Clear Evidence (04/29/26)

Here, then, is the chief and fundamental problem for unbelief:  The evidence is there.  This is the message delivered powerfully to those standing and listening to Peter that day.  It is the same message Paul delivers to the church, and in turn to the world.  It is the message with which we each of us must wrestle.  For those spoken to that day, Peter makes it clear.  That Jesus had divine authority was clearly proven to you.  I borrow from the TEV translation for that presenting of the point.  It was proven.  You had the evidence before you.  Your eyes saw it.  Your ears heard it.  You men of Israel, so careful of the Law and of Torah should have known better than anyone what it was signified by the things He has done.  He was, by every indication set forth in Scripture, a man who had God’s approval.

That this was recognizably the case is demonstrated by the response to Him while He yet lived.  The example of Nicodemus is perhaps the easiest to apply.  He struggled to accept the evidence, but it would seem that in the end, he did.  At the outset, though, he at least acknowledged what was plainly true.  “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God.  No one could possibly do such things as You are doing except it be the case that God was with him” (Jn 3:2).  The evidence is plain.  Jesus came to teach God’s people, and He taught with God’s authority.  Even this one, a man of the Sanhedrin set as a teacher over Israel acknowledged the obvious truth of it.

I mentioned Paul.  I suppose I ought to quote him.  “What is known about God is evident within man, for God has made it evident.  Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His divine nature and eternal power, have been made known through what He has made.  There is no excuse for unbelief” (Ro 1:19-20).  There is no not knowing.  They knew, and suppressed the knowledge.  This is man today.  This is the world in which we are commanded to remain amongst that we may stand as witness to this truth.  Look about!  The very nature of nature itself bears the distinguishing mark of Him Who created it!  Man, the image bearer, though marred by sin, yet bears the distinguishing mark of His image.  This in itself is a miracle, a sign.  I don’t wish to puff us up with an undeserved sense of self-worth, but this is the reality of our position.  We stand as miracles in the flesh.  And that’s not even counting the effect of the Holy Spirit coming to dwell in us yet.  To be made in the image of God, to share even in so small a degree in His nature, His essential character, is a wonder, something that really ought to captivate our attention.

Peter stacks up three terms to describe the impact of Jesus, and the evidence of His divine authority.  God declared His approval of Him through miracles, wonders, and signs, he says.  We might suppose him to simply be piling up descriptors for the same thing here, and that might well be the case.  But these terms have distinctive flavors.  It’s as if you spoke of preparing the meal with salt, with oregano, with cumin.  You could simply say that you had used spices, and you would be accurate, but you wouldn’t provide much information beyond the obvious.  You could just say Jesus did amazing things, and you would be accurate, but you wouldn’t speak much to the point of it.   But miracles serve to give evidence of inherent power.  What does it mean to have inherent power?  It means that power is present in the fundamental essence of the one exercising it.  Power is, to borrow from the American Heritage Dictionary, ‘inseparably attached or connected’ to Him.

I have to be a bit careful here, because we hear this and, like Simon the Magician, whom we’ll meet later, we think, “Ooh, I want me some of that.”  And we can all too readily come to think that this power is ours directly, not something God retains His control over.  But if miracles serve as evidence of His approval, they serve in accordance with His authority.  That power may be ‘inseparably attached,’ to the one He approves, but it is also inseparably attached to Him.  And that, in turn, explains the significance.  This one through whom His power is being displayed is likewise inseparably attached to Him.  Thus, we get to this sense of these displays of power serving as clear indication of His involvement, His approval, His authorization of the man and the message.

Let us be clear on this:  The mere capacity to perform signs is not in itself sufficient.  Paul warned the church of this from the outset.  One is coming in accord with Satan’s activity, he warned the church (2Th 2:9).  This one will come with power, with signs, with false wonders.  The same general terms are applied, but the signs point in the wrong direction, the wonders by which he draws attention to himself are false, not expressive of the power of God, but of a power bent on the destruction of man, the image bearer.  Miracles are indeed wonderful, when they are done in the service of God.  But take that out of the equation and what are you left with?  A magic trick performed to deceive the eye and draw the attention away from what is really happening.  This is quite the opposite.  This is focusing attention on what is really happening.

That’s what had happened with the events just preceding.  The miracle of sudden-onset language skills caused these men to stop and listen.  The wonders that came before that, the sound of high winds without the destruction, the flames of fire that did not burn them to a crisp, those certainly got the attention of the group gathered together for prayer.  They did not distract.  That group didn’t, so far as we are given to know their response, lead them to be so excited they missed the point, too busy chattering amongst themselves, asking what had just happened, to discover the answer being given them.  A miracle!  But they didn’t just stop with the miracle and leave satisfied with a bit of excitement in their lives.  No.  They became focused on God’s purpose, on what it was He intended in this moment.

Wonders!  Wonders capture our attention, force us to stop and observe.  This is what had happened to those outside.  They may have remained skeptical.  They may have been fabricating excuses to dismiss what they were witnessing.  But they could not dismiss it entirely.  They couldn’t just walk away saying, “So what?”  There’s something about it that forces one to stop, to say, “I need to see how this plays out.”  If you observe how Jesus tended to employ miracles and wonders, it was never as an end in itself.  To draw crowds and adulation would not suffice.  Rather, they were as tools to Him, means by which to prepare the ground to receive the word.  But the teaching was primary.  Always the teaching was primary.  Everything else was means to that end.

