Upon a life I did not live (Lyrics) - Indelible Grace

A wee little man changed by Jesus

I was reading the story of Zacchaeus this morning in Luke 19. I still remember as a kid singing the song that goes along with this story and the "wee little man was he". If you grew up in the church, you know the song I am talking about. Be careful, if you sing it, it may be in your head all day! But again, that may be a good thing to remind us of this changed life by Jesus coming and showing himself to the weakest and most hated people.

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector. Not just a tax collector like Matthew, yet a CHIEF tax collector and it says he was rich. How did he get his money? My stealing and extorting it from the people he lived around. That was how tax collectors made their money. People hated, REALLY hated tax collectors, even more then people hate paying their taxes in our day.

Yet on this trip, Jesus went to go find a hated man by people, yet loved by Jesus. Jesus did not care what the people said of Him. They said "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner". Why yes He did. We are all sinners, we all need a visit from Jesus to know and be known by God and be raised from the dead. Zacchaeus was looking for Jesus because God had been working in His heart. Zacchaeus met his creator and God that day and He was raised from the dead. How do we see that? We see that he turned from what he once worshipped and followed, Money. His old god was dead to him and Jesus, the true God, knew Him and saved Him. Zacchaeus responded in a way to see his life was changed. He gave away half his goods to the poor (whom he didn't care for before this) and he would restore fourfold to those he had defrauded (which would have been basically everyone). He would have been broke after this, well in the worlds sense. He was among the richest men and women of the world to know and be known by the God of this universe. His home was in heaven and he was a exile in this world (Hebrews 13:14 & 1 Peter 1:1)

Jesus "came to seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10), which Zaccheaus was and which we are. This is an example of the life changing work of God. I am thankful that God came and found me, saved me, raised me from the dead! Let us remember, Jesus came to seek and save the lost. We can't look down on anyone and think they are not able to be saved. No one thought Zacchaeus could be saved. Yet what is impossible with men, is only possible with God!

Lets praise our God for He is worthy! Let us Behold our God and sing to him!

Behold Our God - Lyrics Video [Risen]

Winsome Weirdos - John Piper

According to the apostle Peter’s first letter, labeling Christians as “winsome weirdos” is not only linguistically alliterative; it is also exegetically accurate. The implications for our cultural moment in America are crucial.

I have especially in mind 1 Peter 4:3–4,

The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you.

Two statements stand out: “they are surprised,” and “they malign you.” The word here for “surprised” (Greek xenizontai) is translated “strange things” in Acts 17:20 (“You bring some strange things to our ears”). It’s built on the word for strange, foreign, or unfamiliar (xenos). 

Eight verses later, both the verb (xenizesthe) and the adjective (xenou) forms are used to describe the persecution of Christians: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12).

We might paraphrase by saying: “Don’t think it strange (4:12) when they think you are strange (4:4).” 

Sojourners and Exiles

The first sparks of the “fiery trial” are already flying as Peter writes. They include the “maligning” of Christians in verse 4. The word translated “malign” is blasphemeo — from which we get our English word blaspheme. The Greek dictionary (BDAG) defines it as, “slander, revile, defame, speak irreverently/impiously/disrespectfully of or about.”

What, then, is the situation as a whole? 

Peter has already identified the Christians as “elect exiles” (1 Peter 1:1), whom he urges “as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). The entire Christian life is “the time of your exile” (1 Peter 1:17). In other words, we are “strangers (xenoi) and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).

The implication of this “foreign” status of Christians among the cultures of the world is that the new birth (1 Peter 1:3, 23) has given us new desires (1 Peter 1:14; 2:2) that no longer match “what the Gentiles want to do” (1 Peter 4:3). The result is a disruption of whom we literally “run with” (verse 4). And this disruption causes our associates to be “surprised.” That is, they think it “strange” that we are not running with them into the same “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3).

Weirdos

This reaction to our new strangeness is so strong that they “malign” (blaphemountes) us. This is where I see the idea of “weirdo.” Their response to our “strangeness” is not mild or respectful. It is strong and severe. The word “malign” does not mean they say: “We all have our preferences, and we can live and let live with mutual respect.” No. “Malign,” together with “see as strange,” means they are using strong language to insult the Christians. The label “weirdo” would be among the more mild results of our new way of life.

