Grand Ol' Topic of Faith

Something I'm big on is faith. Now this doesn't mean I believe in faith only salvation, I believe in Christ only salvation, that is, only from Christ does salvation come. It's not baptism that saves, it's not faith that saves, it's Jesus that saves. You want to argue about how that salvation comes about, have at it. Just don't tell me I'm wrong unless you're willing to admit you're wrong. But that's all besides the point.

I think faith does a lot. Others will say it doesn't, but then I have to counter with scripture and show them that it does. What I mean is that faith requires action.

James 2 is a favorite chapter of mine. First off James tells us not to show favoritism between people. Now there is a difference between showing favoritism and helping people who need it. I give some people more time than others, but that's because those particular people actually need it. I've had people try to take my time who only wanted it, which would have taken it away from the people who needed it, and I chose those who were in need over those who just wanted. A child who breaks their arm needs more attention than a child with a paper cut. That's the mentality that I had, and I think it worked and was still in line with what James is talking about there.

But then moving on to the next passage in the chapter, James talks about how faith without works is dead. This is what I really want to get into today. This tends to be something I come to a lot because I see this problem a lot.

There's a preacher that said one time something along the lines of, "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian just as sitting in a garage doesn't make you a car." I just tried to find the source and failed, but someone did note on that idea that a more appropriate phrase would be, "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage would make you a mechanic." This I think is more spot on. Going to church can, over time, bring you into true Christianity, just as being at a shop could slowly turn you into a mechanic.

I've talked about my mechanic friend before and I've had this happen to me. I hung around, watched, had some people show me how to do some things, and I'm no mechanic, but I can change oil and brakes and do a few other easy things. That's what we call the discipleship process. A master teaches an apprentice so that the apprentice can become self sufficient enough to eventually become a master and do the same. 

So what does this do with faith? 

You have faith, you want to do something about it, you find someone older and wiser who has been in the faith a while, and follow them, learn from them, grow to the point where you can do like wise. That's what Jesus did, that's what he told us to do, that's how the Church really got kicked off in Acts, those are the people that followed Paul, and that's what a lot of churches today have lost. 

Faith has to lead to action. It's not always discipleship though, some people think that only good works matter. "I tithe every week, I pray, I read my bible, I give extra to the homeless, I volunteer at a food pantry, I even lead a bible study for people in the church." That's all great. And I have no problem with that. But how many people have you helped lead to Christ? How many non-Christians do you tell of the Gospel? Your faith breeds actions, which is good, but does it breed discipleship? 

I guess what I'm saying is that Faith without works is dead. But what works need to happen? What works show that you have faith? Why do works show that you have faith? I'll try to answer these three questions real quick.

Why do works show that you have faith?

Let's say you love someone, boyfriend, girlfriend, parents, whatever. You tell them to their face, "I love you." But then when they're around you ignore them, never do anything to make their life just a tad bit easier, never show them that you love them in anyway possible. Is that love then? No. Same goes for faith. You say you believe God exists, that Jesus is his son and died for your sins, and you say you accept him as your savior and Lord. But you act no different from before that faith and after it. You still complain about everything because you're life is sooooo terrible. You still pick on people, mouth off to your parents, give your younger siblings hell, break laws, and really just do whatever you want because you're grown and no one can tell you what do to. Do you really have faith then? If you did believe all of that then you couldn't help but change your life because of what Christ did for you.

What works show you have faith/ what works need to happen?

As I said, yes, there are easy things to do in response of having faith. We can give, we can volunteer, we can lead Bible studies, what have you, but serving can turn out to be pretty easy. For most people that's in their comfort zone, and others it's just on the edge of growth. I serve a lot, because I enjoy it. I don't do it for praise for myself, I don't do it because I think it'll show my faith. I do it because I want to love everyone as God does, and it doesn't matter who needs help I'll go out of my way to help them whether I like them or not, because I show no favoritism. But that's not me showing my faith. Me showing my faith is sitting down with a believer or non-believer and giving them time, not service, but time, even if I don't know them. I show interest in them because I am interested in them. We'll talk about whatever, maybe we'll get to a topic about Christ, maybe we won't. Doesn't matter. But I actually care about that person and that's what matters. I may not know the person like I said, but they're as much one of God's children as I am, they just may be lost, or they may not. I have that faith that Christ died for me, but not only for me but for them also. And I live on that faith.