The final word Peter gives us is signs.  Signs, of course, indicate something.  A sign in and of itself is nothing.  The sign out in front of the grocery store will not supply you with groceries.  It will not supply you with anything.  But it gives clear indication that somewhere around this parking lot lies a grocery store which will.  The sign along the highway will not in itself get you to the town whose name may be on that sign.  But it will direct you towards that town.  Of course, those of us who grew up on Bugs Bunny will be well aware that a sign is only of value if it points accurately.  If the exit sign claims this exit will take you to Boston, but in fact plunks you on a highway heading for New York, it is what?  A false sign.  If an advertisement, a sign indicating the value of the product advertised, makes all manner of claims which said product cannot in fact supply, we are likely to sue the producer of that product for false advertising.  But a sign that points true?  A clear indication of direction with clear meaning?  That’s valuable.  And when that sign concerns matters of eternal import, it is priceless.

Here, the sign is given as a distinguishing, authenticating mark.  By this you may know.  It’s as if God stamped His Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on the Man, Christ Jesus.  He did.  There’s no real as if about it, other than that there wasn’t some sort of embossed stamp on Him.  Or was there?  Wasn’t there?  “He is the radiance of His glory, the exact representation of His nature.  He upholds all things by the word of His power” (Heb 1:3a).  I actually like the KJV phrasing of this point.  He is the “express image” of God’s person.  How could He not be?  He is God’s Person.  And that’s the point.  He was proven by God.  The things He did, the wonders that happened by His hand, the powerful words He spoke, the truth He lived:  All of these gave clear evidence of that very point.  And you can’t miss the power of this in Peter’s message:  “You yourselves know it.”

You know by perception.  You saw.  You heard.  You had personal experience of it.  And that knowledge doesn’t just reside in the past, some memory to be forgotten in the course of time.  No.  It has continuing, lasting effect.  It is declared in the perfect tense.  In point of fact, this particular word for knowing is always in the perfect tense.  It is always knowledge that comes of prior perception.  We might allow that it is knowledge that comes of having thought upon those prior perceptions.  I think of Mary, who ‘treasured these things’ (Lk 2:51).  She thought on them often, considered the significance, wondered at what it was God was doing.  That same perfect tense applies to God’s attesting to the Man.  Those actions were in the past, but they didn’t stay there.  They continue to have impact in the present.  They did for those outside listening to Peter.  They do for us today.

We, too, have the evidence set before us.  No, we did not personally witness Jesus in action as He walked among men. But we do witness Him in action through His word, through the lives of those He has redeemed, through the power of His work in our own lives.  We sense the change within, see the change without, and know that something has happened that is not of our own doing, could not be of our own doing.  He lives!  I dare say that every last individual ever to come into the saving knowledge of Christ has arrived at some point at the wonderful realization of just how true that declaration is.  He lives!  And that changes everything.

Lord, how often I recall that very dawning realization as it came in the aftermath of You laying hold of me so many years ago.  He lives!  It’s all real!  It’s all true.  Amazing.  Sometimes I fear I’ve lost the wonder of it.  And maybe that’s okay.  Maybe that’s supposed to happen as we mature in faith.  But there remains the continuing impact.  And there remain those moments, like yesterday morning, when You have so arranged events as to fill me anew with a sense of Your very present orchestration of events.  The joy I had at hearing my friend the bishop speaking from Malawi, the comfort I felt in hearing what he had to say; it came as not merely appreciation from him personally, but as a comforting affirmation from You.  This I truly believe, that You moved him to speak as he spoke, when he spoke to deliver Your message.  And I thank You for it.  I don’t know, but I pray that I am yet being used of You to speak in like fashion into the lives of those with whom You place me, whether to my wife, to various individuals in men’s group, or on the worship team, or whomever it may be. May I be more conscientious in setting myself at Your service, to speak Your truth and not merely my own opinion.  But however we proceed, thank You.  That encouragement yesterday came as a significant bolster to my state of mind, my state of awareness of Your presence.  May I indeed know such awareness more often, more clearly, for I do know You are here and You are with me.  Help me to live in light of that.

Clear Purpose (04/30/26)

The same God who so attested to the authority that is in Christ also established the time and manner of His death.  We need to remind ourselves that Peter is speaking to a Jewish audience at this point, and not as yet making the case for the deity of Jesus.  But we know this to be the case already.  And that being so, it’s important to pause for just a moment and consider that if God had predetermined the events of His betrayal and death, He, too, had foreknowledge of those things.  Indeed, He spoke often of the very thing as He taught His disciples.  He knew it had to come.  He knew it all along, just as He knew the one who would betray Him even as He called that one to follow Him.  And to be clear, this knowledge of what must transpire preceded even His being conceived as a human embryo.  It preceded the most embryonic stage of Creation itself.  Before Adam was, He is; and already He knew, having covenanted with Himself, as it were, that it must be so.  This was not some emergency response.  This was the plan and the purpose of Creation from the outset.  The devil played his part, coming to tempt Adam and Eve successfully, such that they reneged on their own covenanted relationship with God.  But again, this wasn’t disruption.  This was the unfolding of what was intended by God’s “predetermined plan and foreknowledge.”

