A Rooster Once Crowed: A Commentary on the Greatest Story Ever Told

©2013 by Bryant Cornett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. Permission is granted for brief quotations in critical reviews,

articles, or teaching materials.

Published by Full Porch Press (www.fullporchpress.com) at Smashwords

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright ©

1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

Used by permission.

Cover Design by Kent Weakley

Interior Design by Suzanne Lawing

Editing by Andrew Toy, Gail Fallen, and Cheryl Lewis

Published January, 2014

978-1-940262-07-9

This book is dedicated to my lovely wife, without whom I do not know where I would be and who sacrificed more for this than anyone. And to William, Mary Dudley, and Hudson—three of the best kids I’ve ever known.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: A View from the Porch

Chapter 2: In the Beginning, God …

Chapter 3: The Fall

Chapter 4: Those Who Can’t Not

Chapter 5: The Prophets

Chapter 6: The Wait of the Gospel

Chapter 7: Step this Way

Chapter 8: Truth Beats Love

Chapter 9: Tune into Life’s Belief

Chapter 10: The Great-ceful Dance

Afterword: Questions from the Front

About the Author

A Message from the Author

Endnotes

Acknowledgements

“A Rooster Once Crowed helped me understand the Gospel more clearly and love our Savior more dearly. Bryant has shown a new facet to the diamond which is the Gospel and readers will see the beauty of Jesus and His loving sacrifice in a way that will change the lives of new believers and committed Christians.”

- Len Sykes, Reflections Ministries, Atlanta Georgia

“A Rooster Once Crowed is a study which is broad in scope, accessible to seekers and – from my perspective as a Messianic Jewish rabbi – sensitive to the nuances of Yeshua (Jesus). Take your time with this material. You won’t be disappointed.”

- Rabbi Richard Nichol, Needham, Massachusetts

“My friend Bryant Cornett has crafted a compelling way to tell the old old story by integrating a wide variety of scriptures with illustrations and narratives that press for a decision. This story speaks to the mind, the heart and the will reminding us that revelation requires a response.”

– Dr. Ken Boa, author, Atlanta, Georgia

“This book is for building disciples. If you want to be one or are building them, read this book.”

– Jerry Leachman, former chaplain for the

Washington Redskins, Washington, DC.

Introduction

This book demands a decision.

In Jesus’ last hours, He said Peter would deny Him before the rooster crowed twice. Peter replied, “No way. Not even facing death will I deny You.” But a few hours later in the midst of a big commotion, pressure from the world, and three denials, the rooster crowed once.

“What was that?”

It seemed familiar. “Where did I just hear someone mention a rooster?”

See, Peter was getting by, doing what needed to be done, staying close in case opportunity presented itself. But that first crow of the rooster found Peter warming himself on the porch.

The second crow of the rooster sounded and Peter was shattered. Tears rolled down his face as he realized that his time with Jesus was over. What Jesus told them was happening and Peter’s own denials made him feel ineligible. Alone in the moment with the sun peeking over the horizon, Peter felt outside and unworthy even while he experienced that what Jesus said was true.

We are living in those few moments between the rooster’s first crow—familiarity, worldliness, getting by, chores, provision, warming ourselves on the porch—and the second crow—shame, realization, loss, despair, weeping.

Because a rooster once crowed is an opportunity to turn around, to change our course, to reclaim, and to run home. But the second crow, the second crow is the realization of truth.

You may feel like you’re on your hundredth crow or that you haven’t yet heard the sound, but this is it. This is the rooster first crowed. This is an opportunity to engage the material and to make a decision about what you believe and how you will live that belief out from this moment onward. Because there is a second crow coming. The rooster always crows twice.

This book began with a vision I received one night planning a lesson for my Sunday school class at Family Ties at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church. For the first time without a written note, I gave this lesson to a packed class of about 40 folks, and it was, by far, the best lesson I’d ever given.

I knew immediately that I had to share this as far as I could. It was a gift that required stewardship.

As of this writing, people in 54 countries have downloaded a version of the 38-minute talk nearly 8,000 times—if you’d like to hear it go to www.fullporchpress.com. That some have found it valuable enough to forward it to their friends, and those friends have sent it to their friends, is a great encouragement. The response to this Gospel story is a testament to the power of the Gospel. We’re all hungry for its truth, authenticity, love, and depth.

I’ve borrowed heavily from great thinkers throughout this book. Without the Bible, Lon Solomon’s background in biology and faith, Tim Keller’s sermon series “King’s Cross” on the Gospel of Mark, Ken Boa’s depth, Len Sykes’ patience, C. S. Lewis’ musings on everything else, Rabbi Rich Nichol’s view of history, or Cheryl Lewis’ kind eye, I would never have been able to put into words what I saw.

Indeed, I put each of these on level with Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul because, like these heroes of the Bible, God spoke through them in miraculous ways exactly when I needed to hear them. I can’t tell you how many times I felt lost and afraid that I had nothing to say, and God’s Word came to me like manna through them with exactly what I needed. Thank you.

Peter was wrong, you know.

Standing on Caiaphas’ porch, Peter thought that he was finished. But he chose the right path and his story didn’t end there. Peter went through forgiveness and on to become the rock on which the church was built.

It doesn’t end here for you, either. No matter if you believe or are hostile toward Jesus, the central tenant of our faith is that we all fall short of the standard. Not one of us is up to snuff.

But from here, from wherever you are, in this time, you have a chance to make a decision. After enough time, indecision is a decision. The rooster has crowed, so let those with ears to hear, hear and eyes to see, see.

This is a commentary on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the greatest story ever told.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 1 & 2

Mark Chapter 1

Luke Chapters 1 & 2

John Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

A View from

the Porch

Imagine you’re a parent, and you have two children—a boy and a girl.

Your boy is a high school all-American and an honor student who loves and serves you unconditionally. He has a heart for others and from a young age, every person he has met left conversations with him thinking he will own the world someday. And you agree. He goes to college on a full scholarship, playing a sport you love like you’ve never seen anyone play it before. He chose that college because it was where he thought you wanted him to go. He graduates, works for a while, and gets married. You love his wife, and when the three of you are together, you orbit around each other. Each of you competes to love the other two more. Then, he quits his job to go back to law school in a faraway city for admirable reasons. You’re proud of him and just can’t believe you’re connected to this person. Knowing that he loves you nearly breaks you in two.

You have a daughter, too. She is strong and beautiful, but from an early age, has shown an uncanny ability to make wrong decisions. If you’ve been around someone like this, you know that after a while, they’re choosing only from a menu of bad choices. There are no good choices left. She steals from you and curses at you. Things get so bad that her presence in your home hurts you, and she feels the exact same way. In the last couple of years, you’ve become estranged.

One day, you’re in the kitchen when the phone rings. The conversation goes something like this: “You won’t remember me, but I’m a friend of your daughter and we’re into some really bad stuff. The worst kind of stuff, and she’s been sold to some really bad people. They’re moving us around a lot, and I heard them say they’re taking her overseas tonight. I didn’t have anyone else to call. We’re at this address and, if you want to see her again, she’ll be here for the next four hours, but…”

The line goes dead.

As you hang up the phone, you realize that the address she has given you is in the same distant city where your son is attending law school. There is no way for you to make it there in four hours—but your son could.

Do you send him? Do you send your only son to save your daughter?

But what if you know—and I can’t tell you how you know, but you know—that your son will not make it out alive, will you send your son to save your daughter?

If you know—and I can’t tell you how you know, but you know—your son will die an unspeakably painful death that would not necessarily save her, will you still send him? Will you send him if his sacrifice only guarantees her three steps outside the door, and that once there, she can make a choice?

Would you make that sacrifice knowing that she may walk back into that house? Would you make that sacrifice to give her the chance to run home to you? Could you even take her back? She might decide to stay there, on the porch, managing her life—understanding the sacrifice made on her behalf, but just too scared or attached to run home? Will she accept the sacrifice, but deny its cost and choose to live closer, but not altogether back with you?

This story became real to me once I realized that each morning when I wake up, I’m that girl on the porch, three steps outside the door, deciding which of those choices I’m going to make. Will I honor the sacrifice that allowed me to see the light of day, or will I choose to walk back into that house?

What is it that makes us repeatedly go back inside? An addiction or vice? Family or charity? It doesn’t have to be a bad thing that keeps us there.

In the end, where I move from that porch tells me and my God whether I am a person that “couldn’t not” enter into the love and care of Him, or a person who just won’t.

Through the next chapters we will begin to look at this story and uncover the truth and love woven into the Gospel. This story, God’s love letter to humanity, is real, and it’s OK to believe it. In fact, I’d strongly encourage it.

At the end of each chapter, you’ll see a box like the one below with suggested reading. Choose one of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke or, John) with which you are least familiar and commit to reading through it over the course of this book. Following along with this will greatly enhance your experience. If you’re overly ambitious, pick two, three, or even all four. You can even mix and match as you go along. Just make sure you read at least one. It’s worth it.

Also, throughout the book you will see linked text that's underlined like this containing Scripture that is referenced to support a thought. It will be tempting to skip or read past them, but I encourage you to click each one. Also, there’s a surprise. If you’ll click the chapter numbers at the start of each chapter, you can read all the Scripture contained in the chapter and see where the text will lead you. There is something excellent about these that is enhanced by reading them first and then again together with the text, too. I guarantee that you’ll come away from the exercise with a new understanding of what has been done for you. Each one is a seed created with you in mind, planted thousands of years ago and set to sprout within you at this very moment.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 1 & 2

Mark Chapter 1

Luke Chapters 1 & 2

John Chapter 1

CHAPTER 2

In the Beginning, God …

To say that these four words changed the world is a massive understatement. To say that these four words set the rails which defined time and the direction of the universe before either existed, is closer. In. The. Beginning. God. In the beginning God created the universe in community with Jesus and the Holy Spirit establishing all that was right and the rhythm of the Great Dance. This has massive ramifications on us today and gives us a look into the very being of God. God created the heavens, the earth, and man and it was only the beginning.

All great stories have a beginning, but do you know why?

Because this one did.

Not only did this story have a beginning, it had THE beginning. Because of it, authors and storytellers until the end of time are forced to compete earnestly for second place. When it comes to beginnings, first place was secured a long time ago.

“In the beginning, God…”

Four more powerful words have never been written. “In the beginning, God…” contains a course of events so large that it defies explanation.

To tell the story of the Gospel, to share a perspective of the greatest story ever told—a story that has been clipped, stolen, borrowed, or used in every great piece of literature since—to tell a story that contains this much excellence we must start at the beginning.

And in the beginning, God was.

In this chapter, we will explore three questions:

What was in the beginning?

What does heaven tell us about God?

What does that mean for us today?

Indeed, WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING?

We know from Genesis 1 that the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters of creation. And we know from John 1 (and if you’re a student of the Bible, you’ll know that the Word is code for Jesus) that Jesus was there in the beginning, too. John 1 backs up Genesis 1 that God spoke to affect Creation.

The fact that God created the world by speaking it into being, instead of the myriad of other means at His disposal—He could have formed it, blasted it, molded it, manipulated it—reinforces the evidence of Jesus’ presence at the time of Creation. And this provides evidence of the existence of the Trinity from the beginning.

We have writings, composed within 100 years after the death of Christ, mentioning prayer “to Christ, and to the Father and to the Spirit.” It is not clear in Scripture, but entirely possible that the apostles began to teach about the Trinity directly after Pentecost. Paul links the three in 2 Corinthians, but he doesn’t really try and define Their nature.

Various official councils and beliefs about the relationship and entity of the Trinity cropped up over the years. Then, in 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea settled the issue as it sits today:

—from before the beginning, the Trinity represents the three persons of the Godhead: God, the Father; Jesus, His only begotten Son; and the Holy Spirit and that together They are One God in three Persons, no more One than Three and no more Three than One.

For such a fundamental teaching, I wish that Jesus had spelled it out a little clearer, but He talked often about the Father and, from time to time, about the Holy Spirit. In Matthew 28, Christ’s final words of this account of the Gospel, Jesus links the three inexorably.

I bristle at trying to quantify this relationship between the three. The greatest part of them and their relationship is beyond our comprehension and, if our knowing of the nature and relationship of the Trinity is necessary, Jesus would have explained it in greater detail. So I recommend holding this part loosely. In other words, don’t try to cram them or their relationship to each other into a human understanding.

Simply rest in the knowledge that the few clues Jesus does give us provide depth and texture to the relationship that is fundamental to knowing God.

Aside from Creation, in Genesis 1, the greatest example of the presence of the Trinity (and the only one where man is actually present) is in Mark 1:9-12.

So, from our earliest accounts, from the creation of the heavens and the earth, we have a sense that God, singular in power, lived in community with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Tim Keller is the pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. In 2006 he started a sermon series titled “King’s Cross” where he distilled for me three things that we can discern from these interactions:

First, if the heavens and the earth were created by a triune God, then ultimate reality is relational. Said another way, the ultimate focus of the world and our lives, in order to use them both within warranty, is within community.

Second, the nature of the Trinity is LOVE. This is shown in the singular example of the Three being in the same place in the presence of man, where Jesus is literally covered in love—You are My Son Whom I love—and the Spirit fills Him with power. Each honors the other with love and service.

And third, this community among the three, sharing in love from all time, is Their essence. It is why we can say that God is love. I love how Cornelius Plantinga puts it:

At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, defer to one another. Each person, so to speak, makes room for the other two. I know it sounds a little strange, but we might almost say that the persons within God show each other divine hospitality. After all, John’s Gospel tells us that the Father is ‘in’ the Son and that the Son is ‘in’ the Father (17:21), and that each loves and glorifies the other. … each of the divine persons harbors the others at the center of His being. In a constant movement of overture and acceptance, each person envelops and encircles the others.[13]

Later in the same sermon series, Keller points out the excellence of the Trinity, and that its existence is one of the most powerful examples of the truth of Christianity. No one would ever come up with it; the Trinity’s complexity overloads the brain, and yet it fits perfectly within the framework of the Gospel.

Without the Trinity, we run into all kinds of problems. Consider love. Love exists between one being and another. Without the other, love cannot exist. So if God is fundamentally love—true love—then without the Trinity, without the others, before Creation, there could have been no love. God created us to love out of love, and the existence of the Trinity makes that possible.

If God is One, and not Three, then He would have sought love from us. If that had been the case, then His essence would be something other than love. But the dynamic of the Trinity is off the spectrum. It represents the unity of absolute truth that comes from One (Three in One), but the diversity of community involvement that comes from the Three (One of Three).

Those cultures that worship one god celebrate the individual, but polytheistic cultures (those that worship many gods) tend to look to the family as the ultimate object of worship. The Trinity transcends a linear scale and honors individual sacrifice toward each member of an extended family unit (all of humanity). So begins the great dance of each orbiting around the other.

In this, we see that God created the heavens and the earth with such precision and perfection that all still function today, magnifying His glory and being born, uniquely, out of labor. All religions have some account of the beginning, but none begin with an all-powerful God reaching down to labor in creation.

In creation, with an understanding of Tri-unity, we can liken it to a couple who toil together to painstakingly build a home, brick by brick, out of love for one another. Once the house is built and everything is to their liking, there is nothing the couple can do to increase their love any more than bring a child into it.

Here, in the world, we can never get this quite right, but the Trinity, with perfect love, could. That is the Spirit with which God created man. Can’t you feel it here, in this first account of Creation provided in the Bible?

It is easy for us to see the excellence that God created on earth, but He didn’t just create earth. He created heaven, too. What we think about heaven, how you think about heaven, and when you think about heaven has an enormous impact on our lives, because it guides and shows us the nature of God.

So, WHAT DOES HEAVEN TELL US ABOUT GOD? Have you ever really thought about heaven? Do you thirst for it? Does the realization of it spur you on to greater and greater service? Is it real to you?

Early in my walk, it wasn’t real to me. I didn’t have a picture of what heaven was and, quite frankly, hanging out on a cloud while strumming a harp didn’t sound that appealing. I just didn’t think much about heaven.

I felt that the reward of knowing God in this life was enough. When Christ became a real force in my life and entered into my daily decision-making, the joy and freedom that I felt from His presence seemed an unbelievable reward. I looked at heaven like a freshly minted college graduate looks at a 401(k)—with the biggest paycheck of my life and the promise of another one in two weeks, putting money away for retirement down the road just seemed like a bonus.

That changed about a year into my walk when I spent a day in prayer focused on heaven with Len Sykes, a missionary based in Atlanta. Initially, considering the fullness of heaven seemed a little crass, like “countin’ up our winnin’s ‘fore the dealin’s done,”[15] but I trusted Len and waded in.

Those few hours developed into one of the critical pillars of my faith. The idea and concept of heaven, the realness of it, and a physical thirst for it have grown in me an unshakeable faith in what is to come.

Through these three sections, my prayer is that you will grow to yearn for heaven as much as I do, that together we’ll yearn for it even more and that the mere mention of the word will begin to evoke a physical reaction in you—a savoring in your mouth that melts for the sweetness of heaven.

So what do we really know about heaven? From here, I’ll make no differentiation between the heaven that God created, heaven as it sits today, and the new heaven that will exist at the end of time. We know a good deal about these realities from the Bible (and there are a number of good books on the subject),[16] but I’m going to focus on the most cohesive vision that we have of heaven. In Revelation 21, John is given a vision of the new heaven and the new earth that is to come. Revelation 21:1 packs a lot into it.

Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:3 introduces the first Creation account with, “In the beginning, God created…” It encompasses the sixth day, when He creates man, and then, in Genesis 2:3, the account of Creation is concluded.

Genesis 2:4 picks up with another view of the same creation. It’s where we get the account of a more detailed creation of man and woman, and are told more about the ecosystem of the earth, and shown, in Genesis 2:8, that Eden was placed apart.

Genesis 2:10-14 gives us coordinates for the location of Eden. If not for a massive flood 1,500 years later, they might have proved helpful in finding it.[19]

Eden was in the world, special, and separated from the world. It was a little bit of heaven on earth—paradise. But Eden wasn’t paradise due to the lush vegetation (which it had), nor the bounty it provided (which it did). Eden was paradise because of the physical, available presence of God there.

Toward the end of Revelation, after the rapture and the plagues and all the gnashing of teeth, we discover a Scripture that says the first heaven—where our beloved saints are now—and the first earth (not Eden, which was set apart, but this old ratty place in which we now live) will have been used up and discarded. It describes what’s next: a new place, a better place. It is a place that I’m dying to attend—even now, as I sit in a nice, warm house with an incredible family. I’m ready to go.

I really love Revelation 21:2-3. Imagine being able to eradicate the terrible side of living in any city (trash, poverty, crime, pollution, homelessness, isolation from community, traffic, etc.) and magnify only the positives (culture, luxury, food, drink, theater, art, architecture, diversity, etc.). This will be a city unlike any we’ve ever seen!

In verses 18-21, John describes the brilliance of the city. What is missing from that description? The harshest material in a city, the material that is literally glue to an earthly city, is completely absent. Instead of concrete, there are costly stones, crystal-clear jasper, and gold so pure it’s like glass.

Imagine a bride, your own daughter, walking down the aisle. I’m not sure how a city could be made that beautiful but, to John, standing below and seeing this city being dropped down to earth, the ugliest part of it must have been the part John was seeing. Yet what came to his mind was a bride.

