Toward the conquest of fear

Posted on February 18, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

In his first inaugural address, Franklin D. Roosevelt used the oft quoted phrase, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The first time I heard this quotation, I thought it rather silly since there are many things to fear. But as I’ve gotten older (I hesitate to say matured), I see the wisdom in this.

In the New Testament, the verb phobeo (fear) is used as an imperative 62 times (list). If I counted correctly, 59 of those instances the command is used in the negative; we are commanded to not fear. In the 3 remaining uses of phobeo we are commanded to fear God.

Why does God tells us so many time to not fear? It is because we are prone to experiencing fear. Fear is a powerful, if short term, motivator. Since it is so powerful and since we have an enemy, it should not surprise us that The Enemy uses fear as one of the primary weapons in his arsenal. That is why Peter tells us to “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

In this election year we see fear used as a campaign tool. The ads tell you about all the bad things that will happen to you if you elect the other guy. Political commentators make a lucrative income by playing to these fears. We as believers must not give in to them. We can’t panic. God has not given up control.

In 1 John 5:4 we are told that our faith is able to conquer the world. That faith is rooted in an understanding of the nature of God. We can be confident in God’s ability to remain in control and complete his plan for the world. His love and justice will not be thwarted by any scheme of the enemy.

If that is the case, then why do we fear?

I am not a trained counselor so you may think my answer to this question is simplistic. If so, I ask your pardon. Yet I have a sense that we fear because we do not understand nor appropriate God’s love and power. The Apostle Paul proclaimed this great love for us when he penned these words:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:4–9, NASB95)

God made us alive, raised us up and seated us with Jesus Christ. By his resurrection, Jesus displayed his destruction of the most powerful source of fear that the Enemy has, that is death.

So I must remind myself, if Jesus has conquered death, what could be worse than that? If God is master over death, can he not get me through whatever trial that comes my way? Yes he can. I simply need to live as though this is true despite what my fears tell me.

Teaching Evolution in the Church?

Posted on February 15, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

This post is in reaction to an article written by Paul Wallace that I read in the Huffington Post. In it Mr. Wallace writes about his efforts at teaching evolution in the Church.

What the author seems to assume is that belief in evolution is the only reasonable response to the question of origin. If evolution is the only reasonable explanation of what we see, then it would be foolish to deny that claim.

I will set aside the difficulties inherent in evolutionary theory because there are many voices more qualified than I to enumerate them. Even if we granted that evolution is an adequate explanation, it is not the only reasonable explanation.

My point is that those who hold that evolution is the only reasonable explanation of origin do so because of their fundamental assumption that there could not be a creator or intelligent designer. They do not find a creator because they assume that he cannot exist and therefore ignore any evidence that he does. The first wrong assumption is that God cannot exist and therefore he could not have created.

The second wrong assumption in this article is that there is a dichotomy between faith and reason. This is the “if you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church” fallacy. God, in Scripture, does not ask us to suspend our reason, he asks us to allow him to transform it. Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that this transformation is the most reasonable response to God. In fact the word translated reasonable (NKJV) is logikos from which we get our word logical.

We do not suspend our reason in order to believe, but we do open ourselves to the possibility of God having acted in the past, present and future of human history. Without this possibility we do not have Christianity. The whole focus of Christianity is Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh who came specifically to intervene in human history on our behalf.

My question for those who would teach evolution in the church is why would you seek to undermine the foundational truths of Christianity and still try to call it Christian? Why call it Christian if you don’t want Christ? Call it whatever you want but it is not Christianity.

Perhaps the drive to undermine Christianity lies in the demands that Christ places upon us. Jesus doesn’t bid us come and evaluate his philosophy, he bids us come and die with him. He does not offer neatly packaged explanations of reality, he offers mystery. He does not offer transcendent conquest of life’s difficulties, he demands surrender and contentment.

At the core, I suspect that this evolution vs. creation debate is more of a submission issue than an intellectual one. If there is a God who is powerful enough to create what we see than it would be foolish to refuse submission to him.

Therefore since we refuse to submit, it is much easier to pretend God doesn’t exist. If I don’t look at him or acknowledge his presence, perhaps God will go away and leave me alone.

But then oh, how alone I would be.

