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Ever one Answer, “Jesus Christ our Lord”

2/22/2020

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“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:24-25).

The mournful cry goes up from the child of God as moisture rises from the damp earth after the dark cold of night (Matt. 5:4). In this cry we see evidence of God’s Spirit at work in His people. “The righteous cry…” (Psalm 34:17). What is God’s answer? What is the comfort of heaven to mournful spirits on earth? There is but one. It is always the same. It is Christ that died, Christ that rose, Christ who reigns and Christ who intercedes (Rom. 8:34)! It is Christ who is willing and able and saves to the uttermost by His death and endless life (Heb. 7:25; Rom. 5:10)!

Our crucified, risen Savior is our one and only Answer. He answered God for us with Himself at the cross (John 18:8; Gen. 43:8-9; 44:32-34). He answers for us now with Himself in advocacy upon the throne of grace (1 John 2:1-2). And on Judgment Day, He will answer again for us with Himself (John 5:24; Rom. 8:1). Oh, thank God that our Forerunner has taken possession of our inheritance for us (Heb. 6:12-20)! “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, who is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34)! Our “lot” is in Christ (2 Pet. 1:1)!

In Romans 7, God performed surgery on the Apostle Paul. He laid him on the operating table of His grace and opened him up to show us His work in the heart of His believing children. During that operation, He revealed the healing stream that flows to His patient under the knife of His word. When Paul cried, the Spirit of God lifted up Christ to show us the certain success of His operation and our present life-sustaining I.V. during it all. That I.V. carries the life stream of the Gospel of Christ crucified, by whose stripes we are healed, in whom we are risen, and by whose life we now live (John 6:63;1 Pet. 2:24; Gal. 2:20; Rom. 5:10).

We daily wonder: how can we be delivered from ourselves? Who shall deliver me from this wretched man that I am?! How shall I be free from this body of death!? In desperation, we cry out. God answers. It is His one answer to our every question. It is our all-glorious Substitute, our enthroned Savior! “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary” (Jer. 17:12)! “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Thank God! This is not complicated. There is but one Answer! We have no strength against our sins (Psalm 65:3). We don’t know what to do (2 Chr. 20:12). God sends His word. Our eyes are directed to Christ. As Thomas (John 20:27-28), we learn again, “There for me the Savior stands, shows His wounds and spreads His hands!” (‘Depth of Mercy’, Charles Wesley).

Therefore, I will take this one word to my Master, as Onesimus took the letter of Paul his surety to his master Philemon (Philemon 1:12-13, 17-19). I will bring this one and written plea to heaven’s throne. Put it on my tombstone: “It is Christ that died!” God heard Him! In Christ’s answer of Himself, God heard every believer. I won’t be in that grave ‘ere long, because He died, He rose, and He forever reigns and even now intercedes. He is my only and all-sufficient Answer to God at all times and for all eternity (Psalm 46:1-4; Rom. 8:28-39).

God answered Paul’s cry out of his internal war between his flesh and his spirit. He answered with the one and only Answer: Jesus Christ the Lord, who was crucified! It is Christ that died! Christ is the one Answer God Himself received forever for His people (Heb. 9:26).

What is my plea to God out of the warfare in my soul? What is my thanks to God? It is God’s Answer from His Son! Jesus Christ the Lord shall deliver me from the wretched man that I am! We live by the same faith that we received in our spiritual birth (Col. 2:6; James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:3). It is not trials in our soul that should concern us; it is the lack of anything and everything that drives us to Christ (Rev. 3:19; Heb. 12:6)! May God so keep us without strength in ourselves that we might find all of our strength and righteousness in Christ!
Rick Warta
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Runaway Slaves Given Refuge in Christ

2/22/2020

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“15 Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: 16 He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him” (Deuteronomy 23:15-16).

The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled God’s law (Matt. 5:17; Rom. 10:4). He therefore fulfilled this one in Deuteronomy 23:15-16. God’s law is a terror to us. It threatens us with eternal death for our sins (Rom. 6:23). It holds us in bondage as slaves (Rom. 7:1-3). It demands from us, but gives us no power to fulfill its demands (Rom. 3:19-20; 5:20; 7:1-25). Because we are sinners, all we do only adds to our debt of guilt. God’s law holds out a promise of life. But it is a futile and hopeless promise, because it depends on us. Our flesh is naturally hostile towards God. We are not subject to His law. Indeed, cannot be, because our very mind is enmity against Him (Rom. 1:30; 8:7-8; Psalm 14:1-3; Gen. 6:5; Jer. 17:9; Eccl. 7:20, 29). God’s law is holy. Our sins and our sinful nature are the problem.

