Is the God of Universalism More Merciful or Less?

Universalists make the point that at the end of the day God will redeem everyone whether they wanted to be redeemed in this life or not. The question I have is why on earth did God allow any brokenness in the first place? They say the only way God can be completely loving and merciful is to create the perfect world, allow us to goof it up, and not restore it all then and there but instead allow millenia of pain, suffering, disease, spiritual warfare, sin, rebellion, alienation from God, degradation and abuse of children, and so much more to pass but that at the end of it all he is going to restore everything and everyone back after we have suffered all of that. We know none of these issues are an issue with God’s power, right? Universalists are all about the power of God and his power to save. God is the one who chooses when to do the redeeming and restoring. If it is going to be everyone, all the way…why not now?

Is it just me or does that actually sound more cruel, not less? If the end result is complete redemption of every single person who has ever lived and God is all loving and all powerful, why not get on with it? At the moment of the very first sin or even before that…take the tree out of the garden and live in bliss forever. Why allow anyone else to suffer? Why allow one more tear? Does the God of universal salvation actually depict a more merciful God or a less merciful one? I really am asking so please fill me in if you have an answer.

Heaven: I Have Questions…

I am teaching a class on heaven right now and thought I would share a bit along the way. When I just sit and let my mind think about heaven there are a lot of thoughts that come to mind. Just like with any place I have never been, when I hear mention of it, I have more questions than I have answers. Obviously, scripture addresses some of our questions and others it is silent on. I have studied enough to have a decent answer on some of these questions but it is always worthy of investigation of the scripture rather than just assuming my conclusions are solid and based on a solid interpretation of what the Bible actually says. Here are a few of the questions that come to mind when I think about heaven:

Who ?- who will be there? Not who do I expect will be there but who does the Bible say will be there?

What? – What happens in heaven? What is the focus? What will we do?

When? – When will all of this happen? When will Jesus return?

Where? – Where is heaven? Where are the dead?

Why? – Why did God create the world in such a way that there is a distinction between heaven and earth? Why is there evil in the world? Which leads to…

How? -  How will God take care of the problems we face in this world? How does God expect us to live here and now and how does an understanding of heaven address that?

I am going to highlight what scripture has to say in response to these questions and how that helps us to have an accurate view of heaven and to help us live in light of that understanding.

What questions do you have about heaven?

What The Incarnation of Christ Teaches Us and Does To Us

Preaching, teaching or writing on the incarnation of Christ usually focuses on the Gospels. There is another verse that I think has so much to teach us about the incarnation and it comes from the Apostle Paul in Colossians. Paul appears to be addressing some false teaching in Colossae about the nature of Christ to which he replies,

“For in Christ, all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,” – Col 2:9

Jesus wasn’t part God, part man. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. That means Jesus had all the qualities of the immortal God wrapped into the body of mortal man. You can list all the attributes of God and assign them to the Jesus. I am sure that is not news to you at is point. Many people have made that point before. What is fascinating about all of this to me is the significance this brings to the actually incarnation/conception event in Mary’s womb in light of Jesus’ qualities as God. The incarnation takes all of the “fullness of God” and puts them into an embryo the size of a pin head in Mary’s womb. Not only do you end up with the smallest baby Jesus that you can imagine, you have 100% vulnerable divinity.

There is a tension that pulls between creator and created and between the all powerful God and the all vulnerable Jesus. Just a few verses before the scripture mentioned above, Paul wrote this about Jesus,

“¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” – Col 1:15-17

What does it say about a God who is willing to go from creator to created? What does it say about a God who is willing to step off the heavenly throne, put his immortality aside, take on flesh and be put in the womb of a woman he created?

As time passes and Jesus grows the vulnerability continues. He is ridiculed in his own hometown, misunderstood, mistreated, and homeless. After still a few more years and that same divine man is being nailed to a cross by men he created and loved. Finally, a body containing all the fullness of God dies and is raised back to life. Jesus, as God, endured all of that.

What does that mean for us? Paul tells us in the very next verse and at least for my tiny brain, the significance of all of this is mind blowing,

“and you have been given fullness in Christ.” – Col 2:10

In the incarnation Jesus empties himself so that we might become full. In the incarnation He steps down from heaven so that we might be raised up to be with him and he takes His place off the heavenly throne so that we too might be seated with him in heavenly realms (Eph 2:6). The incarnation of Jesus Christ is powerful, not just because it was his entrance into the world, but also because of the spiritual realities it opened the door to in the lives of those he came to save.

