That annoying alarm wakes us up. We grab a shower and a cup of coffee, then we’re out the door on our way to work. We might listen to a sermon on the radio during our morning commute, or we might read the Bible at lunch time. And soon enough, it will be time to go home. We go home, do a few things around the house, cook supper, pay bills, and then we’re off to bed to restart the process. But here’s a pressing question: when did we stop and talk to God, and really spend some time praying to Him? If you’re answer is anything like mine, you might feel a bit of shame. Most of us would likely admit that we haven’t been praying as much as we should be. For me, reading the Bible isn’t a problem. I’ve got a Bible reading plan that keeps me in line. But prayer . . . that’s another story. It is difficult for me to find time in my busy day to really spend time with God. That’s an honest confession.
I read something in the Scripture today that drove me to prayer this morning. It’s something I’ve read dozens, probably hundreds of times before. But a few details helped my understanding and application of it. What I read today was Luke 5, the verse that convicted me to prayer was v. 16 where Luke notes that Jesus prayed at His busiest moment at the beginning of His ministry. It reads in this way:
“But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16).
In this passage, Luke records Jesus cleansing a leper saying that once He healed this leper, “even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities” (v. 15). Jesus cleansed this leper, and word got out about His healing power. Because of this, crowds came to hear Him preach and teach, and they came to be healed of their many diseases and infirmities. Jesus was getting popular at this point. More and more people began to know about Him as time went on. And Luke says that there was one thing He would always do, even when He was busy with His teaching and healing ministry: He would withdraw Himself from the crowds, to places where He could be alone, and He would pray. There are several passages of Scripture in the gospels that tell us that Jesus prayed alone, prayed for others, and prayed long prayers (Matt. 11:25-26; Matt. 14:23; Mark 1:35; Luke 6:12; 22:41-44; 23:24; John 17:1-26). The fact that Jesus prayed is astounding for two main reasons. First of all, because He was God in the flesh, and still prayed. Because He was God, it would make you think that Jesus would not need to pray, but it is very apparent from the gospels that prayer is something that He needed and something that He did. Though Jesus was God, He prayed to His Father and He made use of prayer.
Second, it is astounding that Jesus prayed because He was occupied with more tasks than any of us ever will be, and He still found time to pray. We might say, “But Jesus didn’t have a full time job like I do. Jesus’ didn’t cook supper for children, or pick them up from school everyday like me. Jesus didn’t have emails to send and receive.” Historically, that’s absolutely true. Jesus wasn’t a factory worker, working from nine to five. Jesus didn’t go to see His children play football at the high school. Jesus didn’t have an iPhone and wasn’t able to Tweet or check emails. But let me tell you what Jesus was involved in doing: Jesus was teaching crowds of hundreds of people everyday, and they were increasing as He became more popular. When is the last time you taught growing crowds of people multiple times a week? He was healing all kinds of diseases, people were coming to Him to be healed of all their infirmities and sicknesses. When is the last time you cleansed a leper? He was calling and teaching His disciples. He was dealing with the persecution of the religious rulers. Everywhere He went, He had to walk. When is the last time we did any of those things? And here’s the biggie: no one else could duplicate Jesus’ ministry. No one else could do what He was doing. It would be different if Simon Peter could heal the same way Jesus was, and teach the same way He was. But there was only one Son of God, and there was only one ministry that could do all this: Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was one busy man.
So even though Jesus was God, and even though He was unbelievably busy, nothing seemed to deter Jesus from spending extensive time in prayer. So we need to reflect now on our own prayer life. In light of this passage of Scripture, what is keep us from spending time in prayer? Whatever it might be, we need to get it out of the way and spend time alone with God, taking our requests to Him, praising Him for His blessings upon us, and praying for His grace and enabling to be obedient. I’ve said it before, and it’s something I have to constantly remind myself of: if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Let us pray, and let us devote time to prayer. Jesus did, so should we.
I just finished eating roasted turkey, dressing, corn, mashed potatoes and . . . now I’m going to have to get another plate. So while we are feeding ourselves this Thanksgiving Day, I want to offer you a plate of theology to enjoy on this great holiday. There is much to learn from the Scriptures about thanksgiving, that is, giving thanks. We’re going to glean from Psalm 100, and see a couple of principles to use while we give thanks not only today, but in our daily lives.