Under this dark cloud of bondage and death as slaves to sin and to the terror and bondage of God’s law, the Gospel shines brightly. It proclaims freedom by the redeeming blood of Christ! It proclaims forgiveness of God for all our sins by the precious blood of Jesus (Eph. 1:7). It tells of a holy, perfect, beauty, even the beauty of Christ’s obedience to God in His life and death, a beauty that is His, but which He worked out for us and gives to us freely out of God’s grace, to present us without fault to God’s delight in the presence His glory (Rom. 3:24-25; Heb. 10:10, 14; 13:12; 1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:4; Jude 1:24). The Gospel declares liberty in Christ to sinful slaves held captive by God’s law under the threat of death and the hopeless despair of obtaining favor and life from God by our own obedience.

This gladdest of all news is delivered by Christ on His throne through His ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:18-21). It is delivered with the life-giving, creating, resurrecting power of the Holy Spirit of God. Thus sent and thus applied, it is the best news a sin-captive slave ever heard! It is good news to know that such freedom is not only available, but worked out in entirety and obtained eternally for us (Heb. 9:12; 10:14). God has received full payment from Christ. Complete and perfect fulfillment of God’s law has been rendered to God by our Redeemer for His chosen people, even for ungodly sinners (Rom. 5:6-10). This freedom is ours without payment, without contribution, without anything of us (Eph. 2:8-10). It comes to us while we are yet in our great sins (Eph. 2:1-4). It fulfills our great need. It provides for us in our hopelessness and our helplessness. Christ, by His Spirit, applies this salvation to us through the gift of faith, a gift of His grace. He gives us sight to see Him who accomplished it. He persuades us that He obtained it. He causes us to embrace Him for this salvation with glad embrace. This is God-given faith; it does not come from us (Heb. 11:13). We hear the news (Rom. 10:16-17)! We see the salvation that is in our Savior (Ex. 14:13-14; Luke 2:30)! We are persuaded He is able (2 Tim. 1:12; Rom. 4:21). We embrace Him (Heb. 11:13). We unreservedly commit the keeping of our souls to Christ who sends this most blessed report from His rightful, exalted place on heaven's throne of universal authority and everlasting dominion in glory (Dan. 7:13-14; Matt. 28:18-20; John 3:13; Eph. 4:9-10; Acts 2:30-36; 5:31; 10:36).

When this news reaches our ears, we look to Christ (Isaiah 45:22). We cry out to Him (Mark 10:46-47). We call on Him to save us (Matt. 14:30; Luke 18:13). We flee for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us (Heb. 6:18). We flee our old master: the yoke of God’s law to find justification in the blood and righteousness of Christ (Rom. 5:9, 19; 2 Cor. 5:21). We look to Christ and cast our life upon the certain confidence that if God has thus spoken in promise to Him (2 Cor. 1:20; Gal. 3:16, 19; Rom. 5:9, 19; 8:34); if God has received His offering and sacrifice of Himself, offered to God in love for His people; if God has received Him as a sweet-smelling savor in unspeakable delight (Matt. 17:5; Eph. 5:2); if God has raised Him from the dead in satisfaction and delight (Heb. 13:20-21); and if God’s promises of forgiveness, righteousness and eternal life are in Him for the most guilty, condemned and helpless of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), then we can run out to Him from our sinfulness and nothingness and helplessness, run even to Him in glad, unrestricted commitment of our eternal souls into the hands of His all-sufficient, saving, almighty grace!

Salvation is deliverance from sin and the just condemnation of God against us for our sins. It is deliverance from the righteous requirements of His law upon us. It is deliverance in our Savior, our Surety, who interposed Himself in personal obligation to do all God requires of us in our place, who substituted Himself to obtain our eternal freedom, to take our every sin as His own, to answer every charge against us with Himself, and to fulfill every obligation of God in satisfaction to His holiness with His own obedience. He is our Savior. God has made Him our Refuge. He is our Rock. He was smitten. God opened a cleft in Him for us to hide. He is our Redeemer. He paid our debts and obtained our release with His own blood. He is our Champion. He defeated and subdued all of our enemies. He is our Husband. He clothes us in His own beauty and presents us to Himself in love, without spot by His own blood, by the sanctifying offering of Himself to God (Heb. 13:12). He cleanses our hearts. He has given us His own holy nature by His Spirit in application of His saving work through the preaching of His word (Eph. 4:24; 5:25-27; Heb. 9:12-14; Acts 10:44).