So here we are and we have been given fullness in Christ. God has placed us in a world that is lost and dead and aimless and empty. Will it be more alive when we depart than when we arrived? Will it be more filled with Christ’s presence due to our presence? Will we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and even suffer for the sake of Christ? Let us live out the incarnation of Christ through the fullness God has placed in each and every one of us so that the world will see God more clearly and that they too may receive fullness in Christ.

How Do You Flood a Mountain? – Ezekiel 47

The temple in Jerusalem sat up pretty high. One of the last things they had to worry about was a flood in the temple. The only thing that came close was the pouring of water during the Feast of Tabernacles but even that was just one cup of water poured out over the altar. You could be certain that the temple was not in danger of flooding any time soon. What is more, the Dead Sea is not too far from Jerusalem and is the lowest point on earth. Before the temple in Jerusalem floods, the Dead Sea is going to have to fill up…that is a tall order!

It is against that background that the words of Ezekiel 47 were penned,

¹ The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. ²He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the south side.

³ As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits^[a] and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. ⁴ He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. ⁵ He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross. ⁶ He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?”

Then he led me back to the bank of the river. ⁷ When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. ⁸ He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. ⁹ Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. ¹⁰ Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. ¹¹ But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. ¹² Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

Now that is impressive! When God gets to work you better watch out. The impossible becomes possible. Things are happening in the temple that no one would have guessed let alone condoned. The water goes out from the temple. It starts a trickle and grows into an unpredictable, uncontrollable torrent of rushing waters. No one can cross it…no one can contain it…no one can make enough sand bags to hold it in. No earthly authority can give orders for it to stop. No sect of God’s people can convince the waters to change course. The waters are going to do what they are going to do and go where they are going to go.

The water goes where water goes, into the low places…the Dead Sea. The waters do what waters do…bring life. Fish swim where they could not before. Trees grow where they had not been able. Life springs forth! This is a God thing. No one would have called it. No one could have arranged it and yet that is exactly what God is doing.

Too often we try to bottle this up and pass it around. Too often we try to act like we can control it, levy it, dam it up and open the spill ways only in small, measurable and controllable amounts. But God will prove to us as many times as we need that he cannot be contained. He cannot be logicized into a tight box. God will be God and we will submit to what God decides to do. I am glad we don’t serve a man sized God but a God who is able to do more than we ask or imagine! So how do you flood a mountain? You don’t. Only God can do that and when He does it is best to get out of the way!

(image from freedigitalphotos.net by exsodus)

Spiritual Gifts: Dependence and Trust

What is one thing you can do that would require God’s involvement for it to be successful? There are two ways of looking at that question. One way is to say that really everything depends on God, without God allowing me to live, breathe, move, etc I can’t really do anything. The more helpful direction I want to take this question is this…how many things do we do that are so small that we really don’t expect God to have to be involved in it for it to be a success?

I don’t think anyone says they don’t need God but sometimes we live like it. We don’t consult him, rely on him, or do anything other than what we think we can handle on our own. Too often we don’t learn to trust God because we stay too comfortable. More often we need to engage in things that recognize the need for God’s involvement for it to succeed. We need more times where our faith and God’s faithfulness intersect on a regular basis. Only then will we learn that it really does all depend on God. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency are myths…they just aren’t true. Without God it all falls apart. Paul recognized our own weakness when he wrote this,

“ ⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸ We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” – 2 Cor 4:7-9

Without God’s involvement these verses would read very differently, “We are hard pressed on every side and crushed, perplexed and in despair, persecuted and abandoned, struck down and completely destroyed.” The difference is not the jar of clay of self…the difference is God. We only have hope in Him and so we have to depend on Him for everything but before we do we have to learn to trust Him. Most Christians’ lack of trust is less about outright defiance and more about outright indifference. We just don’t think about it and go out on our own and do our own things.

What does this have to do with our gifts, talents and abilities? It is important that we use the things God has given us for His glory. In order to do so we have to trust God so that we can serve Him with our time, talents, and everything else we can give. Instead of using our gifts for our glory, our happiness, our success, we use them for God. Happiness or success may come as a by product of that dedication but it is not the end we are seeking. We have to rely on ourselves less and on God more. We have to start relying less on happiness as a general indicator of what is best to do and start trying to discern God’s will on what we need to do, regardless of whether it makes us happy or not. That takes complete trust and dependence to make the shift in how we utilize the gifts God has given us.