We don’t know much about John, except that he was one of the twelve apostles and the only one who died of natural causes at an old age. He was likely over 80 years old when he died, and he wrote Revelation in the last 4 to ten years of his life. We don’t know if he was married, had a daughter, or escorted her down an aisle, but it is safe to assume that, in such a full life, he saw a few brides. It’s incredible that this beauty of “a bride, adorned for her husband” is what came to his mind in what surely must be the least flattering view of this marvelous city.

Later in Revelation 21:15-16, John also gets a chance to document the size of this city when an angel pulls out a measuring rod and measures it in front of him. When I tell you that this city will make New York City, Paris, London, and Tokyo combined look like the four great suburbs of Minot, South Dakota, it is not an understatement.

We can’t even imagine a city of such size. If it was stacked atop the United States, it would cover over 60 percent of the entire United States.[23]

But that’s not the whole story.

Read closely: Revelation 21:16 says that the city’s “length and width AND HEIGHT are equal.” There is nothing remotely like this on our planet. The earth isn’t an exact sphere, so it varies a bit, but, generally, if you started digging at the North Pole and kept digging, you’d hit the South Pole after 7,900 miles.

The New Jerusalem will be 1,500 miles high—just about 20 percent of the width of the entire planet. The highest thing on earth is Mount Everest and that’s only 5.5 miles high! New York City, arguably the greatest city we’ve ever seen, would be the equivalent of a one stop-sign town—not even worth a blinking light.

What about nature? Well, if you took off in a plane and flew straight up, over the clouds, do you know how high you’d be? At an extreme, you’d be about 7 miles high. Imagine the nature in a space 1,500 miles high covering 60 percent of the United States. I can’t wait to ski there in the morning and hit the beach at night.

Remember, this place will exist without any of the negatives of any city we know. The culture, food, and art generated from a city this great has to dwarf anything we can even imagine today. Take away any of the hassles of such a place (reservations, traffic, petty jealousy), and the possibilities are endless. This will be a city of a size and scale and talent that we couldn’t even imagine—and with room for full-fledged nature.

In Revelation 21, excerpted here, I see two more parts to this perfection. First, consider that joy is (another) currency of heaven. Here on earth, we need a certain amount of joy to live well, but, if we’re quiet and honest long enough, we’ll admit that even the best of us are barely getting by. We mimic greatness on earth in everything from automobiles to hotels to cinema, but even excellent examples of these are still missing something. The difference between the joy we currently experience and the most joy we could possibly stand is miles wide.

Those who have experienced Jesus know there is a deeper longing for something that we have yet to taste. All men seek it earnestly, but are willing to settle for something that only resembles it. The satisfaction is flimsy and fleeting from the substitutes. They take many forms, such as drugs, fame, or luxury. We can even pursue fulfillment through work, companionship, or immersing ourselves into our children’s lives.

Heaven spans that gap in us. It takes the shortfall and covers an exponential multiple of the difference. The catalyst, the difference, is the presence of God in heaven. God will literally illuminate the city there. No power bills, no light bulbs—God will light the city. His closeness will bring, finally, the greatest joy we can experience.

Second, if you consider that moment-to-moment joy your nut, as in the amount of currency you crave to live a full life, then there is one other problem—debt. In the thousands of years that man has just been getting by, parsing out joy in small amounts, we have racked up a significant amount of debt. It is common to look at sin as debt, and I think that’s a part of this, but let’s also include all forms of tragedy, unhappiness, and loss. Bad things that happen to good people, crimes against children, loss of any kind all add to this increasing debt. If we’re going to spend countless units of joy day after day in heaven, then this debt must be satisfied, too.

In heaven, along with ultimate joy, God will make all the wrong things right. Things that shred us now, whether we caused them or were complicit or played no role at all, will all be made right and turned for God’s great glory. Again, Plantinga, quoted by Keller:

Cornelius Plantinga says in his book “Engaging God’s World” that the second coming is good news for people whose lives are filled with bad news. If you are a slave in Pharaoh’s Egypt or in the southern United States in the early nineteenth century, or if you are an Israelite exiled in Babylon, or a Kosovar exiled in Albania, if you are a woman in a culture where when your husband is mad at you he can lock you in a closet or call up his buddies and threaten to have them rape you, if you are a Christian in sub-Saharan Africa today where AIDS is devastating whole populations, you don’t yawn when someone mentions the return of Jesus. The coming of the kingdom depends on the coming of the King, and the coming of the King means justice will at last fill the earth.[27]

If there is something that you hate in the world, the coming of the King Who ushers in a new heaven and a new earth will turn that shame into glory.

Heaven is for Real is a compelling book about a child who comes back from a healthcare emergency with scripturally-correct explanations for what he saw in heaven. In it, Colton Burpo says that, in heaven, “Jesus has markers.” There’s a cute discussion that follows, but it becomes clear that this four-year-old is talking about and identifies the locations of the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet. Colton’s dad is a minister, but he’s adamant that their Sunday school curriculum doesn’t include a discussion of nails into the hands and feet of Jesus. That’s why Colton didn’t recognize these as wounds, but markers. For me, this account reinforced my certainty that our shame on earth will become our glory in heaven.

Another example of this can be found near the end of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Certainly fiction, it’s a great account of some issues dealing with heaven. The book starts out in hell as ghosts (men and women who have died) board a bus headed to a waiting room (of sorts) in heaven. A series of characters are met there by folks from their past to plead with them to make the trip into heaven. It’s a succession of failures—each one clinging to something that is totally insignificant. (It cut me as I realized I’d held on to something just like that.)

The story depicts three or four ghosts, until we meet one with a red lizard on his shoulder. Unlike the rest of the ghosts, this one is met by an angel, literally on fire, and called the Burning One. The angel offers to kill this lizard (in this story, representing lust) if the ghost gives him permission. Disturbingly, the ghost prefers to just manage the lizard better. Not surprisingly, the lizard agrees that’s a better course, saying, “…I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams…”

The angel and the ghost go back and forth, and the conversation is agonizing until the ghost finally concedes and allows the angel to kill the lizard.

“God help me,” the ghost whimpers, “God help me,” as the angel chokes the lizard.

Then, the ghost who had been so wispy and insignificant under the yoke of lust just moments before, begins to change.

For a moment I could make out nothing distinctly. Then I saw, between me and the nearest bush, unmistakably solid but growing every moment solider, the upper arm and the shoulder of a man. Then, brighter still and stronger, the legs and hands. The neck and golden head materialized while I watched, and if my attention had not wavered I should have seen the actual completing of a man—an immense man, naked, not much smaller than the Angel. What distracted me was the fact that at the same moment something seemed to be happening to the Lizard. At first I thought the operation had failed. So far from dying, the creature was still struggling and even growing bigger as it struggled. And as it grew it changed. Its hinder parts grew rounder. The tail, still flickering, became a tail of hair that flickered between huge and glossy buttocks. Suddenly I started back, rubbing my eyes. What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold. It was smooth and shining, rippled with swells of flesh and muscle, whinnying and stamping with its hoofs. At each stamp the land shook and the trees dwindled. The new-made man turned and clapped the new horse’s neck. It nosed his bright body. Horse and master breathed each into the other’s nostrils. The man turned from it, flung himself at the feet of the Burning One, and embraced them. When he rose I thought his face shone with tears, but it may have been only the liquid love and brightness (one cannot distinguish them in that country) which flowed from him. I had not long to think about it. In joyous haste the young man leaped upon the horse’s back. Turning in his seat he waved a farewell, then nudged the stallion with his heels. They were off before I well knew what was happening. There was riding if you like! I came out as quickly as I could from among the bushes to follow them with my eyes; but already they were only like a shooting star far off on the green plain, and soon among the foothills of the mountains. Then, still like a star, I saw them winding up, scaling what seemed impossible steeps, and quicker every moment, till near the dim brow of the landscape, so high that I must strain my neck to see them, they vanished, bright themselves, into the rose-brightness of that everlasting morning on into heaven…[28]

In heaven, the worst things that happen to the least of us will be made right, and our tears will be wiped away. I’m sure I haven’t even scratched the surface of heaven, but how great does that place sound? How would you like to luxuriate in the fullness of that kind of perfection? How great is it to know that every need will be met and every wrong will be made right?

What does this tell us about God?

God, the triune God, created man out of community and in Love for one purpose: to increase love through worship, honor, and praise. From a human perspective, this seems selfish, but do we call parents selfish for bringing a child into the world? No. It is at incalculable cost that parents bring a child into the world, but they do it, at their best, in a spirit of seeking to increase their love by sharing it.

God knew that man’s highest calling was to enter into His home (heaven), to get into the rhythm of heaven and to be a fully functioning member (with meaningful work) there. That’s why C.S. Lewis described the Trinity as a “cosmic dance,”[29] and Dante penned heaven a flurry of movement and song around a point “enclosed by a circle whose motion is so rapid because of burning love which spurs it on.”[30]

This visual of heaven being a cosmic dance—with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit at the center, and all the heavenly host and the chosen orbiting around them—is a glance of what we can expect and prepare to enter.

In any dance, to be really great, there are three things that one must master: Step, Beat, and Tune.

You must know the step, feel the beat, and breathe the tune. If you’ve only got the step and the tune down, you’ll never make it out of high school drama class. Pick up the beat, but lose the tune, and you’re back to touring in a regional company.

To make the Great Dance, you must have a real relationship with all three. We can see hints of that on earth. In heaven:

The Step is Service. This is not the service that you want to provide, but the service the recipient requires. I am willing to feed a man, but he needs my time, too, and that might be too much. Real, sacrificial service is the step of the Kingdom of God. We discuss this in greater detail in Chapter 7.

The Beat is Love. Try dancing without a beat. Without Love, you can’t join the Great Dance, and the Bible, the whole canon of Scripture affirms this. Love is the center of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37–41) and love is the very essence of God. Without love, we are noisy, bankrupt, wisps of smoke. We discuss this in greater detail later in Chapter 8.

The Tune is Belief. We’re besieged by a culture of individualism telling us that we’re all to follow our hearts and find our own truth. Jesus brings us a different message. It’s not just important that you believe, but what you believe and how you believe are also critical. We’ll address this more in Chapter 9. Belief is as important to entering the Kingdom as the tune is to a dance.

So within this center of the Great Dance, in community and out of love, God—no more One than Three nor Three than One—designed and built this world with an incredible amount of precision and excellence. For God to have built a thing so alive, real, and magnificent for every human, I’m convinced that there is something each and every one of us must do here, while we still can. There is something we must learn, something we must understand, or some skill we must develop.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR US TODAY?

The skill we must attain and the knowledge we must develop is a correct view of the Great Dance. In consistent steps of service to the other, beating to the rhythm of love and moving in the belief in Jesus, heaven pulsates with life—1, 2, 3—1, 2, 3—1, 2, 3. Heaven heaves and gasps in a great rhythm of constant movement, loving service, meaningful work, and worship.

For God to have built so much excellence into this world, and to have paid so dearly for it, I believe we are to use our time here to practice these key parts of heaven, because there, our ability to learn these pieces is diminished.

Why practice sacrificial service? We’ve talked about the perfection in heaven that will provide for your every need, but won’t my needs be met, too? If our needs are provisioned, then won’t everyone have their needs met? In heaven, there will no longer be any in need of our service, yet we will nevertheless happily serve.

This is a tough concept to understand, but Dickens does a pretty good job in A Christmas Carol. In the following scene, Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner, has just left Scrooge through the bedroom window:

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.[35]

To join the Great Dance, you must really know the step, and that comes from service to others for God, honoring and glorifying Him. That leads to a great need in our souls: meaningful work in heaven. But it’s not all technique. There’s heart, too.

Why practice love? This one is the most important. If you had to choose one of the three to lean into, to really practice, it would be this one. We know that God is love and that His every motivation is with all knowledge to increase love. We’ll talk a lot more about this as we go along. That said, I’ll give these two reasons now:

If you want to begin a relationship with someone—not even a God/worshiper relationship, but merely a friendly one—then it has to be built on something you have in common with that person. It might be hard to develop a relationship with Mario Andretti based on your love of floral arrangements, or with Bill Clinton based on your love of entomology. They may be indifferent or willing to try to care about those things, but in the end, it is not their passion or the drive of their life.

To establish a relationship with someone, you have to have access, mutual interest, and commonality. For that relationship to grow into a deep one, that commonality would need to be a central and core value or interest for both parties. If God is love, then to strengthen a relationship with Him, I must be seeking a greater role for love in my life.

I start a lot of fires in our fireplace over the winter. I’ve gotten pretty good at it and know there is a tipping point: those few minutes when your fire goes from vulnerable and potentially extinguishable—when everything’s still a little cool and nothing has really caught fire yet—to the point where it is unquenchable. In the beginning, a strong breeze, a glass of water, or just leaving it alone might squelch the fire. But after the tipping point, there is virtually no way to stop it cleanly. Even turning the hose on it would leave some hot embers. The fire is unquenchable.

Our love is like that in heaven. I can’t tell you much more than this, but I believe that passing over into heaven with a small amount of love is extremely precarious. It’s not that something there will extinguish it, but all the other things we carry with us—hatred, jealousy, greed, worry—are like buckets of water that we’re pulling along and at any moment could slosh over and extinguish our love.

Lastly, there’s a head part of the Great Dance. Why practice belief?

Well, because Jesus said to. All parts of the Bible are littered with scripture on the importance of belief. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Just like a dancer who is technically perfect and owns the beat, but cannot really feel the music deep in her heart, we have seen how insufficient those are who serve earnestly and love honestly, but do not believe. In the end, without belief in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, service and love just can’t bridge the gap. The service becomes onerous and efficient and the love feeds on itself for fuel, like a mansion that’s slowly dismantled, piece by piece, to be burned in the fireplace for heat. As we’ll see, fundamental belief in Jesus is the only way to fuel service and love without cannibalizing each.

In heaven, we will no longer have the opportunity to believe. Most Disney movies in the last 20 years, tell the story of someone who is placed in a land where they’re not fully known. The entire movie hinges on a set of characters, some good and some bad, who do not know the true worth of this one character. In the end, the true worth of the one is known, and everything is set right. Those that disregarded or mistreated the one are punished or ostracized, and those that loved the one in spite of the circumstances get to live in the castle or are welcomed into the inner circle.

That story—in fact, every piece of credible literature over the last few thousand years—is the Gospel story. We are living within it; but soon, the full worth of the One will be revealed, and there will no longer be an opportunity to express belief.

I understand that, for some of you, there are significant barriers to belief. We’ll address some of those throughout this book, but some of them sit right here, “In the beginning…”

If science doesn’t accost your belief, then feel free to skip ahead a few pages to the paragraph that starts with, “So if this…” But if it does, consider the following:

In earlier drafts of this book, I had several chapters on evolution and barely scratched the surface. If this is an impediment to your faith, know that there are countless resources for researching this subject yourself—it’s too big a decision to just hitch your wagon to someone else’s opinion. But for now, I’ll provide two of the most compelling pieces of information that I found.

All credible science now agrees that the universe had a point of beginning. Stephen Hawking (no friend to the biblical Creation account) said, “All the evidence seems to indicate that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago. This is probably the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology. Yet it is now taken for granted.”[41]

To concede an event of Creation, but still deny a Creator, takes an extreme amount of mental gymnastics. We know of hundreds of variables that, if altered in even the smallest amount, would make the universe unstable and collapse upon itself. For instance, the ratio of electrons to protons, which is extremely important to our survival, can only deviate a little—and I mean VERY little. For every 10 to the 37th power, meaning for every 10 with 37 zeros behind it, you can vary ONE of them and still exist. If you vary two, the universe rips apart.

Consider this great example from Dr. Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist and apologist, on how small one for every 10 to the 37th power is:

Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. (In comparison, the money to pay for the U.S. federal government debt would cover one square mile less than two feet deep with dimes.) Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billions of piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are 1 in 10 to the 37th power.[42]

Or consider the genetic code. We are still unraveling the genetic code of man but, for the first cell of man to have been created out of nothing would be similar odds of hitting the cherry on a three-billion-reel slot machine with 22 pictures on each reel. If 10 to the 37th power seems like long odds, try one in 22 to the three billionth power.

Consider these two quotes:

“To suppose that the first cell originated by chance is like believing that a tornado could sweep through a junkyard filled with airline parts and form a Boeing 747.”[43]

“To suppose that the eye with its ability to adjust its focus, admit different amounts of light, and correct for chromatic aberrations, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”[44]

Someone with a different academic degree than mine could refute these facts, and yet another could rebut that, but the fact is that science has an extremely bad track record. New discoveries disprove old discoveries, but society never fails to believe that it—whether in the first, twelfth or twenty-first century—has finally grasped truth by the throat.

So if this or additional research brings you to a point of realizing that what has been presented as fact may not actually be the full story—that, at best, we’re playing with 10 or 100 of what must be a million facts—then I ask you: What would you like to be true? Is there any benefit to leaning into science if its foundations seem shaky? Or, standing in heaven, in the presence of God, angels trumpeting, which of these would you want to say?

a) Oh, really? I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought every word in the Bible was true.

or

b) Oh, really? You mean it was entirely true, after all? Really? Even Jonah and the whale? Yes, I’m afraid that I did tell some folks not to bother with that part.

Everything that we’ve talked about up to this point has enormous implications on our lives. If it is true—if a triune God created us from a community of Three, born of labor (read service in Genesis 1 and 2) and out of love for Another, and that the focus of our lives is relationships—then the practice we get here (through imperfect relationships in a broken world) is practice for the perfected relationships we will have in heaven.

Are you thirsty, yet? Did an understanding of the greatness of heaven, the excellence of God’s plan, and His Love for you awaken something inside of you to make you hunger and thirst for the righteousness that heaven will bring? Well, there’s more.

The realization of this prize, along with the price paid for it, has driven me into a life that is absolutely fearless. It has given me a perspective on pain and suffering that is a comfort to me and those around me. I’m still growing into this (and lose it at times when I focus on myself), but this faith in the greatness of heaven, and that one day all things will be made right, has moved mountains in my life and is allowing me to move mountains on this earth.

I have begun to see and experience pieces of heaven on this earth that push me on, like a boy eying the bike he’s earnestly saving to purchase. If I am successful in guarding and stoking this flame, this fledgling thirst for heaven, then one day, that for which I long will be mine. And it will be even greater than I can imagine.

Each of us has a thing (or things) to which we look for our security or significance. I call it your Fundamental, and what each of us selects as our Fundamental is of extreme importance. Choose something great, that can never be taken away and will fill you, and you’re like a man who builds his foundation on a rock. But choose poorly, or choose something that can be taken away or that is too superficial to actually fill you, and the risk is enormous.

Know that in heaven rests a Fundamental so big it will wholly fill us, and it is so fine that it cannot disappoint, and is guaranteed that it will never go away. By orienting my days and time toward heaven, I have literally ushered pieces of it into my life here—today.

Lastly, if you are fortunate enough to live in those extremely rare times and even more rare places (or homes) where your life isn’t dominated by bad news, then cultivating a thirst for heaven gives us a chance to be compassionate. In fact, to be a Christian demands this type of compassion.

