Where to Turn When You Need Help

Scripture: Psalm 121

Translation:

¹ A song for ascents

I’m lifting up my eyes to the mountains,

Where will my help come from?

² My help is from Yahweh

The One who made heavens and earth!

³ May He not allow your foot to be shaken!

And may The One who watches over you not slumber!

⁴ LOOK! He doesn’t slumber!

And He doesn’t sleep!

He who watches over Israel!

⁵ Yahweh is the One who watches over you!

Yahweh is your shade!

At your right hand!

⁶ By day the sun won’t strike you down!

Nor the moon by night!

⁷ Yahweh will watch over/protect you from every evil!

He will watch over your soul!

⁸ Yahweh will watch over your coming out and your going in

From now and into eternity

Exegetical Idea: A person want to know where he can find help, so another person Responds that His Help is Yahweh and He blesses the questioner—wanting Yahweh to be His Help—and then resolves that Yahweh is His Help now and forever!

Outline of the Text

a. A Question (v.1)--Person on the way to the Temple wonders where to find help

b. A Resolution (v.2)--Fellow traveler testifies Who his Help is: It is Yahweh the Creator God

c. A Blessing (v.3)--Fellow traveler blesses the questioner, that Yahweh would always protect him.

d. A Hope (vv.4-8)--Fellow traveler declares that there is Hope in Yahweh, that Yahweh is already our Help and He always will be

i. The Present (vv.4-6)--Yahweh is watching over Israel and you right now

ii. The Future (vv.7-8)--Yahweh will always watch over you--your whole life-- no matter what, in every circumstance,

Conclusion:

Therefore, rely on Yahweh for Help in everything. Have Him be your Help, you can't help yourself. Rely on Him to help you get through all the hard, painful, awful stuff of life. When you have a ton of homework, when your parents aren't happy with you, when you have sinned really badly, when you don't get into the college you wanted, when people are mean to you, when you are violated, betrayed, and ignored--all the time in everything Yahweh is our Help and Him alone.

Signing Bibles is Kinda Creepy...

So on Feb. 3, I was at Moody Bible Institute's Founder's Week, which was pretty cool. Chip Ingram was the speaker for the evening session. In a very generous move, he and his ministry decided to give away one of Chip's books to every student at Moody. So I of course went to get myself a free book, it is free after all. Now, as I waited in line to get one of these free books, I was told that Pastor Ingram was signing the books. So, I was with my friend Adam, and we said, "Hey, what else do we have to do, let's wait in line to get it signed." So we waited for a while, but as we neared the signing table my eyes caught of glimpse of something I saw as terribly peculiar and creepy! Did my eyes really see what I thought they saw? O-hoh, yes indeed! Some people (equipped with a copy of the free book mind you) were whipping out their Bibles and having Chip sign them. I mean there they were with a perfectly good book that was intended even to be signed, but people instead got this man to sign their Bible--a BIBLE! Who signs a Bible? Sure, you might give a gift Bible and write a little note, but who signs a Bible like they would sign their own book? That just strikes me as creepy and wrong. Really creepy. I mean, what kind of view to people have of both their Bible and Chip Ingram that they think that having him sign it like a autograph diary is a good and legitimate use? It is a Bible, why would you have him sign a Bible? It is just creepy. I could explain how creepy this is to me and why, but suffice it to say that when I saw such actions I was disturbed in my soul at the profound not-rightness of it all. It just seems that a line was crossed somewhere in there--it just seems wrong, creepy wrong.

Big Command, Big Comfort, Big Condition (1 John 2.1-6)

Scripture: I John 2.1-6

Translation: ¹ My little children, I’m writing these things to you, so that you don’t sin. And if someone does sin, we do have an Intercessor with the Father, Jesus Christ who’s righteous. ² And He Himself is propitiation/expiation for our sins, yet not for ours only, but also for the whole world. ³ And in this we know/experience that we have known Him, if we are keeping His commandments. ⁴ The person who says that I have known Him and doesn’t keep His commandments is a liar and the truth doesn’t exist in this person. ⁵ But whoever would continually keep His Word, truly the love of God has been brought to completion in this person, in this way we know/experience that we are in Him. ⁶ The person who says that he is abiding in Him ought himself in this way to be walking just as That One walked around also

Exegetical Idea: How we can  be sure we have a relationship with Jesus, so that we can be sure we have our sin dealt with when we blow the command to not sin!