So let me ask it again, What is one thing you can do that would require God’s involvement for it to be successful?

What Are We Willing to Go Through For God To Do What He Wants To Do?

Scripture is the story of the relentless pursuit of God to bring people back into relationship with himself. The Bible is very clear that God will go to great lengths to make this happen so that we can be made right with God. God is willing to sacrifice his own son, part seas, defeat mighty armies, forgive sins, flex his divine muscle and even conquer death to reconcile us to himself. The question for us is this – what are we willing to endure to accept God’s transforming work in our lives?

If God is relentless then we should expect His pursuit of our transformation to result in some things that are difficult, even impossible for us to do on our own. I am reminded of Job who said, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” – Job 13:15. We should be willing to humbly submit and even surrender to God’s work in our lives so that God can accomplish His purposes. I suspect there are times I feel like Jonah the prophet…I am willing to do this but not that based on my own comfort zone or expectation for how I think things should be. Instead I really need to listen and let God change by my thinking and my journey.

P.S. I am not implying in this post that God needs our permission to do what He wants.

I Cannot Do It…But God Can

A line from Genesis 41 really hit me last week and it has been on my mind. It is Genesis 41:15-16,

“¹⁵ Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.”  ¹⁶ “I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.’”

When Pharaoh tells you that you are to do something your first response is not supposed to be “I can’t do that!” it is supposed to be “Yes…it will be as you say.” But Joseph wasn’t under Pharaoh’s leadership and sovereignty. He was under God’s. That changed the way he understood the situation as it unfolded and put him in the proper position to allow God to use him.

I wonder how many times we fool ourselves into thinking we can do things that really can only be done because of the grace and empowerment of God. I wonder how many times I think I can teach this class or that, preach or lead something when I really should have the attitude of Joseph…these things can get done but not because I am able to do it myself…but God will make sure it happens. Going back to the previous post…if we want to be servants of God it takes dependence not independence. If we are going to be effective in ministry it is because God is behind it not because we are pushing it. If we want to be on the right track we have to pray for wisdom and discernment and not pick the route that seems best to us without praying to God for his leadership in the decision.

Why?

I mentioned in the last post that Jonah, who is almost three now, has a favorite question and that question is, “Why?”. Why is a very important question so I am very proud that he likes to know why things are the way they are or why things need to happen a certain way. Of course there are the times he really isn’t that interested in the answer but knows “why” is a means of gaining time before he has to do something. We are working on that!

Why is an important question for us as we look at our lives too.

• Why are we here?
• Why do we do the things we do?
• Why did you choose the career you choose?

Ministry was not my first choice. I went to Harding University to study psychology. Graduated with a bachelors and went on to do graduate work in clinical and health psychology at Florida. Something happened that made me ask, “Why am I doing all of this?” That something was September 11, 2001. It is hard to believe next month will be the tenth anniversary of September 11. The events of that day changed my priorities and made me realize that my answer to that question was insufficient. I was doing all of those things for me and no one else. I wasn’t happy with that answer. It prompted and motivated me to go to graduate school for ministry.

There are several levels to how you answer the question “Why?” On one level you can address symptoms but not really get beneath the surface. When we tell Jonah to clean his room and he asks us why often our answer is, “Because your room is messy and you have too many toys out.” But is that really the reason why we want him to clean his room? If you dig beneath the surface the real answer is, “Because we want you to grow up to be a responsible young man who knows how to take care of things.” Answering the question “why” should evaluate the real reason behind why we do what we do. It is important we don’t give surface answers to that question.

So why do you do what you do? Why do you work the job you work?

One answer to the employment question might be to get a check. Another answer might be to change the world. The way you answer that question has a profound impact on the quality of what you do. And if you change the why then the how and what also have to change and will change by default.

If you do your job to get a check:

•  keep things as easy as possible
• sacrifice as little as possible
• invest in those you influence as little as possible

If you do your job to change the world for Jesus Christ it is essential that you

• do tough things
• sacrifice often
• invest greatly in those you influence

Once you change the why, how you do that and what it is that you do adjust to meet that purpose.

