Spectacular Sins

Spectacular Sins? Oxymoron? How does this work? How could a sin glorify Christ?

So, how does a sin get the title of spectacular? John Piper, in his book, Spectacular Sins: and their global purpose in the glory of Christ, addresses some of the greater sins from the bible (i.e. the sell of Joseph into slavery, the fall of man, the people building the tower of Babel, and the most spectacular of all, the betrayal and murder of God's Son). One thing to always remember when analyzing The Book is that everything will ultimately point to the Cross. All those Old Testament stories point to the Cross. All of these "Spectacular Sins" point to the Cross. It's amazing and mind-boggling to wrap your mind around the idea that Adam's fall finally glorifies God through His Son as well as the other points mentioned in this book.

I got this book about a week and a half ago. It's fairly short, but with lots of depth throughout every page. So, by the end of this post, maybe I can convince you to read it.

First thing to note is that no matter what God is sovereign over everything including your greatest sin. There is nothing that He can't do. He has a plan for everything, nothing surprises Him, and even though things make no sense to us, there is a purpose for them.

One of the biggest things that I got out of reading this book was the fact that everything was created through Christ and for Him. In Colossians 1:16, Paul tells us this. (If you read verses 15-23, you get an even clearer picture of Christ's supremacy and our redemption through His sacrifice.) Even the evils of this world. As we all know, way back when, Satan was condemned into Hell for his ungrateful desire for power. And you may ask, could God not have prevented this from happening? Yes, He could. Why didn't He? It was all in His plan. Satan's fall ultimately glorifies the Son. You may have tons of questions, as do I, but we read in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that we only "know in part; [but] then I shall know fully." So, some questions seem impossible to answer while on Earth, we should not be brought down by the lack of knowledge that we have but wait until it's worthy of knowing. A big question I have is: why did all this have to happen in the first place? In other words, why couldn't God have just created things so that sin was impossible? Here we recall the idea of "free will" and how Adam had the "free will" to choose to sin. This part of spiritual doctrine is very confusing to me anyways, so I cannot attempt to answer. Piper gives a clear explanation in his book concerning this but some things still seem blurry in my comprehension of it all. All I know is that I am not going to worry about it, but just love Jesus until I can "know fully."

The third chapter in the book was my favorite. It was entitled, The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ. The Victory of Christ. This is such a wonderful thing to remember as we journey through life. In God's plan, the outcome would be to glorify Him. Never forget that God always rules over Satan. Even though this devil disobeys God's commands, God never loses the ability for Satan to overpower Him. Genesis 3:15 says "...he shall crush your head and you will strike his heel." At the cross, the seed of a woman (a human being) crushed Satan. Even though Satan's strikes at our heels everyday, in the end we know that Christ is victorious. We may not understand why things happened this way, but we know God is the victor and sin has no hold on us. Because of Satan's "Spectacular" sin, Christ was able to crush him with three nails and some splintery wood.

Another question you may ask would be: why didn't God just wipe out Satan when this happened? To answer this we can simply say that He wanted to glorify Himself so he allowed for Satan to be defeated.

The other "Spectacular Sins" are covered in the book. Go read it for yourself. It's deep, but very moving. You will see things like you never thought you would.

I'm not trying to turn this blog into a book review site, but I've read some very good books here lately and I want to encourage you to check them out for yourself. Instead, I'll leave you with some good music to check out. John Mark McMillan, an incredible songwriter from the good ol' North Carolina, has written a song called Death in His Grave. This song is worth listening to for it's accurate description of Christ's victory as well as the creativity of his ability to create art with his music and poetry. Such a great song. The chorus says...laid down in grief but awoke with the keys of hell on that day, the first born of the slain, the man, Jesus Christ, laid death in His grave. And then in the bridge of the song he says....He has cheated hell and seated us above the fall. In desperate places He paid our wages one time once and for all. Man, good stuff.

new song

So here are a few vids I took while we were recording a song called Yesterday. We recorded most of the parts in this auditorium. It gave a BIG roomy feel to the song. It's not completely done yet, but progress is being made. One clip is most of the song and the other two are when we were tracking guitars. Enjoy.

crazy love

Wow. I can't believe it has been over a month since I last posted something. Regardless, something hit me about two days ago that I knew would end up on this blog.