Do you merely accept God’s commission, or are you excited to fulfill it? Do you regard the Kingdom of God to come as basically good, or do you thirst and yearn for it? If you don’t thirst for it for yourself, compassion requires us to thirst for it for our neighbors.

A greater view of the coming heaven has pushed me toward a higher joy than I’ve ever known. At my best, I’m freed to serve others, knowing there is greatness and rest coming. It inspires me to move away from my worst self, where I sought new and creative ways to get others to serve me. It has given me a view of relationships that is no longer consumer-based: I can serve others, even when they are not meeting my needs at an acceptable cost to me.

It has given me the energy to carry on, when I’m tired or run down or at the end of my rope. You would think that knowing that this world is a shadow of what’s to come would make me value it less, but instead of eating hamburger and trying to imagine that it is steak, I’m now actually enjoying the burger. In shooting for heaven, the world has been thrown in for free. But shoot for the world, and you’ll miss both as you focus on yourself.

There is a blessing beyond belief in knowing that I will spend all eternity in a place that will truly satisfy. It has made the troubles of today light and momentary. With this step of service, beat of love, and tune of belief, I’m given the opportunity, even within the fall, wherever I am, to be an example of Jesus Christ. In Him, I can live the life of service and love through belief in the One who has always existed, but in our Gospel story, is still to come. Cover all of this in worship of God, prayers of repentance, and a spirit of thanksgiving, and we begin to bring heaven into focus, here on earth. Today.

Get a picture of heaven because, when you make that blessed hope the frame of all your experience on earth, then even the worst of our current circumstances can be joyful.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 3 & 4

Mark Chapters 2 & 3

Luke Chapter 3 through 4:13

John Chapter 2 through 3:21

CHAPTER 3

The Fall

Things work out great for a while. But in time, Adam brings sin into the world, and there is a definitive break. While God remains in this loving relationship that brought man about, man sometimes walks, and sometimes edges and sometime runs from God. For thousands of years, each sin layers on the next and pushes man further and further away from God.

After Creation, Adam and Eve lived in Eden’s perfection—essentially heaven on earth. Genesis 2 ends with the creation of Eve and, without any time stamp at all, the next chapter details man’s fall.

In the course of five verses, we’ve covered the facts of the second most important event in the history of humanity: the Fall. Without the Fall, there would be no Gospel, no need for redeeming love, no account to settle. THIS EVENT, OUR PARTICIPATION IN IT, and ITS EFFECTS are some of the hardest things to reconcile in the Gospel, so we’ll look at each of them in that order.

THIS EVENT

The Fall was the end of the beginning. It represented such a period of great destruction and separation that we can hardly fathom it. For thousands of years, all mankind has been affected.

The idea of original sin—one action—that would change the course of all time for all men is an idea that is too big to even contemplate. To get close, we need to understand three things:

First, take into account the context of the universe at that point.

According to the Heritage Foundation, in 2007 the federal government had “at least 4,450 crimes”[50] that you could commit. Total city, county, state, and other jurisdictional laws, and you would easily triple that number to an estimated 12,000 infractions. We’re accustomed to living under rules. The Hebrew Torah, which God gave man, was 613 laws, but to whom did God give the Law? Moses, and he wouldn’t appear on the stage of history for thousands of years.

Adam had one rule given to him in Genesis 2:16-17. He had been given everything: meaningful work, sustenance, companionship in Eve, and fellowship with God.

You know that feeling we all have in our hearts? That we’re missing something or not living up to our true potential or are somehow inauthentic? It’s a gnawing, low-level fear that we really don’t matter. Adam didn’t have that. He never had that. He never once knew that feeling before the Fall. He was a part of the community with a great triune God and that filled him. Adam had all kinds of great things in front of him, and yet he was willing to undo it all for a bite of fruit. I’m doubtful that Adam could have known the full consequences of his actions but, even if he did, Adam and I are cut from the same cloth.

How long did it take Adam to eat the fruit? I’ve mentioned this at the open of this section, but while there is a significant recording of time throughout Genesis—days and years are meticulously cataloged—it is curious to me that there is no mention of a timeframe between the creation of man and the Fall. We go straight from the creation of Eve and into the snake’s craftiness in the garden. Genesis 5 gives us some clues, but it appears that Adam (fully grown and with all his mental faculties) was likely an adult in the garden for at least 100 years. And, as we will see in a little bit, without death or deterioration of his body, Adam had tens of thousands of days (at least several lifetimes) to enjoy God’s presence, but also to break the one rule that he was not to break.

Adam was a human like you and like me, so I ask you: Would you have eaten the fruit from the one tree that God asked you to leave alone? I’d like to think that I wouldn’t; that I could enjoy the days in paradise with my mate and be content with meaningful work and the presence of God, walking with us in the garden. Still, I know that’s not how it would have happened. Without death or deterioration to slow me down, I might have lasted another day or 10 days or 10,000 days but, at some point, I would have listened to the half-truths that the serpent spoke, or I would have followed Eve’s lead. In a weak six minutes, I would have eaten the fruit.

I know this because I don’t live everyday grateful for the gifts I’ve been given. I often want what God knows I’m not supposed to have. I’ve been in situations where I was willing to gamble it all away on the hope that I wouldn’t get caught, and for what? Temporary pleasure.

Some of you are probably living with consequences of your own six-minute decisions or those of others. Maybe your father made one of those decisions or your grandfather did. Sometimes these choices are small and seemingly insignificant, but sometimes they literally change the course of the world for you or four or 40 or 40,000 others.

Lastly, it matters who Adam was. Adam, designated as the first, made clean in God’s image, was the federal head of humanity.[53] As Americans, we really don’t like this. Individualism, the idea that each individual must determine his own truth and that institutions (such as the state or family or a church) should not be able to impose its truth on the individual, is so ingrained in Americans that it seems like an ultimate truth. We hold up the separation of church and state alongside the freedom-of-religion doctrines and declare that even the founding fathers believed the individual is responsible for discerning his own truth.

We believe this in the face of significant evidence to the contrary, and Americans are nearly alone in this ideal. No other culture in the world has such a rabid culture of individualism as America. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, there is a deep understanding that the sins of the father diminish the tribe. In America, while we would bristle at that, we can still see its truth. Can a Madoff get a job on Wall Street again? He never had a son, but would Donny Hitler be a welcome candidate for your son’s private school? If the world is indeed a series of small towns, we all know that small towns never forget.

If we begrudgingly concede that, as the federal head of humanity, we are part of the Fall through our participation in mankind and nature, then so what?

What is the real EFFECT OF THE FALL on our lives?

The effect of the Fall was legion.

But buried inside the punishment that comes as a result of the Fall is a promise. I don’t pretend to know the ultimate truth on this, but I can see three things peeking through.

First, in the curse on the serpent, God speaks to Satan through the serpent saying, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” Remember, Moses wrote Genesis under God’s instruction. In the following chapters, Moses begins to discuss the genealogy of Adam and, in every case, history is always passed from father to son. A few wives are mentioned, but names, property, and lines all pass from fathers to sons THROUGH women.

Isn’t it curious that God would address Satan in a context of woman’s seed? What does Scripture say? It says that this seed (of a woman) shall bruise or crush the serpent on the head—a potentially lethal blow to a serpent. Yet it also says that the serpent shall bruise or crush the seed (of a woman) on the heel—a potentially lethal blow to a man from a poisonous serpent.

I believe that this is God speaking to evil, saying that one day—that very day that humanity can bear it—He will send One, tiny as a seed, to earth through a woman who is untouched by any man. That seed will crush evil just as evil tries to crush the seed.

The second is the “thorns and thistles.” In a modern world, this seems like a strange thing to bring up. No one likes them, but by and large, we seem to have overcome them, right? Perhaps. Go to New York City, and thorns are likely contained to a few small places in Central Park. But watch a movie about the end of the world, and what literally scales the buildings and brings them down? You got it.

With labor and activity, I can keep thorns and thistles out of my yard. But if I stop, if I cease my labor, they will creep back in. Jesus talked about seed planted among thorns, and the thorns (the world) came up and choked out the Word of God from the listeners’ grasp.

Where is the next most famous thorn in the Bible? In our story, there comes a day when the thorn will be turned, literally bent, into a crown. In that day, this unceasing, grasping, unbeatable force of the world will be tamed and turned into His glory. Man’s curse, overcome, will become God’s glory.

The last blessing, buried in the effects of the Fall, is death itself. Really? How exactly is death, stalking us as we just discussed, a blessing? With the Fall came a change in path. With the Fall, we went from walking in perfection with God to walking away from God. How long can mankind walk away from God? How far can you or I walk away from God? Each and every one of us has cancers within us that are so slow growing that they will never kill us. We would die of 100 other things before one of these cancers became lethal, so they go untreated.

But what about other things that death keeps from growing too fierce within us? What about anger? Laziness? Hatred? After the Fall, all types of sin came into our lives, into the world, and into our hearts. If death had not come too, and if our time here in a fallen world had not been limited, what kind of a horror could I become, given 10,000 years? How much (un-repented) anger could I hold? How much (remorseless) hate could I bear before I tore myself open in agony, begging for death to save me?

The beautiful thing in all of this is that it is completely beyond man to have established any of this. No one could have ever imagined it. To have Moses compose even the beginning of the book of Genesis and convey truths that are alive today is absolutely inconceivable without a Creator.

My favorite part is that even in the midst of what must have been an incredible betrayal, God’s love is already planning a day—That Day—when all will be made right. Each of these curses, problems, issues, dangers, and losses will be undone.

From the Fall, God had a plan to make even this right, and your part in that plan is more important than you can imagine. It was written in at Creation, prepared for this day, and is waiting on your response. Want to know how?

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 5 through 7

Mark Chapter 4

Luke 4:14 through the end of Chapter 5

John 3:22 through the end of Chapter 5

CHAPTER 4

Those Who Can’t Not

Immediately after the Fall, in persons number three and four, Cain and Abel, we see the archetypes of two different attitudes we possess today. Abel, who gives his first and finest to God, typifies us at our best, when we just can’t NOT be part of this Great Dance. Even when there seems no way to achieve it, we answer the call and know that getting into step is our heart’s deepest desire. But then there’s Cain who, under no requirement to sacrifice to God, provides one for which God has no regard. At our worst, sometimes out of greed or jealousy or lust or some kind of hardness, we refuse the offer and joy of entering this Great Dance. Whether we choose it or just don’t choose anything else, we live there, on the outside of the Great Dance.

Of all the chapters, this one has endured the greatest amount of writing, rewriting, and editing because it is important to me that this Gospel story is a true representation—an accurate portrayal of the Word—and not merely a clever one.

In Cain and Abel, we see the course of an empire and struggle and pain and strife. In some ways, their story seems more relevant to us. Sure, we get that it’s a shame about Adam and Eve, but quite frankly, we’ve only known a fallen world and so can only grasp at wisps of what they actually lost. But this—brother versus brother, labor, sweat of the brow, sacrifice, anger, rebuking, murder—is something with which we all can identify. This story is a realization of the Fall.

Genesis 4 tells us that Adam and Eve had Cain after their fall from grace. I think it is interesting that God only gave Adam a child then. We consider children such a miracle and a blessing, and that is certainly reinforced throughout the Bible. Indeed, our children truly are blessings in our lives and a prism through which we can understand our heavenly Father.

But, for anyone in the midst of raising children and honest about the labor of it, the process of having and raising children is a humbling task that will break the back of the proud. Even if you manage to muddle through their formative years, we sow seeds that will literally bring us to our knees.

If you’re God, and anything is possible—children could appear when fully grown like Adam and Eve, or they could be sun-baked in bean pods—everything is on the table, here—then there must be some excellence designed into this process. How great is God that even in the blessing of receiving a child, there is growth, hard lessons, and a breaking of self and individualism all baked into a cuddly package that is literally irresistible? Even the most shallow among us would wail at not getting one of these little back-breakers.

Here are a few scriptures to investigate and ponder. In Genesis 3:16, read about Eve’s punishment. Then, consider Genesis 4:2. Cain comes first and then Abel.

Keep going. Genesis 4:3-5a is interesting on a couple of levels. First, why are they providing offerings to the Lord? Why do we bring offerings to the Lord?

Under Mosaic Law, Jews gave a tenth to the Levites, the priests of Israel (Leviticus 27:30-33); another tenth to be set aside for a colossal party in Jerusalem or in some other more convenient city that the Lord determined (Deuteronomy 14:22-27); and a third tenth, which was only due every three years, to the widows, orphans, and aliens in the country (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).

But in this scripture, Moses wasn’t coming around for another few thousand years. Neither Cain nor Abel was under any obligation to provide an offering to God. So why did they do it? Why offer anything? The language here reflects something different than I’m conveying, so I want to be true to that. The phrase “So it came about in the course of time…” or “At the designated time…” (as the NET Bible translates it) could convey that Adam and Eve had laid down family rules requiring an offering at a certain time.

While there was no legal requirement at that time for this type of sacrifice, God may have set an example for blood-atoning sacrifice that covers sin when He killed animals to cover Adam and Eve as they left the Garden. In the end, both Cain and Abel, likely of age, offered sacrifices with no clear requirement of the law.

So not because it was required, but likely because it was what they wanted, two men brought the fruit of their labor to God. The farmer brought grain and the shepherd brought flesh and blood.

Some men I respect feel that Cain’s offering was not acceptable, because it was not a blood offering. That could be true, but I’m inclined to disagree. There is a word, minkah, (translated “offering”) that is the same Hebrew word used in Leviticus 2 to discuss an offering.[71] In the Leviticus text, the context of the offering is grain, so I’m inclined to believe that it wasn’t the fact one offering was grain and the other contained blood that put off God, but the issue is not totally settled.

Scholars disagree on this and maybe this is why: Cain’s offering is described as simply “fruit of the ground,” which seems to convey run-of-the-mill stuff or just whatever was lying around. Abel’s offering was, by one translation, the fattest firstborn of his lambs. To give the fattest of the flock was a pretty big deal back then. A fatted lamb was like a great Roth IRA investment. All the taxes had been paid in feed and water that the ewe had eaten when she birthed a live lamb—a quasi-miracle, since some calves don’t survive. Nourishment required a lot of the mother’s milk (that could have been sold) to get extremely fat, and represented the full potential of Abel’s labor when he slaughtered it and presented it to God. Abel’s offering was exceptional in that it was the best he had to give.

If there is one theme visited over and over in the Bible (and visited first and foremost here in Genesis 4), it is that God honors those who take something they should have loved (in fact, likely do love), and put it on an altar to Him.

Abel should have looked to the greatest of his flock as his provision. He should have been counting their worth. Livestock, if you can grow them faster than they die or you harvest them, grow exponentially. David should have worried about his head and not stepped onto the battlefield to face that Philistine. Jeremiah should have backed down and shut up. I should have gotten back to work and quit messing with this manuscript a long time ago.

The world tells us that holding onto the best is necessary in order to survive, but when we orchestrate opportunities to sacrifice those things for Him, He honors us. He honored Abel with His great regard.

Cain realized that God had no regard for his offering and Scripture says his countenance fell. Do you know what that’s like? Do you know how it feels when God seems to have no regard for your offering?

I do. Last week, my countenance fell when God’s provision felt far from me and I had noticeably fewer touches by Him. It all seemed to begin after I became so enthralled in my son’s football game that I cared more about what I wanted than anyone else’s needs. (Those of you who get passionate about sports know exactly what I’m describing.) Just that morning, I had been pondering whether the loss of God’s presence in my life would be the worst thing I could imagine. Somehow, those two occasions came together and changed something in me.

By the end of the week, I realized I was feeling a distance from God, though I knew He was there. I began to frantically search for what had gone wrong, like a man who has lost his wallet retraces his steps. As I recalled my selfish emotions earlier in the week, I realized that, like Cain, I felt that I’d failed to provide a worthy sacrifice of my time, focus, and actions, and so of them, God felt “no regard.”

A relationship is like a masterpiece. While destruction of a building or loss of a year at college can be difficult, they can be repaired or redeemed. But for a relationship or a masterpiece, you can work on it for ten years, and one mistake—one slip of the hand or one sly word—can irreparably damage it. With other humans, we say things to each other that will blot out all other assurances for decades to come.

Disappointing your great Creator feels disorienting and terrible, and saying that your “countenance fell” doesn’t quite seem to cut it.

But I’ve also felt like Abel. When I first finished reading the Bible, and whenever I give this lesson, I’ve felt the joy and love of meaningful service to God. It is also extraordinary to be within His slipstream when I’m serving my family or giving thanks. It is the credibility of being named righteous by God—not self-righteous, but righteous. This is addressed directly in Hebrews 11.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.[74]

Whether in prayer, giving sacrificially or in service, it is easy for me to forget how great it is to meander in the soft garden of Abel’s sacrifice, inside the warm confines of God’s regard.

I warm myself there. I get comfortable there. I might even build myself a little house to stay in, but eventually, sooner or later, like Adam fully grown with days upon days upon days to falter, I fail. I step back into the heat of Cain’s desert, of my own will, but I hate it.

I begin to feel the heat of the air and the dryness of the soil. It may take longer than it should, but I begin reaching and grasping backward to return to God’s favor.

This isn’t me saving myself. I’m already saved by God’s grace first and then by my belief in the price paid for me, but I also have a responsibility: I repent. I repent in front of men. I renew my commitment to arm myself with Scripture which, had I been doing it all along, would have warned me against venturing astray in the first place. I pray and, while still shaking off a little bit of the desert sand, the point of return comes when I earnestly offer up something that I truly treasure—a sacrifice of monumental importance to me. It is at that point that I truly feel the return of God’s regard for my work/time/worship. I believe that I have done well, and therefore my countenance is lifted up.

It’s not my only choice. That is not what Cain chose.

Cain felt that with his offering, but with a side of regret. He knew that he had held back, despite putting up some great parts of his harvest. Getting a C- on your work hurts. Afterward, he was mad that he’d even bothered. He was angry that he hadn’t put in the additional effort. He was furious that he’d been humiliated. Then, when he spoke to the Teacher, he was told that he didn’t do a good job. And on top of that, it’s not just that you didn’t do a good job, but there’s a bigger issue behind this specific work product. Cain didn’t take it well. Not only did he have a bad project, if he didn’t master this, he was a dead man.

We’re pretty detached from true horrors crouching at our door, but in the wild, as he was, this was fear-inducing. Something crouching at his door, after what happened to his parents, must have been maddening: “You mean it could get worse than this? I already have to live with my parents chewing my ear off about how You kicked us out of the greatest place I could ever imagine. I’ve got these cherubim with flaming swords over here to remind me that I’ll never get in, and now the same thing (read: sin) that caused all that carnage is crouching at my door to take me down even further?”

Cain, mad at the rebuking, called his brother out to the field and told him exactly what God said. Shouldn’t Cain have been elated to have heard from God?

Job endured unimaginable distress and trial, and in the end, because of his response, he was redeemed. When he got all his stuff back, what do you think Job counted as his true treasure—all the material things restored, or the fact that God knew his name and crossed that chasm to speak with him?

I don’t blame Cain, because I was Cain just last week. I gave up all manner of God’s presence and fruit for nothing. If we see ourselves for what we truly are, we will often see evidence of Cain. I’m certain that, when he spilled his guts to Abel, he was hoping for righteous indignation.