In Psalm 100, we have what you might call a manual for thanksgiving. In this chapter, the people of Israel were called to give thanks to the Lord. It serves as both a song and instruction on giving thanks. The Israelites would gather for worship, and this would be one of the things they would sing. This psalm/hymn was likely sung during one of their many festivals. The Israelites had a ton of festivals, and this was one of the psalms that was likely sung during one of those. This Psalm will show us how we should give thanks to the Lord, and why we should do so.
So let’s begin by reading it together.
The Text: Psalm 100, ESV
“A Psalm for giving thanks.
Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
2 Serve the LORD with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
3 Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
5 For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
1. A Celebration of Song (100:1-2)
Giving thanks should be expressed in song/gladness.
In verse one, we see that the whole earth is summoned to make a joyful noise to the Lord. It is an invitation to worship and give thanks that is extended to anyone: “A Psalm for giving thanks. Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” (vv. 1-2)
Here, a joyful song is to be sung to the Lord. When the Israelites would gather for worship, this is one of the many ways they would express their worship of God. They used several instruments in their worship (Psalm 150:3-5). So according to this psalm, one way that we can express our thanksgiving to the Lord is by a song. Do you ever sing to the Lord? You don’t have to sing aloud to the Lord, because a song can also be in your heart.
We are also called to serve the Lord with gladness. Gladness is a feeling of joy or pleasure, to be delighted in serving the Lord. Since we are approaching the Christmas season, I want you to think back with me to Christmas when you were a kid. Now remember that gift you really, really wanted as a kid. Remember the Christmas when you actually got it? You were probably like me, and deserved coal from Santa or a bag of switches. But anyway, man opening that gift you really wanted was a joy wasn’t it? It was what you asked for, and when you opened it up, your heart was full of gladness and delight. That’s how worshiping and giving thanks to the Lord should be. We should have that same kind of gladness when we think of all the gifts God has given us.
2. A Celebration of Covenant (100:3)
Giving thanks should be intimate.
We’ve already seen that giving thanks should be expressed in song, and in this verse we see that giving thanks should be intimate. The psalmist writes, “Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (v. 3). As we give thanks with joyful song, we are called to know the Lord. This only makes sense, for giving thanks to the Lord can only be done if we know Him. Giving thanks to the Lord includes knowing the Lord we worship. You can’t properly worship Him without knowing Him—that is, in a personal relationship.
That’s exactly what the author of this psalm is trying to say. In fact, the Hebrew word for “know” here is yada, which means to know intimately, or to have a deep intimacy. Much like the intimacy between a husband and a wife. Isn’t it interesting that the term knew is how Genesis describes Adam and Eve’s intimate relations? In Genesis 4:1, it says that “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.” If you’ve ever heard someone ramble on and say yada, yada, yada, in actuality they’re saying know intimately, know intimately, know intimately!
Our relationship with the Lord is that way. In fact, the New Testament describes our relationship with Him in terms of a Bridegroom, who is Jesus, and the Bride, the Church (Matt. 25:1-13; Eph. 5:25-27; Rev. 19:6-10). So the idea here in this psalm is that we must have an intimate relationship with the Lord, and our giving thanks to Him should be personal, ongoing, and one-on-one. Our giving thanks to Him needs to be something we do in our private lives. When we get an A on a test, we should thank Him in our hearts. When we wake up, we should thank Him. When we’re about to go to bed, we should thank Him. When we read His word we should thank Him. It’s one-on-one.
Not only must we know the Lord, we also must know that we are accountable to Him: He created us, He owns us, we are His people, and we are His sheep. The psalmist talks about the ownership of God, saying that He created us, we are His, we are His people, and we are the “sheep of his pasture.” He tends to us like a faithful shepherd. These are terms that describe, once again, our closeness to the Lord. We must know Him, and because we know Him, we are His completely. So when you give thanks to the Lord, is it weak and heartless, or is it passionate and intimate? Do you understand your relationship with Him like that?
3. A Celebration of Thanksgiving (100:4)
Giving thanks should be corporate/together.
We’ve already seen that thanksgiving should be expressed to the Lord in song, and that our thanksgiving should be intimate with the Lord, but notice also that our thanksgiving should be expressed together—it should be corporate. This is another call to praise, like vv. 1-2 above. The psalmist says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” (v. 4). Notice the terms gates and courts here. This is clearly referring to corporate worship that would take place in the Old Testament temple. It is an invitation to community worship. It is a call to enter the temple of God with an attitude of thanksgiving—to enter his courts with worship and praise. This was the purpose of the Israelites’ gathering—to give thanks to the Lord. They were to give thanks as they prayed, as they read the Scriptures, as they sacrificed, and as they gave. Even Jesus did this, as we see recorded in Luke 4. Luke writes there, “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read” (v. 16). He went to the Jewish place of worship on the Sabbath day and took part in the service by reading the scroll of Isaiah (see v. 17). Basically, Jesus went to church. He valued corporate worship, and so should we.