So go out, and live your faith.

You've Already Been Paid For

You and your family decide you want a dog. You're not worried about breed, sex, color, none of that, you just want a dog. So you up and go to the pound, might as well save one right? You go in there with intent and a purpose. "I want a dog." You're looking through the choices and find the one that you want, picking it out. To take this dog home though you have to pay X amount of dollars. It's worth it to you because you and your family want a dog that bad. If you don't do all these things, taking time, picking out a dog, and paying for it, the dog will be put down.

You have just redeemed a dog.

Redemption is a word that we use in church that isn't always understood. I think this dog analogy works great for the idea of redemption. But to put it even plainer I'll do a couple more examples.

You redeem coupons, giving them to someone in exchange for something.
You redeem a wage, working throughout the week in exchange for money.
You redeem items, giving someone money for that particular item.

Redeeming things is a lot like bartering. I have this, I think it is worth this much. You have that, and it's worth this much, we can trade these things, I give you this, you give me that. I just redeemed that with this.

In the Old Testament God goes to a man Hosea and says, "You're going to go marry a prostitute." So Hosea obeys. They marry, have some kids, then his wife (Gomer) runs away back to her old life. God comes back to Hosea and says, "Go get her back. It's going to cost money, but it doesn't matter. Go get her." With God telling Hosea to do this it can be assumed that maybe Hosea didn't want her back. And if her own husband didn't want her back, why would anyone else really want her? But he goes and pays to get her back, despite the fact that he has to pay for what is already his. She was already his wife, yet he had to go buy her back. He had to go redeem her from her old life to bring her into the new one. But Hosea got off easy. Yes he had to pay something for what was already his, but you can't really place value on a human life, so whatever he paid to have her back was less than he should have paid.

God had to do the same thing as Hosea, he had to redeem us. Last time we talked about sin. We see throughout scripture, and right now Romans is coming to mind, that we are slaves to sin. Sin owns us. We can do nothing that sin doesn't tell us to do. That is essentially what it means to be a slave to sin.

Yet we are God's creation, his masterpiece. But he still had to buy us back. So what he did was sent his son, putting on flesh and bone, to come and pay for our sin. Romans 6.23 tells us that the wages of sin is death, that is sin is paid for with death. You work a job, getting paid $8.00/hr for 20 hours a week. Before taxes that's $160/week. Those are your wages, money you have earned for the time and work you have done. Exact same concept with this verse. We have done sin, one single sin, and we have earned death for it. Our actions have only gained us death. But the rest of the verse says that the free gift of God is life, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

We have been offered a free gift of life, countering the wages of sin that we have rightfully earned. The gift of grace and life is free to us, but it cost God something so that he could reclaim us. It cost him his son. Jesus was the currency paid so that we could be brought back to God and be redeemed, so that we can be reconciled and receive grace and life.

God paid for us, his own creation, with his sons life.

That's like if Bill Gates wanted a computer that ran Windows, he would have to give up his firstborn for it. It's already his, he's the one that started Windows. Why should he have to give up his son for it?

Well why would God have to give up his son for us then?

So by now you should have an idea of what redemption is, but I want to get a little further into what it does.
Ephesians 2.8 says that we have been saved by grace. We can change the word saved there to redeemed. (I've talked about this before and haven't been struck by lightning so I think I'm good.) So then we have been redeemed by grace, or the grace of God. This is saying that God did all of the work.

This grace of God allows us to be redeemed then.
He had enough love for us to be merciful to us despite our sin.
He had enough mercy on us to not just straight up kill us but instead to extend grace to us (seen in Titus 2.11)
And he had enough grace for us to save us from our sin which is death (Hebrews 2.9 is a fitting reference here).
How he saved us then was with his son Jesus, bring us back to the idea of redemption.

