To Be Saved Is To be Forgiven ~ Luke 1:76-77

Almost 78 years ago, the Japanese attacked the American Pacific Naval Fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor. For nearly two hours, waves of Japanese planes rained down bombs, torpedoes, and machine gun fire on American ships and planes causing the loss of more U.S. ships than had been lost during WW1. In all, the U.S. lost 18 ships including 8 battleships, 170 airplanes, and over 3500 servicemen. Later that day as the news of what happened at Pearl Harbor was broadcast on the radio—Americans were in shock at what had happened—But not for long—because they were rallied by President Franklin Roosevelt who delivered a message which in his mind all Americans needed to hear, believe, and then share with those who hadn’t heard.

The message was simple, short, concise, and powerful—“We are now in this war.  We are all in it. All the way.  Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history.”  Americans did hear the message and what’s more they believed it—so much so that they gave themselves to the cause of fighting and winning WW2 and America was saved. 

And today, I was reminded of another simple, short, concise, and powerful message that all of us, especially me, need to keep hearing, keep believing, and keep sharing with those who haven’t heard and its found in Luke 1:76-77 which reads:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
    in the forgiveness of their sins,

These 2 verses make up part of Zachariah's prophecy about the coming Savior and the part that his son, John the Baptist, would have in this Savior’s work of redemption. In these two verses Zachariah speaks to his newborn son John, giving him God’s commission for his life which was to proclaim the Savior's coming and the Lord’s salvation for all who would come to Him.  Zachariah states in verse 76—“And you child will be called the prophet of the Most High for you will go before the lord to prepare His way.” And in then in verse 77, Zachariah tells his baby boy exactly what it is he will be doing as the prophet of the Most High. “And you child, will give knowledge of salvation to His people. . .”

That was to be John the Baptist’s job—to give people the knowledge of how to be saved and specifically how to be saved from the wrath of God for their sins.  So, his life work—his life mission—his great commission, if you will was to tell people how to find salvation from the wrath of God for their sins. And then in the second part of verse 77, Zachariah tells his little baby boy what he would need to explain—what he needed to tell people.“And you child will give God’s people knowledge of salvation—in the forgiveness of their sins.” Or “by the forgiveness of their sins”. Taken literally, the verse is better understood as saying—

“And you child will give God’s people knowledge of salvation which consists in the forgiveness of their sins.”

In other words, John the Baptist’s calling was to proclaim the message-the good news—that the salvation God was offering them was bound up in the forgiveness of their sins.  Thus, if you are saved—that is—if you are trusting in Jesus Christ and His atoning death on the cross alone for your salvation from the wrath of God for your sins—you are right now and forever forgiven of those very sins. That’s the Gospel--that's God's Good News!  And that’s what God wanted John the Baptist to tell people.

So the Gospel is about Forgiveness.  It’s a proclamation of forgiveness—that God has made a way to forgive people for all their sins no matter how bad, how many, or how unforgiveable they seem. Its a message that God will completely pardon and remove from the divine record all the sins of any person who will come to Him on His terms through Christ the Lord.

 Which is why King David, a man who carried the burden of great and overwhelming sin was able to say—“Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are removed out of sight.  Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.”

You see, the Gospel is the wonderful declaration that as believers—our sins have been so removed and so separated from us that they no longer have anything to do with us or say about us. They no longer have any bearing upon us, our relationship with God, or our eternal destiny.  For believers, the Gospel is the decree of the King that our personal sin is no longer an issue between us. It’s the message that our sin is no longer our identity—His righteousness is! It’s so simple and yet it’s so profound for believer and non-believer alike.

Salvation is the result of having your sins forgiven.