It bothers me when people say, “I’m a devoted Christian, but I don’t go to church because I don’t believe in it.” Corporate worship is laced throughout the whole of Scripture; Jesus attended corporate worship; it is how we grow in our faith and are equipped to do God’s will (Eph. 4:12-16); and the local church is the representation of the worldwide church of God scattered throughout the earth. When we gather for worship in our local churches, our services should be saturated with thanksgiving. We are to enter our sanctuary doors with thanksgiving, and as we fellowship, sing, and learn from God’s word, we are to do so in His courts with praise and thanksgiving.
4. A Celebration of God (100:5)
Giving thanks should be done because of God.
So we know that our thanksgiving should be expressed in song, it should be intimate, and it should be corporate. Finally, we see in this manual of thanksgiving that our giving thanks should be done because of God and who He is. The psalmist writes, “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations” (v. 5). Three reasons are given for giving thanks to the Lord. First, we are to give thanks because “the LORD is good.” I love the old saying, “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.” There is so much truth in that statement. God is completely good in His nature and everything He does. We are to give thanks because He is a good God. Second, we are to give thanks because “his steadfast love endures forever.” Because He is a good God, His love for us endures forever. It is a constant love that never ends. That should definitely be a reason to give thanks to the Lord! He loves you with an eternal love! Finally, we are to give thanks because “his faithfulness [extends] to all generations.” God’s faithfulness never runs out, they are in fact new every morning (Lam. 3:23-33).
Conclusion
We’ve seen in this Psalm that our thanksgiving should be expressed in song and gladness. It should also be intimate, one-on-one with the Lord. It should be corporately expressed, together as we gather for worship. And it should be done because of our good, loving, and faithful God.
If you’re like me, every time I get new tech, I always throw away the manual. Heck, I can figure it out for myself . . . until there’s a problem. Then I have to go to the professionals and have them check it out. And most of the time it’s a simple problem that could’ve been resolved easily if I had only read the manual! Well, let us not make the same mistake in our thanksgiving lives. We have in this Psalm the very manual for thanksgiving, instructions on how to give thanks. So let us use it, cherish it, and use these principles in our lives so that our thanksgiving won’t need to be fixed or repaired.
Following Bro. Nicholas’ message on missions emphasis, we had a panel discussion on missions. Several questions were submitted to us that we attempted to answer on this panel, that you can listen to below:
What is/are missions?
Does God call all Christians to missions?
How do I know if I’m called to missions?
Why are missions so expensive?
How can I be mission-minded?
WATCH THE PANEL DISCUSSION HERE:
I invite you to listen to his message that was preached that night also. You can hear it by clicking here: Missions Emphasis Message.
“As His followers, we are His hands, we are His feet, we are His mouthpiece. And it is our duty to make His word known.”
Recently at our church, we had a missions emphasis night with our students. We focused on unreached peoples, we prayed, and we heard a great message from Bro. Nicholas J. Rafael from Murphysboro, IL. This was a great message on missions, and I invite you to take a few minutes out of your day to listen/download his message below:
Be sure to check him out on Facebook, and to listen to our panel discussion that also took place that night by clicking here.
“. . . Teaching you in public and from house to house” (Acts 20:20)
Let’s imagine for a moment that, since the birth of Christianity as recorded in the book of Acts, no one ever built a church building. Never. No one took into consideration that a large number of believers could meet in a large building for worship. But believers still need to meet for worship because it’s biblical . . . So where would they meet? The most convenient place would be in homes. That’s the next best thing to gathering for worship in a church building, isn’t it? Bible study and worship in your own home. Well, that’s exactly where the early church met for worship before there was ever one brick laid in construction of a church building (Acts 2:46; 20:20; Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Philemon 2).