But just above I stated that grace has been extended to all. This means that we all have a chance to take it, but not everyone does. Read Titus 2.11 and tell me that God has extended grace to everyone. And it is grace that saves/redeems us. All we have to do is consciously take it, you cannot accidentally accept the grace of God.

Well how do you accept it? It's been said, "Grace is free, but not cheap." This is a true statement. Grace is a free gift of God. If it wasn't free then we'd have to give something of equal value for it or else it's a steal, and you can't steal from God. But we don't have anything of equal value of God's grace. That's why it's free. But it's not cheap, it costs us everything. What do I mean by that?

When I got baptized at school, I was talking with a professor about it and he told me that the only thing that we own is our sin. This is also a true statement. Think about it. You die right now, what goes with you? Your cell phone? Nope. Friends? Nope. Clothes, money, xbox, dog, bed, boyfriend, girlfriend? Nope to all of the above. Not even your body is yours, you cannot control what it does. From the time you're born it starts to die and you can do nothing to stop it, only further it along.

The only thing you'll take with you after life is your sin, because no one gave that to you. You chose that for yourself. That is all that you own, that is everything you have, most people find their very identity in their sin. I used to always put relationships before God and I found my identity in that. That was my sin, and it controlled and owned me, much as I owned it because it was mine, and I chose to do those things. Yet to receive this grace we must repent of our sin, turning our back to our own lives and handing all we own to God.

For our sin he gives us grace, and by his grace we are redeemed.

Yet he gave us his son for our sin, giving something invaluable for something worth less than excrement in the yard.

This is what it means to be redeemed.

You pay for your dog, you bring it home, and becomes part of your family, it's valuable to you.
God has already paid for you, and he asks that you come join his family, leaving your past life behind, giving him all you own so that you can find joy in this new life, joining his family.

Saved from What?

So the past two day's I've basically been talking about Jesus as King and the Gospel message. Both of which are closely tied to the issue of salvation. Salvation=Saved. The person who saves us is our savior. And our savior is the Messiah, the king who came to save. Now I'll get into salvation at a later time, but right now I want to talk about why we need saving, and hopefully I can get some people out there who don't think they need saving to realize that they really do.

In the beginning God made everything, and it was all good. It was exactly as it was supposed to be. Then came the Fall. The serpent came and tempted Adam and Eve, we're not going to get into whose fault it was or anything because it doesn't matter, and they sinned. Now it is to be noted that being tempted is not a sin. Jesus was tempted yet he was still perfect. Adam and Eve were tempted and they failed the test, and sinned.

Now in this moment in human history there are a lot who say that Adam and Eve never had any real knowledge of how to handle a situation like that; being tempted. While they have never been in a situation like this, they did have knowledge how to handle this type of situation. They were given two rules: Take care of everything, and don't eat THAT. Pretty simple. the Fall hasn't happened, things don't die, should be pretty easy to take care of the Garden. Don't eat from that particular tree? Well there's tons more stuff around here to eat, shouldn't be that hard. It should be ingrained in their minds by this point that they're not to eat of that certain tree. And that's shown in the dialogue between Eve and the serpent. "God said, 'You shall not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" Eve has that memorized so she knows that she is not to eat of that tree. And God had made them a promise: Eat of that tree and you die. Now he wasn't talking physical death, but spiritual. The serpent tricks her and reverses her thinking though, getting her to eat from the tree, going against what God has told them not to do. They knew this thing wasn't God, he spoke about God in the third person and said the exact opposite of what God did say, therefore they questioned God and his wisdom, then went and acted on that questioning doing what he said not to and therefore sinning. It wasn't because they wanted to go against what God said, but they wanted to be like God (Gen. 3.5-6). In that moment she put herself before God, wanting to be like him and maybe even hoping to be better than him.

Because of that single moment in history, one bite, everything changed. And the world has been declining since. I've spoken about it before, the Law of Entropy, how everything is dying. This is a result of the Fall, of sin entering into the world. Everything started to die then, everything began to decline, all as a result of sin.