Here is a fundamental point for us to get firmly in our hearts and minds.  God is not reactive.  He is causative.  As Scripture takes pains to make clear, this in no way allows us to posit Him as the cause of evil.  No, the evil done by man and the evil done by Satan are alike the will and intent of the one who acts.  Yet there is a necessity to their acting.  It could not have come about otherwise.  And still, in their actions there was no coercion on God’s part, nor did He in any way initiate or desire the evil.  What He desires is the outcome, and the outcome is ever and always for the good of those who love Him.  And I suppose I should observe that this love for Him is in like fashion necessary on the part of the lover, and in like fashion entirely an act of the will of that lover of God.  I belabor this somewhat because I know that when we start dealing with the foreknowledge of God and the necessity of His plan and purpose playing out as planned and purposed, our sense of self gets offended.  But that would make us no better than robots!  Where is free will?  But free will, to such degree as it is ever truly free, is there.  Nobody is forcing an act that is against our own will in either case.  And yet, it is not possible that we should have willed other than we did.  We are, after all, who we are.

I have at various times argued this point in different ways.  There is that formulation a past brother of mine propounded, which has stuck with me through the ensuing years.  Yes, your will is free, but His will is freer.  That’s one way of expressing the matter.  But it can still leave God appearing a coercive force.  I tend to view it somewhat differently.  The will is free to choose, yet ever and always bound by its perception of the options.  Put differently, you cannot choose what you do not know exists.  If all you can see is enticement to lust, then the only choice you will perceive is which lust to pursue.  Think of it in electoral terms.  You are free to vote.  But you cannot meaningfully vote for a candidate you don’t know exists.  Yes, you can fill in a blank for ‘other,’ but you and I both know that’s a rather meaningless protest vote that achieves nothing.  It’s effectively choosing not to choose.  You are free to choose, but only between the candidates proposed.  Or, if a ballot measure comes up, you can vote yes or no, but have no option of offering some alternative for consideration.  There is no, “yes, but with modifications.”  You are only free to choose from among the available options.

I could think of some of these silly quiz websites that come up.  Given this set of options, which would you choose?  Perhaps you’ve burned a few moments on one or more of these things.  The problem tends to be that none of the options truly answer.  You may not even know what some of those options actually are.  But you have no option for ‘none of the above,’ and you must choose something, so you pick the closest thing you can find to what you would really have preferred to answer.

Well, come to the realm of moral choice.  It often seems to us that there are no good options, only the choice of the lesser evil, or the least undesirable.  The necessities of the moment may lead us to choose something other than the least undesirable, were we measuring solely by our pleasure response.  If it was all about dopamine hits, we would opt otherwise.  But sometimes necessity dictates a different course.  Arguably, every morning that you get up and go to work, every time you do the laundry rather than pursuing your hobbies, you are opting for something other than real preference, and why?  Because there is a necessity to the action.  But what if doing laundry isn’t even an option?  What if there’s no means of pursuing that course?  Well!  You won’t choose to do it, because it’s not really a choice.  That may be a difficult scenario for us to contemplate.  But there was an age when one, maybe two outfits were likely all you owned, and you wore them until they were too worn out to wear.

But consider; when once you have been made aware that you can have clean clothes every morning, and not have to deal with the rashes and the smells that come of wearing the same bit of cloth every day with no opportunity of washing away the sweat and grime of previous days, will you then willingly choose to continue with just the one outfit?  I don’t think so.  It is somewhat the same when the Holy Spirit comes and opens our eyes to the truth of our condition.  We have been walking about in a stained and offensive skin utterly polluted by sin.  We didn’t know any better, one could argue.  We were so used to it that we didn’t even notice the offensiveness of our person.  It’s just how life is.  Then comes awareness that yes, that’s how life is, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  There is another course you can take.  Who, having come to awareness – and let me stress, real awareness with understanding, – would choose to continue as they were?

That still doesn’t quite establish the necessity of choosing to change course.  But goodness does rather compel the choice, even though there is no coercion.  There is a necessity to salvation.  God speaks and it is.  And yet, there is liberty in our desire of that necessity.  Our ability to choose in no way limits the foreknowledge of God.  God’s foreknowledge in no way coerces our choice.

I recall Jonathan Edwards arguing the point that even when coerced, the will chooses what it wills willingly.  That is to say, you cannot, in any circumstance, choose other than what you want to choose.  Your wants may be constrained.  Conditions may cause you to weight your options differently than you would under better conditions.  Yet you choose according to what seems to you the best available option as you assess your options in the conditions that prevail.