Other results of Christians becoming culturally alien “weirdos,” who are out of step with “what the Gentiles want to do” (1 Peter 4:3), include: being “reviled” (1 Peter 3:9, 16), being called “evildoers” (1 Peter 2:12), “suffering” (1 Peter 3:14, 17, 18), and being “beaten” (1 Peter 2:20). 

Weirdness Embraced

What makes this situation remarkable is that the apostle Peter calls us to embrace it, but then to do so many good deeds, that at least some of our detractors are won over, and even glorify God because of our lives. Not because we become less “weird” but because we are more than weird.

First, notice that our “weirdness” is called for by Peter, and embraced by us. He says we are to “live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do” (1 Peter 4:2–3). In other words, we are to choose to march out of step with a culture which is driven by “human passions,” and in step with the “will of God.” Weirdness called for. Chosen. Embraced.

Winsome Weirdness

But, second, notice that, just as prominent in this book, is the call to be so busy with good deeds that those who malign us are “silenced,” “shamed,” and “converted.” 

• “This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” (1 Peter 2:15) 
• “Have a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” (1 Peter 3:16) 
• “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” (1 Peter 2:12) 

Our aim in filling our lives with “good deeds” is that:

• Ignorant and foolish criticism of Christians would be revealed and silenced.
• Slanderous reviling of Christians would be put to shame.
• And, best of all, calling Christians “evildoers” would be converted into calling God glorious.

That is where I get the word “winsome.”

In Step and Out of Step

What is striking and paradoxical in 1 Peter is the mandate that Christians are to be both out of step with their culture, and compelling in the culture. We are to be weird and winsome. 

The key in 1 Peter is that the inevitable moral weirdness that arises from replacing “human passions” with the “will of God” (1 Peter 4:2), and replacing “passions of former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14) with joy in Christ and his ways (1 Peter 1:6, 8; 2:3; 4:13), is matched with a Christian zeal for “good deeds” (1 Peter 2:15, 20; 3:6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17; 4:19). Perhaps Peter’s strongest statement of this zeal is that we are to be “zealous for the good” (1 Peter 3:13).

And it needs to be stressed that “good deeds” are not merely the avoidance of bad behavior. That avoidance is crucial. It is essential throughout 1 Peter. That is why we are maligned as “weirdos.” But “good deeds” are the proactive efforts to “bless” those who revile us (3:9). 

Of course, there are many things Christians regard as good which the culture will call evil. That is what Peter says: “They speak against you as evildoers” (1 Peter 2:12). But right alongside of that recognition, Peter presses us: “that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). These are deeds that, if God wills, even the hostile culture will see as good.

The Relevance for America

What makes this so relevant today is that American culture is increasingly out of step with the way of life which the Bible calls “how you ought to walk and to please God” (1 Thessalonians 4:1). Proposals about how Christians should respond to this situation include (as a recent symposium in Christianity Todayillustrates), the Benedict Option (Rod Dreher), the Wilberforce Option (Peter Wehrner and Michael Gerson) and the Dr. King Option (Gabriel Salguero).

It seems to me that all of these options embody aspects of the response to culture that are needed in our day: ongoing engagement, creating alternative communities, readiness to surrender dominance.

What the apostle Peter contributes to this debate, among other things, is this: Baby Boomers (like me) who grew up with an assumed overlap between Christian morality and cultural expectations, and Millennials, who desperately want to be hip and cool, must both joyfully embrace the calling to be weirdos. It is not our culture. And we are not cool. 

And, with just as much resolve and joy, we must set our faces to be winsome. Not by cowering before the slander, or desperately trying to avoid being maligned, but by getting up every morning dreaming of what new good deeds can be done today. What fresh way can I “bless” my enemies (1 Peter 3:9) or anyone in need? This may be as simple as a genuine conversation with the woman panhandling at the corner of 11th Avenue and 17th Street. Or it may be creating a ministry as huge as World Vision or Samaritan’s Purse or Food for the Hungry.

The apostle Peter is calling for a special breed. Not the kind of conservative who gives all his energy to embracing and defending his weirdo status. And not the kind of liberal who will embrace any compromise necessary to avoid being a weirdo. But rather a breed that is courageous enough to be joyfully weird, and compassionate enough to be “zealous for good deeds.”

