BRUNO’S EXCHANGE FOR A LIE – May 3

“Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God, for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” Romans 1:24-25

 Occasionally, the audacity of pop culture directly confronts and confounds me.

I normally travel within a sanitized cocoon of musical lyrics emanating from a radio of pre-set Christian stations. Long ago, I ceased to care about those who were occupying the top of the music charts, attending the awards shows, or  destined to define the current decade.

Since I only occasionally dip my toe into the pool of pop culture’s current offerings, I am usually astounded by the contrast of worship between these two worlds. This recently happened when I took a company car to a meeting. The radio was set to a local pop station and the melodies of Bruno Mars immediately grabbed my attention and got me bobbing to the rhythm. As I began to listen more closely to the lyrics, I found them ridiculous. I shook my head as he sang the following:

“Never had much faith in love or miracles
Never wanna put my heart on the line
But swimming in your water is something spiritual
I’m born again every time you spend the night
‘Cause your sex takes me to paradise
Yeah, your sex takes me to paradise
And it shows, yeah, yeah, yeah
‘Cause you make me feel like I’ve been locked out of heaven”
Bruno Mars, Locked Out of Heaven

Consider for a moment what these lyrics are communicating to the millions who have listened to this song (there are over 254 million views of this video on YouTude as of this date). He is willing to be barred from heaven because sex provides a suitable alternative. He does not need to be born again in Christ because he is born again in sex. I can only conclude that Bruno Mars has a stunningly low view of paradise if he truly thinks that sex is comparable.

The Christian’s understanding of paradise would be a poor hope for anyone if sex were an equitable exchange.

This song represents a culture with a shockingly low view of God. Bruno Mars is advocating a belief that the physical release of a sex caused neurological soup is equivalent to experiencing the majesty of the Divine Presence; an ordained voice in the choir of heavenly hosts is akin to the worship of created flesh; the momentary invigoration of sexual intimacy is equivalent to eternal rebirth into the family of the Creator.

This simple song represents the exchange by countless generations of Truth for the worship of the created. It is a capitulation to the inherent lie resulting from a low view of God. The sad reality is that this exchange of a low view of God is not limited to the world that does not know Him.

In today’s Christian culture, lofty exultations of God are often substituted for low, personal interpretations of a shallow god, unworthy of deep contemplation and worship.

How long is our silent adoration upon all the Biblical attributes of God?
How often are we awed by God’s absolute power and sovereignty?
How balances are devotions of “Jesus as friend” and “Jesus as Master”?

Our friendship with Christ is most amazing when viewed in the reality of Jesus as Lord. We will be tempted to make an inequitable exchange of knowing Christ Jesus for the worthless trinkets of this created world, when we lose our appreciation of the majesty of God. Paul said:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Romans 3:8a)

Paul’s high view of God enabled him to recognize the disparaging worth between the created and the Creator. It is only through the worship of Jesus as Lord that losing everything in exchange for knowing Christ Jesus becomes an equitable exchange.

Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!
(Psalms 46:10)

• We need to learn the practice of silent and humble worship before throne of the King of kings.
• We need to regularly experience the awe that inspires the laying down of crowns and scepters at the feet of our Redeemer.
• We need to contemplate upon our Savior, high and lifted up, at the right hand of His Father, sovereign over all the earth as often as we are comforted by His loving friendship.
• We need to strain through the fog of misplaced values and keep our eyes on the truth of God and the Paradise that awaits those who belong to Christ.

It is by keeping our eyes on the lofty personage of Jesus Christ that we will be kept from the horrid exchange of a lie for truth and consider it a bargain to lose everything for knowing Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever.

PRAYER: Father, I pray for Bruno Mars – open his eyes to your surpassing worth; show him the lie that he has exchanged for the truth about you.  Forgive me for all the times that I have made a similar exchange.  Forgive me for all the things of this  world that I have refused to count as lost.  Forgive me for taking such a low view of your majesty and surpassing worth.  Open my eyes, O’ Lord.  Change the loves of my heart.  Give me new passions and desires and to treasure the truth about you.  Help me to live in the reality of your Truth.  I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen

 RELATED POST:  GOD IS (NOT) MY BUDDY

“FEARING TO FEAR” – Dec 13

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  Genesis 1:1

I gazed up at the night sky on my drive home from work the other day.  It was an incredible display – stars deep and bright posing a mysterious question that challenged exploration and elicited awe.  The fullness of the expanse shrunk the office entanglements that still clung to my consciousness.  The burdens and responsibilities of a small business owner failed to rise above the trivial when confronted by the breath and complexity of this natural world painted across the black canvas of a night sky.

(Image: Yayoi Kusama  I Who Have Arrived In Heaven )

I felt a familiar sense of fear as I gawked at that night sky.

The implications of creation that come from a clear night sky are daunting upon contemplation.  We live in a world of intricate detail and minute precision.  It is a world of impassable distances and staggering scale.  Our discoveries reveal how much we do not know or understand.  There are many theories of how all that surrounds us came to be.  Most of these theories demand a faith of the adherent that is greater than any religion.  They yield to these theories to avoid the natural response of the alternative.  The natural response to contemplating this world as the product of a Creator’s hand is trepidation.

lrargerich / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

The realization that we are not alone should be jarring.

The presence of a Creator diminishes all of the accomplishments of man.

The theories and physical laws of human intellects climbing the heights of knowledge appear as mere children’s stories in contrast to the knowledge of a Creator who caused the ordering of those laws.

We lay defenseless before a Creator who gave the sun its energy.

We are but grains of sand on a limitless beach when the timeless reach of an infinite Creator is considered.

A living and active God, who has the power to create, changes the world that we live in.