Instead, Abel probably told him, “That’s about right, Cain. It’s not just this offering that you flubbed, but you’ve been disrespectful to Mom. Your wife has mentioned it, too. We all love you, but God’s right. If you don’t change, that lizard crouching at your door is going to consume you.”

The greatest risk we face today—the veritable lizard crouching at our door—is that we spend so much of our time managing sin, explaining it, making it worthy (or trivial) in men’s eyes that we never cross back over into the warmth of God’s favor. Instead of serving, loving, and strengthening our belief, we sow seeds of lust, greed, sloth, pride, envy, gluttony or—in the case of Cain—hatred.

Wracked with anger, Cain killed Abel there in the field.

Whether salvation can be lost by venturing too far afield into sin or is locked into a soul upon the moment of belief is a topic that has twisted theologians and split congregations for thousands of years. Where Cain or Abel went after they died is beyond a characterization that I can make. I like what Tozer said:

God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, ‘O Lord, Thou knowest.’ Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.[79]

In persons number three and four on earth, I see the archetype of two people whom I know in me. At times, I have been Abel—one who, since the beginning, even when there appeared no way for him to be part of this, couldn’t imagine a scenario where he would not be included in this Great Dance called heaven. At my best, I put in the time and learn the steps. Fully knowing that Jesus’ sacrifice will justify these accounts, I recognize my role in the process and love recklessly. I recognize that God counts me as righteous through my belief in Jesus—a belief that drives my service and love to extreme limits. I set my heart on settling my account the best I can, even while recognizing that on my own, I’ll never bridge the gap. But in spite of my circumstances and failings, I couldn’t not be part of that Great Dance hosted in heaven.

Then, at my worst, I become Cain, refusing to admit my shortcomings or lean into God’s grace. I refuse or (at best) delay getting my arms around the sin that falls to my account. I feel awkward going through the steps and eventually give up. I see serving myself as my highest and best use. The list goes on. I ignore my role in it and I get a taste of the punishment visited on Cain. Because of my circumstances and failings (mine and others, writ large), I just won’t be part of that Great Dance hosted in heaven.

What does that mean for you? If you look at this as a spectrum, on one end is Abel with his unyielding desire to please God with his best and greatest. It is a place in your heart that, while fully realizing free will, you sacrifice to a higher One, a Fundamental big enough to bear it, so there is nothing that will keep you from it. Think Mary of Bethany wiping Jesus’ feet with oil costing a year’s wages or Paul’s mission work or Joshua entering the Promised Land. It doesn’t have to be a sacrifice, but it is something that burned within them so hot, there was no way they weren’t going to complete their mission.

On the other end of the spectrum is Cain and his attitude to check the box on the religion imposed on him by his parents. It is a dark place where selfishness rules, and despite knowing and seeing that happiness lies within the walls of the Great Dance, you’d rather stand outside in the cold. When you say something that is true but extremely hurtful to a loved one, or when you cut a corner because the benefit to you is too great, you’re squarely within this end of the spectrum.

Want to reclaim the legacy of Abel?

If you still have the small flame or ember of Abel within you, you can feed it with service, love, and real belief. You can enjoy the pleasure of God’s regard and look for it in every interaction, smile, or ray of sunlight. You can decide today that you’ll set your heart on a Fundamental big enough to deserve love.

If you don’t feel even an ember of Abel within you, don’t despair. You can ask for it!

We took our kids to New York City a few years ago and couldn’t wait to take them to FAO Schwartz, a huge toy store that’s like parents remember toy stores from time past. We looked around for about an hour, and I was dying for them to choose that special toy that we would always remember. They thought the store was interesting, but, in the end, they didn’t pick anything. We walked down the street to a Toys“R”Us and bought a Lego set that I could have purchased back home and now sits broken down at the bottom of a drawer in the basement. I was dying to get them something great, but they needed to want it, too.

God has been calling you by name, and if you will take the initiative to ask for that ember—it’s enough for you to want to want Him—then it is His absolute pleasure to give it to you. His call for you is real, but it requires an affirmative response.

Answering this call and setting your heart toward God promises eternal life. Not doing it brings extreme consequences. Paul wrote to folks he’d never met in Romans 1 to address those who lived like Cain, vacationing so long in the desert of God’s disfavor that they’d begun to build homes there. Paul said that, eventually, God will give them what they want—He will leave them alone.

Cain, receiving a double portion of his father’s legacy, consisting mainly of pain and strife, walks the earth. No person administers final judgment—that is the business of our Lord. But we know that one day—That Day—One will come Who will make it all right again. He will separate all of mankind to His right and to His left, burn off the dross, and deliver an overflowing portion to all those who can’t not be part of this wonderful, cosmic Great Dance.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 8 through 10

Mark Chapters 5 & 6

Luke Chapters 6 & 7

John Chapter 6

CHAPTER 5

The Prophets

So man continues down a path away from God. And sin lays on sin until there was one burning question of the day among those that couldn’t NOT. The thing that Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Hosea and all the prophets are really asking in the last 1,000 years before the year zero is, “How can the God we know ever justify our accounts and wipe away the sins we and our families and our tribe committed?”

They understood that God was not feudal, but a God of truth, and He stood in the gaps for all those that stood on the truth. But if no one was left to stand on truth, then what was left but the gap?

And so God, full of love and joy as host of this Great Dance, chose to leave heaven to see and walk with us, even in our sin. He chose the possibility of our reciprocated love over His greatest love, because He has always had a plan. The cost of this time away from heaven, and the time that Jesus walked the earth, and the time that the Spirit is with us is unknowable. But we can know that whatever the cost, He endured it FOR us and out of love.

Mankind is a hard case. There’s no record of any pleading or requests for mercy from Adam when he was expelled from the Garden of Eden. There’s no record of Eve sobbing at the gates or of their children repenting in dust and ashes. Perhaps they did, but it’s not recorded in Genesis.

Genesis 3:8 implies that Adam had walked with God in Eden before. We also know from scripture that the mysterious high priest Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God, Abraham walked with God, and Jacob wrestled God. Over the next almost-500 years, mankind’s sin had increased to such a fevered pitch that no human, even the righteous Moses, could be in God’s presence or see His face and live.

Opinions on my conclusion here vary; men I respect have suggested that “walking with God” was just an expression Moses used from the time and that it conveyed no special closeness or relationship with God above others called righteous by God (such as David, Jeremiah, etc.). Indeed, the Gospel of John clearly states that “No one has seen God at any time,” despite Isaiah making a pretty clear description of God in the temple.

Still, I think even the most conservative among us would agree that enough accumulated sin changes things for everyone. Sin stacked upon sin from the beginning of time likely had an effect to change the way mankind interacted with God and the way He handled us.

In Genesis 6, God sees the wickedness of man. Paul tells us in Romans that as far as sin goes, those before Moses had a high-limit credit card, but as we can see, there was a limit. Consider Cain and this note from the NET Bible:

“The Hebrew verb (sha’ah) simply means ‘to gaze at, to look on with favor or with devotion for.’ The text does not indicate how this [regard or no regard] was communicated, but it indicated that Cain and Abel knew immediately. Either there was some manifestation of divine pleasure given to Abel and withheld from Cain (fire consuming the sacrifice?) or there was an inner awareness of divine response.”

Sunday school classes far and wide paint Cain as a forsaken man, whose sin pushed him farther into a broken world and away from God—indeed, as a hateful person marked by God. But in this picture of immediacy of feeling God’s regard (or lack thereof), it is possible that his relationship with God was one that even the holiest among us only achieve momentarily—if ever. At my best, with repentance, fasting, Scripture, and service, I can only feel the slightest touch (like a blown kiss or the weight of the wind) of God’s pleasure.

Maybe you’re better, but at far less than Cain’s best and in the midst of sin, he heard from, understood, and responded to the very regard of God. I believe this is a peek into how man interacted with God thousands of years ago, before chronic sin really changed the dynamic of the chasm.

Over the course of thousands of years, Noah built an ark and God reset humanity in a second Creation story. Abraham left his home and went to the Promised Land, where he had Isaac, who had Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons who (more or less) launched the 12 tribes of Israel. Joseph was sold into slavery and eventually rose to become the second-highest ruler in the then-greatest country in the world. Though that went well, eventually all of his and his brothers’ descendants fell into 400 years of slavery.

Moses came along and led the people out of slavery, delivering the Law to them. Because of his temper, he was only allowed to gaze upon the Promised Land. Joshua led the people into Israel and began a period where Israel was ruled by quasi-military judges such as Deborah, Gideon, Samson, Eli, and a few others (who aren’t so famous).

Samuel was the last judge of Israel when the people demanded a king. King Saul didn’t work out and was replaced by David. In David’s son, Solomon, Israel came its closest (even to this day) to fulfilling God’s potential for them but, toward the end of Solomon’s life, he failed. In one generation, by 931 B.C., the Kingdom was taken away and split into two nations.

The Northern Kingdom of Israel lasted for 219 years and was then conquered by the Assyrians. The Southern Kingdom of Judah lasted for 355 years and was conquered by the Babylonians. The temple was sacked and all of Judah was deported to Babylon, where they were exiled for 50 years. During the exile, great portions of the Old Testament were put together, written down, and ordered. Then, 70 years after the exile, the temple was rebuilt and the sacrifices, as required by the Law, were resumed.

On paper, this looks like redemption, but in reality, from the fall of Judah in 586 B.C. until 1948 A.D., when the United Nations declared the nation of Israel, the Promised Land was never under its own control. It was controlled by a series of vassal rulers, who bought or traded their way into kingship over an area rife with tribal loyalties and competing religious views. Sometimes with gold and sometimes with blood, agendas were waged and settled over the city of Jerusalem.

With this view of history, and with the understanding that God created us in relationship out of love—to increase His own love by giving it away, by including us in this Great Dance—we gain new perspective on the major and minor prophets throughout the Old Testament.

Before we jump in, let’s look once more at the timing and layout of the Old Testament:

1. Genesis through 2 Chronicles covers biblical history through 800 B.C. It conveys most of the sequential stories of the Bible and carries through the era of the divided kingdoms. Let’s skip Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther for the moment.

2. We now get to the wisdom literature in the Bible. Job (which is a story that likely happened before Joseph’s rule in Egypt), Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon provide a brief cushion before some of the most punishing portions of the Bible.

3. The major prophets pick up the story, but in a completely different way than what was just mentioned in 1, above. If 1, above, was the front page of the newspaper, then this is the editorial page. There is an increase in the shrillness of the warnings and judgment delivered by these prophets. Gone is the instruction and on comes the discipline.

4. All of this culminates in the stories we skipped: Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, plus Malachi and Joel to close out the linear stories of the Bible.

5. The next 400 years, sometimes called the intertestamental period, are marked by a silence from God similar to the 400 years of silence in slavery in Egypt. Texts were certainly written during this time, and some of them make up the Apocrypha in the Catholic Bible.

So how can God hold men in 586 B.C. accountable for sins that compounded over the years and justify such incredible ruthlessness?

I believe the answer lies in this idea of the Great Dance and a proper understanding of the importance of knowing the step (sacrificial service) and the beat (love) of the dance. If it was really just a high-school dance, there wouldn’t be much harm in not learning the steps. But if the Great Dance is heaven and the alternative is hell, then it becomes critically important to get the step and the beat right.

Christians believe that when we die, God stands in eternal judgment of us. We believe that we all fall short, but through the blood of Christ, our sins are covered and debt is paid in full. First, we must believe in Him. We must believe and accept this great and free gift that Jesus has given us. Christians also believe that there is an alternative. Both testaments are full of references to hell and chronicle the horrors of spending eternity there.

My understanding of Scripture is that God views the whole of humanity like a parent views the life of a child. When given a child, a parent knows to vaccinate him. Nearly naked and cold, the child is mercilessly held down and given shots. The pain can be excruciating. If his entire life consisted only of the seconds during those appointments, plus a spanking or two and the week he deservedly spent grounded, then it would be fair to call his life terrible.

But that’s not the whole story, is it? The shots helped the child avoid terrible diseases that could have debilitated him, and the discipline that his parents leveled against him forced him to rethink decisions that would have led to catastrophe in his life.

While it was excruciating for entire generations in slavery, exile, and the dark of God’s Word (the intertestamental period and slavery in Egypt), these trials were necessary. Each one of us carries a responsibility to the life cycle of mankind. We learn something about thirst from Moses’ trek in the desert and about faithfulness from Daniel’s trip to the lion’s den. We learn about the depravity of men’s hearts from the horrors of war. This accumulation of knowledge—not abstract knowledge, but knowledge based upon real experience, bought with blood and sweat, borne proportionately greater by some—is required in order for us to achieve the greatness planned for us.

It was rumored that, on his deathbed, Pancho Villa said, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

That desperation of wanting our lives to mean something is familiar to us. So as we read these experiences—not fiction, but real experiences that some lived and bled and cried through—find some way in your life to let the legacy end better. We will never be able to achieve this fully, but when we can take another’s tragedy, loss, or holocaust and enter into that pain to learn from it or resolve never to allow it to happen again or see a path that we’re on and turn from that path, then we—I, you—become part of the redemption and happy ending.

The prophets knew something about God. They didn’t see all that Jesus brought us, but they knew, like the child found in the discipline from his parents, that God would withhold nothing in the pursuit of a right relationship with His children. God was unwilling to favor or spoil His children at the cost of ruin or to set aside the pain of a vaccine. The risk of the alternative is too high.

When I look at the arc of humanity over this time and the tenor of the prophets, I don’t see a wrathful God, full of vengeance, throwing a tantrum because mankind can’t figure out the step or the beat.

I see a parent at His wit’s end, who knows how great a life can be, in spite of all these mistakes. I see a parent willing to leave perfection—the Great Dance—to travel the lonely road into prison, only to be told that the inmate won’t see Him today.

I see a parent who knows the alternative and will do anything to keep that child, conceived in love, away from impending flames.

I see a parent, fully knowing, willing to move heaven and earth if that child will only turn back and choose Him.

I see a parent way past hoping for a child that can’t not be in our family, and now, desperately fighting, at all costs, to pull a child up from a nosedive.

Today, we look at those throughout the Old Testament who were punished, killed, or dropped into wells. Good and bad men throughout the Bible met ends that seem unfair. But we overlook that God never gave up on us. Even when He had the chance, like a mother’s prayer, God never stopped pleading and working out an excellence in each of us.

C. S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, said it well:

We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the ‘intolerable compliment.’ Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.[98]

God cannot give less. Heaven cannot accept less. And we cannot function, without voiding our warranty, with any less.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 11 through 13

Mark Chapters 7 & 8

Luke Chapters 8 through 10

John Chapters 7 & 8

CHAPTER 6

The Wait of the Gospel

The wait must have been excruciating. At least seven factors existed in the time of Jesus that had never existed before, but there are probably hundreds of others. For thousands of years, humanity suffered under the weight of our sin, but we did not suffer alone. God had a plan to redeem humanity, and the minute that we could bear its weight, Jesus came with a message of how we, too, can enter into this Great Dance.

Throughout the Old Testament, any discerning reader is struck by how much blood is actually spilled. God brought fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah, but spared Nineveh. Sometimes judgment came and sometimes judgment waited. Over the course of time, man suffered incalculable atrocities. The Holocaust, with millions of Jews killed, is still too fresh a wound to prod, but it’s on par with other destruction perpetrated against God’s people: the Flood, 400 years of slavery in Egypt, 40 years in the desert where likely two million Israelites died (see Numbers 14:25-35), exile in Babylon, the horrors of Hellenization, and life under Christian-hating Roman emperors.

In our house, we have a rule borrowed from an old Jerry Leachman lecture: No one suffers alone. For us, it means that if a member of our family is unhappy or unable to come to the table of joy that we set, we will not eat the meal there. We will not put our happiness or comfort or joy over another’s pain or sorrow. If you cannot enter into mine, then I reduce myself to enter into yours.

The U.S. military has the same rule: “Leave no man behind.” My family hasn’t been tested like a serviceman who puts himself in harm’s way to save a comrade, or God, who spent thousands of years broken-hearted with man. But, in each of these examples, we can see that while the punishment was leveled against one (or One), others suffer.

The degree to which God suffered due to mankind’s judgment is unknowable, but there must have been some cost to God to leave the perfection of His Great Dance to come to earth and deal with us. From the Beginning, and until Christ, God was continually with us, speaking to us, speaking through us (except for 400 years during slavery in Egypt and around 430 years after the death of Nehemiah), sometimes walking with us, and warning us.

This period of mankind walking away from God, Who created us to dance with Him, must have been excruciating to Him. We can identify with earthly loss or tragedy, but for God, Who created time, Who is outside of time, for Whom “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day”, it is possible that this ancient period of separation is just as raw for Him today as 9/11 or the Holocaust has been for those that experienced it. It is clear to me that none of us suffer alone.

From the beginning, through the Old Testament, and even into today—this very moment—God has had the power to snap His fingers and say, “We’re good. Don’t worry about all the sin. Don’t worry about whatever you did. Your accounts are paid. You’re free to enter into My love.” The very definition of omnipotence demands it. Yet, He doesn’t and didn’t. He knows humanity has to be prepared to bear the weight of the pardon. Humanity has to be able to understand it.

Think for a minute about the last time you knew you had to do something that you really didn’t want to do. Maybe you had to pay a debt or have a conversation with a loved one or a family member. Maybe you needed to confront a friend or give up something in your life that you enjoyed. Whatever it was, you did it. We’re Americans, and part of being an American is getting done what needs doing. You got it done.

How much harder would it have been if you had to wait? What if you needed to deal with an aging parent, but had to let the situation linger for another five years? How about if you needed to settle a debt with your neighbor or brother whom you knew you could fully forgive, but to really love them you had to let the debt sit there, like rotting milk stinking up everything between you for another six months? What if you had a son who was addicted to drugs, but to really love him, you knew you had to leave him to his own devices?

I have a vision of Jesus bursting into the throne room the moment Eve broke the skin of the fruit and hurling Himself at the Father’s feet, low and pleading, begging, “Can I go now? Will you throw a cross into the middle of that garden and let Me climb onto it? Will you let My blood cover her and redeem mankind?” And God leans down, pulling his Son off the ground, looks Him full in the face, sort of smiling, but also fully recognizing there’s pain ahead, and says, “No, Son. Man cannot yet bear the weight of the Gospel.” So They wipe away Their tears, and watch, and wait, and help where They can.[105]

But thousands of years later, the very second that man can bear the Gospel, Jesus comes.

There were probably hundreds of things that came together for the first time in the world in the few hundred years before Christ, but I’ve only come up with seven factors that changed the world and gave it, even in its weakness, the strength to bear the weight of the Gospel. Consider:

1. Roman Roads. Beginning in about 500 B.C., the Romans began building roads in an effort to unite their territories. I couldn’t find any data on the amount of roads built by the time of Christ but, by 100 A.D., Rome had built over 258,000 miles of roads throughout the world.[106] That is five times the mileage of the United States’ entire interstate highway system. If you grew up in a rural area, 258,000 miles of road is 25 percent of every single unpaved road in the entire United States. That’s also about 55 percent more than every mile of interstate and major road in the United States today.[107] Roman roads cut through hills and filled in ravines to provide reliable transportation between cities. These roads weren’t like our roads that shut down every few years for maintenance. Starting with compressed dirt, they set large stones below smaller stones— and lime below an even finer grain of pounded stone below large rounded stones—that gave these roads an arc to drain water and keep dry.[108] Some of these roads are still in use today.