Awake and at War - John Piper

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,  who trains my hands for war,  and my fingers for battle.  –Psalm 144:1

Two thousand years ago, “the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel” (1 Samuel 17:45) sent his Son to earth on a new kind of mission among his enemies (Romans 8:7; Ephesians 2:3, 16). He would defeat them not by killing, but by dying, and he would gather those who surrender into the very family of his Father. The world had entered a new era. 

Until his crucified, risen, and reigning Son returns to earth in glory, God will no longer go out among the armies of his people with the weapons of this world. That Old Testament period of holy war is over. Now there are no nations, no peoples, no tribes to be defeated, because the crucified Lamb has “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). The enemy is not nations, not peoples. The enemy is sin, and Satan, and hearts that hold fast to the insurrection.

Day of Salvation

For now, until he comes again, there is no trumpet summoning God’s people to sword and shield and chariots and horses. Instead, the God of armies has dispatched his ambassadors among every enemy outpost with the message of amnesty, the offer of reconciliation with no recriminations for past disloyalty. “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

For now, in this “favorable time” — in this “day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2) — “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4–5).

For now, until “the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–8) — until then, the followers of the Lamb are called to imitate their Master, “because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure, when slandered, we entreat” (1 Corinthians 4:12–13). 

“The Lord Jesus is no less a warrior today than in the days of old.”

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For now, until the Lord Jesus, with his eyes “a flame of fire,” and with “a robe dipped in blood,” and with “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” — until he comes to “tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God” (Revelation 19:12–15), “we are not waging war according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 10:3). “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). 

For now, until Christ appears “a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28) — until then, the Lord declares, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting” (John 18:36). 

Once he led his armies in holy war at the head of Israel. At the end of the age, he will take up arms again. But for now, this is the day of salvation. The day of amnesty. The day of reconciliation. The day of triumph through suffering.

Call to War

But we who follow the Lamb are in no less a war than David or Joshua. The Lord Jesus would not even let us follow him until we considered the cost of this war: “What king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?” (Luke 14:31). 

But it is a “good warfare” (1 Timothy 1:18). A “good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7). Our enemies in this war are “the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11), the law of sin “waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin” (Romans 7:23), and the devil who was “a murderer from the beginning . . . and the father of lies” (John 8:44). 

It is a fight for faith (2 Timothy 4:7), a fight for righteousness (2 Corinthians 6:7), and a fight for life (1 Timothy 6:12). No one perishes because of this fight, but only in spite of it. It is a fight to save (1 Corinthians 9:22), not destroy. The arch enemy in this fight is a destroyer (1 Corinthians 10:10). Our warfare is a fight for liberation from this enemy.

“As with every war, people must often be opposed for the sake of people. For the enemy has many agents.”

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It is a good warfare, even though, as with every war, people must often be opposed for the sake of people. For the enemy has many agents. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14–15). But our defensive protection against the apostles of darkness is not the armor of steel, but the “armor of light” (Romans 13:12). And our offensive weapon is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” not the sword of the flesh (Ephesians 6:17). 

The words of our warfare may be gentle: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind . . . correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:24–25). Or our words may be severe: “Filled with the Holy Spirit, [Paul] looked intently at [Elymas] and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?’” (Acts 13:9–10).

Promise of Victory

It is a good warfare also because the decisive victory has already been achieved by the Lord of glory. “The Son of God appeared . . . to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Christ took on human nature “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15). 

Satan’s time is short. The dragon’s head is off. And he is flailing in the death throes of defeat. At God’s appointed time, “The devil . . . [will be] thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur . . . and will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10; Matthew 8:29; 25:41).

“Satan’s time is short. The dragon’s head is off. And he is flailing in the death throes of defeat.”

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For the followers of the Lamb, the implications for their warfare are stupendous. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Romans 8:33). Neither “angels nor rulers . . . nor powers . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:38–39). “He who is in [us] is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). We conquer “him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of [our] testimony” (Revelation 12:11).

Let us pray, therefore, that we not be lulled into the sleep of appeasement, as if the Hitler of hell had no intentions of world conquest. We are not ignorant of his designs (2 Corinthians 2:11). And though the warfare of the world is not the war of chariots and horses, the Lord Jesus is no less a warrior today than in the days of old. So let us come as willing soldiers of the Prince of Peace and declare, “He trains my hands for war” (Psalm 18:34).