Thus, to be saved from our sins and the just penalty of our sin is to be forgiven for our sins. To be saved completely from sin is to be forgiven completely. To be saved forever is to be forgiven forever.  So, if you have come to Christ for salvation by trusting in Him to save you from the eternal punishment you deserve for your sins—you are saved—and your sins are forgiven and they will never be used against you in God’s court.  Furthermore, your sins have been forgiven comprehensively in that every single one of them—whether a sinful thought, word, or deed—no matter when committed or still is yet to be committed—has been forgiven. You could not be saved if this were not true!  This means—that our sin is not the end of our story—forgiveness is! It also means that our sin is not our story—God’s forgiveness is! And because we are forgiven—we are reconciled to God, declared righteous by God, blameless before God, at peace with God, and destined to be with and enjoy God for all of eternity. And this is the message we need to hear and be preaching to ourselves everyday as believers.

We stand forgiven by a divine, eternal, comprehensive, and all guilt and condemnation destroying forgiveness which has saved us and made us right with God. This is the message we also need to believe everyday if we are ever to grow in our security in Christ and thus our love for Christ and thus our personal holiness—which only grows as we respond to what God has done for us in forgiving us. This is also the message, the Good News, we, like John the Baptist, have been commissioned to proclaim, that the Savior Jesus Christ has come and has provided salvation for everyone who will come to Him in faith believing.

What's A Pastor To Do?

Used to be that one of the most popular synonyms for the title "pastor" was another title, "preacher".  That's because, back in the day, that's what pastors were--preachers--because that's what they did.  Now, that's not all they did.  In fact, if that's all they did they really wouldn't be able to be pastors because pastors do more than preach.  Besides preaching, pastors also pray and shepherd the souls of those God has entrusted to them.  Of course, they also provide leadership and counsel to their congregations as they shepherd them.  So, there you have it.  Pastors primarily shepherd God's people by preaching and praying.

In preaching pastors are essentially talking to the congregation about God.  In their praying pastors talk to God about their congregation.  And in their shepherding, pastors, besides preaching and praying, live life with their people offering spiritual direction, counsel, encouragement, friendship, a listening ear, an imperfect example of what it looks like to follow Christ, and sometimes even firm loving discipline.  These three tasks of preaching, praying, and shepherding are the essential acts of pastoral ministry.  

This is not to say pastors don't do other things like moderating business meetings, presenting budgets, training church workers, attending meetings, overseeing building projects, analyzing community demographics, launching attendance growing programs, scheduling, and any number of other tasks that have somehow over the decades become part and parcel of what a pastor does.  It's almost as though a conspiracy was hatched to keep the pastor so busy with the peripheral that he has very little time and energy for the essential--the tasks of simply preaching, praying, and shepherding.

And how has the church fared with hordes of pastors neglecting the essential tasks of their calling to heed louder voices screaming "expediency", "pragmatism", "church growth", and "cultural relevancy"?  Not well.  You see, pastors who are too busy to study Scripture so as to preach, who are too busy to pray, and who are too busy to interact spiritually with their people have become themselves inattentive to God.  This results in their churches becoming inattentive to God too.  

Pastors do not need to be attentive to God to grow a big, experience-focused, program-heavy, entertaining,  "what's in it for me", Word deficient kind of church.  The word of faith prosperity false gospel preachers have proved that.  But, pastors do need to be attentive to God if they want to see themselves and their churches become and remain attentive to God so as to see healthy and authentic spiritual formation and growth take place that honors Christ-The Church's Chief Shepherd.

Boiling the pastor's job down to just one all-encompassing task is challenging.  At the risk of oversimplification I'd have to agree with one old pastor who said it's the task of keeping God's people attentive to God.  But, this can only be accomplished if and when well-meaning pastors get back to the basics of their pastoral calling--preaching, praying, and shepherding.            

    

REGIONS IN NEED UPDATE (NOVEMBER 2019)

Thanksgiving 2019 

Greetings from Rockholds, Kentucky. Thank you for taking the time to read our update and pray for us, our ministry, and those we have been given the joy of serving.  Many of these faithful servants, who are invisible to the Church in the West, serve in very challenging, hard, and dangerous places.  It is our joy to partner with you in working to advance the Gospel in these places by providing these indigenous workers with training, resources, and encouragement.  Thank you for helping us help them.