2. Safe Seas. Wide expanses of earth require a government that can police it. Like Africa today, where weak governments fertilize some of the worst atrocities we’ve ever seen, the Mediterranean was a place where anarchy reined. Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world by the year he died in 323 B.C. Over the next 250 years, a series of his commanders and their heirs fought over the lands from Egypt to Greece, but kept the seas generally safe. In the transition to Roman rule from Ptolemaic and Seleucid rule, piracy flourished in the open seas. Coastal towns with no defense became havens for pirates or victims.

“Consequently, the pirates remained the only considerable naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean with bases throughout the sea.”[109] Like any criminal enterprise, its success was its downfall. Attacks became more brazen and finally, in the summer of 66 B.C., the Roman Senate granted Pompey extraordinary leeway in dealing with piracy on the Mediterranean and in 89 days, he destroyed 1,300 pirate vessels on the Mediterranean. This virtually ended piracy on the Mediterranean for 1,200 years.

3. Greek. Following the death of Alexander the Great, Israel and the rest of the known world went through a period of Hellenization. To varying degrees over that period, those under Greek rule were forced to dress, sing, appreciate, and speak Greek. Sometimes encouraged, and sometimes forced with blood, Greek culture was mandated throughout most of the known world. I’ve heard a preacher mention that 30 percent of the known world spoke Greek at this time, but I couldn’t confirm that statistic. However, “thanks to Alexander, Greek was the international language; now, for the first time, the Bible could be ready by virtually everyone.”[110]

4. Pax Romana. Beginning 30 years before the birth of Christ and ending about 150 years afterward, the Roman Empire experienced a period of relative peace. Wars were still waged on the borders, but during this period there was no major invasion, piracy, or great civil war. This period of stability gave those living under Roman rule a rare opportunity to answer questions and submit to activities that are often pushed aside in times of great conflict.

5. No Borders. For the first time in history, one could travel to virtually all the land that the Mediterranean touched—all of Eastern Europe, and the habitable portions of the Middle East and Northern Africa—without a passport. Within the lifetime of those who saw Jesus (117 A.D.), the empire reached its peak and one could travel for 2.5 million square miles[111] without passing through customs or immigration.

6. Unity. While it may seem strange to call a Roman occupation unity, consider Jerusalem’s history. Since Solomon’s death in 931 B.C., which we have called the closest that mankind ever got to a realization of the covenant, the nation of Israel has been either split (divided kingdoms), at war (with Assyria or Babylon), occupied by a series of warring kings (Seleucids vs. Ptolemies), or at war with itself (Maccabean Revolt) until 64 B.C. when the Pharisees begged Pompey (a Roman leader, consul, and militarist with a big army) to save them from the Maccabees (essentially themselves).[112] The next 134 years, while painful for those under the yoke of Roman law, would be characterized as a slow news day in Israel. This unity was broken in 70 A.D. when Romans leveled Jerusalem, and Jesus’ prediction from around 37 years earlier came true.

7. The Pride of Herod. Herod the Great was a ruler of epic proportions. His great-grandfather was a convert to Judaism by force in a type of Maccabean reverse discrimination and his mother was an Arab. Herod the Great had a troubled relationship with his people. His wife, whom he adored and later killed (only to call after her throughout his palace for the rest of his life), hated him and openly belittled him in court. With over 500 concubines, he denied himself no pleasure, but this pursuit built a home of danger and deceit. Yet, through cunning, blood, and ruthlessness, in 40 B.C., this incredibly unlikely Herod stood between Marc Anthony and Octavian (nephew of Caesar) and was named by the Roman Senate King of Judaea and Roman ally.

Standing between “the two pillars of the world,” this “half Jew, half Arab” descendent of Esau knew that back at home, among the people, “he would have to fight for every inch of his kingdom, and then Jerusalem.”[113] He did, and over the next 40 years, he built Jerusalem into the center of the world. Rome was still Rome, like Washington, D.C., where the laws were made. But Jerusalem and the temple complex, out of Herod’s pride, were built into the center of the world. Jerusalem became New York City—the center of culture, architecture, literature, and the arts. It was said, “Whoever did not see Jerusalem in her glory has never seen a beautiful city” and “Ten measures of beauty descended to the world, Jerusalem took nine.”

Again, there are probably hundreds, but these seven events meant, for the first time in history that if you sent someone out to spread the Gospel, there was a good road to lead them there. And if you put someone on a ship with a letter or an alm, barring weather, the seas were safe enough to carry them. If you wrote a book or a letter, then most of the known world could hear it because, with blood and sweat, chances were great that they now spoke Greek. Government forces were aligned so that one man could walk for three years in an area a little bit larger than Puerto Rico and the entire world would take notice.

Most scholars believe that Jesus was 28 or 29 when He started His ministry and that it took three years, but we’re examining an ancient story spanning thousands of years from the Garden of Eden to the cross.

Why a cross? We know from history that death on a cross was laden with symbolism:

Crucifixion, said Josephus, was “the most miserable death,” designed to demean the victim publicly. Hence Pilate ordered Jesus’ placard to be attached to His cross—KING OF THE JEWS. Victims could be tied or nailed. The skill was to ensure victims did not bleed to death. The nails were usually driven through the forearms—not the palms—and ankles: the bones of a crucified Jew have been found in a tomb in north Jerusalem with a 4 1/2-inch iron nail sticking through the skeletal ankle. …Victims were usually crucified naked—with men facing outwards …[115]

So why this? Jesus, in Gethsemane, clearly didn’t want to take on this ordeal.

I would ask that you hold my next few paragraphs loosely because we will not fully know this until that day when we see Him fully, but here is what I believe: The cross was the sacrifice that we demanded. It’s hard to imagine that the debtor would get to choose the method by which a creditor forgives the debt. But if the purpose of the payment was to woo and win the debtor, then a debt paid too easily only pays the debt. Gethsemane proves that this debt was not paid easily.

When I was a teenager, I thought my parents were about as rich as anyone else. For them to cover tuition at the Johns Hopkins University was just the freight for being my parents. I knew it was a lot of money, but if I’d even taken the time to think about it (which I don’t think I did), I would have thought they had plenty more. Looking back, I know it was a sacrifice for them. They tried to guide me to a state school at 10 percent of the cost, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

Arian Foster grew up differently. He made the news in 2012 by signing a five-year, $43.5 million contract with the Houston Texans. In a news conference, he said this deal was significant to him because it meant that his family would never struggle again. Crying, he recounted growing up in New Mexico with a single mom. Arian said he and his siblings struggled and one day his mother “pawned her wedding ring to give us some food that night and I just told myself that I wanted to do something with my life to make sure that when I had a kid he never had to worry about the lights being on.”[117]

Do you see that? Arian has a different understanding of the sacrifice that his parents made for him. My parents paid many tens of thousands of dollars per year and his mother sold a wedding ring that likely cost a few thousand dollars. Yet his appreciation for her sacrifice greatly outweighed mine.

This says something unfortunate about me, but the illustration is meant to illuminate that it matters who is paying the debt. If you’re trying to win over the debtor, then the sacrifice has to be big and understandable. And if you’re God, Creator of heaven and earth, owner of everything, how can anything possibly be a sacrifice?

In my humble opinion, the cross does it perfectly. For you and for me, God scattered His glory with shards of skin and blood strewn through the streets, so that we may be gathered. This very act was the pinnacle of service. For you and for me, Jesus did that thing that he didn’t want to do. It embodied service, yes, but in a way that bled love, saying, “Forgive them…” as they gambled away his clothing.

For you and for me, Jesus believed. He believed all that His Father told Him, but also, He believed that it was worth it. My parents and Arian’s mom must have decided that it was worth it, too. But if they had not—if He had not—where would we be?

In the end, the debt has to be paid, but the goal isn’t to merely pay the debt. For God, paying the debt is just a nice consequence. The real goal is bringing the debtor back from the brink and into the Great Dance. So no matter how great the sacrifice or how long the wait or how heavy the burden, no risk is too great to achieve the realization of God’s plan for us.

Service. Love. Belief. Service. Love. Belief.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 14 & 15

Mark Chapter 9

Luke Chapter 11 through 13:21

John Chapters 9 & 10

CHAPTER 7

Step this Way

Jesus brought us a way that, in order to go up to join that Great Dance, we have to go down. This wasn’t a prescriptive way, but a demonstrative way. It is exactly what He did.

God sent Jesus the minute that humanity could bear this Good News, and, with Him, Jesus brought us three things. We’ll look at those three things over the next three chapters, but let’s start with the way right where you’d begin to share the Gospel: Haggai.

Really. Five hundred and twenty years before Jesus came, Haggai the prophet was hearing from and speaking for God to us. He was old and part of a small contingent that came back from Babylon to rebuild the temple after Babylon sacked it. During his ministry, he emphasized four things, but the third is especially relevant here.

I can hear you now: “Wait a minute… 500 years is a long time. A lot can change in that period of time.”

It didn’t. His message might have been delivered the day before Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem. Since the beginning of time, just as light always overcomes darkness (try as it may, even the darkest darkness cannot consume the faintest candle), when an unclean thing touches a clean/holy thing, the clean thing becomes unclean. No amount of cleanliness—not the high priest, not a holy sacrifice, nothing—could be clean enough that, when it came into contact with uncleanliness, it remained clean, much less could make the unclean item clean.

Haggai made a pronouncement on the people, saying that their sin had separated them from God. Even in the midst of that era’s most important work, their labor and role in accomplishing this great project did not excuse sin. Keep this in mind as we think about the way that Jesus brought us.

The first thing that Jesus brought us was a way.

From just after the beginning, there wasn’t a way for mankind to enter back into the presence of God. Eternal life was a bridge too far. There were multiple men whom God called faithful or righteous but, as sin laid upon sin, it became impossible for even those gifted with God’s Word (the prophets who heard from and loved God) to imagine a scenario where God could redeem anyone.

The best of them knew something about God. They knew that He wasn’t a tribal leader. They knew He wouldn’t take Israel, set them behind His back, and lay siege to nations that stood in Israel’s way, although He had certainly done that. They knew He was a God of the Law and of truth. That meant He would take Israel, and put all those behind His back that followed the Law and protect them from all who were in front of Him—those who wouldn’t follow the Law.

What scared them—what really put their backs into cries for repentance—was a realization that no one was left standing behind God. The entirety of humanity stood in front of God, within the path of His wrath.

So this way was no small thing. The fact that it was even possible when, for thousands of years, it had appeared impossible, is in itself a miracle. This way was ground breaking, because there was now a performance for God’s people to achieve what they never could previously under the Law.

This way was descriptive, not prescriptive. When you go to the doctor, he checks you out and says that, based on your symptoms, you need to take certain medicines. He prescribes a course of treatment for you because you need it. It would never dawn on you that the doctor should undergo a similar treatment, because he didn’t carry your symptoms. That’s a prescriptive way. A descriptive way says, “Watch me,” or “Do as I do,” or “Walk the walk I’m walking.”

Jesus’ descriptive way was this:

If you want to go up, you must go down.

If you want to be exalted, you must humble yourself.

If you want to be increased, you must be diminished.

If you want to realize righteousness, you must first realize your sin.

It was exactly the opposite of what they had in mind. Even today, we answer like they did 2,000 years ago: “Got it. Is there another option?” Mankind waited 4,000 years, suffering at the hands of sin and under the yoke of the law, only to come out the other side with this difficult command. It was hard then, and it is still hard today.

It was difficult then, because Jesus preached to religious rulers who came from 2,500-year Levitical dynasties. For 50 generations, some hung their significance and livelihoods on the backs of their fathers, who were all temple priests. That meant something. It meant that they got kind greetings from folks in the markets and the best seats in the temple. That was something about which they had been proud of for a very long time. Then along came a child, only 12 years old, to show them differently (or later a man from the countryside to tell them that a molester or scumbag was in line for heaven—ahead of them). That was tough to take. They figured they might be in line behind Moses and the prophets, but not far behind. Their focus had been to the extreme on their own righteousness for hundreds of years, but Jesus and John the Baptist came with another message—the same message: Repent.

This is just as hard for us today. There are two Americas. There is one America that is sound asleep within its own dream and fully realizing all the fruits that this country has to offer. It is the America about which Christmas carols and love songs are sung. Citizens of this America have jobs and retirement accounts. They buy plane tickets with about as much thought as movie tickets. They move to new cities for better opportunities and finance a lifestyle that fits their station in life. I’m part of this America. For those of us in this America, this way—Jesus’ way—is extremely difficult.

It is challenging because I can make 12 bad decisions and still not be down. My life, my choices, my family, and my environment all conspire to keep me up. My parents and in-laws love this, and I’m not saying it is bad to make good decisions. But when I am up, it is difficult to acknowledge God’s hand in these present circumstances and easy to consider them a fruit of my own labor.

There’s a second America. There’s an America that sits bolt upright nightly and unable to rest for a moment from the harshness of their reality. Keeping heat and food and bills at bay is a constant juggling act where releasing just one ball ends in catastrophic consequences. It might mean a return to addiction, jail, homelessness, or another broken promise to a child, but every day is met with challenge and vice. The bounty of those who live a few miles away is nothing more than a dream to residents of this second America. They buy groceries with the precision of a surgeon. Credit is beyond their reach and they get stuck, sometimes left, in cities that are entirely foreign to them. I’m part of this America, too, but as a visitor. When I’ve talked with those who live on the streets, I can see they have a quicker grasp on the Way.

They don’t have to walk two steps to go down. They wake up down. Their lives, choices, family, and environment all work with Six Sigma efficiency to keep them down. These are mothers, veterans, children, and entire families that live throughout this country and within your community and across every ethnicity. They wake up every day with no one to bear them up but Jesus.

Becca Stevens is a minister who has preached at our church with an incredible story. For years, she has selflessly run shelters in Nashville for women who have been assaulted by a culture of prostitution. She has an amazing ministry and story. She says, “If you want to see the face of Jesus, go to jail.”

I’ve seen this myself. If you’ve ever gotten a chance to really interact with homeless men—not just feed them or serve them—but just talk, introduce yourself, and ask them about their day, you’ll see something different from the conversations you have in the hallways at your church. I don’t have an exhaustive study or years serving the poor, but this anecdote is consistent each and every time I visit.

I know a group of real-estate men who love to cook. They’ve got all the great toys for chili and BBQ competitions, so they thought they could put that to use feeding the poor in downtown Atlanta each Saturday. I’ve volunteered with my family a few times. Once setup is complete, I typically just wander back and talk to the men who are standing in line. (Women are invited to the front of the line, so they’re always through before I can chat with them.) Every time I’ve walked that line, sharing bottled waters or coffee or just making small talk, I’ve had Jesus shared with me many times. Think of a guy who just bought a Ferrari and is sitting alone in a bar at three o’clock in the afternoon. These men are exactly like that—looking for any opportunity to talk about their great love.

I don’t mean to paint the picture that every homeless person is faithful and every churchgoer is not, but in that line, on any given Saturday morning, I’ll have more conversations initiated with me about the Gospel than I will in an entire month of idle chitchat at church. God is breaking out of them, bleeding out of their eyes, and they just love to share God’s message, despite their daily hardships.

Jesus models this.

The Creator of heaven and earth went down. It is unfathomable what the true cost was, but we know from history that God chose to send Jesus to Bethlehem in the womb of a virgin of no standing and into a family that was only able to make the minimum of sacrifice for the birth of the Son of God. They offered two young pigeons. He grew up not in the center of the world, but in a backwater town.

How hard must this have been? The Creator of the universe chose this way, this family, and this time to serve us. This lowest of circumstances is how God chose to show us we should go down. Over 33 years, Jesus continued that solemn march to the cross. He humbled himself so that He could be exalted. He scattered His power so that He could consolidate it. The realization of the purpose of man, to worship God, was finally achieved by Jesus’ humiliation at the hands of those for whom He died.

In the Great Dance, in heaven, this way is the step that we must learn to enter into the dance. It is the step of service—not just convenient service, but sacrificial service. It is a type of service that says, “How can I serve you?” or “How would you like to be served?” instead of “Here’s what I’m able to do for you,” or “I will serve you by…”

Consider this in the story of the leper in Mark 1.[132]

Leprosy was a terrible cocktail of problems for those afflicted with it. It is a physically debilitating disease, with bacteria entering the body and producing skin lesions that progressively and permanently damage the skin, nerves, and eyes, leaving the body open to secondary infections that can cause the skin to fall off and/or deteriorate painfully. The disease was untreatable and highly contagious.

Because of this, leprosy was socially debilitating, too. Mosaic Law dictated that those presented to the priest as having leprosy would be set aside from the people. Religious leaders, being who they were by the time of Jesus, had added several other laws to the heap. A leper couldn’t come within five miles of a Jew. A priest or citizen standing under a tree whose shade was breached by a leper became ceremonially unclean. Some have reported that babies will die without touch, but lepers were required to live without any human contact.

Lastly, it was spiritually debilitating, too. In those days, Jews came to the temple to worship, and being excluded from worship meant that they were excluded from God. For a leper, ceremonial uncleanliness permeated every inch of their lives.

Mark 1 shares the story of a leper, presumably a Jew. A Greek or Roman leper would have said, “…You can make me well,” but only a Jew would say, “…You can make me clean.” The leper knew that he needed more than healing; he needed to be made clean in the eyes of his community and in the eyes of God. He needed help that only Jesus could give him. So what did he do?

It is possible that Jesus was out in the country and away from all others at this point, but based on his success in Capernaum, it’s unlikely He was alone. Jesus was standing among those of the community when this leper made a mad dash for life. He came into the inhabited places, and to the feet of Jesus and begged Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” His actions broke all the rules, but what he said was even more scandalous.

He didn’t say, “You have to make me clean,” or “Make me clean so that I do not die,” because there is no question that others were preparing to strike dead this frontal assault on public health. He was really saying, “If You see fit to save me, I have risked everything to come to You. I won’t define my needs, but if You are willing, I respectfully ask that you make me clean. I have presented no conditions to my service to You. I have indeed risked everything in advance, and if You are willing…”

From this man, the leper, we get a picture of the way, the step that is required for the Great Dance, of unconditional service and how we can go down. How different is this from your walk to Christianity? What are the questions you get from friends considering coming to Jesus? “If I become a Christian, do I have to support…?” or “If I’m a Christian, can I still…?”

Essentially, we’re asking if Jesus can address our needs without too high a cost on our end. Those are the questions of someone who is up. The leper’s mad dash toward salvation is the action of someone who knows down, puts himself unconditionally at God’s service, and looks to God to meet whatever needs that God defines.

What does Jesus do? He feels compassion. He touches the leper. He heals him. He provides him salvation. We know from the Gospels that Jesus didn’t have to touch the leper to heal him. Jesus’ willingness to heal the leper[134] was His own and required neither touch nor compassion, but God doesn’t heal us that way. God heals us in the way we need to be healed. With His touch, Jesus healed the leper’s wounds, his estrangement from community and his heart.

Salvation, redemption, and community all in one.