Now we all have sin in our own lives. Think about the best person you know, whether it be your parents, pastor, best friend, grandparents, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Liam Neeson, whoever, they have sinned. The only person that hasn't sinned is Jesus, which is why his sacrifice was perfect, but we'll get into that later. Paul tells us in Romans that all have sinned. Solomon tells us the same in Ecclesiastes. There are all types of ways to sin: Actions, inactions, seen, unseen, thoughts, conversations, even letting your emotions out of control is a sin (example being Matthew 5.21-22). Go look at the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5-7 and tell me that you haven't done at least one of those. Have you looked at a guy or a girl and thought, "I'd hit that"? Guess what, you've sinned. You've committed adultery. You ever been driving and someone cut you off and you thought about running them off the road? Well you just basically murdered them.

Now these things don't mean we might as well go out and do them. Let me be very clear about this.

THOUGHTS LEAD TO ACTIONS

THOUGHTS ARE AS BAD

AS ACTIONS

BOTH CONDEMN THE SAME

WE ARE CALLED TO BE CHRIST LIKE

WHO WAS PERFECT

WHO KEPT HIS THOUGHTS

EMOTIONS

AND ACTIONS IN CHECK

GET YOUR IN CHECK AS WELL

MESSING UP BY THOUGHT DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OKAY TO MESS UP BY ACTION

What this really comes down to is: Have you repented? Have you been saved? If so act like it. But if you're still a slave to sin then continue to reap judgement on yourself. Pile it high and see where that gets you on the other side. If you're a Christian: Act like it. If you're a pagan: Do whatever. 

You may not think you sin, but that's you turning from the truth. We all sin, saved and unsaved. The difference is those who are truly saved make an attempt not to sin. They don't always succeed, I sure don't. They stumble, probably a lot. But they try. They act like their saved. 

A guy smokes from the age of 14 till he's 40, pack a day kind of guy. Finds out he has stage 3 lung cancer. He goes and gets treated, and by the grace of God the cancer goes into remission. Now do you think after that he's just going to go out and start smoking again? Probably not. He realizes that he has a second chance and he's going to honor and respect it. 

It's the same thing with sin. We have this cancerous thing in our lives which is killing us. We finally realize it after a while and realize what it's doing to us. We go to have someone take care of it, we go to God. He says that he's already done everything to take care of this cancer in our lives, all we have to do is believe that he and his son did all the work. We do that, we turn our back to the life that we lived, and start over again. Since we've had the problem taken care of do we then go on living the way we did? By no means! We died to sin and found a new, better life in Christ! 

The point of all of this is: We all have sin in our lives and it's killing us. Murder, rape, abuse, bullying, obesity, hurricanes, earth quakes, wild fires, depression, fear, hate, suffering; it all comes back to just sin in the world. Those in the world continue to sin more and things get worse. I think there's something to that. We all do it, we can't get around it. There is absolutely nothing we can do to take care of this sin problem.

But luckily for us, someone who could do something about it already did. And he did everything required. Jesus lived a perfect life. He went to the cross in our place. He took on our sin. He died then rose again. This defeated sin, defeated death, and brought life back into the world, and pouring out grace. This grace has appeared to all of us, as has God. Accepting is the only way to gain this grace and the freedom that comes with it.

For sin is paid for with death, but God gives the gift of grace for free, giving us life.

Sin is why we need a Savior.

The Clearing of Issues

So I was going to title yesterday's post "Step One" but realized before I posted it that that's a horrible title. I'm working on leading people to Christ, who is our salvation, and it is in my theology that salvation is not a process, but a culmination of events at once.

When I was working for Enterprise I ended up talking with some baptists who believed whole heartedly what they were taught without thinking about what it was. I know this because they stuck to their beliefs even after I thoroughly questioned them poking some pretty big holes in their theology. This also happened with some other baptists who randomly showed up at my house because I visited their church. Those were some fun conversations.

But the real conversation and banter found itself centered around one particular issue: Eternal Salvation.
For those of you who don't know, this is the idea that once you are saved you will always be saved no matter what you do. If you want to believe that, go for it. That's incredibly dangerous territory to be and isn't supported by scripture, but you go right on ahead and believe that.