Christ fulfilled that law of God that made refuge for an escaped slave in the One to whom he fled for a haven of salvation and freedom and rest. Our Surety will not cast out any who come to Him (Deut. 23:15; John 6:37). He will not deliver us again to our old master. He has given us a place in Himself. He will give us eternal life. He will keep us with Himself. He will stay with us and dwell in us. And we will dwell in Him in unbroken union to everlasting days (Heb. 13:8; John 6:56; 14:1-3, 18-20; 17:20-24). He has obtained our eternal salvation (Heb. 5:9). He will give us an inheritance in Himself (Eph. 1:11). He has given us life that is His own life (Gal. 2:20; John 14:19). He has given us an uninterrupted place that God’s freed slaves like best (Deut. 23:16), an eternal haven in Christ. He will not oppress us as did our old master. He will give us eternal rest in Himself (Heb. 4:1-10). He will make Himself known to us. He is our eternal life (Matt. 11:28-30; Isaiah 26:1-3; John 17:2-3). Thank God! He has brought us out. We have fled to Christ. It is all His work. It is all to His glory!
Rick Warta
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The Gospel Glass

2/1/2020

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People used to refer to mirrors as “looking glasses.” Moses made the laver that Aaron and his sons washed in from the women's looking glasses (Ex. 30:18; 38:8). My mom always told us we were being "vain" to look at ourselves in the mirror. She said her mother was always telling her, “Stop looking at yourself in the mirror; you’re vain!" We all probably remember the witch in the Disney movie, “Snow White and the seven Dwarfs.” She constantly looked at herself in the mirror, saying, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"

When we look into a mirror, we see ourselves. Why do we look into the mirror? We look into the mirror to see how we look. The mirror reflects our image. We have a mental image of what we look like. We've seen ourselves countless times before. But we forget, or we wonder how we might have changed, or maybe we simply want to comb our hair to keep from embarrassing our family by our appearance! But we look repeatedly to remind ourselves of what we saw only moments before (James 1:23-25).

Why? If our appearance pleases us, we maintain our sense of pride. If our appearance displeases us, we grow despondent. How many times have you heard of a beautiful woman who thought she was ugly, or saw a person withdraw from the public eye because they thought they had a blemish or defect in their own appearance? How many advertisements focus on improving our outward appearance? Merchants promise to rejuvenate hair loss, remove wrinkles, make our skin look younger, remove unwanted hair, hide blemishes, tighten sagging skin, and many other things. Such appeals bring wealth to merchants who promise beauty in creams, pills, surgery, masks, makeup and so much more.


My mom's mother was right. It is vain to look at ourselves. If we are pleased by our estimation of our appearance, if we vainly think more of ourselves than others, then we are vain. Scripture says, "Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised" (Proverbs 31:30). In this proverb, the woman who fears the LORD is every believer in Christ. She is beautiful in her Savior!

Spiritual navel gazing is a common trap. We look at ourselves to see how we are doing. If by our own measure, we are pleased, we go away in self-contentment. If we are displeased because the mirror reflects somewhat of our true self, we feel ashamed, knowing others will see that we are not pretty. The problem is that we will never find in ourselves what God requires, what pleases God, what God can accept. All interest in our appearance and concern for our self-reflection arises from our sinful hearts. Outward "beauty is vain.” We must look away from ourselves. We must look only to Christ.

The natural man can only see outward appearance. "
Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). This truth is extremely significant. It teaches us that we must be concerned with what the LORD thinks! "The LORD looketh on the heart." And yet, apart from grace, because our heart is deceitful above all things, knowing that God looks on our heart can actually lead us into an even more sinful self-reflection. The admonition, "Examine yourselves" (2 Cor. 13:5) does not mean to examine our own worth or works. The exhortation is to examine whether we are "in the faith." In other words, examine yourself to determine if Christ is all in all of your salvation. Examine yourself to see if you derive your confidence and peace and joy from what God thinks of Christ, not yourself.

Faith is looking to Christ. Faith sees the only object in the Gospel looking glass (2 Cor. 3:18). Christ is that object. He is our confidence and comfort by the Gospel glass.
 Scripture in 2 Cor. 3:18 compares the Gospel to a mirror. Only spiritual eyes can see the image in that mirror. The Gospel reveals — not the image of ourselves — but Christ! The Gospel mirror reveals what God sees in Christ, and that He sees His people in Him! So seeing us in His Son, we are beautiful to God (Rev. 21, the Church, the heavenly Jerusalem).