Remember Haggai? For the first time, in all of history, something clean, the right thing, came into contact with something unclean, and the clean made the unclean become clean. It was a game-changer. Along the way, through the leper’s unconditional service, he reversed an ancient curse. Not only did the clean (Jesus) stay clean, but the unclean became clean.

Through Jesus, we can all become ceremonially clean, no matter what we’ve done.

Keller calls the leper’s dash and Jesus’ response of unconditional love scandalous. Jesus’ mission was literally to save the world by spreading His Word, but, because of the leper’s response to Jesus’ instructions, they trade places.

Jesus instructs him to tell no one, but the leper can’t help it. He tells everyone that he’s clean and no longer has to live in the hillside. Because of that, everyone wanted to see Him and Jesus can no longer enter a city.

Cities represent ease and comfort. It was where culture and religion and academia occurred, but for a leper, Jesus left the cities and met mankind in the unpopulated areas.

Jesus can’t become unclean, but for this man—one person below the bottom of the rung of society—Jesus lives the life of a man unclean and away from the cities. It is a picture of what also happens to Jesus three years later when, for men living in the world and within community, Jesus is dragged outside the city gate and onto the garbage dump. He is taken to the place of the lepers and made a pariah.

God showed us the Way through Jesus, He takes our uncleanness at an extreme cost onto Himself so that we will be forever clean.

Bruce Waltke, a famous Bible scholar, read the entire Bible looking at the idea of what it means to be righteous (to live justly in the world). He determined that the just or righteous are those who “are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the [unjust] are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”[136]

So where does this meet you today? Whether the world has you by the throat or you own half the city, what does it look like to go down and is it worth it to go up?

I’ve had a very real experience with this in September of 2012 with Jerry Leachman, a lover of Jesus and missionary on the ground in Washington, DC. Leachman ministers to men and came to Atlanta to speak to our church. I had the honor of taking him around and hearing every talk he gave in the city. Toward the end of our time together, some of the troubles facing our nation began to weigh on my heart.

For the first time, I really experienced the hopelessness of the hole we are digging. I saw, and almost experienced, that the only thing that can deliver our country was revival, and at the end of that weekend, I had a real thirst for it. I didn’t even begin to work out what revival looked like, but I had a fire in me for revival.

With a little research, I found that all major revival begins with true repentance. I came across Jesus’ first words of His ministry in Mark 1 and James 5.

With two brothers in Christ, we walked past the threshold of the sanctuary to repent. I’m not sure they were on board with repenting, and to be honest, I wasn’t either. I remember that, as I put one foot in front of the other, I thought of reasons why I really didn’t want to do this—things like, “I’ve been forgiven for these sins,” and “I don’t want them to know that,” and “Is this really that important?” But a moment later, I was at the altar, praying.

What came out of me started slowly but, over the coming minutes, I let loose the worst sins I had—things that I’d only shared with God. I was humiliated there, with my two friends, but I wanted God more. Like a leper dashing through the crowd, I could almost feel the blows to my carefully curated self—but then something incredible happened.

I felt the presence of God. He’d been there all the time, but something about this humbling, this running to the feet of God, risking a lot, and laying aside any condition to my service, revealed Him to me in a much fuller way.

I went down that day, and He bore me up.

Though my nation didn’t experience revival, I did. On that day, I felt a physical wrenching in me that I now consider an anointing. Three days later, I was given the vision that became this lesson. For me, this is what it looks like to go down, and yes. Yes. EXTREMELY, YES! It is worth it to go up.

I don’t know if this works for everyone, but it works for me. Each time I make that walk to repent of my sins of the week and any others that come onto my heart, with my brothers in Christ or another that I pull into a prayer room—every single time, my eyes are opened to the very real presence of God within that room. I don’t know if it will work for you. To be honest, I haven’t found anyone willing to try it again with a group, but it’s a big enough deal that I urge you to try it.

Wouldn’t that be just like God to have put His Kingdom within the reach of anyone willing to make that long walk down the aisle and earnestly repent as Jesus asked 2,000 years ago? Try.

Regardless of your results, there is blessing in this model. Find a way this week—whether it’s repentance or giving away some amount of money or time that you need or sharing something personal—to go down in sacrificial service to someone else and wait—no, expect—that if you do it for Christ, He will literally bear you up.

But do it like the leper, without any expectation or condition as to what that blessing will be.

I can’t wait to hear your results!

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 16 through 18

Mark Chapter 10

Luke 13:22 through Chapter 14

John Chapters 11 & 12

CHAPTER 8

Truth Beats Love

Jesus brought us the truth that religion won’t save us, that our works aren’t sufficient, and our thinking they are sufficient negates them, anyway. Until we understand what God did to give us the opportunity to enter the Great Dance, even our works push us farther from Him. The Gospel is that God sacrificed His most Precious out of love for me and, therefore, it’s my absolute pleasure to obey.

The second thing that Jesus brought us was a truth.

Within the context of the Great Dance, in Chapter 1, we drew a line between the beat of the dance and love. Love, sometimes termed grace, with its warm and fuzzy consequences, seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from truth, which is often associated with the law with all of its requirements and obedience. We must choose, mustn’t we, whether to enforce the law (truth) or to administer grace (love)?

No, in fact, we don’t have to choose. We will see throughout this chapter that when we choose between law and grace, or truth and love, we diminish and end up with a poor version of both. Jesus connected them in the specific truth He brought.

To whom did Jesus bring this truth?

What is this truth?

How can truth, mishandled, diminish our love?

How can truth and love work together as our Fundamental, a concept that we’ve discussed briefly but will fully work out here.

In those days, JESUS BROUGHT THIS TRUTH TO two major groups: the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees were more liberal in their faith. They got along to get along, and were more willing to conform to the greatest power of the day. Because of that, they held most of the lucrative government offices and the best jobs in the temple. They were among the wealthy class and looked more Greek and Roman than the typical Israelite.

They believed only in the Law contained in the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and rejected any other oral Law proposed by the Pharisees. Because the Torah contained little mention of life after death, they disregarded eternal life completely. This played out in their lives, as they were more likely to make decisions based on accommodating their present circumstances.

The Pharisees were the faith conservatives of the day—sort of. They spent a lifetime memorizing and trying to live by each and every one of the 613 Laws in the Bible. They followed the rules.

When you get serious about following 613 laws, and you lay thousands of years of human interaction over it, you develop some well-thought-out interpretations that turn into laws themselves. These new laws compound on top of each other until an already impossible law can become an obsession. These guys were sometimes wealthy, but typically were from the working class. Some that took pride in their ability to follow the rules, exclude others, or weigh down their brethren were regular foils in Jesus’ ministry. They would have looked extremely traditional.

They believed so strongly in a “world to come” and that the dead would be resurrected that failure to believe it as they did was one of the only three things that they thought would keep one from eternal life. Because of this, they were earnestly trying to earn reward and favor in this world to come. (A Pharisee didn’t quite see it as heaven, so for now, we’ll just refer to this as resurrection and eternal life.)

We have the same groups today. We may not be able to neatly stuff them into Republican and Democrat, rural or urban, lover or fighter—but we have pieces of each.

To be candid, I have been pieces of both.

I’ve been a Sadducee when I go along to get along—thinking that I’m doing good enough in this faith walk. I’ve changed my preferences toward the preferences of a client or a boss to make them like me. I have thrown out a coarse joke when it seemed appropriate or denied Christ when someone I want to impress also denied Him. I often looked, dressed, and acted like those that occupy this world, rather than those whom I am called to love. And I have made decisions that are convenient to my present circumstances, even when they result in a resounding “Atta boy” from the deepest evil. Jesus criticized the Sadducees, but they weren’t his focus. His most scathing commentary was for the Pharisees.

I have been a Pharisee, too. I’ve been a student of the Word, which Jesus loves, but I’ve also been a rule-follower. Jesus loves obedience, too, but when I’ve looked to others and felt superior to them or when God has asked me to help someone cut away something with a scalpel and I’ve used an ax, I’ve been a Pharisee. I have tried to earn God’s favor by obeying the rules I liked and failing to love. I’ve searched the Internet for a hair shirt. I’ve felt pride in things of God as if I’d been the one that initiated them. I have served others with a poor heart or hoped that others would see my labor and think better of me. I have judged others mercilessly.

Once you get outside yourself and begin to get serious about the Word, and start putting some action behind what you say you believe, there is an extreme risk of slipping into the trap of the Pharisees.

The risk is to get off the storyline of the Gospel—instead of curating it, we begin to interpret it and mold it around things that we can handle. We begin to say, “He couldn’t have meant that,” or, “How can that be true?” God leveled His greatest criticism against those that calcify here—that became hard in their conviction that their own works made them acceptable and their religion would save them. In the end, Pharisees 2,000 years ago and today build the Gospel around a set of rules they hope to achieve and encourage others to do the same.

WHAT IS THIS TRUTH? The truth that Jesus brought us is that our works will never save us and, if you believe they will, you’re doomed. Throughout all history, no man except One has been able to accomplish works that stand up to the Law. The standard is too high. In the 21st century, here’s how it plays out:

“Lord, I love You and I trust You. I obey all You tell me to do. I know that I take those additional deductions I didn’t earn and I know I yell at my _____________ and I know that I could have dealt differently with that person who’s against me, but hey. What else have Ya got? There is no one else in my _____________ that’s half as committed to You as I am. So, You’re welcome. And while we’re on the subject, I’ve got a few requests. I can’t wait to be with You and see You, but in the meantime, I need healthy _____________, and a good _____________ and how about throwing something in for me, too? You know what I like. Thanks. Amen.”[141]

But God, on the other end, says, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have something I need to tell you…” Yet he’s met by that long, loud dial tone of someone who has hung up to run off to work or carpool or _____________.

Our response leaves the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth sitting on the other end with fewer options than He had at the beginning of the discussion. Lay months upon months there and what choice does He have but to shake our very foundations? We know something of this God by now, don’t we? We know that He had the ability to snap His fingers and clear our accounts, but to do so would have been an insufficient amount of love and grace to win our hearts. Instead, of the simple solution, He chose love. God chose love for us, for His Son, and for the Holy Spirit in the way that love demanded it: the cross.

You know how this story progresses. Over time, because of our choices—choices that put other things in front of God in our hearts—we begin to lose these things (the healthy _____________, the good _____________, and the other pleasures). If your view of God is built on this—that I am accepted by God, because I obey—then whether you’ve actually drawn this out or not, you’re really saying that God owes you. It’s His end of the contract.

God owes you a good life, healthy kids, a loving/helpful spouse, a job, etc. And if He can’t (or doesn’t or won’t) provide those for you, then you’ll provide them for yourself.

I’ve taken a long time to get here, but the truth of Jesus turns this kind of thinking on its head. The truth is that He came to give us everything—to scatter His power, to become poor, to give up all glory, humbly—out of love for us. The truth is that when I recognize that, when that becomes my Fundamental, it is my absolute pleasure to obey.

When that truth goes deep into the center of our lives, things change.

I go from a guy ticking off 50 cents for every candy bar on a ledger like Ben Kingsley in a convenience store in House of Sand and Fog to Johnny Depp in Blow without the time to count transactions—I just weigh the money and put it in the spare bedroom. It goes from minutiae to Niagara. When the fact that the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth came down to climb on a cross to be shredded and torn for me becomes my Fundamental, it is my absolute pleasure to obey in everything—things big and small.

Instead of obedience being a chore that keeps me from what I’d really like to be doing, my love courses through this fundamental truth, drives my obedience and replenishes my love. Like a heart beats blood, my truth beats love, pushing it into all corners of my life.

But the truth doesn’t automatically work that way in our lives, does it? For most of us, our central truth (not God’s truth or law, but the laws by which we live) doesn’t grow our love and pleasure to obey. Our obedience is a furnace for which we earnestly search every corner of the house looking for any small bit of love to keep it running just a little bit longer. How can it become our pleasure to obey?

Before we look at this, let’s examine two parables Jesus shared to explore HOW TRUTH, MISHANDLED, DIMINISHES OUR LOVE.

Two men, a rich young ruler and a lawyer, approach Jesus and ask him nearly identical questions. They’re both weighing Jesus and trying to decide whether they should consider Him worthy to follow or instead begin a list of reasons to hate Him.

“What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

How you respond to Jesus’ answer to this question determines the tune your truth beats to. Does your truth beat love or does your truth beat hate, jealousy, comparison, rules, freedom, self…

Luke 10 is the only Gospel to report this incredible story of the Good Samaritan. It is so fundamental to our teaching that every child in Sunday school knows and can tell you the story.

Let me set the stage:

In that time, a lawyer wasn’t like we might think of one today. His expertise was in Mosaic Law and, so he acted kind of like an arbiter and judge for faithful men when they got into a dispute or when they just wanted to know how something should be interpreted.

Christians have gotten away from this today but, for centuries, those seeking to be faithful to God would seek out wise counselors, like this lawyer, to tell them what is acceptable in a specific situation. The faithful Jew would lay out the facts and pose a question, then the lawyer would mine his extensive canon of mostly memorized Scripture and make a ruling.[142]

In this parable, the lawyer stands and asks the question perfectly. He doesn’t ask, “What shall I do to EARN eternal life?” No, he uses the word “inherit.” See the difference? Want to earn a fortune? Get an education. Get a job. Save a lot of money and then take some big risks—maybe six in a row—and then, maybe, you’ll earn a fortune.

Want to inherit a fortune? If this option is even available to you (by being born into the right family), then there’s one thing you’ve got to do: Don’t mess up. At this point, the lawyer’s looking good to the crowd—but Jesus sees his heart.

Jesus then turns the question back on him, but the lawyer was ready.

Perhaps the lawyer had heard Jesus’ teaching and just parroted it back to Him, or it could have been a significant part of the teaching at the time. Either way, His response is profound, because it draws together two different scriptures from the depths of the Torah.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind,” is a close interpretation of the Shema.[145] The collection of verses called the Shema were of critical importance to Judaism by 100 A.D. and is still contained within Phylacteries (or Tefillin) and the Mezuzah outside Jewish homes today. They are the John 3:16 of Judaism.

“And [love] your neighbor as yourself,” is a little more problematic. It also comes from the Torah, but is buried in the middle of Leviticus 19 under the (much later-given and only in Protestant Bibles) title “Sundry Laws.” Called the greatest commandment by Christ (Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31) and quoted by Paul (Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14) and James (2:8), it comes after some good rules for living and before guidelines on mixed breeding of cattle, seed, and clothing fibers.[147]

This Law wasn’t written on a tablet and brought down the mountain. Jesus and this lawyer pick these two scriptures out as two that define all Scripture and a roadmap to inherit eternal life.

Don’t mess it up.

The lawyer got the answer he was seeking: Good job—do that and you’ll get eternal life. Yes. Thank you. But, instead of stopping there, he pressed on.

Justify.

Jerry Leachman taught me that the word justify should be thought of as, “just as if I’d never…” or to settle accounts. When I owe AmEx $500, they will pursue me until I pay it, but once I pay it, the account has been justified, settled, made just as if I had never incurred the debt. They’re not mad at me. The account is paid.

What does Luke tell us that the lawyer is trying to do? He was trying to settle his own account—to justify himself. Standing in front of Jesus, he had been promised that he would inherit eternal life if he held to just two laws. The lawyer, in one beat, decided he would try to earn it. His truth marched to the beat of self, action, performance, and getting things done.

What comes next is that story that we all know: the Good Samaritan. As background, it’s important to know who these characters represent in our current world. The man isn’t really identified. Scholars speculate that this man was Jewish, but others suggest that he represents all of mankind.[149] A priest is a preacher or associate minister—a holy man. If you’re active in your church, the Levite would have been one of us. In those times, he was of a special class that performed jobs around the temple, but today he would have been the guy on the finance committee, member of a Sunday school class, administrative board chair, or some lay person with a role in the church and doing some work there. The Samaritan was considered scum. When Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel in 586 B.C., he took all the best families to Babylon, as was his custom. Those that remained were the lowest level workers. According to the elite sojourning in Babylon, Samaritans couldn’t run the place and certainly didn’t know the right way to pursue God.

The time in Babylon steeled the “good” guys and made them even madder when they returned to see the remnant Samaritans, now intermarried with some locals who moved in to fill the void—and were just as proud of their heritage in the land of Israel as the returning Israelite. Over the next 600 years, Samaritans and Jews fought like only brothers can. It was a long and dirty feud fed by militant Greek occupation, like gasoline feeds a fire. Conservatively, Jews hated Samaritans and the feeling was mutual.

Consider Jesus’ question, “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man?” while we look at the next person, the rich young ruler in Mark 10, who asked this same question. It’s the same exact wording, except this rich young ruler added the salutation, “Good Teacher,” instead of the lawyer’s, “Teacher.”

Jason Lin suggested in a sermon that this addition to an already auspicious title was fawning, essentially trying to flatter Jesus—and He was having none of it. Jesus gave the same initial answer that He had given the lawyer: “Obey.”

If the rich young ruler had my Dad, he would have said, “Thank you. You are correct, sir.” Jesus wouldn’t have let that stand, though, because, “looking at him, Jesus felt love for him…” Love.

This prideful ruler, who chased after Him, fell at His feet and begged that the question we all pose deserved an answer, so Jesus gave him a different one. While He had told the lawyer to go and care for neighbors that hate him (or at least that he hated), this time, He told the ruler to sell all he had.

Here in the stories of the lawyer and the rich young ruler, we have two who submit to the Law, but fail to connect it to their love. Instead of obeying because they love, they obey in order to be accepted. They hold their loves separate from the Law.

Let’s look at this a little closer and see HOW TRUTH AND LOVE CAN FUNDAMENTALLY WORK TOGETHER. How can we connect our hearts’ greatest love to fuel our obedience to the truth that Jesus affirmed?

First, notice how Jesus, in perfect wisdom, provided answers specific to each man, but also gave the same answer. The answer was to obey out of your love. Jesus told them to obey in the big things and to obey in the small things, but also to obey in the circle of things that each man considered impossible.

Both men were disheartened, because they were focused on themselves and didn’t see the others around them. When their obedience was fueled by their own needs, the level of obedience Jesus demanded was impossible. But when obedience is fueled by love, this type of obedience becomes a pleasure.

Let’s look just below the surface in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest was headed away from Jerusalem into Jericho. The road is a 17-mile descent of about 3,300 feet—from the highest point in the area to the lowest point then known. It is treacherous and signifies a walk from heaven into hell. If the priest had touched that man, not because of nationality but because of his open wounds, he would have become ceremonially unclean. Since the ceremony would have happened in Jerusalem, it is not clear what relevance becoming unclean actually had to the priest, but it would have put him out of service for a period of time. The same goes for the Levite, but here, we’re given no indication whether the Levite is ascending or descending. He is just going.

Their role within society is critical for these two characters. They were seen as the manifestation of piety and religious duty—their actual job was to serve God. If they were coming and going—whether ascending to or descending from Jerusalem—it was implied that they were in service to God, and yet their service lacked any love for this man.

How many times have I been en route to a Bible study and passed someone homeless or stranded on the side of the road? Does my obedience drive my love or does my love propel my obedience?