Pedagogical Idea: A real relationship with Jesus resolves our sin problem

Hook:

1. How do you respond when you sin? Give me some options? Shout it out!

Truths (Book)

Don't sinàwhat to bank on when you sinàhow can you be sure you are/can be banking on Jesus

1. Don’t Sin

a. Say to your neighbor, “Neighbor, don’t sin”

2. If you do sin…We do have Jesus (Neighbor, you blew it)

a. Jesus is our Advocate (He is our Defense Attorney/Lawyer),

i. He is on our side

ii. He is righteous when we are not

b. Jesus is our Propitiation/Expiation

i. This means Jesus gets rid of God’s anger against us (sin ticks Him off)

ii. This means Jesus deals with our sin

c. Jesus is the world’s propitiation/expiation = Jesus makes common grace possible

i. Common Grace is a Doctrine that explains why even unbelievers get good things sometimes, why sometimes they even seem to get more and better that we get

ii. The reason everyone is not immediately destroyed upon sinning or upon conception is because of the Truth called Common Grace,

iii. The way it works is that Jesus got rid of God’s anger and dealt with sin for the whole world to the extent that God can be nice to them and still be just/Godly

iv. This is an encouragement, because Jesus does not just deal with our sin, but with sin of the entire world (although in a different way), because He gets rid of God’s rather great anger against us and against the world (although in a different way)

v. You have to let Jesus deal with it, only He can, don’t earn it, trust Him for it, by grace!

3. How do you know if you have Jesus? (so that your sin can get dealt with, so you have Jesus) (say to your neighbor, “Neighbor, how’d you know that you know that you know?”

a. Do you keep His commandments

i. That means you need to think about what did Jesus command?

ii. How are you going to know that? Read your Bible—How are you going to know that you know if you don’t go where the know is? (Neighbor, Did you read your Bible? If your neighbor says No, you need to get a new neighbor!)

iii. Note that a command is not a suggestion, these are things we are most definitely supposed to be doing.

1. Ex. When your mom says, “Go clean your room!” does she mean that you are allowed to not clean your room if you don’t want to? No! She means go do it now!!!

b. mNegative) Do you say you know Him, but live like you don’t, then you are lying and don’t know Him

i. Know = means you know personally, experientially, you and Jesus are tight, you have a relationship with Him, you know what He is like and what He likes, you have experienced all that Jesus says and is and does—He is your best friend, the person you can talk to all the time no matter what you want to talk about, you have felt Him, His love, His comfort, His joy, His sorrow, His pain, His anger, His holiness, His beauty, His wisdom, His understanding, His humor, His power, His death, His resurrection, His cross, His ways, HIM

ii. Can you say something like that? Do you? I mean do you know Him? If you think so, look in at your life, do you obey Him? If you know Him, You will know what He wants and has said and do it

iii. What happens if you come up with a life that is filled not with knowing Jesus, but fakin’ being with Jesus, they you are a liar—to yourself and to others—and you don’t have the truth in YOU, you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you don’t have God’s Word, you don’t have the Good News, the Gospel, you don’t have eternal life, you are not saved!

c. (Positive) Do you keep His Word? If so, then you God’s love is perfected in you and you can know that you are in Him (i.e. that you know Him) (Ask your Neighbor, “Neighbor, are you keeping His Word?” If yes, you say “so you know Him” if no, scooch away from your neighbor!)

i. This is the condition

ii. Keep means that you are actively seeking to obey it

iii. His Word is the Bible, bur especially the parts where Jesus says something

iv. Love for God has been made perfect in you—that means it is complete, it is not missing anything—you are doing what Jesus has said, then you are completely loving God, it has reached its goal, its end—you have all the love you can have

1. Ask your neighbor, “Neighbor, do you love Him?”

2. Love being finished with you is a really good thing, you are being maxed out with Love for God—you are loving Him left and right

3. This is the truth, the reality, this is how it really is

v. Our love for God is part of how we know that we are in Him—we are sure that we are with Jesus—

vi. in Him, that means in union with Him, that means so close to Him that we are all up in and totally inseparable from Him, in other words, super tight with Christ

d. Do you say that you hang tight with Him? If so, then you had better be walking just like Him (say, “Neighbor, where you walkin’?” if the answer isn’t “after Jesus, then say “I’m not going there!”

i. Do you say you are super tight with Christ, do you claim to know Him really well, do you claim to stick with Him no matter what, then you should be proving it

ii. How do you prove that you are really with Him, the way is you live like Jesus

iii. If you are all up in Jesus, then you are going and doing what He goes and does

iv. Say Neighbor, “Neighbor, How you livin’?”

Applications (Look)

1. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved and get to know HIM!!!