 MYANMAR TRIP REPORT

I returned from Myanmar this past weekend very tired, yet also extremely pleased with the work which God enabled to be accomplished.  Through your generosity, we were able to provide transportation, food, and lodging for 32 church-planters, church-planting assistants, and other church workers so that they could come to Yangon for further training.  Our teaching venue was a rented classroom and lodging facilities owned by a school for the blind in downtown Yangon.  This year’s training focused on the Book of Romans.  I wanted to help our students get a firm grasp of the doctrine of salvation as well as understand God’s process of sanctifying believers.  In addition, I wanted to do this expositionally from one Book of the Bible as much as possible.  With these goals in mind, Romans was our go-to Book.  The course was entitled: Romans-An Expositional & Theological Survey.  

When I asked the students how many had ever preached through or heard the Book of Romans preached through, none raised their hand.  Probing further, I asked if preaching through Books of the Bible was something they were accustomed to and again I received a negative response.  Even the church-planting pastors which made up much of our class were unfamiliar with expositional preaching and the systematic teaching of a whole Book of the Bible.  It took us several hours over three days, in some very uncomfortable stifling heat and humidity, to work our way through Romans 1-12 at what I considered breakneck speed.  It is not optimal to move this fast but it was all the time they had to be away from their bi-vocational jobs and their churches back home.  Many of the students had to travel over 18 hours, one way, by bus as well as by foot to get to the training and then return home.  At the end of the training, the students all expressed their gratitude toward the Lord for being able to further understand and better communicate the Gospel.  Please pray for these students as they use this training in their new church plants.

In addition, to teaching, I was able to visit one of the children’s homes we support.  It was a joy to sit and hear how the Lord has provided for Awn and Cherry as they provide a loving Christian home for 18 abandoned children of all ages.  I was also very thankful to have Awn and Cherry as students.  Their desire in taking the course on Romans was to be able to better teach the Gospel to these children under their care.  While Cherry stays in the home to care for the children’s needs, Awn drives a taxi in Yangon in order to provide for his large family.  However, there is always more month left than money and they often fall behind in their ability to pay rent on their land and provide for all of the kids’ needs.  Please pray for them! 

In talking to our students as well as with Pastor Manaai, who is our on-the-ground liaison, it is apparent that there are many more pastors and church planters, living several hours from Yangon, who are lacking and desiring Bible training.  We’d like to put together a trip either this coming Spring or early next Fall to Chin State in NW Myanmar to teach the doctrine of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit to pastors and church-planters serving there.  This would be a rugged trip as it will entail flying from Yangon to Mandalay and then hopping a bus for several hours to get to a guesthouse in the town where we would be teaching.  If interested let me know and I can begin to give you more details as they are provided to me.  I imagine the cost will be somewhere between $2000 and $2500 each.  I have two openings for this trip.

INDIA OPPORTUNITY

While on the plane heading home from Myanmar, I sat next to a man who is the president of a Bible Seminary in Bhubaneswar Odisha, India.  He was traveling to the U.S. to visit his alma mater, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, ILL., where he had received his Masters  of Theology and Ph.D. degrees.  After we spent several hours getting to know each other, he asked me if I would be willing to come to India and provide some week long extension classes for pastors without formal seminary training and whose life circumstances would not allow for them to go to seminary.  He also inquired as to whether I knew of other American pastors who might be interested in the same as well as teaching two week modules in the seminary itself.  This opportunity is still in the formative stages but if this might interest some of you pastors please let me know.  As far as academic requirements, at least a Masters degree in Theology, Bible, or related field would suffice.  I will be talking further with this Brother and will provide more information as I receive it.  We are only in the formative stages of this right now. 