Sorry.  Bit of a diversion there, but I hope I’ve made my point.  God predetermined.  It was His ‘determinate counsel,’ as the older translations describe it.  And here again, as I think I have already noted, we encounter a perfect tense function.  What Peter describes, in replaying the events of Jesus’ death is the current, continuing result of past action.  That past action was God’s determining, decreeing if you like, that these things would come to pass.  And to be clear, He had determined by whom they would come to pass, when they would come to pass, and where they would come to pass.  His foreknowledge is more than running through probabilities.  Neither is He paging through some multiverse of potentialities in hopes of cajoling all these myriad threads towards His desired outcome.  Nothing is left to chance, for chance is nothing.  There is foreknowledge, and foreknowledge requires the power to establish a determinate plan.  God spoke and it was.  Even in the chaos of those earliest moments of Creation, when all was void and without form, there was nothing of chance involved.  There was no, “Well, let’s hope that works out somehow.”  No.  Every last mote of dust, every current of energy, every least subatomic particle, moved in accord with His plan and purpose.  And so it has continued to this day.

All may appear to be chaos and disorder.  Anarchy may appear to be on the rise.  We may question the capacity of world leaders to ever do anything right.  We may question whether they even want to do anything right.  But their wants and their deeds aren’t, finally, what matters.  What matters is the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.  What has He willed to transpire?

Now, we enter into matters of will, and we must deal with the fact that Greek gives us two distinct terms, both of which tend to be translated as will.  More usually, we come across thelema, and there we might read preference or desire as the matter of willing.  Here, however, we are dealing with boule, a more determinate form of will, which we might supply as decree.  I find that different lexicons tend to distinguish between these two words.  But one point would be that the Greek senate, or equivalent thereof, is referred to as the Boule.  They are establishing law, determining what shall be done, and what shall not.  Zhodiates makes the point that in Scripture, boule always refers to God’s own actions.  Where man is involved, even as directed by God, the will is stated as thelema.

Play that into Peter’s declaration here.  I’m not entirely sure we can, but let’s try.  If boule is the action of God, then even though we come to that second half of verse 23 and its assigning of action to the ones outside listening – You did this! – yet, God Himself was acting to bring it about.  Well, consider some of Jesus’ actions leading up to that point.  We find Him becoming quite adversarial in His dealings with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  He’s practically goading them into action.  The schedule requires it, after all.  Even with Pilate, you can see something of that.  He’s certainly not acting to help His own situation.  He is moving things towards the predetermined plan, acting in perfect obedience, perfect accord with what must be done, when it must be done.  And He, let us be clear, is God.  For Jesus to act is for God to act.  So, yes, in that sense, though man acted in causing Him to be arrested, handed over to Roman power, and said power more coerced into acting against its own better judgment, yet Jesus, as He demonstrated even with His last breath, was fully and utterly in control of the event.  “I lay My life down that I may take it again.  Nobody takes My life away from Me.  I lay it down on My own initiative, as authorized by My Father.  And I have authority to take it up again as well.  Indeed, to this I am commanded by My Father” (Jn 10:17-18).  He willed, even in His humanity, but Father directed, decreed.  The same could be said, though without the conscious determination to pursue the Father’s will, of every last individual involved.

There is the most fundamental point we must lay hold of and retain.  God is in control, not only as allowing but as planning and decreeing.  It was so in this most crucial moment at the center of history.  It was so in the moment of our salvation.  It is so in every moment of every day.  It is so when we fall.  It is so when we get back up.  We act as we will, but we act according to the predetermined counsel of God Almighty.  And praise be to God that for us who have been called according to that predetermined counsel, the outcome of our actions, and of the actions of those we encounter, shall in the end prove to be for our good.  So, we go our way, pursuing our purposes, and by the grace of God we find that more and more our purposes are aligned with His good purpose.  Not perfectly aligned, for we are not perfect creatures.  But there is a trend line to our lives, and its trajectory is heavenward.

So, as I wrap up this part and begin to transition to the next, feel the tension of this.  What had happened in Jerusalem a month or so back had been planned by God.  And yet, as Peter forces their eyes to behold the enormity of their sin, they are reminded – we are reminded – “You did this!”  You nailed Him to the cross, even though you hired out the work to godless men.  That it was God’s predetermined plan has not altered the situation in the least.  You, who think yourselves so holy and upright did this thing to one you knew had God’s approval.  You chose godless man over the man of God.  It is as Jesus had said, “The Son of Man is going as it has been determined.  But woe to him by whom He is betrayed!” (Lk 22:22).  Yes, that speaks first and foremost of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Him.  But it speaks every bit as much to every one of those in the crowd before Pilate’s pavement.  It speaks to Pilate and his soldiers, who abused the man, Jesus of Nazareth, in spite of their own clear judgment that He had done nothing deserving of punishment.  It speaks to each one of us, for each of us in turn has betrayed Him in going after our own sinful proclivities.  And every time, we are forced to acknowledge, we acted knowing.  We knew Who He is, and yet we chose our own course.  And every time, God knew we would do as we did.