Unlike all mirrors on earth, the Gospel mirror, by the light that the Spirit of God shines in our hearts, we are enabled to see and glory in Christ crucified (2 Cor. 4:6). We find our joy and confidence before God in Christ alone because He alone is beautiful to God in Himself, and because God sees His people in Him (1 Cor. 1:30).

The good news of the Gospel is that God looks upon His Son as our Surety and sees us in Him.
By God’s grace, He enables us by God-given faith to see Christ crucified, and so seeing, to find all of our acceptance and beauty before God in Him. So finding our all in Christ by faith, we know peace that passes understanding (Isa. 26:1-3) and the joy of the LORD that is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). We have confidence before God by Him (Rom. 15:13; Php. 3:3).

When we look with physical eyes into a mirror on earth to see our outward appearance, our fleshly mind is either vainly puffed up, or our we are disappointed. This is because we put our trust in how we appear to ourselves and to others. This vanity occurs not only when we look at our physical appearance, but much more when we try to measure our own spiritual condition. But when with God-given sight, we look away from ourselves to Christ alone, and by Gospel truth, rely on what God says in His word — that He looks upon His Son and sees His people in Him — then we delight with joy and come to God only by the blood and righteousness of Christ (Heb. 10:19; Isaiah 45:24-25). We go in boldness through faith in Christ, praising God in our hearts because He finds us beautiful in Christ’s comeliness that He has put upon us, the garments of His salvation, the robe of His righteousness (Ezek. 16:14; Isaiah 61:10). In other words, God looks upon us and thinks of us only as He thinks and looks upon Christ, our Surety. This is all-important. This is how we are justified. This is all of our assurance.

Perhaps the greatest and most delightful truth revealed in the Gospel is that, though in Adam and in ourselves we have offended God in all of His holiness and are condemned and under the sentence of death (Rom. 5:12-14), yet before God laid this world’s foundations, He chose us in Christ and accepted Christ as our Surety (Heb. 7:22). From then on, He received from Christ all He required of us, and received us for all that He found in Christ and what He has done to God as our Substitute and Representative Head (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:34). Thus we are commanded to look to Christ in the Gospel (Isaiah 45:22; John 3:14-15; Heb. 12:2). In looking to Him, we are "changed into the same image, from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18).

Believers live and walk by "
the faith of the Son of God" (Gal. 2:20). They see Christ, the only object in God’s Gospel mirror. They see only Christ and Him crucified, risen, exalted and reigning in the glory of His person and salvation (Psalm 21:5; Heb. 1:3; Php. 2:5-11).

There will be no mirrors in heaven. The One we see in the Gospel glass with eyes of faith now, will be our only vision then. He will appear to us as He is. Then we shall be like Him (Psalm 17:15; 1 John 3:1-2). We are never to think of our condition before God by what we are in ourselves. We are to look away from ourselves as curse-bitten sinners, and look upon Christ as our curse-bearing Savior. In so looking we will find our all in Him: all of our righteousness, all of our acceptance, all of our holiness, all of our beauty, all that pleases God, all that we shall find when we see His face. One day, we shall see Him as He is (John 3:14-15; 1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 10:4; Rev. 22:4).

Isn’t He altogether lovely (Song 5:16)? Isn't He lovely in His humility, in His cheerful giving of Himself to God in love and total sacrifice for our sins to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18)? Why would we ever be tempted to look to ourselves rather than finding our all in Him? Why would we ever seek honor to ourselves in light of His glory in our salvation, because God has told us what we are in Christ and because He receives us for His sake alone?

We are complete in Him in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col. 2:9-10)! Isn’t that enough! God says this is true for every believer (Rom. 10:4; Isaiah 45:24-25).

Faith enables us to see what is true of Christ for sinners. In so seeing, faith brings near what God says is true. In so seeing what is true, we have what we see.
Forget all that you are by your own estimation of yourself. Abandon your own righteousness (Isaiah 64:6). Forget the ugliness of your sin by looking to Christ lifted up on the cross and risen and ascended to glory at the right hand of God.

In the Gospel mirror, there is only One who is fairer than them all. It is Christ Jesus our Lord (Psalm 45:2).

Rick Warta
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