O Blessed Sinner

IBS Application for Mark 4:10-11 “And when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parables. And He said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables...’” Here, we catch a glimpse of the sort of relationship we have with God as His disciples and students. These people who were following Him along with the twelve questioned Him concerning why He spoke so often to them and others in parables. His response to their question also proves to be an encouragement to all believers, as it pertains to our ability to discern the meaning of the lessons God teaches us. For now, I want to focus on the followers’ willingness to ask a question concerning why Jesus was so intent on teaching in parables. To some, this may seem overtly disrespectful towards Jesus, as it could appear as though they are questioning His authority or legitimacy as a teacher. I can see how people would think that; He te

IBS Application for 1 Peter 4:7 “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.” This verse is fairly easy to understand, I think. Peter, knowing that the world and the things of the world are going to pass away, decides that it would be wise to inform and advise the dispersed Church of this truth to encourage them and give them a command as to how they ought to live in response to this. The command in this verse is essentially to live a prayerful life for the Lord. There’s something to be said about a man who prays in such a manner, who thinks about those people and things outside of himself for their sakes. We are to pray that God would carry out His will for us all, so that all might potentially come to know Him and receive His grace. We are to be watchful for His return, as well, for that too is close at hand. But Peter adds something to this command that I think is quite prudent. He tells them to be “s

IBS Application for 1 Samuel 11:11-13 “And the next day Saul put the people in three companies. And they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch and struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day. And those who survived were scattered, so that no two of them were left together. Then the people said to Samuel, ‘Who is it that said, “Shall Saul reign over us?” Bring the men, that we may put them to death.’ But Saul said, ‘Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel.’” Saul, although he became quite the wicked man in his later years, still did what was right in the eyes of the Lord at this point. Because of his faith in the Lord, the Lord gave the Ammonites into the hands of Saul and Israel. But what is particularly striking about this passage is the self-control he demonstrated when his men confronted Samuel asking for permission to put those to death who were mocking Saul and saying that they wouldn’t be led by h

IBS Application for Psalm 119:11/Mark 1:35 “I have stored up Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He departed and went out to a desolate place, and there He prayed.” It seems clear to me what the message in these passages is about: having a good devotional life. Both the Psalmist and Jesus kept good practice in their devotional time to the Father. They both spent time reflecting on Scripture and in prayer to have a good relationship with the Father. And having a relationship with the Father is ultimately the goal of devotion time. It is time we set apart for God to spend time with Him. We spend it either in prayer or studying His Word, or both. It is by spending time with God that we learn more about who He is to us, and who we are to Him. Spending time not only in study of the Word, but also in relationship with God, is very important to our growth. If we were to only take in Truth an

IBS Application for 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” Paul certainly enjoyed making comparisons between how we go about walking the walk of faith with Jesus and how athletes train their bodies. It takes discipline to do both, and as Paul regularly pointed out, it in fact is comparable to that of physical training. The author of Hebrews makes a similar comparison between walking in faith and running a race in chapter 12 of that book, when they write that in order to run the race well, we ought to run it with endurance and throw off any weights or sins that hold us back. A good

IBS Application for 1 Timothy 4:8 “...for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” We, along with Timothy, are to exercise ourselves in godliness, so that our godliness may grow. It would seem that according to Paul, a comparison between the training we undergo to improve our bodies and the training we undergo to improve our godliness is possible and useful to understanding how we can improve our godliness. The same kind of discipline required to stay in shape physically is also required for spiritual growth. This is to say that it requires diligence, faithfulness, and getting stretched beyond your present limit. Just as muscles need to be worked to the point of breaking down, so do we have to be put through trials and tests of faith in order for us to grow in our faith and in character. No one likes being put through these trials at first, just as a person who h

IBS Application for Philippians 3:12-13 “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead...” Paul lived life in the manner we all ought to try to live life. We have all fallen short of the standard, but Jesus has shed His blood for us that we might have His righteousness for ourselves and by made pure by His great act of love. We are all still in the process of being cleansed, however. This was Paul’s perception of things: that Jesus had already bought Paul with the price of His own life, and that Paul, having been called to be righteous and holy, needed to seek the righteousness of Christ in order to reach that goal. But this couldn’t happen without Christ, because as Paul has already said in the verses prior to this passage, his righteousnes

IBS Application for Philippians 3:11 “...that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” I order to be made alive and stay alive, something must first die. For us, we have to die to self before we can have life. Paul understood this. Of course, he is speaking about actually physical death and the resurrection that God has promised to those who walk in Christ. But he also understood that to have this, we have to understand Christ’s suffering and the power of His death, as we saw in the previous verse. Paul made it point to realize that the old life he lived, the old man he used to be, had to be put to death daily. Otherwise, he’d be operating in his own flesh as he used to. And as we learned in the previous verses from this passage, he had learned that none of those “good works” were counted to him as righteousness, but ultimately as filthy rags before the Lord. Paul said that “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but C