Said another way, in my heart, does the Law give me a way to prop up what I really love, or does my love push me to greater service through obedience to the Law? One leads to burnout, comparison, hatred, and standing outside of your father’s party, cursing him. The other may look to the world like the same thing, but instead of obedience diminishing you, feeling like a chore, or draining you, it becomes a spring of love that replenishes—a veritable fountain overflowing with water that runs through the streets and quenches the thirst of a city.

When the lowly Samaritan comes, everything changes because, “he felt compassion.” He picked up someone that hated him and sacrificed his time and his provisions for this stranger. He proved to be a neighbor.

The Samaritan’s truth beat love—his truth, obedience, and the law of his heart didn’t run on rules and wasn’t built to sustain another set of hidden loves. His truth was powered by his love. To the lawyer, Jesus’ request, in that moment, was impossible. The lawyer’s hate for his neighbor was so great that he couldn’t even say the name Samaritan—he called him, “the one who showed mercy toward him.”

Sa-mar-i-tan. It’s pretty easy to say, but his truth beat a hatred so strong or he’d grown a pride so large that he couldn’t even name the hero of this parable.

The rich young ruler, whom Jesus loved, got his answer—a true answer, which was evidence enough that his truth beat luxury or wealth or security or significance. In the presence of the Lord of the universe, he chose his stuff.

I’ve been there and I can tell you, when you get back home and look around at all that things you put in front of Jesus, it all looks like junk, anyway.

These parables are ironic twists in a much larger Gospel story. Jesus was asking these two men to do the same impossible things that He was actually doing in their midst. This ancient story is one of an extremely wealthy man with centuries of reasons to be angry and with the ultimate credibility.

He travels across the universe into the land of those who hate Him. He reduces Himself by epic proportions in a Great Dance of Service. He keeps the commandments—all of them—perfectly in the Spirit that they were given and He is very good. He gives His time and treasure to the poor, but what He gives them is so much more than that—at a cost that is unspeakable. He loves God with every fiber of His being and exceeded Leviticus 19:18—finding the one narrow path toward loving His neighbor more than Himself.

And as this man ascended toward Jerusalem, Jesus was there before the priest. When the robbers lunged for the man, Jesus stood in his place, and took the beating. And as the man scurried away, and the priest moved to the other side of the road and the Levite passed by, Jesus knew that even though each one hated Him, it was His absolute pleasure to endure. Jesus’ truth beat love like a heart beats blood.

Jesus didn’t throw these parables around lightly. These parables told His great story, the Gospel story, to men who were reading from their own story, the wrong story. These parables were an opportunity for the scales to fall from our eyes and see the man that stands before them.

These parables aren’t just examples. They were being lived out, in real time by Jesus Whose truth and love connected seamlessly into acts of service.

So how can this connection become our Fundamental?

Keller told a story[159] pretty soon after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, when the news media was full of pundits suggesting the real problem with the world was religious fundamentalism. Keller said that one night he heard his wife, Kathy, answer the pundits, “Well, it matters what your Fundamental is.”

Your Fundamental is that thing at the center of your heart around which everything else orbits. It is the thing that you think about 10 or 100 times a day. It is that thing that you write books about in the form of checks and calendars. It is that thing that you plant and sow and, eventually, reap in your life. If that happens to be hatred and a feeling of superiority, then it’s not too big a leap to consider flying a couple of planes into a building.

What is your Fundamental? You probably have a good idea what it is, but here’s a way to confirm it. Think about the last time you walked into a room and felt less than everyone else there. They might have been richer, prettier, better dressed, more powerful, better athletes, or thinner. Hold that picture in your mind. Or, think about the last time you were in danger. Maybe you were in danger of losing your job, your house, a loved one, a child, your retirement—or maybe someone literally put a gun in your face.

Where you go next is your Fundamental. If you say, “Yeah, but I’m from a better family than all these folks,” or “I’m OK, I’ve got a nest egg socked away,” or “Yeah, but I drive a Mercedes.”

Where you go next when your significance or security are threatened is your Fundamental.

And when that Fundamental is that the all-powerful Creator of the universe came down from heaven at an unbelievable cost to break and tear His greatest love, because He loved you—when that becomes the center of your heart—then your heart switches over, love compels your service, and it is your absolute pleasure to obey.

But how do we do that? What does it look like to begin anew? Start with three things: a request, a warning, and a burial.

Start by asking God to increase your love. Earnestly pray for it and repent of those things that have muted it in your heart.

Remember the story of our trip to FAO Schwartz? We wanted to get our children a special toy there, but they needed to want it, too. This is like that. If you ask God for love, He will give it to you, because He’s dying for you to have it. In fact, He has already paid for it, and all you have to do is choose it—to want it more than whatever your hand is clutching right now. With all the poetry you can muster, or even with a groan, reach up to God and ask Him to send His Spirit into your heart and to increase your love. Then, as you rise from prayer, walk out into the world as if your love has been exponentially increased. Even before you can see that it has, assume that God has loosened a wellspring of love within your heart.

C. S. Lewis talks about this at length:

Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That’s why children’s games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown-ups—playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretense of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.

Now the moment that you realize, “Here I am, dressing up as Christ,” it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality. You will find several things going on in your mind, which would not be going on there if you were really the Son of God. Well, stop them. Or you may realize that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash up. Well, go and do it.

… There are lots of things which your conscience might not call definitely wrong (specially things in your mind) but which you will see at once you cannot go on doing if you are seriously trying to be like Christ.

This prayer, assumption, and acting requires a warning: Jesus’ truth to the lawyer and the rich young ruler were extremely costly to each. Jesus’ love to us was costly. Any parent’s love, if properly gifted to a child, is extremely expensive.

Yet somewhere along the way, we have decided that personal responsibility is our neighbor’s job and doesn’t have to cost us a thing.

This even applies to the church, which is often outspoken about issues for which their stand on truth costs them little. Earnest churches have campaigned against accurate readable translations of the Bible, women’s suffrage, abolition, civil rights, and other issues today—for which their stand on truth cost them nothing—while overlooking their own contribution (read: sin) to the issue entirely.

Society is no better. In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, those with no interest in owning or having a firearm see a solution in gun control. Those who own firearms but have no immediate connection to anyone who is mentally ill believe all can be solved by focusing on mental health. And those with children dealing with anti-social behaviors say we should not be too quick to point to a certain type of child as the problem. Somewhere along the way, we have decided that personal responsibility is our neighbor’s job.

When we look past our own obvious sin to shine a light on the sin that we will never commit, we manipulate the Gospel. When we develop solutions to problems that lay the burden of compliance on our neighbors, we choose the lesser love of the lawyer. When we choose to focus our congregations on issues that do not affect our lifestyles in any way, we choose the rich young ruler’s wealth over God.

The antidote to this is God’s love letter to man. Sold more than any other book in history, the Bible is now universally available—and nearly unread in most of the developed world. Christians purport to build a life on it, but don’t even bother to read it.

The Bible is the window to God and steady plodding through it, a chapter a day to start, will provide the protection and wisdom you need to avoid trouble as you move out into the world with love.

Finally, you must bury the cross deep within your heart. Read and work though the Gospels and this sacrifice until it melts you. Imagine what it must have been like to stand in Jerusalem. How did the blood of Jesus, mixed with dirt and sweat, smell? How did it feel to stand by and see 400 pounds of wood and flesh drop nine inches into the groove that had been cut to hold it?

There are innumerable ways to make this real to you, but draw close to the image of Adam, lifeless but held tenderly, and then the hot breath of God entering into His nostrils. It took days for God to create the world, and thousands of years for Him to fix it. From that first breath to Jesus’ last, the Creator of the universe loved you in the most costly way anyone has ever seen. And the truth is, that even if everyone else had been spotless, He loved you enough to make the same choice of sacrifice, even while you waged rebellion against Him.

When the fact that an all-powerful God of heaven and earth became a seed and was torn for you—when that becomes your Fundamental truth, then it is your absolute pleasure to obey.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 19 & 20

Mark Chapter 11

Luke Chapters 15 & 16

John Chapters 13 & 14

CHAPTER 9

Tune into Life’s Belief

Jesus brought us a life—His life. He left all He had ever known, all eternity in communion with God, to come to earth and be rejected by His Father for us. Could God have done it another way? I’m sure He could have—but this sacrifice was the sacrifice that WE demanded. How else could He demonstrate the depth of His love? The blood on the cross settled the accounts, but the resurrection was the receipt showing the debt was fully paid.

The prospect of writing this chapter frightens me.

Jesus brought us a way, and a truth. But He also brought us a life—His life. To weave a tapestry together of the ministry of Jesus seems a mountain too tall, but the path back looks even more treacherous. So buckle your chinstraps. This chapter is longer than the previous ones, but is central to the Gospel. Let’s begin with a review.

Chapter 1 gave us a new perspective on our role in the Cross. In the vision of heaven that we created in Chapter 2, we likened it to a heaving, pulsating, all-encompassing and fulfilling the Great Dance. Chapters 3-6 connected the lines between the Fall, the prophets, and some of the most difficult passages in the Bible.

In Chapter 7, we explored the way that Jesus brought and equated it to the step a dancer must learn in order to participate in any dance. We drew that line toward our call to master sacrificial service here in the world.

In Chapter 8, we explored the truth that Jesus brought and likened it to the beat of the dance and the importance that we all have in feeling that lifeblood of humanity—love. We connected this love to our joy toward obedience in the truth of Scripture—the Law.

This chapter feels bigger. I’m not sure what you call a step and beat without a tune, but it probably isn’t a dance. That’s exactly how critical this part is to the faith of any Christian. Without the tune, service and love, ways and truths, steps and beats, God and Jesus become something else entirely. The two require a third.

In the words of Nathan Arizona, Sr., owner of Unpainted Arizona, “Eight hundred leaf-tables and no chairs? You can’t sell leaf-tables and no chairs. Chairs, you got a dinette set. No chairs, you got [jack]…”[170]

No, the two require a third. In this chapter, we will draw out this third part of the Great Dance, and the most important of the three for each individual. We’ll look at the life that Jesus gave us, connect it to the tune of the Great Dance, and show how here, in the world, we honor Him and accept salvation through our belief.

To do this, we’ll look at this in three sections: why believe, does the object of our belief matter, and what to believe.

First, WHY BELIEVE? The easiest answer is that we believe because the Bible requires it over and over. Click here and read through scripture from Genesis through the beginning of Acts, detailing some of the 259 instances that the word “believe” or “believed” is translated in the Bible—221 of them occur in the New Testament. Read through these periodically, looking for the promises that belief in Jesus brings. What does it say that failing to believe brings?

These are some of the biggest verses in the Bible. We know them, memorize them, and can quote them. But collected together, laid out like this, we get a clear view of the importance that God puts on our belief and clues of it from right near the beginning.

Abraham believed and it mattered. He became the father of a nation, and this wealthy, landless drifter became greater than any conqueror to come.

Pharaoh didn’t believe the signs Moses brought to him, and he lost his life and the lives of many in his kingdom and household because of it.

Israel, in slavery, believed and they were led out of Egypt.

David believed and it saved him from despair.

God promised Isaiah, in the midst of turmoil, that while his people were scattered and buffeted, that He would send a Rock and that everyone who believed in it would not be disturbed.

The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they were spared the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Centurion believed and his servant was healed.

Blind men believed that Jesus could heal them, and because of that, He did. Other men led children who believed away from their belief, and then wished they hadn’t.

The least in a society believed, and that belief moved them to the front of the line for the Kingdom of God. The greatest in a society flaunted their unbelief, and will regret it for all time.

To those who believe, all things are promised by One who can actually deliver. The rewards of belief are offered to those who have yet to see—salvation awaits them. Those who wait until they see lose the opportunity to believe.

God blesses those who believe.

Those who fail to root their belief will not be saved and fall away.

Jesus came so that all might believe and, through that belief, we might become His brother, a fellow child of God.

Through Jesus, we have the opportunity to enter into eternal life, by way of belief. Our belief saves us from judgment that is laid up against all who fail to believe. It testifies to our love of God in the same way that unbelief testifies to our love of the darkness.

Many that would have called Jesus an enemy changed their hearts and believed. But others refused, even when presented with the physical presence and miracles of Jesus. They held tight to another Fundamental.

Our belief will feed and fill or starve and destroy us in ways we cannot imagine.

As we continue with this discussion, look back to the long list of Scripture in notes 171 (or 179) as a consistent reminder that God honors and promises much to those who believe. See how it reinforces that there is no greater message conveyed than the importance of belief. Christians believe because there is no alternative.

For the rest of the world, they must believe for the same reason. There is no alternative to belief for them, either. Atheists, nihilists, agnostics, and the lot all believe in something. Man has a hole in his heart and spends a lifetime looking for something big enough to fill it.

Even those focused on survival (say, in war) or those determined to waste their lives (maybe filling it with television or drugs) hang their belief on something. In fact, in life, there is no escaping belief, and whether one curates, criticizes, or just ignores their own, there is no alternative to belief.

Every one of us believes—something.

So DOES THE OBJECT OF OUR BELIEF MATTER?

Yes, it matters more than anything else one can choose.

In 1862, Victor Hugo published Les Misérables, the complex story of love, redemption, and grace. In it, he traced a large cast of extremely complex (fictional) characters over 30 years in pre-revolutionary France.

Jean Valjean, the main character, is released after being imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s dying son. The world, he finds, has no tolerance for convicts. He is shown grace by a priest and eventually repents for all he had done and become, takes a new identity, and makes a prosperous life.

Inspector Javert, the antagonist in the story, was born in prison to gypsy parents and clawed his way up through the police force ranks to a successful life on the strength of his own fierce belief in French justice. He knew Jean Valjean in prison, and after violating parole, Inspector Javert gives chase across France for years. The genius of Hugo’s work is that both Jean Valjean, the repentant criminal, and Inspector Javert, the zealous keeper of the law, are likable.

In a dramatic twist, the tables are turned and Jean Valjean is tasked with killing Javert. Doing so would erase his own crimes forever and protect those he loved, but he doesn’t do it. Jean Valjean spares Javert’s life. Later, when Inspector Javert has the prisoner within his grasp, the inspector shows uncharacteristic mercy and lets Jean Valjean go free.

This twists the honor-bound inspector fiercely. He walks the streets of Paris and onto a bridge over the Seine River wracked with grief over his decision. On one hand, Jean Valjean needs to be turned over to the authorities, but on the other hand, the grace Javert had been given demands another thing. This hurts Inspector Javert because it puts a criminal above the law and puts himself under the galley and that just cannot be. Finally, Inspector Javert comes to this:

…He asked himself: “What has that convict done, that desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has had me under his foot, and who could have avenged himself, and who owed it both to his rancor and to his safety, in leaving me my life, in showing mercy upon me? His duty? No. Something more. And I in showing mercy upon him in my turn — what have I done? My duty? No. Something more. So there is something beyond duty? Here he took fright; his balance became disjointed; one of the scales fell into the abyss, the other rose heavenward, and Javert was no less terrified by the one which was on high than by the one which was below.”[172]

For the first time, Inspector Javert saw that being good was not enough. Earlier in the story, Inspector Javert tried to resign to his superior for a mistake he'd made, but now, seeing his error prosecuting a fallible French Law, how was he to hand in his resignation to God? Inspector Javert was touched by God and he saw that the Gospel was contrary to the law that he had built a life upon. Everything was in vertigo.

Within a few pages, Inspector Javert takes his own life, plunging into the Seine.

This is an extreme example, but when one’s Fundamental is based on something that can prove untrue, one risks the crumbling of his foundation. Inspector Javert built a house on the foundation of French law. That doesn’t sound like a terrible thing to build a foundation upon, but when the rains came and he realized there was a higher law than French, he was dismantled.

It matters what you believe.

Flannery O’Conner was a young, southern American, gothic writer and National Book Award winner, who died at the age of 39. In her short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, O’Conner paints a picture of a hardened criminal, called “The Misfit,” who takes a family hostage on a country road. As all sorts of unspeakable atrocities are taking place against the family, the self-righteous grandmother tries to talk her way out of things. When things get entirely hopeless:

… [the grandmother] found herself saying, “Jesus, Jesus,” meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sound as if she might be cursing.

“Yes’m,” The Misfit said as if he agreed. “Jesus thrown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me… Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead.” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said, and his voice had become almost a snarl.

Javert had a great deal of belief in the wrong thing, and it was his undoing. But The Misfit slices the issue cleanly—believe in what Jesus did, or do not. This may seem like a line drawn too finely between good and evil, but—without Jesus and the sacrifice that He brought, without the call to obey from our great Creator, without the promise of eternal life—is it? Is The Misfit really that far off base?

If Jesus didn’t do what He said He did, then what’s to keep each and every one of us from following our own greatest pleasure at all times?

One might say yes, but in order for society as a whole to experience the greatest pleasure, we should come together to form rules for ethical living. The peace of the community is an ultimate goal, right?

Nope.

Who erected community peace as a goal? Without a set of standards that are above my own—the law, say—then each individual has no requirement to adhere to them. A group could break off, and decide that they want to live under a set of rules to benefit the community; but in the absence of the Law written on their hearts, the minute that one of the rules is counter to the individual, community begins to unravel. Before you know it, there’s “nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.”

Well, there was law before Jesus, you’d say, and failure to believe in Jesus doesn’t mean that we slide back into anarchy.

Yes, it does.

The Intertestamental Period, which we discussed earlier, is an example of just how bad things can get. By 332 B.C., Alexander conquered Israel, and within the next nine years took most of the known world. Instead of leaving a will, when he was asked who should preside over his kingdom, Alexander replied, “To the strongest.” Then he died.

What ensued was a 300-year cage match fought in Jerusalem. Alexander’s generals (and their descendants) didn’t have the Law of Moses, but Israel did. Jews tried their best to keep it across a spectrum defined by two different poles:

The first group leaned into it, trusted in it, developed institutions for interpreting it, separated themselves from others who didn’t, memorized the Word of God voraciously, and judged each other harshly depending upon their ability to creatively adhere to it. These folks eventually became known as Pharisees.[175]

The second group went along to get along, found or bought themselves into the great positions in the temple, flourished in trade, and lived with a focus on excellence in the world—as in “no life after death”—and codified what they considered the heart of the law to which they would (mostly) adhere. These came to later be called the Sadducees (see the beginning of Chapter 8—Truth Beats Love).[176]

Before either group claimed that name, a priestly family, fed up with Greek rules, staged the Maccabean Revolt.

When a Greek general attempted to force an elderly Mattathias Maccabee to sacrifice a pig, Mattathias basically said, “If everyone else in the universe does this, I and my five sons will still walk with God.”

When another villager stepped forward to sacrifice the pig, Mattathias killed him, and the general and Mattathias pulled down the altar.

For the next 98 years, the Maccabees alternated between a Seal Team 6 counter-government organization seeking freedom from Greek rule and rulers of Jerusalem and Judah (whose victories are so incomprehensible, they must have been divine).

Sounds great, right? The law is enough. If we all just follow the law, then we’ll get along fine. There’s no reason for “killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him,” right?

Well, that’s exactly what the Maccabees did. Toward the end of their rule, in the same way that the Greek generals had forced Hellenization (Greek culture, language, and religion) on Jews, Maccabean rulers like John Hyrcanus forcibly converted non-Jews in Israel under penalty of death. Toward the end of their rule, power corrupted them to such an extent that they looked more like Greek rulers than the Pharisees that initially supported them.[177]

Invariably, throughout the history of the Bible, man’s inability to keep the Law proved that the law alone—the law without belief in something greater than ourselves—was insufficient to keep us good. And if the law is insufficient, then when you or I come to the end of it—when the law and our will are intractably at odds, without belief in something great enough, “then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can.”