Many churches are still following this model for “doing church” even today, and they should be because it is both biblical and strategic for reaching people for Jesus Christ with the gospel. First it is biblical. It is biblical because it is usually only a smaller version of our regular corporate worship gatherings at our own local church. The Bible commands and exhorts us to meet together with other believers (Psalm 150:1-6; Matt. 18:20; Heb. 10:25; 1 John 1:7). You cannot be a growing, thriving believer if you’re not attending and participating in a local church somewhere. So meeting in a home for worship and Bible study, or meeting in a community center or restaurant is only a condensed version of what you would normally do with more believers in a larger setting and building. Second it is strategic for reaching people for Christ. Most people today, especially today, have their preconceived assumptions about the church. With this in mind, people are far easier to reach with the gospel in your home or out in public, than they are in the church. When you think about it, that is actually essential to the way evangelism is supposed to be done. People will respond more positively to an invitation to your home than they will an invitation to a church they know nothing about. You can reach them with the gospel in your home, and then they are far more likely to attend your church and continue attending your church. We need to be reaching people with the gospel and bringing them into our churches in non-threatening ways. We’re not changing the message of the gospel, only the means through which we present it. We can have a bonfire at the house, a cookout, we can meet for lunch with a couple of friends, and the list goes on and on – there are several available options for meeting places, which makes it that much more strategic for reaching people for Christ.
So you want to start doing this. You want to get this thing going. You want to be biblical and you want to reach people for Christ through our own home and community. Well, there are at least three things essential to these “in-home” church groups. Three things that you need to keep in mind in order to start and sustain groups in your community or home:
1. Focus. You need a missions-focused church that is on board and ready to do smaller churches in homes. I believe we should excite our church members by sharing with them this model of doing church, and encouraging them to participate in and support it. If no one else in your church is concerned about outreach, you should be concerned about your church – they are destined to close their doors. Your entire church needs to be focused on reaching people with the gospel in this way. It might take some time to get members informed about this, and excited to participate, but your time will be well spent if you do so. This is something that should be consistently promoted in your local church. Both you and your church should have a continual focus on meeting in homes, so that members can participate and do the same thing you’re doing.
2. Training.You need people who are trained, at least in some way, to teach the Bible – leading those Bible studies, able to answer tough questions, able to lead others to Christ, and things of that nature. Someone in your church may have an earnest desire to be involved in small groups that meet in homes, but if they haven’t ever taught a Bible study, they need some type of training where they can learn how to do so. It doesn’t need to be formal Bible college training per se, but they need to know the basics because one day they will teach someone else to be a teacher of the word. You and your church should have people who are fully prepared.
3. Resources. Anytime something like this is done, you need resources. You need financial resources, literary resources, and a place to meet. Your home should be a place where you can meet for Bible studies. If it’s a one bedroom apartment, it’s probably not the best place to meet. Perhaps you can meet in your local park or in a restaurant or coffee shop. You also need literary resources: Bibles, Bible study booklets, books on the Bible, gospel tracts, etc. Those things will contribute to your overall outreach. Many people you will have in your home or meeting place do not have resources like this. All of this will require some type of financial support. Are you financially able to carry out a continuous small group Bible study? Are you financially able to have cookouts or snacks around the table when you meet for fellowship?
Those are a few things to keep in mind as you have “in-home” church groups. Is there anything else would you add?
A tool can be very valuable if we learn how to use it. The worker is never without his hammer, because of its many uses. If he believed that a hammer had only one use, say for driving nails, then he probably wouldn’t value it as much. But he can likely accomplish two-thirds of his daily tasks all by using a hammer – but he must know how to use it. In order to get the most use from it, he must know how to use it.
So it is with the word of God, the Bible. It is our theological toolkit for living the Christian life. We need it to grow in our faith and be the Christian that God has called us to be. No believer can be obedient to God without the Bible, so it is important that we use our Bibles effectively. The Scriptures are profitable to our Christian growth (2 Tim. 3:16), but we must know how to use them. So how can we get the most use out of our Bibles? I believe there are five basic ways we can get the most use from our Bibles:
1. Read the Bible. This is the most basic way we can use the Bible. Do you read the Bible every day? Everyone reads and learns at a different pace, so it may take some time to adjust to reading the Bible regularly—but perhaps the best way to read it is by reading a few chapters a day, in the morning and the night. A good Bible reading plan is also very helpful—helps keep you accountable and track your progress. We must take time out of our busy schedules to read God’s word. If you’re too busy to read the Bible, you’re too busy. The good part about it is that the more we read it, the more we will want to read it, and the more we will be equipped with its teachings.