2. You might not know Jesus if you are always lying, cheating, stealing, disobeying, calling names, being mean, treating God’s name with contempt, pride (thinking your better than others), selfishness,

3. IF sex, porn, masturbation, making-out, touching, necking, liking, worrying, idolatries, or even discouragement dominate your life, so that it is less focused on Jesus, or if facebook is your best friend and not Jesus, if your mouth is filled with cussing, if you're not trusting God with your problems, or not praying, or if you indulge in anorexia, bulimia, occultic stuff, partying, unGodly movies, unGodly TV, unGodly youtube videos, or even if you put watching those things ahead of loving Christ and reading the Word, or if you fake looking at your heart when you come face to face with the Word, or the Spirit's conviction, or if you're not sharing the Gospel, or if you are lying, bad mouthing, gossiping, and even holding grudges and being filled with unforgiveness, THEN it is possible you don't know Jesus for real, and indeed depending on how much these things dominate your life, it may be more than possible, it may be likely.

Took:

1. Commit to reading the Bible and praying this week so you can get to know Jesus, and commit to confessing and rooting out one sin from your life and replacing it with Godly obedience.

A good read for eating humble pie...because the Trinity is so over our heads!!!

I strongly suggest that everyone read Robert Letham's The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (P&R Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2004). It is so thorough, but still readable by an average high-schooler or older. The Holy Trinity has to be believed for us to have eternal life, for the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the Doctrine of WHO God really is--NO Trinity, means you have the wrong "god" and only THE GOD can save--reject the Holy Trinity and you reject Jesus, so believe the Trinity and Live by Believing further in God the Son's incarnation, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins and the granting of eternal life. This book gives more than enough information to start wrapping your mind around this Doctrine more deeply. Of course, a thorough and constant perusal of Scripture would do even better, but this book draws out some stuff one might miss on a normal pass through. I love the Holy Trinity, so I urge all to read more about Him to His Glory first in Scripture and then in those who write about what Scripture says. With the One and Only Triune LORD GOD, it only gets better and better the more you know to the glory of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit! Amen!

My Theory on the Being and Doing of the Holy Trinity

I believe God is the One and Only God eternally existing in Three eternally co-equal Persons (who are God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) but with an eternal humility in the order of all three, such that while to some extent the Father is said to be First, the Son Second, and the Spirit Third, ultimately each of all Three Persons love and seek the glory of the other Two Persons (thus, the Holy Spirit is not the shared love between the Father and the Son). The Father glorifies the Son and the Spirit; the Son glorifies the Father and the Spirit; and the Spirit glorifies the Father and the Son. They are co-equal in power, being, authority, love, holiness, wrath, justice, wisdom, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, etc. Absolute and eternal subordination is heretical; absolute and eternal humility is not. The typical ontological and economical ordering is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—From the Father, through the Son, in/by the Holy Spirit. There is a perfect balance in the Trinity between oneness and threeness. Una Substantia in Tres Personae (Gen. 1:26; Deut. 6:4; Matt. 3:16-17; Matt. 28:19; John 1:1-4; 8:50, 54; 10:30; 14:1-17:26; 20:21-22; Acts 5:3-4; I Cor. 2:10-11; 11:3; 12:4-6; 15:27-28; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:1-23; 1:17; Eph. 2:18; 2:19-22; 3:14-21; 4:4-6; Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:15-19; Titus 3:4-6; Hebrew 1-10).[i]

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[i] This section on the Holy Trinity comes from my Theological Project Paper, which I did on the ontology and economy of the Holy Trinity. For more information on the Trinity see my paper on it. Also, note that a good part of the “sources cited” section comes from my thorough study on the Holy Trinity that I have already performed for my other paper. However, the sources I will also list hear for clarification, however, there is some overlap in sources used to for the rest of this paper.

Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics: Vol. 2, God and Creation (ed. John Bolt. trans. John Vriend. Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI. 2004 by Dutch Reformed Translation Society).; The Bible. The New American Standard Bible.; The Bible. The New International Version.; The Bible. Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament W/concise Dictionary. 27th ed. (New York: American Bible Society, 2004. Print.); Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for hēgeomai (Strong's 2233)". (Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2009. 13 Dec 2009.) < strongs="G2233&t="NASB">.; Coppedge, Allen. The God Who Is Triune: Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 2007).; Erickson, Millard J. Christian Theology (2nd ed. Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI. 1998). ; George, Timothy. The Nature of God: Being Attributes, and Acts (in A Theology for the Church ed. Daniel L. Akin. B&H Publishing Group: Nashville, TN. 2007.); Giles, Kevin. Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2006); Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 1994.); Letham, Robert. The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (P&R Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ. 2004).; Peters, Ted. God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Westminster/John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky. 1993.); Ryrie, Charles C. Basic theology: A Popular Systematic Guide To Understanding Biblical Truth. (Wheaton, Ill: Victor Books, 1986. Print.); Torrance, Thomas F. The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark LTD.: New York. 1996); Wallace, Daniel B. The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Greek Grammar (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2000.).; Ware, Bruce A. Father, Son, & Holy Spirit: Relations, Roles, & Relevance (Crossway Books: Wheaton, IL. 2005)

Do We Need a Creed?