So when I was talking with the guys from Enterprise, I asked if one of the men believed in predestination like other baptists. He gives some answer that sounded a lot like predestination but made even less sense. But then he stated that he believed in Eternal Salvation. I start asking him questions, poking here and there, and he holds to it with all he has. I look at the other guy there and ask if he believes in it to which he replies, "Eternal Salvation? Oh yeah of course. As long as you're fully saved."

Fully saved? Does this mean you can be partially saved? If you die and you're not fully saved does only part of your soul head on to heaven while the rest goes down to hell? By saying "fully saved" what he was saying was that salvation is a process and that there are hoops you must jump through in order to be saved. Does this sound like how God works? That's how it was in the OT, but once Jesus came the things that we did became meaningless for salvation because Christ did all the work. That's the point of Jesus coming to earth. So by saying that salvation is a process then we are still saved by ourselves and the of Jesus was for nothing. Not only that but scripture points to not a process of salvation, but an event of salvation.

I take this idea of salvation as a process from something that was started in the 60's or 70's I believe called the five steps of salvation. I could have those dates completely wrong, but the five steps were: Hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized. Yes, all of these things lead to salvation, and it cannot be had without these things, but these are not hoops that we must jump through to be saved. They are not entirely separate actions. I see them as chain reactions.

Now in the rest of this I may make some older and fundamental people mad, but oh well. This is how I see scripture, you don't have to believe it. Just don't outright say I'm wrong without proof and don't try to shove your beliefs down my throat. I'm not making anyone believe what I say, I'm only sharing what I think.

So what makes us "saved?" Is is being baptized? Living a good life? Praying, reading, and singing on Sunday's? Am I saved simply because I went to a Christian college or am in ministry?

Absolutely not. It doesn't matter what we do, none of these things will save us.
The biggest issue with churches that I've ran into on this topic is baptism. I once baptized a guy in my youth group and his elbow was sticking out and the minister there wanted me to do it again because of that. He thought he wasn't saved because he wasn't, by definition, "Fully immersed." If God keeps a person out of heaven for that reason me and him are going to have some issues. But if it's baptism that saves us, then why was Jesus baptized? Did he have sin of which he needed to be forgiven? Did he need saving as well? What did he need to repent of? Does anyone else see the issue behind the statement of, "baptized for salvation?"

Salvation is being saved. Saved from sin and the death that comes with it. You cannot be partially saved, that makes no sense. You cannot save yourself, you can only be saved by outside help. So being saved washes away our sins, if it didn't, we couldn't have the Holy Spirit, God himself, with us because God can't be in the presence of sin. In Acts 10 we see Cornelius, a God fearing Gentile with his family and Peter when the Holy Spirit, God himself, comes upon them. To which Peter replies, "Can anyone stop them from being baptized?" Now how can God come upon people, full of sin, if they haven't been baptized for salvation? How many times throughout scripture do we see people receiving the Holy Spirit at baptism? Once. And that was with Jesus. Ever other time we see baptism there is no sudden coming of the Holy Spirit, it either comes before or after baptism. This leads me to believe that baptism is but a symbol. It's necessary for all believers, being commanded by Jesus, but it's not what saves us.

So what does save us? Ephesians 2.8 says that is is grace that saves us. Well how do we get grace? Through faith. Faith for me is incredibly powerful and essential for all Christians. We have faith in the point of yesterday's post, that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the only and living God. Not only that but we accept him into our life as our personal King and savior. When we have that faith we have all of the things that salvation will include: It causes us to be humble, repent, acknowledging the supremacy of Christ. We receive grace, redemption, righteousness, sanctification, justification. In a simple word, through this true and actual faith, we are saved. If we have this faith then we will act on it. All that comes from this faith is a process. we are not 100% righteous, but Christ continually works at making us righteous. We have not 100% repented, we still fight our demons, but now with the help of Jesus. We are not 100% sanctified, but are continually being made holy.