A while ago, I did a little math to calculate how long it would take someone to read through the entire Bible. The Old Testament, consisting of 929 chapters, would only take you 26.5 weeks to read all the way through if you read 5 chapters a day. That’s reading through the entire Old Testament in about 6 months. The New Testament, consisting of 260 chapters, would only take you 7.4 weeks to read all the way through if you read 5 chapters a day. That’s Matthew through Revelation in under 2 months. If you read 5 chapters of the Bible daily, you could read through the whole Bible once and read half of it over again. . . In a year. In a small 5 year period, you will have read through the entire Bible nearly 8 times.
2. Meditate on the Bible. This is not simply a suggestion, for the Bible implies that we should meditate on the Scriptures (Psalm 119:15, 48, 97). Do you remember the first Psalm about the godly man who was blessed in every way? How did he get blessed? How did he become so prosperous? It was because “his delight [was] in the law of the LORD and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). Scripture meditation involves pondering and thinking deeply on what we’ve read. We think about what they mean for us, and ponder how to put them into action. Meditation involves allow the Scripture to dictate our thought lives—to let it swim and boil in our hearts and minds throughout our daily commute. Do you have some Scripture that you’ve been meditating on?
3. Pray the Bible. Many people do not realize the benefits of this or see that it’s even necessary, but praying the Bible helps us to align our prayers to God’s will. That’s the only kind of prayers God answers anyway—according to His will: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15). God’s will is revealed in the Bible, so if we want to pray according to God’s will, wouldn’t it make sense to pray the Scriptures? Sometimes we pray for the wrong things, but if we want to pray for the right things, we need to be praying the Scriptures. When you’ve read your Bible each day, let what you read compel you to prayer, and then pray about what you’ve read.
4. Memorize the Bible. This one, like the others, seems to be implied by the Bible itself as a command. We are familiar with Psalm 119:11, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” The psalmist there says that his defense against sinning was that he had stored God’s word in his heart. Scripture memory involves not only getting into the Bible, but allowing the Bible to get into us. It is allowing the word of Christ to dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16). Scripture memorization involves taking time to memorize the Bible, whether a few verses or a few chapters. It is very beneficial, for we can call to mind a Scripture that is especially helpful for us in a time of need or for someone else in a time of need. Because the Spirit of God can’t call to your memory a Scripture you’ve never read or memorized. Do you take time to memorize the Bible? You can write it out on paper until you have it memorized, or you can repeat it back to yourself time after time, or you can simply read it over and over again. I’ve put Bible verses on note cards and slipped them in my pocket as I go about my daily tasks. That way, when I get my keys or phone out, I can always look at that verse first.
5. Study the Bible. Studying the Bible is key. It involves the most effort, but yields the best results. Studying the Bible is observing it, interpreting it, and applying it to our daily lives. We might spend a while studying a verse of Scripture, a chapter, or a whole book of Scripture—but studying involves doing much work to excavate the deep truths of Scripture. A good study Bible helps with this, good commentaries, or other helpful books like Bible dictionaries and Bible handbooks. In studying the Bible, we focus on it—think through it intellectually and emotionally. We discover what the particular author is saying about his subject and what it means for us today. Do you study the Bible? How much time a week is spend studying the Bible?
Every Christian faces temptations, and they can come in all different shapes and sizes. The lay workman may be tempted to call his boss something vulgar. The pastor may be tempted to give up on his ministry. The teenager may be tempted to watch pornography. The believing sister may be tempted to keep quiet about the gospel in conversations with her unbelieving brother. Whatever the temptation may be, this facts stands true: we all face temptations.
So the first thing to understand is that you should not despair when you face temptations, because everyone has them. Scripture says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13a). Paul says here that there isn’t a single temptation that only you are facing. All of mankind faces them. It is even a temptation within a temptation to believe that we are the only ones who struggle with certain sins or desires. But the Bible clearly teaches that believers are still fighting sin, and thus, all face temptations. So don’t feel like you’re the only one.
Secondly, you need to understand that temptation can be overcome. Turning again to 1 Corinthians, Paul continues: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (v. 13b). The hope we can have in our temptations is that God is faithful, and that He has provided “the way of escape.” While God does not cause temptations (James 1:13), He does want you to endure them and come out victoriously. And the way He does this is by providing for us the way of escape. But we must be willing to take that route and pursue His way of escape. I have a few practical, biblical suggestions for overcoming temptation in your life and fleeing through God’s way of escape:
1) Study and know yourself. It’s good to take a long look in the mirror sometimes isn’t it? We need to know what desires we have a problem with and what situations or people cause us to enter into temptation. What desires do you have a problem with? Find out what situations, places, or people, cause you to have desires for sin. Study and know yourself well. Ask God to reveal that to you as well. Pray with David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24).