Well, praise be to God that He has had, from all eternity past, a plan to deal with us in our sorry state of sin.  He has accounted for our weakness, our fickleness, our self-centered pursuit of pleasure in the moment, as we seek to disregard eternal implications.  It does nothing to alter the sinfulness of our sins.  But it offers hope to the hopeless.  There is a way.  There is a way because God as determined beforehand that there shall be a way.  There shall not be another.  All paths do not lead to heaven.  Indeed, only one.  You shall come to Him by the blood of the Lamb or you shall not come to Him at all.  Any claim of another path is a lie and a deception, seeking to turn you onto a course that can only end in the eternal agony of hell.  Oh, may He be pleased to open your eyes to the reality of the case, and rescue you from the bondage in which you have chosen to abide all these years!  May He call you out of all that to truly live as He gives true life, life of such a nature as will never die.

Clear Guilt (05/01/26)

We arrive at this point of tension.  God ordained what happened.  This is true, and it is needful that we have a firm grasp on that fact.  What happened, happened for a reason.  What happened had been established by God long ages since.  He knew it would come to pass because He had declared that it would, and so it must.  And as I have, I believe, already pointed out, Jesus knew it as well.  He was there for the planning, part of the Triune Counsel at which the whole idea, purpose, and development of Creation was determined.  His hand was in it from the outset, and remains in it to the end.  And He is the end, the purpose, of the whole work, start to finish.  As He laid the foundations of heaven and earth, He knew that it would entail this Passover.  He had established the Passover, and insisted on its observance through the ages.  But long before Egypt was a thing, He knew.  He must die – by these means, at the hands of these specific men at this specific time in this specific place.  He must die.  But His death did not alter the plan.  It was the plan.  And that plan included as well His resurrection.  It also includes ours, whom God has called.  It also included those in Israel that day who, in spite of their personal involvement were called.

And there we come to the tension.  God ordained all that transpired, and yet, it was you who acted.  You acted not as men under coercion, as men with no choice.  You acted as you desired to act, did what you wished to do.  Pilate, for all that we may pity him in his capitulation, trying to keep his job by appeasing the mob, acted by his own choosing.  Even such a mob could not compel his choice.  He could have played the man.  He could have abided by his own judgment, and, if necessary, involved his troops to quell the gathering crowd.  Decision made.  He’s in charge.  And he has the power of Rome to back him.  But then, of course, though they acknowledged it not, both he and Rome, and the Jews for that matter, have a higher power behind them.  What must be shall be.  But again those words Jesus spoke in regard to Judas ring through.  “Woe to him by whom it comes.”

Understand from this that God’s control of events, His predetermining foreknowledge does nothing to ameliorate the criminality and guilt of man’s choices.  It changed nothing for Pharaoh that he could not possible have acted differently than he did.  It changed nothing for the mass of people gathered against Jesus that Passover week.  It changes nothing for us.  What changes everything is the love of God, His own self-willing of compassion and mercy upon those whom He chooses.  He chose to die on our behalf.  He chose to create such a fallible people as would require His death.  Why?  Because we were such wonderful exceptions?  Hardly.  Look at Peter who is preaching.  He hardly showed himself a paragon of virtue, did he?  Even forewarned, yet he pretty much immediately fell to lying and cursing and seeking to distance himself from Jesus.  But Jesus wouldn’t have it.  No.  He had spoken, and it must be.  “Satan demands permission to sift you, but I have prayed for you.  When you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Lk 22:31-32).  Not if.  When.  Failure must come, and it will have been your choice to fail.  But restoration must come as well, and this, too, will have been your choice.  Why?  Because it is mine.

As he delivers this message to those below, I have no doubt that his own record is clearly laid out before him.  You, he says, you who are so proud of your piety, gave this innocent man over to those you account your enemies, that they might do to Him what you would not sully your own hands by doing.  Yet, it remains your hands doing the work.  Your prevarication alters nothing.  Some of those out there had likely been in the crowds greeting Jesus as He rode into the city days prior.  They had hailed Him as king, rejoiced to see their rescuer arrive.  But He failed to live up to their expectations, as if He had cause to do so.  And they, like jilted lovers, turned hard against Him.  It never occurred to them that they had long since jilted Him in favor of the idol of their imagined rebel hero.  It was not He who had failed them, but they who had proved repeatedly unfaithful to Him.  Oh, they went through the forms well enough.  They still showed up at appointed times.  But in between?  But in the private space of their thoughts?  No.  “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Mt 15:8).

There was no excuse that could be offered.  Nothing can alter the case.  Take it to court, and the judge would surely rule against you.  No jury would acquit you.  The evidence is too plain.  You knew.  You had the evidence.  You understood the evidence.  You knew He was a man of God, sinless beyond your hope of being found righteous.  And yet, you nailed Him to a cross.  Yes, you got others to do your dirty work, but still you did it.

There are shades here of that system of vows they had devised, ways to swear an oath that were, to their thinking, not quite so binding as holy vows.  If I swear by the temple, or by heaven, or on my mother’s grave, or what have you, I still have wiggle room.  I won’t swear by God, won’t make promises to Him, for I know I have no intention of holding to my word.  Or, at the least, I fear I will prove incapable of it.  So, I’ll soften the oath, and maybe I can maintain my innocence when I fail.  No.  As we read in James last week, Let your yes be yes, and your no be no (Jas 5:12).  It matters not what you swear by, or whether you swear by anything.  Your word is just as binding, and your failure to keep your word just as condemning.  It matters not how you try to distance yourself from the outworking of your perverse desires.  They remain your desires, and the result remains your responsibility.