IBS Application for Philippians 3:10 “...that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like Him in His death...” Here, we see that Paul was willing to make sacrifices in his life to the point of suffering for the sake of Christ. Not only that, but as he says, “becoming like Him in His death.” He was willing to die for the sake of Christ. Paul saw his own life as forfeit when it came to serving Christ. But this makes sense when considering the heart he had in his service to the Lord: To follow Christ’s example and walk as He walked in life. This meant going as far with that mentality as God called him to go. And he certainly did go far with it. He was beaten several times throughout the book of Acts. He was even stoned at one point. While we don’t have the specifics of this one particular instance, we know from 2 Corinthians that he and some other disciples came under such heavy persecution at one point in their ministry i

IBS Application for Philippians 3:9 “...and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-“ Our righteousness by itself is anything but righteous. As we see in verse 8, Paul counted all of that which the world would look at as the best one could possibly achieve in the flesh as “rubbish.” Works that have an outward appearance of being good only aren’t good in themselves; they could be done for the sake of wanting to have an appearance of goodness and a kind heart. Works done without faith cannot save a person. They could be seen as being like fruit that looks good on the outside but in reality is rotten on the inside. It takes faith-specifically faith in Jesus Christ and what He did for us on the cross-to make those works valid as good works. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him,” the author of Hebrews tells us. If what Paul tells us

IBS Application for Philippians 3:8 “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ...” Paul learned loss and sacrifice for the sake of knowing Jesus. This was as crucial to his walk with Christ as it is to ours. Why? Because these things trip us up, distract us, and lead us away from Christ and what He has done for us. The specifics of that “everything” that Paul talked about were his pedigree and his faithfulness to the Law. It was essentially all about the titles and power he had been born into and attained through his own works. But upon receiving the revelation of who Jesus is and what He had done in dying on the cross, Paul realized just how useless all of those things were to him; none of those things could save him from the judgement that he was due, because all of his works were infinitely lesser than t

IBS Application for Amos 3:3 “Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” Although the other verses we’ve received this week to study have for the most part been about unity within the Church, this one is a rhetorical question put forth to Israel and, now, the Church by the Lord about our relationship with Him: “Are we not walking together here? Did we not mutually agree to this relationship?” It’s a very compelling question, because so often do we wander away from God. Of course, if we have salvation and if God has a plan for a person’s life, that person can’t wander so far away from the will of the Lord as to become exempt from it. He won’t completely abandon anyone with whom He’s made a covenant. Take Israel, for example. They regularly left God, their first love, in pursuit of idols and the things of the world, and while the Lord regularly gave them over to those things, He would always seek to bring them back to the fold, often times only through one perso

IBS Application for Matthew 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” This, as many of us know, is the beginning of Jesus’ instructions to the Church about how to deal with brothers and sisters who are living in sin. We’re told to go through a process: First, approach them yourself, one-on-one about your grievance against them, or their grievance against God, and if they listen, then we’ve gained them back. If they refuse to listen to you, we are then to take one or two witnesses with us to confront them about their sin. If they still refuse to listen, then we take the issue before the Church elders and have them confront the sinning brother. If they still don’t listen, then they are to be treated “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” which is to say, we excommunicate them for the Church, in hopes that in being given over to their sin apart from the Church for a time will he

IBS Application for 2 Corinthians 13:11 “Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” Paul, in this particular closing statement in this letter to the church in Corinth, identifies four actions they needed to start taking if they were to start living in the love and peace of God again. As we know according to Scripture, the actions in themselves wouldn’t justify them or sanctify them in any way, but they would serve to unify the members of the church under this love and peace. These were to “aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another,” and “live in peace.” The church in Corinth had been dealing with so many problems that Paul felt to need to make several addresses to them, both in person and through epistles. It’s suggested in one of the two letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians that he wrote more letters to them than just these two, i

IBS Application for Romans 12:6 “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith...” Paul, in this passage, exhorts the church to make use of the gifts of grace that all who are in Christ have received. We’ve been called to participate in the use of these gifts as part of the body of Christ. Each of us has received gifts unique to us that we are to use appropriately, according to our faith and our place in the body. While we don’t have the full list here, in this one verse, we have the start of the list: some have been given the gift of prophecy. Paul goes on to list the others: service, teaching, exhortation, generosity, leadership and mercy. Prior to this list is the exhortation to act as a body as it regards our gifts. He states that no individual member of the body ought to think more highly of themselves than the others, because one member of a body cannot act as a body unto itself. Likewise, if we

IBS Application for 1 John 1:5-7 “This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses is from all sin.” As the Church of Christ, we walk together with each other as one body. We have fellowship with each other as we have fellowship with Jesus. But darkness and sin have no place in the heart of God. We, living in Him, cannot continue to walk in our sin if we seek to be unified as one body. It is only by living in the saving grace of His blood that we can walk in the light and have fellowship with each other. It’s inevitable that we will still sin. We sin everyday. But by accepting the grace of God, we are freed from our bondage to sin, and therefore can walk with Christ in the light

IBS Application for Luke 12:37-40 “Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” This passage should light a fire under every Believer to start doing more for Christ. We’ve been given a commission to be witnesses for Christ, and it is in this task that we serve our Master. But we don’t know when He’s coming back. Though we’re told to watch for the things He predicted would happen before He comes back, we still don’t know when He’s coming back exactly. I find that most people who are likely called to do more fo