The only two things that happen 100% when we come to this faith is that we receive that Grace of God and are saved by it. But it will not remain if do not allow ourselves to be transformed. God doesn't want you to come to him perfect, he wants you as you are: Broken. He'll put you back together again and make you into something new and better. But you have to let him do this. This is where we humble ourselves and repent.

All of this is what I will be getting into through the next week or so. But this is what I felt like I needed to talk about today. The main thing to remember is Jesus did all the work. And in the words of the fantastic Dr. Girdwood, all we have to do is ride his coat tails up to heaven.

The Rock King

Class one day I was given a challenge: Completely relay the Gospel message in 30 words or less. Needless to say, that wasn't too easy, but I think I got it down.

God came to earth in human form as Jesus. He lived a perfect life then died for our sins, then rose again three days later defeating death and sin.

Bam. 29 Words.

That is the essence of what I wanted to get at yesterday, telling of what the Gospel is. I went a bit deeper than just 29 words last night, but I still told of what the Gospel was, the Good News of Christ. With that we began to lay down a foundation that we can continue to grow and build on.

To recap, the foundation is Jesus, with the cornerstone being his identity as Messiah, leading to him as Savior, which is the Gospel Message. That's where we're coming from, the foundation on which we will not only begin building on, but also be putting together.

Today we go to step one of that task.

Step one is defining what it means to Jesus as King, Messiah, or Christ.

Jesus' main teaching in the Gospels, and we see this especially in Matthew, is the Kingdom of God/Heaven. What exactly does this mean? Well going back to yesterday, Israel had no human king for a long time, with God being their only king over them. Eventually they wanted to be like the countries around them and have a human king over them. So God gives them what they want, and they get a King over the nation of Israel. This comes at a price, the king will abuse and extort them, ultimately being a regrettable decision for them. They say, "Oh well! Do it anyways!" and get their new king, Saul. He goes nuts, dies in battle at his own hand (or someone else's depending which book you read), and David becomes king. Then there's a long line of kings eventually ending in them being taken over by numerous enemies throughout the years, finally leading up to the Roman Empire taking over and the only king that they have then is Caesar.

This brings us to Jesus who comes up and says that he is the promised Messiah, the promised King of Israel, saying that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Now looking back to the previous paragraph we may be thinking that the Kingdom of God is a nation with God as king. Yes and no. When we come into the family of God we become a part of the new nation of Israel, with God as our King yes, but there is more to it than that.

Back to the beginning of time Adam and Eve have a personal, intimate relationship with God, where they walk with him every day, talk with him in person every day, and he is physically there with them. Not only was he their God, but their King and Friend. This is the original Kingdom of God: Having God as a personal King in your life whom you can go to at any time about anything. Israel's kingdom needed people to go between God and the people, they couldn't go to God themselves for fear of death. Yet with Adam and Eve, they could be around God before the Fall.

So with Jesus coming as Messiah he came to usher in the Kingdom of God, with him being King over our lives. No longer do we have intercessors between us and God. The only intercessor that we have is a form of God himself (Rom. 8.26).  Not only that, but that form of God that intercedes for us is constantly with us, meaning part of God, which is fully God, is always with us. God is always with us. How much closer to the original Kingdom of God can we get?

This is what it means to have Jesus as Messiah, as King. That he brought the Kingdom of God to us, allowing us to be personally under the Kingship of God as our personal Lord and savior. Any of you baptized? Remember saying that? "I believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and my personal Lord and savior." A lot of good stuff there we'll probably look at later. But if you repeated this phrase you are saying that you are making Jesus the only God, the only King in your life, and you will serve him to the best of your ability, which can only happen when you lean on him, which is why we need him to be personally involved in our lives.

All of this is the cornerstone which the rest of the foundation will be laid in relation to.

The rest of the foundation is pretty easy. We see all through scripture who God is, and we see through the New Testament who Jesus claims to be: The Good Shepherd, the True Vine, the Living Water, the Bread of Life, etc. It is your job to go look at these and see who Jesus is. Compare it and relate it to him as Messiah, and lay that stone down to build the foundation for your life.

