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Monday, July 6, 2020
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” —Psalm 103:12
Sometimes I imagine that God has a big file on every person on earth. Maybe this file has some basic biographical data to remind God who we are. And then it definitely has a comprehensive list of every action we’ve taken, every word we’ve spoken, and every thought that’s crossed our minds. In this image, when God looks at one of us, he doesn’t so much see a human being as a record. It’s like each of us is a candidate for office, and God can (and will!) scrutinize each and every bit of our histories to figure out whether we’re more worthy of his vote or of federal prison.
Other times I imagine that God is kind of willfully ignorant. In this image, God basically just pretends that he doesn’t know the truth about us. It’s like God is an indulgent parent who can’t see what little monsters we are. It’s like all of us are looking around at each other—at our messes and hard-heartedness and foolishness and narcissism and cruelty—and wondering, “Can God really not see how awful we are? Does he really think we’re so lovable?” In this image, we’re miserable and despicable, but God just pretends that it isn’t so.
The image in Psalm 103 is quite different from either of these images. The God we meet in Scripture is not a prosecutor just waiting to drop a boatload of damning evidence in front of us. Nor is God a willful idiot pretending not to see what everyone else can see. No, the God of the Bible actually deals with sin. The God of the Bible sees sin much more clearly than we do. The God of the Bible acts to remove this sin.
And when God removes our transgressions from us, he doesn’t tuck them away in a neatly organized file cabinet for later reference. Rather, God removes our sin from us—and we should say as well that God removes us from our sin—as far as the east is from the west. In other words, there is now an infinite chasm between the one who was in bondage to sin and the one who is now free in the Messiah Jesus.
Our God is not a God of half measures. When God frees you, he doesn’t set you just outside the prison wall. Instead, God removes you from the prison of sin, buries that prison in a grave, and places you in the fresh air of new life.
So may each of us, today, remember that God is not passive. He is not delusional or foolish. He is not petty. God has removed our transgressions, freed us from bondage, and brought us into his new creation. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Praise be to the Lord.
Friday, July 3, 2020
And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another. -1 John 3:23
What is your purpose?
For many of us, this is a life-long, or at least a recurring, question. Starting in childhood, we’re asked what we want to be when we grow up, and we’re encouraged to dream about our professions, our family structures, the communities we’ll join, and how we’ll contribute. Sometimes we feel confident that we’re fulfilling our purpose and at other times we feel purposeless, drifting in uncertainty. Our purpose may change as seasons of life change. Perhaps your purpose in one season was to learn, and in another to parent, and now with grown children, to serve in a new way. Living purposefully looks a little different for each of us. As Christians, we know that God shaped each of us with unique gifts, traits, experiences, and personalities to fulfill God’s purposes. Depending on where you find yourself in life, this question about your purpose can be inspiring or daunting…or a bit of both.
Even as we seek God’s unique plans for us, it’s important to remember that, as members of the body of Christ, we each have a purpose that isn’t unique at all. A purpose that applies to all of us without ambiguity or exception is Jesus’ command to love God and love people. Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31), and in today’s reading, John reminds us that this command has been given to all Christians in all times and places. There’s no question about whether it applies to you. It does. This is your purpose. This is our purpose.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty about where God is leading you, keep seeking, but also find rest in the certainty that Jesus has already given you this commandment. If you’re doubtful that you have a purpose at all, listen up: you do! No one is exempt from this. Loving God and loving people is always in line with God’s plans.
But how do we do it? Well, that’s where our uniqueness can come into play, because there are infinite ways we might bring Jesus’ love into the world. But even as there’s room for variety, 1 John 3:16-18 gives us straightforward instructions: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” We love God and love people through our actions. We listen, we give, we serve, we encourage, we pray, we protect, we invest, we advocate, we defend, we share, we sacrifice. Jesus told us how to do it, and Jesus showed us how to do it.
Imagine what our world would look like if we all lived with an undivided commitment to this common purpose. May you find satisfaction and joy in acting upon God’s universal call to love God and neighbor. And may you gain specific insight about how you can follow Jesus’ command to love.
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Jeremiah 23:24 – “Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? Says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? Says the Lord.”
In Monday’s devotion, Pastor Peter explained how the southern kingdom of Judah had been conquered by the Babylonian Empire, carrying the people of God into exile. After this occurred, the prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the Jews in exile and encouraged them to build houses, plant crops, get married, have children, and work for the peace and prosperity of their new home.
But…it didn’t have to be that way. Well before exile, God’s prophet Jeremiah had been warning Kings, Priests, and residents of the Southern Kingdom to return to following God.
So when I read today’s verse, I can’t just read it as an amazing description of God’s presence in the world or something that gives me comfort that God deeply knows me.
Because while God does deeply know me and God’s presence in the world is amazing, when this verse is taken in context, it is a warning. God is saying this through Jeremiah to false prophets who have been telling people that things will be fine without the need to stop worshipping false idols or change their behavior.
It’s a warning where God is saying, do you think that I am not aware of what is going on? That you are misrepresenting me? That you are not living out the life I have called you to?
It’s a warning that tells us, there is only so long you can go in the opposite direction from God before life will start getting really complicated. For the people in the Kingdom of Judah, that meant they were conquered by a neighboring empire. Maybe complicated is an understatement. Anyway, Jeremiah tells the people to get comfortable in Babylon. It was going to be a while before things got sorted out enough for them to go back home.
That holds true today doesn’t it? The messes we get ourselves into, don’t always get immediately resolved when we realize we’ve screwed up and seek forgiveness from God. More often than not, we have to spend some time getting our lives untangled. Repairing relationships. Learning from what has happened and working to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
But for as messy as that is, thank goodness we have a God who wants to forgive us and who desires for us to truly learn from the mistakes we make. Thank goodness we have a God who calls on us to not hide our mistakes but instead let what God has done in our lives act as a lesson for other people to learn from, just as we learn from the witness of those we read about in the Bible.