2) Avoid tempting situations. Keep yourself away from the situations that cause you to sin against God and fall into temptations. You know it does no good to pray, “Lord deliver me from evil,” if we thrust ourselves into it. I heard an old preacher say, “You can’t pray “Deliver me, Lord, from temptation,” if you thrust yourself thither!” Avoid the situations that cause temptations. Don’t park a freshly washed car under a tree full of birds. In other words, don’t try to be clean when you willingly go into areas that will make you dirty! The writer of Proverbs presents a picturesque warning for us concerning flirting around with sin, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27). Indeed not.
3) Submit to Christ. When we get saved, we make Jesus our Savior and Lord. He is our Savior because He saved us from death, hell, and the grave. He is our Lord because He takes control. But that’s the part that gets us sometimes. There may be areas of our heart that we haven’t submitted to Christ and made Him Lord over. But we must submit to His leadership and will and allow Him to take control of all the areas of our heart—including our desires. It is taking “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).
4) Get satisfaction from God. Desires seek to be satisfied. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be desires. So since desire is the problem, then our desires need to change. How can that be done? By getting our satisfaction from God. If you don’t believe that God can satisfy you, David invites you to “Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8). Similarly David says to “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). It’s like eating your favorite food—you keep eating it because of the satisfaction it brings your belly! When you get hungry, don’t you desire your favorite food? Of course you do, because you have a mental remembrance of the satisfaction it brings. It works in a similar way with God. If we will get our satisfaction from Him, we will inevitably begin to desire Him.
5) Walk by the Spirit. Paul says in Galatians 5:16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” He says that if we will live each step of our lives submitted to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, we will not fulfill or carry out our sinful desires. The Spirit of God lives in us to enable us to live the Christian life victoriously and He will give us the power to overcome sin if we will submit to Him and walk by Him.
Friend, do not despair. Every believer faces temptations, and every believer can overcome temptations by taking God’s way of escape. Are you willing?
This is what we refer to as a “non-dogmatic” issue. Dogmatic, on the other hand, refers to something that is incontrovertibly true – something that cannot be negotiated, but must be accepted. So when we say that a teaching of the Bible is dogmatic, then it must be accepted and taught, no negotiations or beating around the bush, as they say. A few examples of something biblically dogmatic would be: the gospel, the inspiration of Scripture, the Trinity, the deity of Jesus Christ, and things like this that would radically change the message and validity of Christianity if they were altered even in the least.
But there are also plenty of non-dogmatic issues today. Some of these are: proper church attire, contemporary vs. traditional music in the church, and others like these. Issues that fall into this category can alter and change depending on your local congregation – and they are no more or less biblical than the church that handles those issues differently. For example, it is just fine if a church allows blue jeans and t-shirts in the worship service. There is no biblical command that says you must wear a suit and tie to worship. But there may be a more traditional church that says you should wear your “Sunday best.” That is also fine. Falling under this category of non-dogmatic is how frequently and individual or church should partake of the Lord’s Supper (or Communion).
The Bible doesn’t specify how often you should partake of the Lord’s Supper, it only specifies that you should partake of it, in a proper manner, and that you understand and apply its meaning. It doesn’t matter if you partake of it once a year, once a month, or once a week. What matters most is that you do it in remembrance of Jesus, understand its significance, and partake of it in the correct manner.
The instructions we have about the Lord’s Supper are found in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul states: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (vv. 23-26, emphasis mine).
Paul quotes Jesus in this passage, and as far as how often we should partake of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus only requires “as often as you drink it.” That is the only time frame we have. This assumes that we are partaking of the Lord’s Supper, and it implies that it should be done time and time again. The tone used in this part of the passage doesn’t indicate that it should only be done once, but it the tone in this passage also doesn’t indicate that it should be done constantly. Only “as often” as you do it.
The important thing to remember is that the Lord’s Supper is a sacred time to remember the Lord Jesus and the significance of His substitutionary death on the cross, and that we have received it. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Lord’s Supper, referred by them as the Eucharist, actually becomes the body and blood of Christ. That might be a good example of when a non-dogmatic issue becomes a dogmatic issue. When something that is considered non-dogmatic is altered to the point where it conflicts with other Bible teachings, then it needs to be reexamined and reinterpreted in light of the other teachings of Scripture. Nowhere in Scripture does the Bible teach or even imply that the Lord’s Supper transfuses into the actual blood and body of Christ that we must receive for salvation. When something non-dogmatic conflicts with what is dogmatic, it is no longer a non-dogmatic issue.