Now since we know the basics of the Gospel message, we'll be getting deeper into it throughout the time it takes to get all these things out of the way. I don't know how long this is going to take, but it'll be worth it. Today's post is only a part of the Gospel. Tomorrow I think I'll talk about why we needed Jesus to come bring the Kingdom of Heaven. Then we'll see where it goes from there.

Time to Get to the Roots

So we recently finished up Ecclesiastes which was fun, but I began to notice while working through it that it's a 12 chapter long hyperbole, meaning that the author over exaggerated his points. We saw him go from one end of the spectrum saying everything that we do is absolutely pointless meaning life sucks to enjoy everything because it's all awesome. Only a few times does it make sure we understand that while everything is permissible, not everything is good.

So all that got me thinking, I should really do some stuff on the basics of Christianity. Now to start all of this off I want to say that, as usual, this is my take, what I've seen, experienced, and read all will come together for this. Some people disagree with me, some would agree, some will even say I'm going to Hell for my beliefs. They can deal with that in their own way, I don't care. I don't plan on getting too deep with these next few posts, but there will be some deepness. I will do my best to make it applicable, meaningful, and understandable for you.

All that being said: Let's get started.

I posted a few weeks ago probably about how Jesus is the foundation. This is what I want to start off with because you build on a foundation. Now this is found in Matthew 16, Mark 8, Luke 9, and 1 Corinthians 3 (along with some other scripture which you'll have to dig a bit to pull it out). Jesus is what all other things are build on. He calls himself the truth and the life. Not just a truth, or a life, but the truth and the life. A devo book I was going through a couple days ago tells of how can be seen as Jesus saying that he is reality. Everything else is not true, is not real if he is not a part of it. It is in him that we find meaning and purpose. It is in him that we find the reason for our lives. And if we don't build our lives on that truth, we're building on sand, a bad foundation. But if we build on the rock, build on Jesus as our foundation, we will begin to have some stability.

With Jesus being the foundation and providing stability to our lives we have to have a corner stone, or the first stone laid on the foundation. That stone is the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised Savior from God. We acknowledge this, understand it, believe it, and set it down first. then everything else that we believe about Jesus is placed in relation to this one truth. With that we begin to have a foundation, and the more we know Christ, the bigger the foundation, and the bigger the life we can have.

So what exactly is this corner stone? Yes I said the Christ, the Messiah, and the Savior, but what do those words really mean? This is a problem that has arisen thanks to lazy churches who allow Biblical illiteracy to run rampant through our congregations. I can be as much to blame as anyone having spent my time in church work, but this is a problem dating back decades now where we don't understand what the words Christ, righteous, justified, sanctified, redeemed, and many more mean. So hopefully I can begin to clean this up.

Christ/Messiah the same word, just a different language. They both mean anointed. Anointed means to be covered in oil, which is something that was done to kings in the past. There were prophecies in the Old Testament about a king that will come from the line of David (3rd king, 2nd human king of Israel) who would save the people of Israel. He would be the "Messiah" or "anointed one," or the true king of Israel. The word Christ is the Greek word for Messiah, which is the Hebrew word (more or less, don't want to bother you with too much language stuff). So Israel is waiting for this Messiah, this king, to come and save them from all the problems that have happened to them. If you take the time to look at Israel's history, you'll see there's a lot of problem they went through. It should also be noted, that while reading a book for class there was a person in there that wrote that all the problems Israel went through was just something that kind of happened to them, and they did nothing to deserve it. Yet scripture tells us something completely different, that Israel sinned in the eyes of God, and he removed his protection from the as a result of their sin, and they were taken over by a foreign nation. This is what they wanted to be saved from, and why they needed a new King to save them.

Skip forward a few centuries to the turn of the ages. Jesus comes along. Here's this carpenter from the wrong part of town walking around saying that he is this promised Messiah, doing all of these miracles, and at times even putting himself on even status with God, going as far as to call himself his son.

The audacity of this man.