Purity of heart is the means of seeing God

Posted on February 13, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

Number 10 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

At one point in Jesus’ ministry he was accused by the Pharisees of allowing his disciples to break the tradition of the elders by eating with unwashed hands. This account is recorded In Matthew 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23. Jesus’ response is interesting when he declares that it is not what a man eats which defiles him, but the things which come out of his mouth are evidence of the defilement that is already inside.

Jesus is telling the Pharisees (and us) that it is the defiled heart which causes the wrong behavior. The behavior is a symptom and not a cause of impurity.

It is this context which makes the sixth Beatitude in Matthew 5:8 so interesting.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Practical Purity

In the Israel of Jesus’ day, there were many regulations regarding external purity. The nation had food regulations, commands concerning washing, laws about touching dead bodies, ceremonial cleansings and prescribed worship. When they complied with these regulations, they could claim that they had purity in their practice, or what I would call practical purity.

Modern day legalists operate in much the same way. We can have lists of things to avoid and things to do which are used as litmus tests to determine the level of purity or spirituality. If you’ve been around the church enough, you’re bound to have run into one or more of these modern day Pharisees.

This is not the purity of which Jesus is speaking of here. External purity can be produced by those who are impure in their motives. Jesus referred to them as white washed tombs that were clean on the outside but full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23:27).

Positional purity

The purity to which Jesus refers is positional purity, or purity that is ascribed to us by God. Jeremiah tells us in Jer. 17:9 that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” David cried out in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God,”

We have a congenital defect, we are born with a sin nature and as A. T. Robertson tells us, “Sin befogs and beclouds the heart.” In Hebrews 12:14 we read that without purity no-one will see the Lord.

So how then can this Beatitude be fulfilled?

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that when we are in Christ, we exchange his righteousness for our sin. In other words, we trade our impurity for his purity. We are then viewed by God as being pure.

It is only after this transaction has taken place that positional purity comes to an individual heart. It is because of this positional purity of heart that we can see God.

The Promise

This is another promise that has an immediate and an ultimate fulfillment. In Ephesians 2:4-5 Paul tells us that though we started out life dead in our sins, we are made alive in Christ. Spiritually dead people cannot see or respond to God. In Christ, however, we can begin to see God in the sense that we are aware of his presence and work in our lives. This is the immediate fulfillment.

The ultimate fulfillment comes when believers stand before God. We read in 1 John 3:2–3 we will see Jesus just as he is in his entire deific splendor. We will then be fully know and be fully known by God (1 Corinthians 13:12). What a day that will be!

Until that day, we have to be satisfied with our intermediate experience of God as our down payment on the ultimate experience. When that happens, the good will be transformed into the best.

When God makes you wait in the wilderness. . .

Posted on February 11, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

Caleb was 85 years old when Israel entered the Promised Land. He was promised this opportunity back in the early days of the Exodus as we read in Numbers 14:24:

“But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.

When he was 40 years old, Caleb was one of twelve spies that went into the Promised Land to bring back a report to Moses. Of the twelve, only Joshua and Caleb gave a favorable report. They were in favor of taking on the giants in the land but they stood two against ten. The report of the ten caused the people to respond in fear and rebellion. The people cried out to Moses saying that they would have been better off staying in Egypt. Their fear overruled their faith and they panicked.

This revolt against God was punished by 40 years of wondering in the wilderness where all the men of Caleb’s generation died with the exception of Joshua, the other spy who gave a good report.

While he was waiting 45 years for his inheritance, do you suppose Caleb had moments when he wanted to rant against the people and their hard headed stupidity? Do you think that there were times when he was frustrated with God for making him wait? It would be easy to become bitter while trudging through the wilderness with the people that caused the delay.

Yet, when we see them finally enter the Promised Land, I do not get a sense of any self-pity or bitterness from Caleb. Read what Caleb said to Joshua about his inheritance in Joshua 14:10–12:

¹⁰And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. ¹¹I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. ¹²So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”

Instead of self-pity or bitterness, I get the sense that Caleb spent his time in anticipation and preparation for his eventual inheritance. He kept himself sharp, in shape and ready to conquer. He knew what he would be up against when the time came and he came prepared.

Things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes an expected blessing takes a long time to materialize. I am encouraged by the example of Caleb in that he appears to have used his waiting time wisely. When the opportunity finally came, he was ready to capitalize on it.

It appears that he stayed focused on the God who made the promise and not his circumstances. May we do the same when faced with difficulty!