One problem we run up against in life is that often the initial “why” changes over time. Maybe you were really passionate about your career field, your ministry, or whatever it is you do but over time the routine of life, beurocracy, red tape, or whatever blocks the way and makes the once fiery passion a luke-warm or cold chore. People often get into helping professions to make a large and lasting impact (teaching, counseling, medical field, ministry) but get burned out because how they expected it to be doesn’t line up with what is happening in the field. What do you do when the how’s and what’s no longer match your initial “why”? It is important for us to remember why we started something in the first place in order for us to break out of the monotony of what some things can and do become. It is also important to remember, as Christians, that the real answer to the “why” question has to have Jesus Christ in the answer. There is no other foundation, no other purpose, no other source for finding the answer to why we do the things we do that will last than that. Anything else will lead to empty frustration and meaningless routine. That is not to say the Christian life is always easy all the time but we know that when God is behind something he will work it out for the good (Rom 8:28).

I was reading Philippians 2:1-13 through the lens of what and how we are to live based on the whys Paul supplies. Have a read and see what you think.

Everything he tells them they are to do, he gives the why.

• The why of Vs 2-4 flows out of vs 1.
• The why of verse 5 is explained in 6-11.
• The why of verse 12 is explained in vs 13

In all things our why has to go back to what God has done for us and in us and through us in Jesus Christ. There is no other foundation, no other source of life, no other “Why” than that. Anything else will leave the how and what of our profession, relationships, ministry, etc empty.

Because I Said So Finally Makes Sense! Answering a Two Year Who Likes to Ask “Why?”

Jonah loves to ask “why?” He does it all the time and will ask it over and over again. Apparently Missy was the same way when she was little so he must be genetically predisposed to wonderment. When I was a kid I never liked the answer “Because I said so” but all of a sudden it makes way too much sense. Here is an example,

Jonah: What’s that?

Me: That’s the moon…it is way up high in the sky.

Jonah: Why?

Me: Because it is thousands of miles away.

Jonah: Why?

Me: Because a foot is a way to measure distance and if you added up all the feet between us and the moon it would be hundreds of thousands of feet away.

Jonah: Why?

Me: Ummmm…..well….Because I said so!

What else is there left to say? Do I explain to him all the units of measure, the methods they use to measure the distance to the moon, how the moon stays gravitationally pulled to the earth to stay a relatively consistent distance from the earth, or what? There are times I start to explain something to him and realize that no matter how hard I try there is no way he is going to understand. So I am left with this answer.

Now that not only teaches me something about kids it teaches me something about God. Faith requires us trusting that God has answers to things that we may never understand. Faith means God is wiser than we are and even if He tried to explain we still wouldn’t be wise enough to understand. So like Jonah we ask God why and sometimes we don’t get a very clear answer. If my experience as Jonah’s dad has taught me anything it has taught me that when that happens I should be okay with it because God knows better than I do and I am thankful for that. We won’t ever get all the answers. Sometimes the best thing we get is because God said so and we just have to run with it!

Seeking God’s Guidance in All Things

I was just reading Genesis 24 and one thing I kept noticing is how much Abraham and company acknowledge God in the process of finding a wife for Isaac:

1. They swear an oath before the Lord about it (24:3)
2. Abraham recalls God’s promise (24:7)
3. Abraham recalls God’s orders in regard to a wife for Isaac (24:7)
4. The servant prays to the Lord for guidance on his journey (24:12)
5. The servant praises God for answering his prayer (24:27)
6. The servant acknowledges God’s guidance (24:27)
7. Laban acknowledges God’s blessing on the servant (24:31)
8. The servant acknowledges God’s blessings on Abraham (24:35)
9. The servant tells Rebekah’s family the story of his journey and purpose and keeps bringing up God’s involvement.
10. Last, the servant realizes that he has been successful (24:56)

This is a reminder to me to involve God in all of my plans in a much more obvious way. This is not about asking God to bless what I have already decided to do or getting God on board with my plans. This is about asking God to guide me and help me understand what His plans are. Too often I think seeking God’s guidance is a one time deal. Genesis 24 reminds me that seeking God’s counsel is not a one time event but is a continuous process.

⁶ Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
⁷ Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.  ⁸ “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
¹⁰ As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
¹² You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.

- Isaiah 55:6-12