Yet throughout his life he has never sinned. He has only loved and expressed it through all of his actions. He has gotten angry at times, but for perfectly legitimate reasons, having a righteous anger similar to God's own righteous anger. Throughout his life he does nothing to deserve any type of punishment, yet makes enough people mad with what he does and says that they finally plot to kill him. They turn one of his best friends against him, take him to trial illegally, bring false witnesses against him, the entire time not defending himself, then have him condemned to death. The beat him, humiliate him, make him unrecognizable as a human, torturing him. Finally they nail him to the cross to kill him. Yet we see in the story that he willing gives up his life, they never took it from him.

"This can't be the promised King that God was supposed to send us from the oppressive countries ruling over us. He died and we're still under these horrible powers. How is he the Messiah?"

Three days pass. A woman goes to where this man is buried to give him some last rites. She's thinking of how she's going to get this huge stone off the entrance for the tomb. As she walks up. the stone is gone, and the body is gone.

Upon inspection by her and the men following Jesus they see his body just disappeared. It wasn't taken, what he was wrapped up in was still there. He then begins to show up all over the region to different people, revealing himself.

He's alive. He rose from the dead.

He must be the Messiah. He did save us from an oppressive power. Not from one of this world, but one that was spiritual. He saved us from sin, taking on our sin as if it was his own for the love that he has for us. This is why Jesus is our savior. This is why he is the Messiah, he was sent by God, to be king of our lives, and to save us from the bondage of the oppressive nation that is sin, so that we might believe in him and be called children of God.

This is the Gospel. This is what us Christians profess to believe. This is the basis of all of Christianity.

Coming to and End

Read Ecclesiastes 12

Finally we are wrapping up Ecclesiastes today. Today's is pretty straight forward, but with a few deep things at the end. Let's to the easy first.

We are all heading towards our end, it's just a fact of life. I'm 23 now, I didn't take too good care of myself over the past going on 8 years, and I'm not like I used to be. I play football with some high school kids and I'm bent over heaving and sore for the next week. I have trouble walking up hills and running around. I'm getting back into shape slowly though. Trying to anyways. But enjoy the youthfulness that you have you can, and keep yourself in shape before you end up like a old guy while still in your twenties.

Solomon leaves us with two pieces of advice before we finish this out. The last, which is the easiest but also crucial to keep in mind, is that all that we do will one day be judged. And we will not only be judged by our actions but also our intent behind the actions. This is a scary thought. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity talks about the Cardinal Sin, the greatest of which, according to him, is Pride, putting yourself before all else; also a form of idolatry. This goes deeply with intent behind actions. If I go to serve to glorify God, I do it with good intent. If I go to serve to bring myself praise and be admired I do it with pride and ill intent. Yes I did something good, but I did it with the wrong intent. God will judge the action by the intent. And you can't use the excuse of "Well I didn't think about it." Then you are no better than the fool. Always have a reason for what you do, and make sure you do it with pure intent.

If you noticed I said that was the last thing that Solomon gave us. There is something before that but it's deep. I'll make it simple though.

Throughout the Old Testament we see "Fear the Lord" a lot. And by a lot I mean like in every book. What exactly does this mean? If God some big kid with magnifying glass waiting for us to screw up so he can burn us like ants? Or is he like some half wit who just crushes us with his fist like we're beetles? (Game of Thrones anyone?) No. God is neither of those. He is the supreme being, creator of all, the LORD, king of kings, the only living God, the only God at all. The God who, if he wanted, could flood the entire earth killing all, again. Could rain down fire and brimstone destroying entire cities if he wanted to. Yes, he his a vengeful God who abhors sin and wants to punish it accordingly. And we being sinful beings should quake in fear of that fact. Yet the fact that he holds back should show us his love, and earn our respect, and we should be in awe of him for his gracious mercy. This is what it means to fear the LORD. To understand that we cannot stand innocent before him and that we deserve punishment, and with that to also know that he is merciful and refrains from giving us our just punishment because his son has already taken it upon himself to take on our burdens of sin. How can you not respect a God like that? How can you not stand in front of him and be full of awe at his amazing grace and love?

So I leave you with this tonight: Know your intent behind your actions, for God will judge them accordingly, and Fear the Lord, for it is only right that you do so.