This was not just an issue for that generation, or for that particular gathering of individuals.  And I am mindful, as I write this, that even the specific matter of which individuals had passed by, had heard the surprising sound of their native tongue, albeit with a Galilean accent, and stopped to listen; even that was by God’s predetermined plan and foreknowledge.  Yes, you specifically:  You are here because He decided you should be.  You are now responsible for your choice as to how you respond to what you are hearing, and that, too, is because He decided you should be.  You are brought to a, “choose you this day,” moment.  So, choose.

And we face such moments daily.  God calls us to our calling.  It may be in matters of how we deal with our children.  It may be in the challenges of relationship that come with married life.  It may be in how we respond in matters of governance, especially if the current leadership is not to our liking.  But, in fairness, the greater challenge to holiness may very well come when the leadership is perhaps a bit too much to our liking.  But more, it pertains to our response to God.  We call Him Lord, but will we receive Him as such?  Will we honor Him as such?  Will we obey Him as such?  Calling Him by His title is of little value if we do not in fact accord Him the glad submission that is His due.  To proclaim ourselves loudly and proudly to be His servants, basking in the honor of holding such a position by His leave, means less than nothing if in fact we don’t serve, or serve only fitfully, as the mood hits us.  We have need of recognizing the fickleness of our own hearts.  It will do us no good to look in upon this scene and think only about how sad it is that this people whom God had called His own turned so vehemently against Him, all the while claiming to hold Him in high honor.  No.  Look at yourself!  Take the mirror of the Word and see what you are like.  For you are there in that crowd listening.  You, sitting where you are here in the twenty first century since that critical event; you nailed Him to that cross.  It was for your sins that it proved necessary for Him to die.  And He did die, that you might live.  And now, having the blessing of that result, the question comes.  You have accepted your Savior.  Have you accepted your Lord?  Will you heed His command, abide by His instruction?  Are you truly a disciple, or just a hanger-on?

The message there as Peter speaks is clear:  There is no excuse you can offer for what you have done.  For us, the same message rings out, and remains ever in the present.  There is no excuse you can offer for what you pursue today, when your pursuits deviate from His command.  Hear again the commission, the grand order, given the Church.  “Go make disciples.  Baptize them into the Triune name of God, but don’t stop there.  Teach them to observe all that I commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20).  You cannot teach what you do not know.  You cannot teach but by your example.  Words without actions are empty things, devoid of impact.  Live as I commanded you, that they may observe your example, and follow.  Nothing less will do.

And know this with equal clarity.  Time and circumstance change nothing in regard to God’s plans and purposes.  All is still, to this day and onward into the future, however long said future may last, transpiring in perfect accord with His purposes.  We pray for His perfect will, but His will is always perfect, and will always come to pass perfectly.  Nothing alters that.  You will act as He wills.  Pray, rather, that your heart may be changed such that you gladly pursue His good intent.  Pray that you may live out that which He has been working within.  Live in accord with your calling, for He has called.  Let His lordship over your life be evident in how you live it. 

You are blessed to know how the story ends.  You have the extraordinary comfort of knowing that it ends with your good, your best outcome, assured, not by your attention to the details of making it so, but because He has already made it so.  Your inheritance is already established in heaven, under His watchful eye, awaiting the day of your arrival.  But let not this assurance become an excuse for sin in the present.  Do not presume upon the grace of God.  Live as a true son, yet live knowing that His grace is sufficient when you fail.  Just own up to it, seek Him out in honest repentance and receive His earnest forgiveness.  And keep trying.  Keep walking towards home.  Know that He is with you, “even to the end of the age.”

Clear Indication (05/02/26)

Many had claimed to be looking for signs that they should believe Jesus when in fact they would never believe.  They were just hoping to catch Him out in something, anything, in order that they could dismiss Him from their thoughts.  Many are still in that place, looking for reasons to not believe.  It’s not that God is unbelievable.  It’s not that man has now evolved sufficiently as to dismiss all this nonsense about angels and demons and deities.  It’s that acknowledging the evidence would necessitate acknowledging one’s own failings, one’s own guilt.  Acknowledging the evidence would require us to bow down to the one we discover to be God.  It would require obeying Him as He ought to be obeyed.  And we would rather have our deluded illusion of independence.

Peter has been laying this out plainly.  You saw the wonders.  You listened to the Man.  You likely joined the crowds with their palm branches welcoming the One they hoped would start the rebellion to rid you of Rome.  But your misconceptions don’t alter the more fundamental truth:  God attested to His holiness and His authority.  And still, when He disappointed your expectations, you turned on Him.  Faced with a Holy One you could not bend to your will, you nailed Him to the cross.  I don’t know.  Perhaps you really thought this would be an end to it; that you could walk away from such a heinous miscarriage of justice and account yourself somehow innocent, or even righteous in what you had done.  Perhaps, like Paul, you thought yourselves to be doing some great service to God by destroying Him.  If you thought that, you were wrong.  You may have killed God, but only because He had already determined that this would be how things went down.  Perhaps you had heard Jesus when He said, “Nobody takes my life from Me.”