Who can stand before one such as He?
What strength must one have to contend with the One who has created?
What claim can be made of the One who is without peer?

j-dub1980(THANK YOU FOR 100k+ Views) / Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Sanity demands a response of the created for their Creator.

Fear is the sane response to the power of the Creator of the scale and scope of our world.
Fear is the reasoned emotion to the incomprehensibility of the Creator who speaks matter into existence.
Fear of Him who created the heavens and earth should be what all people feel.

Thankfully, the created were not left in the uncertainty of the knowledge of a Creator’s existence, absent his character – that would be terrifying.

God has revealed himself throughout scripture.  He revealed Himself generally through His creation but specifically through His prophets, disciples, apostles and Son.  He has shown Himself to be a Creator who abounds in grace and mercy for those He has created.  He has proven Himself faithful even when His creation was unfaithful.  He has demonstrated patience in response to blasphemy.  He displayed the greatest love ever known.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  (John 3:16-17)

However, the revelation of the Creator through scripture begins with fear.  I do not think that it was happenstance that the first verse of the Bible proclaims God as the creator of the heavens and earth.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.  His praise endures forever!  (Psalm 111:10)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)

All decisions begin with knowledge.  God wills us to be knowledgeable because true knowledge of the Creator leads to us to a savior.  I do not believe that a sane person who truly believes in creator God, who knows their unrighteousness, who has had their mind open to redemption of the blood of Christ on the cross, will ever reject the redemptive plan that the Creator knew when He hung the star of Bethlehem in the night sky.

The beginning of that journey to salvation begins with the fear of the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth.  Until we acknowledge God as creator, we will never be humbled enough to know Him as Lord and Savior.

The fear of the Lord is a precious gift.  The overwhelming awareness that we are in the presence of the magnificent God of the universe should humble us.

The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.  (Numbers 14:18)

The doorway to true worship is knowledge of who we are worshiping.  That doorway is latched with the fear of the Lord.  It will do us well to periodically come back to the beginning of faith, to be humble by the healthy fear of our Creator.

lrargerich / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

We are blessed to be diminished by the Creator of the night sky.

We need not fear to fear our Lord.  It is not a fear that causes us to flee.  It is a fear that beckons us to draw near.  Honest fear of the incomprehensible Father of heaven and earth ushers us into deep and meaningful worship of the Creator who saves and the incomprehensible extent of his mercy, grace, and love.

PRAYER: O Lord, you are great and greatly to be praised.  I stand before You humbled by the reality of your magnificence.  You are God, the One and only.  I will trust in You and not be shaken for You hold all the world in your hand.  I can rest in You alone because you are the creator.  Nothing is impossible for the One who has the power to breathe the breath of life.  Thank you for teaching me to fear You.  Thank you for using that knowledge to draw me to yourself.  You truly are glorified in all of your creation.  May you be glorified in me.  I praise you, O Lord.   I pray this in the precious name of your Son,  Jesus Christ.   Amen.

“The humility of wisdom is the happy consciousness that all things come from God, are sustained by God, and exist for God. This wisdom is rooted in the pride-destroying, joy-giving cross of Christ.”
~ John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God

“KEEPING THINGS RIGHT SIDE UP” – July 12

“You turn things upside down!  Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?  Isaiah 29:16

As I contemplate my morning Bible reading, my coffee cup has drawn my eye.  I have written of my love for my coffee cup before (Filled for Purpose).  We all understand that the value of this wonderful cup resides in its orientation.  Attempting to pour coffee in my cup when the bear is on his back will only result in a mess.  Coffee will cascade down its sides.  The entire exterior of the cup may become encapsulated by the overwhelming flow of coffee being poured upon it but nothing will get inside my cup if it is upside down.

Humanity has been unable to get beyond the error of turning things upside down.  People have been applying their flawed reasoning for centuries.  There is nothing new to this world.  In Isaiah’s time, people were denying that God was their creator.  Today, the atheist’s main premise in their attack against God emanates from the belief that God is not their creator.  They embrace the belief that their existence is the product of evolution.  They deny God by reasoning that they no longer need a god construct to explain our existence.  Evolution is merely a modern version of the belief of Isaiah’s day, “He did not make me”; clay regarding themselves as the potter.  It is upside down.

In Isaiah’s time, people were denying that God had understanding.  I do not know how they were doing that but I know how it is often done today.  The instructions of the Bible are often dismissed under the cultural context argument.  Many conclude that they are free to engage in what the Bible calls sin because they believe that the author did not understand our present cultural environment or the author did not understand what makes them happy; potter being regarded as the clay.  It is upside down.

Just like my coffee cup, a person will not be filled with the Spirit until they get the orientation of their hearts correct.  God created man.  God created me.  Since there is a creator God, then I am subject to Him.  I am the clay and He is the potter.  The potter has the right to form and use the clay as he wants.

God has complete understanding.  He understands what I am facing today.  He knew my current condition when He was inspiring Isaiah.  He has an understanding that is greater than my own.  I can trust His understanding of what is good for me.  His guidance is faithful and true.  I can trust that He knows what will make me happy.

There is nothing new under the sun.  Our enemy has used the same old tricks throughout the generations.  Therefore, let us not be naïve to these tricks because they are very effective in turning things upside down.  The saving grace of the gospel has washed over the exterior of many who have gotten turned upside down from these tricks.

The wonderful truth is that we have a Creator with complete understanding.  Troubled waters await those who play at flipping these truths about.

Let’s stay grounded on these truths so that the Spirit of our Lord flows into us and fills our hearts to overflowing.

PRAYER: Lord, remove the gloom and darkness of my eyes; give me eyes to see.  Father, enable my deafened eyes to hear the words of your Book.  Do not allow me to become confused into getting the things of You turned upside down.  Jesus, open the eyes and ears of the lost; may you reveal to them how upside down they have become.  I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ.   Amen.