CAMEROON UPDATE

Not much has changed in the Bamenda/Bambili area where our training school is located.  I am in continual contact each week with Pastor Jude and Pastor Ezekiel.  As of now, there are no definite plans in the works for a trip in the near future due to continued hostilities between government and rebel troops.  When I know more I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, please be in prayer for our students and three church planting pastors in the Region as well as several other pastors working in established churches who we have trained and resourced.

THANK YOU!

Just a final “Thank you” for your prayer and financial support.  It goes without saying that without that, we would not be able to consider the ministry opportunities before us.  

For The Sake of “The NAME”,

Mark, Nancy, Esther & Peter

How To Make Our Churches More Attractive

While trying, unsuccessfully, to fight, a recent and recurring battle, whenever I fly to Asia, with "jet-lag", I tried to pass the wee hours of my sleepless night by reading.  One article that caught my attention, while working hard to find something that might cause me to drift into a fitful sleep, was about how to make our churches more attractive.  It was entitled, Little Ways To Make Church Attractive and it listed things like comfortable lighting and room temperature, quality acoustics, friendly greeters, name brand coffee, and a bunch of other ideas that probably would make a church service attractive to some.

But, there's a huge difference between making a church service attractive and a church, as in a body of believers, attractive.  And this is something we really need to think about and be careful about.  If, by simply adjusting the thermostat or lighting and changing coffee brands, we can attract people to church--maybe we're really not doing anybody any favors.  Now, please don't think I'm against all the little things and especially the good coffee that makes a church service comfortable and thus, attractive.  What I'm struggling with is the whole idea that our purpose as the church seems to have become making the service attractive all the while failing to dress up who's supposed to be attractive which is the church herself.

So, what is it that makes the Body of Christ on earth, the Church, and specifically, those local fellowships or assemblies, if you will, scattered all over the earth, attractive?  I think its grace.  Yes, I do. Churches who have experienced God's grace because those making up the church have experienced God's grace are very attractive.

I mean, can you imagine what a church would look and be like if it was filled with people who truly understood, realized, and believed they, like the guilty adulterous woman in John 8, had been spared the death and damnation they deserved because they were being treated as Jesus deserved?  Can you envision this kind of church filled with forgiven, broken, being restored, and thus, humbled sinners?  Do you even have a category in your mind for this kind of church?  Can you begin to imagine what a business meeting might look in this kind of church?  How people would treat each other?  Speak to each other?  Love each other?  Disagree with each other?  Well, I can tell you one thing--it would be an attractive church.  And it would be attractive because of grace.  Even more specific than that, it would be attractive because the Gospel of grace is being preached in that church.

You see, for churches to be attractive because they are filled with people who truly understand God's grace toward them and others, they must be churches filled with people who are being shaped by grace as they are hearing the Gospel of grace proclaimed as a steady diet.  As Christopher Ash, writes in his book, The Priority of Preaching:

When Christ builds his church . . . he must first humble pride.  Nothing so humbles pride as the word of his grace, which makes us debtors to mercy alone.  We enter the church with nothing in our hands, but simply clinging to the cross.  Only the word of his grace will do that in us, by the power and mercy of God.  Supremely that is done by the public proclamation of that word in preaching.  What the preaching of grace does is to gather a people who join their assemblies humbled under grace.  Our identity is defined not by our achievement but by redemption, not by what we have done, but by what was done for us, just as Israel was defined as those who were slaves in Egypt and had been redeemed with a strong hand and a mighty arm. . . .Only the preached word of Christ, the word of grace preached again and again, pressed home with passion and engagement, only that word will create God's assembly . . .

Churches characterized by this kind of proclamation of the Word in which God's grace to sinners, is preached, taught, sung, talked about, reveled in, enjoyed, prayed, and applied are deeply attractive gatherings.  A group of people gathered by and humbled by grace would have to be attractive for the simple reason that people saved and then gathered by grace are people who while manifesting the joy that comes from being forgiven, redeemed, restored are also humbled by that same grace.  And I can't imagine anything more attractive than a bunch of gathered joyful and humble people who all love Jesus and because of that really love others too.