Perhaps you thought you’d proven Him wrong this once.  But you hadn’t.  Those soldiers by whom you had Him crucified understood.  Nobody just calls an end to it and dies without hours-long agony.  That form of death was designed to last, to maximize the pain and the shame, to demonstrate just how powerless the victim was against Roman justice, and just how terrible it was to suffer its wrath.  And yet, this Man just said, “It is finished,” and it was.  They couldn’t believe it at first.  This should have taken much, much longer.  And yet, tested by spear point, it proved to be the case.  And witnessing this, and the events which followed His death, they acknowledged the obvious:  “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Mt 27:54).

And yet, here you are, but fifty says hence, living as if nothing of significance had happened these last three years.  But listen up!  You killed Him, but He didn’t stay dead.  Ask that centurion.  He knows.  This man was very certainly quite dead.  Ask those who put Him in the tomb.  They handled His body enough to recognize the reality of it.  Ask the tomb itself.  Where is that body they laid in you?  No.  He is not here.  He has risen as He said.  You see, it was impossible for death to hold Him.  And this, too, is a sign, a sign most unmistakable.  If death could not hold Him, surely we must ask why that should be the case?  Who else can you name whom death could not hold?  Will you posit Enoch?  Death never had him, did it?  Will you suggest Elijah?  The same holds.  He never entered the grave.  Perhaps you might think yourself clever in pointing to Lazarus.  But then, you’ve probably been trying to wipe that from memory.  Let it come forward.  Oh yes, he was dead and in his tomb.  And how is it that he is not currently there?  Oh, that’s right.  It was this same Jesus, whom you killed, whom God restored to life, who but spoke a command, and it was.  Lazarus came forth.

You know, it’s pretty likely that Lazarus was up there with Peter among those gathered to pray.  But a larger point could be made in regard to him, that in spite of being raised from that entombment, yet he would return to the grave in due course.  Not so this Jesus.  Lazarus was returned to life because death could not deny God.  Jesus was raised once again to life because He is God who cannot be denied.  You wanted another sign.  Jesus told you what sign you would have; the sign of Jonah.  Three days He was beneath the waves of death, if you will.  But only three days.  And now?  Now He lives.  Now He is beyond death’s reach.  Now He is enthroned in heaven, His native abode.  He was sinless at birth, sinless in life, sinless at death.

There’s this phrase that Peter slips in here, speaking of how God, by raising Him up, was “putting an end to the agony of death.”  That description, ‘the agony of death,’ uses a term which most often applies to the labor pains associated with giving birth.  Yes, it can be used of other, similarly painful experiences, but it retains its association with that example.  The agony of death which Jesus experienced was in fact an undergoing of labor after a fashion.  Through His willing experience of this agony He was bringing about the rebirth not of one child, but of all who believe.  To them, He brings new life, and that life, as His own, is no longer subject to death.  That is not, of course, to say that believers will never suffer the death of this physical plant. In point of fact, as Paul describes for us, every last one of us, even of those still walking the earth when Jesus returns, will die, as concerns the flesh.  It is necessary.  For, “This mortal cannot put on immortality.”  Corrupt flesh cannot withstand holiness.  It must be consumed utterly, like the offerings upon the altar.  But life continues.  The soul is immortal already.  The grave is not the end, but a way station.  The question is, where are you on your way to?

So, hear it.  You sought to put Him to death, but the end result was birth; the birth of new life.  Now, Jesus being unchanging God, we must seek to understand this in some fashion which leaves Him fundamentally unchanged.  Jesus took on human form, became a Man, and yet, it seems to me we must hold that He was Man from all eternity.  This was not a change, but a manifestation.  That newness of life was not new to Him.  It is the Life which He has been forever, and ever will be.  It was a manifestation of that underlying reality of state, that He should arise renewed, His body, His human form, still human, and yet distinctly different.  And so it shall be for us at our own resurrection.  We shall still bear human form, yet distinctly different; now fitted out for eternity, now unfettered by the sinful proclivities of our former flesh, no longer threatened by annihilation should we encounter true holiness, for we will, at long last, be holy as He is holy.

This is where Peter is taking his listeners, and us with them.  His rising from death is the final sign.  It is the true crisis point for every man.  If He has been raised from death, it cannot but be a sign.  And that sign points to one obvious conclusion:   The Man you killed was in fact God.  That fact that He lives means He still is.  God cannot change.  God cannot perish.  Yes, that flesh could undergo death, but it was rather more like the caterpillar in its chrysalis.  That caterpillar is no more, and yet, it lives, emerging as a butterfly.  I don’t know as I wish to press that analogy too hard, but it will do for the moment.  Death could not hold Him.  Death cannot hold you.  Believer or unbeliever, there will come that day, the same day these events just witnessed indicate is dawning around us, though its full arrival may seem to tarry, whatever the state of your physical plant in that hour, you shall rise to a new body.  And the question remains:  Then what?