I'm in the midst of reading a book by Francis Chan entitled, Crazy Love. The gist of the book is about the endless, unmatchless, insane love that God has for us, His people. It also covers how we should love God with our whole lives. Chapters 5 and 6 have had the most impact on me so far. Chapter 5 is titled, Serving Leftovers to a Holy God. It discusses the 'lukewarm' Christian and how it's best to be completely in love with Christ or not at all. He said in one paragraph, "...Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become...But the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it's about eternity, and nothing compares with that. God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives..." I am guilty of letting these type of things rule over my life. To be quite honest, I'm sure that EVERY one of these things takes priority over my concern with my relationship with my Creator on most occasions. So much goes on in life that I forget that I can't do it on my own anyways and I try to tackle these worries with a finite human strength. From this day forward, I am going to make changes in my life. Chan also made the point that if we are constantly running toward Love, then we will not have room to focus on the hardships and temptations of the world. On the contrary, if we are not running toward Love then we are running away from Love. This allows us to take on the hardships and temptations that we would not have had reason to acknowledge otherwise. This should urge us to desire to fall deeply in love with Jesus, Love.

On a similar note, Chan included a quote from God Is the Gospel, by John Piper that essentially asks whether we are in love with God. "...The critical question for our generation--and for every generation--is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?..." It is amazing to realize where we are as we think about this. For the most part, we tend to imagine Glory as a place of all goodness but we miss the real reason for being there, to worship our God. Heaven is going to have one focus which will be the worship of God and even though all of the rest of heaven is going to be incredibly magnificent, worship will be what the rest of heaven is about anyways. I'm not a scholar or even close to being an expert on heaven, but I know that if we eat food in heaven, as good as it will be, we will eat it out of worship. Any activities, pleasures, or sights will be more perfect than we can imagine with our earthly minds, but we will acknowledge their perfectness in worship. And all of this will be in honor of Christ, our Savior. It's impossible to fathom the greatness of heaven and I do not even know exactly what to expect, but I do know that nothing will ever compare to everlasting songs that we will sing at the feet of Jesus.

Part of my story of coming to know (really knowing) Jesus and who He is includes fellowship with believers. I was hanging out with fellow church-goers imagining heaven. I can't even remember if that was the main discussion point, but I remember thinking, "I want to go where these people are going." That was a turning point in my life. I had repeated the sinner's prayer and been baptized earlier on in life, but in this moment, God spoke to me which began my journey in seeking His Love. I soon confessed Jesus as my King and was baptized again. I urge you readers, if you have never had this kind of thing happen in your life, open your heart and allow God to speak to you. There's nothing I am more joyful for having decided in my life than letting Him take over and consume my life. Do this today.

One final point that Chan made was in chapter 6, When You're in Love. A lot of times we beat around the bush when it comes to growing closer to God. We put up this front of obligation by praying and reading His Word only because we know that's what we are supposed to do. Instead we should just be real with God and ask Him to change us. We know that we should want what He wants for our lives but we don't. I'm going to include the final section of this chapter and let you understand for yourself what Chan is trying to say. The title of the section is: SomeOne I Can Be Real With.

"If you merely pretend that you enjoy God or love Him, He knows. You can't fool Him; don't even try.

Instead, tell Him how you feel. Tell Him that He isn't the most important thing in this life to you, and that you're sorry for that. Tell Him that you've been lukewarm, that you've chosen _______ over Him time and again. Tell Him that you want Him to change you, that you long to genuinely enjoy Him. Tell Him how you want to experience true satisfaction and pleasure and joy in your relationship with Him. Tell Him you want to love Him more that anything on this earth. Tell Him you want to treasure the kingdom of heaven so much that you'd willingly sell everything in order to get it. Tell Him what you like about Him, what you appreciate, and what brings you joy.

Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love you and walk with You on my own. I can't do it, and I need You. I need You deeply and desperately. I believe You are worth it, that You are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want You. And when I don't, I want to want You. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have Your way with me."