And that's why we need our pastors to preach grace, which is just another way of saying we need them to preach the Gospel even to us who know it well.  And if they're preaching the Gospel from the whole of Scripture we will find ourselves being shaped, forged, and recreated, if you will, into the people of God--a people saved, sanctified, and one day, glorified by grace.  This is the feast of grace we need to feed upon Sunday after Sunday as we are transformed only by grace.  We need to be reminded that we truly are sinners who have been completely and totally forgiven, declared righteous, and thus accepted by our Heavenly Father through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  We need to be reminded that the record of our sin has been cancelled and removed by Christ.  We need to be assured that the sins we still remember, God doesn't.

And again, the reason we need to be reminded regularly of this amazing grace--this amazing Gospel, is because it is this Gospel of Grace that, upon saving us, shapes us into joyful, gracious, loving, forgiving, accepting, and attractive people who when gathered together become intensely more attractive as those who are, together, being conformed to the image of Him Who is Grace Incarnate.

So, maybe we shouldn't worry so much about the lights, temperature, acoustics, and the coffee.  Maybe, instead, we should focus on grace, which is to focus on the Gospel of God's Grace, given to us in Christ Jesus, if we really want to be an attractive kind of church.

We Can't Love Sin And God At The Same Time!

In reading 1 John 2:15-17, I got as far as verse 15 and had to stop. In considering John’s remarks, I came to the conclusion that it is not possible for the believer to love the world and love God at the same time. We simply were not created with the capacity to love both at the same time nor were we created with the capacity to experience the love of God while our heart is filled with love for and of the world. Thus, John’s statement: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

And what John has in mind in using the term "world" in this passage has to do primarily with the sinful cravings of sinful human beings.  What sinful people, obsessed with sin, crave and fight and claw to enjoy, belongs to and is promised by the world.  Therefore, to love the world is to love sin.  And to love sin is to love what God hates.

To the casual observer, John is simply making the point that if you love the world (sin), you cannot love God at the same time. However, I think he is doing more than that. You see, if it is impossible to love God while you are in love with the world then the reciprocal truth would be that it is impossible to love the world while you are in love with God. Thus, John is doing more than stating a fact about the impossibility of loving both the world and God at the same time. He is, essentially, giving us the key to how we are to overcome the world’s sinful encroachments into our lives. If we are in love with the Lord, that is, we love Him with all our heart, mind, and soul we will not be tempted to love the world and the inferior sinful pleasures it offers us.

The battle, then for the Christian, is one of, to what degree do we love the Lord? To love Him with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul leaves very little room for which to love the world and its sinful allurements. Perhaps this is why it is the greatest commandment.

Now, lest you think that this is not such a hard thing to do. Keep in mind, that this is the battle of your life and for your life—to be so in love with the Lord, so satisfied with the Lord, so captivated by Him that sin’s “fruitless joys” as Augustine referred to them, have no power over you. And it is essentially the battle of faith. What I mean by this is that the battle to love the Lord more than sin and the battle to prefer holiness to sin’s immediate gratification is a battle to believe the Word of God and its promises of an exceedingly far superior joy and happiness that is to be had and experienced through obedience and lost through disobedience. Thus, in the truest sense, in spite of how it seems, to sin is to lose the opportunity for pleasure.

So, where does one begin in his quest to prefer holiness to sin? In Romans 6:17, Paul, in commending the believers for an obedience from the heart made the point to thank God for it. Thus, the best place to start in preferring holiness is with God in that the believer turns to God, in faith, for faith and then to God’s Word for the promises that motivate us to obedience. As one has well said, “It takes God to love God.” In other words, “we love Him because He first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19).   In practical terms, this means we cry out to God for the faith that will take Him at His Word and believe that He is by far our greatest treasure and pleasure in this life and the life to come. As Psalm 16:11 so aptly states about God, “In your presence is fullness of joy; In your right hand there are pleasures forever.”