For the redeemed, what lies ahead in that moment is a future free of sin, a future in the immediate presence of our beloved Lord and God, to truly enjoy Him forever, as the Westminster Catechism so famously articulates it.  This, for the believer, is the beatific vision.  Finally, we are home!  Finally, we are as we were always meant to be, and sin and sorrow are no more.  And ahead lies an eternity in which to rejoice in the wonder of it all, praising God every moment for the glory of real existence.

For the reprobate, however, what lies ahead is still an eternity, but theirs with no sight at all of God.  Here on this earth, even the worst sinner has some experience of God’s goodness, for He causes His goodness to fall on saint and sinner alike.  He feeds both, gives light and warmth to both.  There is what we call common grace.  Come that day, however, common grace comes to an end.  Those cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death (Rev 21:8), do not cease to be.  They perish.  But perishing is not oblivion.  It is instead an eternal experience of utter separation from God.  It is the full realization of sin, with no least grain of holiness remaining.  It is to experience for all eternity the full development of evil, without hope, without respite, and to know undeniably that the experience is most assuredly deserved and just.

Peter is laying it out here.  Continue as you are, and this is your assured future.  Look at just these few verses.  You knew He was holy.  You killed Him anyway.  God wouldn’t let it stick.  Now it’s your turn.  God is still in control, just as He was when you killed Him.  How do you suppose He will look upon your illustrious deeds when the One You killed sits in judgment?  You dragged Him before the judgment seat of Pilate.  He will drag you before His own judgment seat.  And He knows you.  He knows every last thing about you, every thought unexpressed, every deed you thought private.  And He judges justly.  How do you suppose He shall determine your case, you who nailed Him to that cross?

For some, even so blunt a message will not register.  They’ll continue to laugh it off as the effects of too much wine, even though that excuse is implausible.  They’ll find some other excuse to dismiss it from thought, so they can get back to their own sinful proclivities.  But for those upon whom God has deigned to show mercy?  They’re hearing this and recognizing their situation.  They are, as Jonathan Edwards so poignantly described it, dangling over that lake of fire even now, held aloft by no more than a bit of spider’s silk.  The peril is dire, the outcome all but certain.  And yet, there is hope even now.  “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from death, you will be saved” (Ro 10:9).  That’s the Gospel in one line.  In spite of all you have done or failed to do, in spite of your clear and inescapable guilt, this still holds.

Be careful here.  This is more than tossing off some incantation, and allowing rational thought to acknowledge the obvious.  “Even demons believe – and shudder” (Jas 2:19).  It’s one thing to believe He was raised from death.  Presumably, come that last day, all will believe.  They will pretty much have to when He’s standing right there.  But belief, in this instance, consists in something more than simply acknowledging what’s before our eyes.  It consists in more than accepting that truth is true, though it can hardly be of value if belief is in something which is not true.  No.  There’s a question of reliance, trust, and of responding appropriately to that which is believed.  If I believe He is Lord, but insist on dismissing His commands, do I really believe?  Not in any meaningful fashion.  If I believe He saves, but fail to see my peril, fail to call upon Him to save me, of what value is belief?

It’s rather a stupid example, but it serves.  I walk into a room and the evidence convinces me that there is a chair in that room.  The evidence convinces me that said chair is sufficiently stable as to bear my weight.  It might even convince me that not only is it serviceable, but probably comfortable as well.  I might consider, in my thinking, just how pleasant it would be to avail myself of that seat.  But if I stop there, what value has belief had to me?  If I do not in fact sit upon that chair, my belief in the chair is of no value.  So, too, to believe that there is a God, to believe, even that Jesus is God, that He is able to give life to whom He will, and to preserve it against all that may come against it, is fine and dandy.  But if we stop there, if we stop without actually calling upon Him, committing ourselves to Him in sorrowful acknowledgement of our sins and in service to His Lordship, belief has no value.  If I hold every word of Scripture to be true, and yet live unchanged by its message, I have gained nothing.  Oh, but if belief is real!  If faith is truly faith believing, trusting, relying upon Jesus and seeking constantly after how it may better live according to His example?  My!  Then hope has dawned, and not the vague hope of imagination, but hope rooted on the certainty of Christ Jesus, my Rock.

Lord, I know I have come to that place of trust.  I also know how plainly I fail to heed You on a daily basis, and it grieves me.  It grieves me and yet I persist.  How can this be?  Oh, I can take some comfort in knowing that I am hardly the first to feel this way.  Paul expresses it well enough, and thank You for that.  It gives me hope.  You give me hope.  But how I would that my weak flesh would not so readily betray You, disregard You, and go chasing off after its own desires. How I would that I could go a day without bursting at the seams with frustration and anger.  Something is not right, and that something is me.  But I trust You.  I trust that You are working on this poor material to make it something worthy of heaven.  In spite of me, yet You love me.  How can it be?  I don’t know, but I thank You that it is so.  May I somehow, by Your work within me, and Your power exercised through me, come to be worthy of Your love.  May I improve a bit more today, and a bit more again tomorrow.  Have Your way in me.  I know You will, and I trust Your way will prove to be for my good.  For You have said so, and if You have said it, so it is.  Thank You.  To You be all glory and praise and honor and dominion, here in me, as it is in heaven; without question and without hesitation.  Even so, Lord Jesus, let it be done.  Amen.