The Lord’s Supper is a beautiful symbol, and a time of remembrance and thanksgiving. We eat the bread symbolizing that we have partaken of Jesus Himself, the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and we drink the juice (or wine) symbolizing that we have received His blood as atonement for our sins. Nothing in Scripture about the frequency of doing so, only “as often” as we do it.
If you’re like me when you hear the word missions, you probably think back to the Great Commission that Jesus gave the church (Matthew 28:19). Or you might think of those fighting for social justice, or those who sweat and work for years at building projects and digging wells, and feeding the hungry. But missions is even more than that, and missions does not originate with man’s desire for social good, and it doesn’t even originate or begin in the Great Commission. The idea of missions is rooted in the Bible and weaved carefully throughout it’s pages. The Bible teaches us that missions is not man’s idea. Missions is within the nature of God, it is Jesus’ chief reason for coming to earth, and it is the goal of the church. I believe the Bible reveals this to us by way of three major pillars, if you will. Let’s take a look:
I. God is Missional
The Bible teaches that God is missional in both His nature and being, and His plan for mankind. These are inseparable. We see throughout the biblical account that as God seeks after man, His mission is to redeem him. This originates from God’s own character and nature, and is revealed in His promises of redemption in the Old Testament, and the work of redemption culminated in the New Testament. We can see that God is seeking after man to redeem him in just the beginning chapters of Genesis. After Adam had sinned, God came looking for him once he had sinned (Gen. 3:9-13), and then promises future redemption (3:15).
Throughout the Old Testament, we see God in relationship to the patriarchs and to His people, the Israelites—but only because He sought them as His covenant people that He would one day redeem from the curse of sin through His promised Redeemer, Christ. This very truth is promised to Abram (later in Genesis) that through His covenant people who would eventually bring forth the Messiah, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). So while God first sets the Israelites apart as His chosen people, it is clear from the Old Testament and especially the Psalms, that God is seeking for “all the nations” to praise Him (Psalm 66:4; 67:3; 117:1). The narrative of the Old Testament would be enough evidence to say that God is a missional God who is seeking His people for a covenant relationship with Him.
But the New Testament attests to this fact as well. We read that God desires all people to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). God’s missional nature and plan climaxes at the highest point through the coming of the Lord Jesus, God Himself, who takes on flesh and bears the penalty for sin in order to accomplish redemption (Luke 19:10; John 3:17; Rom. 3:24).
II. Jesus is Missional
Secondly, it is evident that Jesus is also missional. The Bible implies that Jesus is missional in His purpose for coming to earth, and His work of redemption on the cross. First, the purpose for Jesus’ coming to the earth is missional. Jesus Himself testifies that He has come to “seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), and that He came into the world “in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). Indeed, the Gospels depict Jesus’ main purpose for coming to earth was to redeem man, and the Epistles explain the implications of this redemption, revolving around the truth that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15).
Second, the work of Jesus is missional. He accomplished fully His purpose for coming into the world by dying on the cross and resurrecting in order to reconcile man to a seeking God. His death and resurrection accomplished the mission of God to redeem mankind. Jesus’ work on the cross results in reconciliation to God (2 Cor. 5:18-19), and now believers are “brought near [to God] by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13; cf. Col. 1:21-22). Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth was missional—He came to redeem mankind. And His work was missional—it did redeem mankind, reconciling us back to God through faith in Christ.
III. The Church is Missional
Finally, the Bible teaches us that the church is missional. The church, being the body of redeemed believers everywhere, is missional in its very structure and origin. The only way that the church can grow is through the goal of missions: making disciples. Jesus commissions His few disciples in Matthew 28 that they are to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (v. 19a). This would not happen by keeping to themselves and being apathetic about sharing the gospel. Empowered by the Spirit, they made disciples and the church grew in only a short time to “about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
The church is missional because the only way it can grow is by disciples making disciples. It is within the context of the church that believers are equipped through the teaching of the word, in order to do “the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). It is the mission of the church to bring the ultimate message of missions—God’s mission to mankind, to others so that God can “bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Rom. 1:5).
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