For Systematic Theology I class, I enjoyed reading about the Creeds of the Church, for they are what I would call “Condensed Systematic Theologies”. I think that the formulation of a new creed would be helpful not just for catechesis, but for the sake of solidifying evangelical Christians together. In a way, the Evangelical Community does have a creed: the Gospel. The Gospel is really just a compact version of Systematic Theology, for it is basically Who God is, what He has done, what He will do, who we are, what we do, and what we need to do according to His Word. However, there is no clear, precise, smooth, and ubiquitous Creed for and of Evangelicals. In fact, if one could be synthesized from Scripture by the Community as a whole and then distributed, then it may help the spread of the Gospel, because believers will now have something in memory that contains the Gospel and the basics of what they need to share. For example, if someone has memorized a Scripturally based, Gospel-centered, true creed, then when his friend asks him what he believes he has a basic answer. Or, for another example, if a person asks what he has to do to be saved, then the believer can respond from the points of the creed. I am very tempted to try to get movement started to gather such a creed of the Gospel that we believe based of the Scriptures.

Make My Joy Complete: How the Church Should be a Joy to Pastors and Christ

This past week I went to J-Gen for the first time, at which I was a counselor. It was there in the Reidger Chapel at Taylor University that God opened my eyes to something that I should have been able to see since the beginning in the Church as a pastor: Joy. It is odd, but at long last I get those verse where Paul goes "Make my joy complete..." or Jesus says "that your joy may be complete"--this I am sure would make Christian Hedonists everywhere smile, but even still. I get it now. Before I could never understand how that could be a Godly thing to beg others to complete my own joy, but I get it! Make my Joy Complete! Although it seems selfish, my own joy is bound up with their faith and God's glory. I should indeed be filled with great joy as I see God being truly worshipped! How amazing will heaven be as I not simply worship, love, trust, and rejoice in God myself but as I rejoice in everyone else's worship--as I rejoice in God being glorified! What else could bring more joy to my heart, mind, eyes, ears, and soul than to see God Almighty, the One and Only Forever, glorified by all for all! My joy is for God's Best! My joy is for their best too! I beg them to make my joy complete, because it is my joy to have them continue in the faith for eternity, in ontology and activity! Indeed, since so many fall away, how great indeed is my joy when one person trusts in God for now and for always no matter the cost! How great is my joy when God is glorified by comparison instead of contrast! My joy is their faith exploding over into everyday life everyday! I rejoice to see my sheep--all sheep--worship God and to love and hope and trust in God--the One and Only God, who Is the GREAT I AM and who Is THE HOLY TRINITY! O how I rejoice in the exceeding joy of real faith being in my sheep--in all sheep--and that same faith going out in practice in Glory, Love, Trust, Hope, and Zeal for God all filled with Joy in Him!

I rejoice when girls starving themselves see their Hope in Christ and that True Beauty is first about being Beautiful to God--that such obsession with skinniness is just foolishness of the flesh, world, and devil--O how I rejoice to see girls see that being Beautiful to God comes way before looking "Beautiful" to the world--Indeed, Sarah was often (even in her old age) desirable to the world, but she clothed herself with submissiveness to Abraham. Godliness knocks socks off! O how I rejoice in men realizing the shallow and depraved foolishness of adulterous self-indulgence! O how I rejoice with men as they gut the idol of porn with the Holy Spirit's aid! O how I rejoice when impurity and sexual immorality leaves the sheep of my Good Shepherd! O how I rejoice when self-destruction and self-obsession vanish from the bodies and minds of the sheep of God! O how I rejoice when those in fear praise God for faith and courage! O how I rejoice when Christ's sheep hear His Voice and obey in faith! O how I rejoice when the sinner repents! O how I rejoice when there is Unity in the Body of Christ and Fidelity in Marriages down deep into even the passing impulses of the soul! O how I rejoice when God is Glorified in all things in all ways always! O how I rejoice when God's Word becomes the Anchor of Hope and Faith and Life and Love in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit according to the Sovereign Will of the Father! O how I rejoice when my sheep--all sheep--study God's Word passionately and lovingly endlessly, all the while in all things in all ways in all times praying as Christ does in complete and total faith and zeal and passion and emotion to God, their Hearer! O how I rejoice in the faith, hope, love, joy, and unity of Christ's Bride the Church! O how I rejoice as He washes us with the Word removing any and every blemish! O how I rejoice in all this and more! O how I rejoice in our rapture to Christ! O how I rejoice in the Holy Trinity's being glorified in us, the Body and Bride of Christ!

Brothers and Sister, please make my Joy Complete!