rise and we shall be quickly changed and all those in Christ will meet their Savior face to face at last.

Soli Deo Gloria        rmb        7/16/2019

Some of those who sincerely follow the Lord Jesus Christ have difficulty in understanding the Bible’s clear instruction on God’s unconditional election of His chosen ones to salvation. For those believers, I offer this story of a sculptor and a stone as an illustration.

THE SCULPTOR AND THE STONE

The day had finally arrived for the unveiling of the sculptor’s grand project. For two whole years he had been working on this one sculpture, this one piece that had required his highest skills to be focused intently throughout its creation. As the date of the unveiling had approached, the buzz of interest had steadily increased to a fever pitch. Now the day was here and the veiled masterpiece had been painstakingly moved from the secret sanctuary of the sculptor’s studio to the plaza where it would be permanently displayed. The plaza itself was made up of hundr4eds of flat, rectangular stone pavers and at the borders of the plaza were plain stone benches and spaces filled with smooth pebbles and small stones. Ironically, the pavers and the benches and the pebbles were made of the same type of stone as the sculptor’s masterpiece.

But to understand this more fully, we need to go back two years to the day when the master sculptor had gone to the quarry. Most days at the quarry were fairly routine. The morning was spent cutting huge blocks of stone from the quarry walls and then transporting them down to the processing factory. In the processing factory, these huge blocks of stone were sawn and cut into plain, rectangular pavers or into parts for stone benches or they were shattered and thrown into a massive tumbler to produce smooth pebbles or small stones. Day followed day in this manner, with carving and cutting and tumbling. But that day was different, that day when the sculptor visited the quarry. He arrived just as the last of the huge stone blocks had been delivered from the quarry, but before the processing of the stone had begun. He had asked to see the manager of the quarry, and when the manager appeared, the sculptor explained his business to him.

“I am starting a sculpting project and am in need of a block of stone. I would like to examine your current inventory of stone blocks and choose the one that I think will best suit my purposes. How many blocks do you have available?”

The two men walked down the line of stone blocks, counting out loud as they went. There were eleven blocks.

The sculptor said to the manager, “Since you work with these blocks of stone all the time and I don’t, I need your advice. Which one would you recommend as the stone for my masterpiece?”

“Honestly,” replied the manager, “these eleven blocks are all pretty much alike, as far as I can tell. There is nothing remarkable about any of them. The fact that they are all basically the same is why we send them all through the factory to make pavers or pebbles. I have never thought of any of these huge blocks of stone as a sculptor’s future masterpiece. So, anyway, I think that any one of them is as good as another. I would just choose one and ignore the rest.”

The sculptor nodded his head and continued to scrutinize the blocks. Then he suddenly ran his hand over a feature in one of the stone blocks and looked very carefully at this feature. “This is curious. What is this? It looks like a flaw in this stone.”

“Oh, yes, that is definitely a flaw in the stone,” replied the manager. “Every stone block in the quarry has some flaw, whether significant and obvious or relatively minor and internal. Not one of them is perfect; they are just different degrees of imperfect. That’s why these
stones are used for pavers and pretty pebbles, but not really used for sculpting masterpieces. Unfortunately.”

“I see,” said the sculptor, thoughtfully. Yet again he walked down the blocks of stone, now running his hands over them as his eyes examined them one last time. Now he stops at one, looks it up and down, slowly nodding his head. A smile begins to spread across his face. “Yes! Yes, this is the one that I choose. How much for this one?”

The manager frowned. “Sir, that one you selected is one of the poorest of the lot. There are others with fewer flaws.”

“That may be, but I choose this one. How much?”

The manager winced to himself as he named a price four times what the best stone in the quarry would have cost. “Okay,” he thought to himself, “if he wants that stone block, it will cost him. Let’s see if he will pay the price!”

Without hesitation the sculptor accepted the price. “That price will be paid in full. Please talk to this young man.” He gestured to his right. “He has my full authority to pay the price.”

The quarry manager glanced in the direction that the sculptor had indicated and noticed for the first time a young man who had been in the background until then. There was nothing particularly noticeable about him, just a sort of plain young man, but he did seem pleasant enough. He stepped forward out of the shadows, paid the required price in full, and then quietly stood some distance away to wait for the sculptor to complete the transaction.

“Thank you, sir,” the sculptor said to the quarry manager. “We have chosen our stone and concluded the purchase. We will arrange for moving the block from here to my studio. Is there anything else you need?”

The quarry manager paused because he felt that his next question was a bit too personal and thus a bit inappropriate, but his curiosity was overwhelming him. “I do have one more question,” he said. “Who is the young man?”

As he walked away, the sculptor said over his shoulder, “Oh, that was my son.”

All that had taken place two years ago, and now that quarried stone block that had been chosen by the sculptor so long ago had been transformed by the sculptor’s chisel into his latest masterpiece, and the rest had been turned into pavers and pebbles which people walk on. But the difference was not in the block of stone, but it was in the choice of the sculptor. How did the sculptor choose? By nothing other than the sculptor’s pleasure. All the blocks of stone were destined to become pavers and pebbles, but the chosen block became exquisite art in the sculptor’s hand. And all the praise goes to the sculptor, for he is the one who chose the block of stone and he is the one who formed it into a masterpiece.

In the same way, all men and women are destined for destruction because of their sin. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” “There is none righteous, not even one.” “The heart is deceitful above all else, and desperately wicked; who can understand it?” “Every intent of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.” But because of His mercy, God has chosen some of these before the foundation of the world for salvation. In time, those who are chosen are called by the gospel to salvation, and, because they are chosen, their hearts are quickened and they come to repentance and faith. The rest hurtle on to destruction, perhaps hearing the gospel, but never responding, and finally “sudden destruction comes upon them like labor pains upon a woman with child and they will not escape (1 Thess. 5:3).”

“Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me this way,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor (Romans 9:20-21)?”

The Lord Himself is sovereign over His universe and over everything in it, including all of mankind. The Lord has the Creator’s right to rule His creation as He sees fit (Psalm 115:3) and He will have mercy on whom He desires, and He will harden whom He desires (Romans 9:18). If all have sinned (Romans 3:23), then all have earned hell’s condemnation and they are without excuse (Romans 1:20; 2:1). But since God is rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4), and since He desires to give His Son a ransomed Kingdom of redeemed worshipers (Revelation 7:9; Isaiah 53:12), then He has chosen some sinners before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-6) who will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and who will thus be justly justified (Romans 3:26).

“O, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God (Romans 11:33).” As a master sculptor selects a flawed stone block and then fashions it into a masterpiece, so the Lord graciously chooses some of the condemned to spend eternity at the master’s table as His adopted children (2 Samuel 9 and Mephibosheth).

The Lord God is, indeed, sovereign in His unconditional election.

SDG       rmb       7/11/2019

As I was carefully considering the second chapter of Genesis, I spent a long time thinking about Genesis 2:17 and its implications:

“. . . but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”

The LORD God issues a commandment to man, the creature, and man the creature disobeys the commandment. This led me to consider another question.

QUESTION #2: How many of the LORD God’s commandments did Adam disobey?

ANSWER #2: Adam disobeyed ALL of God’s commands.

COMMENTARY: What does this show us? What this shows us is that, even before the Fall, man was a rebel. Man the creature is a lawbreaker. Why do I say that? What is my evidence? Well, let us consider Adam and his actions.

In Genesis 2, the LORD God planted a garden and in the garden was “every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food (2:9).” The LORD God even placed the tree of life in the garden. The LORD God told the man that he could “eat freely” from any tree in the garden (2:16), but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he shall not eat (2:17). So, the LORD God gave to Adam complete freedom to eat of all the delightful trees of the garden except one. And to help Adam to be highly motivated in his obedience, the LORD God warned Adam in the most strident and sober words that there would be disastrous and fatal consequences if he disobeyed. One the one hand, there would be an abundance to eat and ongoing fellowship with the LORD God if Adam obeyed, and on the other hand there would be death if he disobeyed. Absolutely everything was stacked in Adam’s favor.

But it turns out that as soon as Adam had a commandment to disobey, he fell into disobedience. The LORD God gave Adam one commandment and Adam broke it. Adam explicitly and specifically disobeyed the only commandment that he had received. Adam was a rebel, and he only needed a command that he could disobey to display his rebellion.

Romans 5:20 says, “The Law came in that the transgression would increase.” What this means is that the more laws there are, the more opportunities there are to violate the Law. For the rebel, a commandment is another opportunity to transgress.

Romans 7:5 says, “When we were in the flesh, the sinful passions that were aroused by the Law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.” Translation? When we were unsaved, the moral Law of God operated as a goad to incite us to sin. When our flesh heard a moral prohibition, transgression of the prohibition became the flesh’s ambition.

So what can change this wretched situation? How can I ever be set free from the body of this death (Romans 7:24)? How can we be set free from our slavery to the flesh and our slavery to sin? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:25)! If the Son will make you free, you shall be free, indeed (John 8:36). Jesus Christ has set us free from the Law of sin and of death (Romans 8:2).

SDG       rmb       7/10/2019

As I was carefully considering the second chapter of Genesis, I spent a long time thinking about Genesis 2:17 and its implications:

“. . . but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”

The LORD God issues a commandment to man, the creature. OBSERVE:

• Man is obligated to obey all God’s commands;
• Our God is a God who issues commands and God’s commands MUST be obeyed
• Disobedience to God’s commands results in death
• God has authority over man and man is subject to God.

QUESTION #1: How many times did Adam sin before he was condemned?

ANSWER #1: Adam sinned one time and, as a result, he was condemned.

Comment: Note that the first time Adam sinned, he was condemned. Adam’s first sin made him a sinner. And this is the same for you and me. The first time that we violate any one of God’s commandments, we earn His condemnation.

How are you doing so far? Have you ever disobeyed ONE of God’s holy commandments?

And the news gets worse! According to Romans 2:5, “Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” As we sin more, we store up more of God’s wrath against us, and He will pour out that wrath upon us on the day of judgment.

Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death.” What we see from all this and many more passages throughout the Bible is that God has a holy hatred of sin and all sin invokes His wrath and merits judgment. DEATH. JUDGMENT. WRATH. CONDEMNATION.

Adam failed to obey the Lord’s commandments and so he fell and was cast out of the garden of Eden and plunged the world into sin. Likewise, we have also violated the Lord’s commands and have rebelled against His holy Law, and we have done that willfully and intentionally. We are obligated to obey God’s commands and we fail to obey, and our rebellion and disobedience merit death. How, then, can anyone escape the terrifying and righteous judgment of the Holy One of Israel? Is there any escape for sinners like us? How can God’s wrath against us be satisfied?

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the heaven-sent Son of God, has lived the sinless life that we were obligated to live but could not and on the cross, Jesus Christ has died the death that we deserved and has thus satisfied the wrath of God for all those who place their faith and trust in Him. The Lord God has made “Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).” No matter how rebellious you have been and no matter how good you think you have been, you can find salvation and rescue at the cross. If you will place your faith in the Lord Jesus and bow the knee to Him, He is willing to save you. The Son of God is willing to save anyone who will bow down to him and confess Him as Lord.

Like Adam, you have sinned at least once. Will you escape the wrath of God and come to faith in Jesus?

SDG       rmb       7/9/2019