It matters what you believe.

I hear you. These are all some pretty committed folks. In Inspector Javert, The Misfit, and the Maccabees, I have brought together a high-octane group of achievers who have committed to a path and followed it with gusto.

The problem here is the gusto. The rest of us aren’t like them, are we? Surely we can manage with a few low-level Fundamentals without any of them having to crowd the other out, send us on a killing spree, forcibly convert a neighbor, or attempt suicide. Moderation in all things, right? We can be reasonable.

But can we? Before we go on, reread the extremely important scriptures visited early in the chapter that show the promise and perils of belief.

Inspector Javert was complacent in his single-mindedness until the moment that Jean Valjean released him. “Up to that moment he had lived with that blind faith which gloomy probity engenders. This faith had quitted him, this probity had deserted him. All that he had believed in melted away.”[180]

In other words, it hit him quickly.

The Misfit killed, because of his realization that, without belief in Jesus, there wasn’t much more for him to do than whatever he wanted. When we split our Fundamental, it takes us longer, but sooner or later, our preferences for the other or others becomes intractable with our belief in Jesus.

Like Adam in the Garden, we may hold out for a day or a thousand days, but there’s a reason that our Fundamental is split. Sooner or later, we will murder for the other.

The Misfit, for all of his moral shortcomings, lived a life of integrity—his lowly actions were in line with his smallish morals. At some point in his life, he realized that his pleasure and Jesus’ message were at odds, and he made a decision. However we hate his actions, there is a short list of those whose actions in the world can so closely align with their own truths.

The Maccabees likely never noticed the point at which their service to the law and to God began serving their hatred of the Greeks.

The fact is that it matters what you believe—more than you can possibly imagine. Scripture confirms that it is of eternal importance, and by the time you need it, it’s too late to develop it. Whether you end up believing in something as deeply as Inspector Javert did, or getting as honest as The Misfit did, or wielding as much power as the Maccabees did, the fact is that you will need belief prior to death. Even if you don’t, belief is the only thing that you’ll take with you through death. When the time comes, what you believe matters.

So if we have laid out a case that everyone believes, and what we believe is of utmost importance, then the discerning reader sees that I have painted myself into a corner. It would be completely disingenuous for me to skip over here with a comment like, “Now we must each determine what to believe for ourselves, or to paint a picture of the cross on your heart.”

I’ve paved the road this far, and honestly, I’m exhausted. I thought that the end of this topic was just ahead, but now I realize (or maybe always knew) that to complete this journey, a wide canyon must be bridged. And I am the least of these to span it.

IN WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE? I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but we have navigated the Gospel Story pretty well so far on experience and heart. We’ve avoided many of the unknowable theological issues that have plagued theologians for thousands of years and stuck to the fundamentals of the story, but that is only sufficient for so long. After a while, each of us has to decide, “What do I believe?”

THE APOSTLES’ CREED

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried;

the third day he rose from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and sitteth at the right hand of the Father Almighty.

from thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Apostles’ Creed is one of those biblical traditions that has been around for a long time. Earliest records of it showed up in the first century around the time that the book of John was written. It has been changed, augmented, and edited over time, but it remains today as the central core of belief in Christianity and is read in churches around the world, in hundreds of languages, millions of times per week.

We profess it in church, and even those that don’t actually believe it will stand and state their belief in the Apostles’ Creed in front of the very altar of God.

So without taking away even the smallest word of that great Creed, I found that the theology of it and my lack of education left me feeling like a fraud. For this kind of belief—core, fundamental belief—I lean into the Gospel.

As Christians, we’re called to believe the story of the Gospel. Keller gives a few great reasons that the Gospels must be true. First, they were written too soon after Jesus’ death for the accounts to be fabricated. Scholars differ on when they were written, but of the spectrum of dates, Matthew is probably the earliest Gospel written. The earliest estimated date of the writing of Matthew is 37 A.D. and most believe that since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. is absent in all four Gospels, it proves they were written prior to that date. All credible historians believe that all four Gospels were completed by 100 A.D.[182]

If someone was going to fabricate an account or change a man’s life to fit an agenda, it would be necessary to publish it after all the eyewitnesses had died off or didn’t care. The Gospels were written much too early to serve an agenda other than the truth.

Second, the use of details that don’t necessarily contribute to the storyline has been prevalent in fiction for the last 300 years, but prior to 1700, this type of literary form was completely non-existent. For one to believe that the Bible was written as fiction, one would have to believe that this literary style dropped into the hands of four liars around the turn of the century, permeated their four books, and did not appear again for 1,500 years.

Third, the Gospels were much too damaging to Christianity to have been fabricated. When the pillar of the church, Peter, denies Christ, that doesn’t further an agenda—it begins another conversation. When Jesus censures his family, that doesn’t play well for an audience that values family as its source of identity.

Lastly, most of the disciples died terrible deaths. Even if 12 (or really hundreds of) men could gather together to settle on a lie or a handful of half-truths, how many would die for it? Yet hundreds did. Other examples exist, too.

We must believe that God, the Father, created heaven and earth in community with Jesus, His only born Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is something that we discussed at great length in Chapter 1. If you’re still not clear, reread portions of those chapters for clarification.

We must believe that God created man out of love and for the purpose of loving and worshipping Him within the community of heaven—what we’ve called the Great Dance. Love cannot exist with one person. In order to love, one must have another. If God, alone, created man, then His center wouldn’t have been love. He still could have created us to love and worship Him, but for God to be love, and for Him to create us out of love, there must have been Three.

If every breath of Scripture from Creation through the cross and on to Revelation reinforces God’s purest love for us, the essence of His being, we are assured of our unique purpose.

We must believe that because of our sin, we have been separated from God and the Great Dance, but that finding our way back is our greatest desire. Each of us is born with the Law written on our heart and so we feel guilt when we sin. Just like a child who has made a mistake and is full of shame runs away from the presence of her father, we sin and turn from God. What we turn toward makes the separation even greater.

But it is critical that we, created out of Love, realize our heart’s greatest desire is to enter into community with Him. Sacrificial service covered in love built on a foundation of belief fills us here on earth and propels us to the ultimate goal of direct, experiential communion with God.

We must believe that in each of us rests the ability to follow Him and thirst for the righteousness that He gives or the ability to turn from Him and deny God’s presence in our lives. Inside each and every one of us is that ember to be like Abel and to live a life fully committed to God, to reach upward and join the ranks of those who couldn’t not enter into the Great Dance. But the truth is that, to become one who can’t not, one must choose that path, protect that ember, and grow it into a roaring, eternal flame. If the line between good and evil is drawn through men’s hearts, we must choose which side to feed and which side to starve.

We must believe that even through hardship in this world, God’s plan for our lives is working to a greater good. God doesn’t promise believers a good life. God’s promise is that when troubles come, a foundation of belief will allow each of us to weather them. Pair that with this hope we have developed in heaven and you will have an outlook on hardship, pain, and suffering in the world that will sustain you until that blessed day when each of us sees Jesus.

We must believe that Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary, walked the earth fully human, and was crucified on the cross, where He hung until He was dead for our sins. In order for Jesus to be the Christ, Scripture must be affirmed. Not one letter of the prophesy must go unfulfilled.

For Jesus to be the Son of God and for Scripture to affirm His claims, Jesus must have been born this way, into the flesh. Jesus wasn’t an idea or a spirit, but an actual person—fully human and fully God at the same time.

The cross was the most humiliating death available to man at the time and the death that we chose. I’ve stated that Jesus’ death on the cross was the Person and the means that we, the debtor, required of God, the creditor, in order to win us. Said another way, on the cross, God bought our love in the costliest way possible.

If God had looked up from another hobby and said, “Sin, sure. That’s fine. Clear the accounts,” then He would look more like a billionaire with a universe of idle pursuits, raising kids to ignore them. We’d never know He loved us. We’d never know He really cared about us and gave Himself up for us. It would be no big stretch for us to reciprocate a small love with a small devotion and to expect our provision. It would be easy to become indignantly angry when we didn’t get our due. This is a scene played out in homes across the country and, to a smaller degree, in my home.

My kids are nine, seven and two. When they run to me asking to play and I tell them I have something else that I need to finish first, they die a little inside. If, when they come back and ask if they can do something questionable—eat a snack they’re not supposed to eat at that time, drink a sugary drink, or watch TV—I tell them, “Sure. That’s fine. Go ahead,” they walk off glad to have the treat or the freedom, but they walk off alone. They know they’ve been sent away with a consolation prize. I won’t give them me, so I give them something cheaper, and they know it.

God gave us every ounce of Himself.

And He died on the cross. Jesus’ death was the atoning of our sin. He took hell and sin and death upon His shoulders in our stead. Death was required. From the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, life blood was required to cover sin. No one ever sacrificed a lamb that lived. Jesus wasn’t a scapegoat.

He was the Lamb.

If believing that Jesus died on the cross is a stumbling block for you, then know this: Roman soldiers were killing machines. Not only did they kill men, they were students of it. The type of soldier that handled crucifixions was especially skilled at prolonging death. To say that anyone made it off the cross without death would be like saying that the president of the United States forgot who he was and booked a flight on Delta.com for his peace talks in Oslo. There was so much wrapped up in a soldier’s identity and the institution of death that no one ever made it off a cross alive.

So if there was a birth, there was a life. And if that life was as reported, there was the cross. And if there was a cross, a Roman cross, there was a death.

We must believe that this blood, spilled for us while we were still sinners, was the perfect sacrifice that covered our sins and that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the receipt for that debt, stamped PAID. We’ve talked about how the rest of the world for all time has understood the idea that the sin of the father falls to the son and the tribe. We also talked about how, from the beginning of time, when an unclean thing touched a clean thing, the clean thing never made the unclean holy (see the beginning of Chapter 7). To clarify, from the beginning of time, no clean thing had made an unclean thing holy—but from near the beginning, God told us that it was possible.

Remember Abraham? In Genesis 18, Abraham walked with God and became the first intercessor. God revealed that He and His companions were going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham knew this city—his nephew lived there—and he began to question God.

Scripture doesn’t say why Abraham stopped questioning God at 10 righteous men. Maybe he realized that he was questioning the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth, or maybe he didn’t want to know that Lot and his house were unrighteous. Scripture seems to indicate that God was finished speaking to Abraham, and He departed. But in this exchange, Abraham discovered the cornerstone of Christianity.

It took almost 1,500 years for God to answer the question that our belief pivots upon today. Remember Chapter 5? One of the prophets, Jeremiah, couldn’t figure out how the God of truth that he knew could possibly justify all the accounts of man. He and God had a heated discussion in the first chapters of Jeremiah. God was determined in His course toward Israel and it wasn’t pretty. But there, in Jeremiah 5, God answered the question without Abraham daring to ask: “If you can find one righteous man, I will spare Israel.”

Although no one up until Jesus had accomplished it, there had always been a way for the clean to wash the unclean. If the sin of one could taint all, then the righteousness of one, the right One, could clean us all.

So Jesus was the One. But why all the blood and killing? Maybe we don’t feel comfortable worshiping a God that is so bloodthirsty and gory. If sin needed to be covered, why choose a blood sacrifice?

All true love involves sacrifice.[194] We touched on it above, in the relationship between the billionaire father and his son, but let’s look at a more typical parent-child relationship. If you believe Hollywood’s version of kids, they’re usually sweet and gentle, but if you have experienced the truth of parenting, you know a different story. They’re hard and needy and time-consuming and require endless amounts of your resources.

For an adult to love a child, they have to pour out their lives for about 15 years. The parent has to bring their interests down and lay them at the feet of their child. The parent can’t talk about what they want to talk about, they can’t go where they want to go, and they can’t eat what they want to eat.

This may be painting too harsh a picture of parenthood, but here’s my point: Either the parent decides to completely fill their child’s needs at the expense of their own, or the parent decides to continue to fill their own needs at the expense of their child. True love dictates that one must go down in order for the other to go up. Without sacrifice, there can be relationship, but love requires more.

It matters who the parent is, too. Parents with endless resources can meet their child’s needs by hiring others to handle it for them, but to that child, the sacrifice isn’t sufficient. When a parent says, “No, I won’t sacrifice myself for you,” then that child will never know his or her own worth.

Most action movies include this story line: Someone is safe. They aren’t in any danger as they go through life, when their path is crossed by someone in danger. The other person is on the run from bad guys or war, or good guys who don’t yet understand, but in order to pull that other person out of danger, someone has to enter into their danger. In order to love the other, someone has to sacrifice something big (their fortune, their safety, their reputation).

If they don’t—if someone doesn’t sacrifice self—then the other will perish.

Imagine that you love someone that has been hurt badly. Can you love them without entering into their pain? Can you love them from afar? Can you stay comfortable and exalted and high and still love someone that has been brought so low?

No. All true love requires sacrifice.

In biblical times, blood was a currency of sacrifice. To be honest, it still is. No great story has found a better example of complete, unadulterated, and absolute true love than this one.

Still, there is one part of this great story of the Gospel that is extremely hard to weave into a story. It is that He sacrificed his most Precious for us while we hated Him. We can never fully fathom His love for us.

After the death was a resurrection. If Jesus’ death paid the penalty for our sin and bridged the chasm between man and God that we dug through our sin, then the resurrection is proof of God’s acceptance of that sacrifice. As God had regard for Abel’s sacrifice, Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled 4,000 years of prophesy in His perfect life, broken for us.

There is absolutely no denying that the resurrection happened. Brooke Foss Westcott said:

“Indeed taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the Resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it.”

His statement becomes tougher to understand toward the end, but he is saying that the fact that thousands and thousands of documents, letters, edicts, etc., WERE NOT written at that time denying that Jesus came back to life is yet more proof that this (admittedly hard to believe) story of resurrection happened.

Jesus rose from the dead and showed himself to hundreds—possibly thousands—of people.

Flannery O’Connor in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor said:

“For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay [and] destruction are the suspension of these laws.”

Finally, Andrew Murray in Jesus Himself said:

“A dead Christ I must do everything for; a living Christ does everything for me.”

“If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can…”[198]

We must believe that Jesus, now in heaven, will return and bring a final judgment into this world along with a new heaven and a new earth for all eternity. Without judgment, there cannot be Christianity. This part is prickly for some, but have you ever had a job with no performance reviews? Or have you ever worked for a boss that was just passing the time and never gave you any instruction at all? In our DNA, we have a need to be encouraged, corrected, and finally acknowledged. The final judgment of Christ is littered throughout the New and Old Testaments, and is in itself a blessing. The fact that there will be a day when the board game will be put away, the money will go back into the slots, and the whole box of this world will be put back on a shelf means that we won’t, like Adam, continue to go around the board forever, eventually failing.

The coming of God’s judgment is designed to lead us to faith in Him for His sacrifice and to a life lived well here on earth. Without judgment, the world becomes an endless track of deeds and works that never measure up. In judgment, we find a great gift of finality, resolution, justice, and grace.

The Bible is clear that there is a place of eternal life and eternal death. One place leads to paradise and the presence of God; the other leads to emptiness, fire, and want. We’ve drawn heaven as the scene of a lively, pulsating Great Dance and hell as a place outside, cold and mad and unwilling to walk inside—but put that visual on steroids.

The Great Dance that is eternal life is infinitely more fulfilling and joyous and lively that we can imagine. But being outside that Great Dance is infinitely colder—so cold it burns—and the anger is heaped with regret, sorrow, and missed opportunities to a point that, in the world, each feeling would kill you instantly. There, inside eternal death, each eats and tears at you with its teeth, but you will not die.

This belief in judgment is not just useful for understanding what is to come. It is just as important for life today.

In 1998, at the age of 87, Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish Nobel Lauriat poet, wrote:

Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in an afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium for the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.[203]

He had experienced the oppression by Nazis and the tyranny of Communist dictators. He had seen the horrors that man perpetrates when convinced that judgment is not forthcoming. Judgment is not a picture of violence, but a place of restraint.

What you believe determines whether you enter the Great Dance or stand outside, but how God’s judgment manifests itself on any individual was most wisely answered by Ezekiel.

In the Valley of Dry Bones, God asked Ezekiel, who was looking over a valley filled with dried-out bones, “Can these bones live?”

Can these bones that are clearly dead live? Can a man that served death all his life repent on his deathbed? Can a regular churchgoer not believe? Can someone who has done unspeakable things, has run from God and cursed Him be forgiven and believe?

“Can these bones live?”

And Ezekiel answered, “O Lord God, You know.”

Lastly, we must believe that until that day of judgment, we have been given the Holy Spirit to guide us toward righteousness, convict us of sin, and teach us of judgment with His wonderful gifts of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such there is no law.

Given on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came into the world to stay. The Holy Spirit is, to some extent, the Rodney Dangerfield of the Trinity—“can’t get no respect.” Hardly a child will pray to Him and yet He has done all the work here for the last few thousand years. He fills us, gives us power, teaches us to deny sin, witnesses for us, fills us with God’s presence, guides us, teaches us what is good, reminds us what is evil, gives us joy, and tells us everything we know about God through Jesus and the prophets. It is hard to imagine what the world would be like without this extremely important member of the Trinity.

In Mark 13, Jesus is talking about His return to earth and that only God knows when that will be. John 16:13 gives us an interesting clue that the Holy Spirit also speaks what is told to Him by God, and that the Holy Spirit will be the one that will tell us what is to come.

When I was young, I thought the apostles had it easy. They got to see and learn directly from Jesus.

In this scripture from John 16, we get the feeling that these days now with the Holy Spirit are truly the good days. In this verse, Jesus implies that He has to go so that we can be given this great gift of the Helper—the Holy Spirit—almost as if the presence of the Holy Spirit is better for the time to come.

In all three synoptic Gospels, Jesus gives a cryptic warning against speaking against the Holy Spirit. Most commentators believe this is a warning against calling the works of God Satanic or claiming that God’s miracles are not from Him.

As you progress into belief, try to develop a separate relationship with each of the Persons of the triune. Ask God to lay their uniqueness on your heart, and try to imagine the image, personality and individuality of each. Pray to them individually. This may be difficult at first, but if God is no more One than Three and no more Three than One, then this dimension to your relationship helps you to better know Him.

That’s a lot of ground. I know.

To review, as Christians, we’re called to believe the Gospel. We must believe:

• that God, the Father, created heaven and earth in community with Jesus, His only born Son, and the Holy Spirit.

• that God created man out of love and for the purpose of loving and worshiping Him within the community of heaven—what we’ve called the Great Dance.

• that because of our sin, we have been separated from God and the Great Dance, but that finding our way back is our greatest desire.

• that in each of us rests the ability to follow Him and thirst for the righteousness that He gives or the ability to turn from Him and deny God’s presence in our lives.

• that even through hardship in this world, God’s plan for our lives is working to a greater good.

• that Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary, walked the earth fully human, and was crucified on the cross, where He hung until He was dead.

• that this blood, spilled for us while we were still sinners, was the perfect sacrifice that covered our sins and that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the receipt for that debt, stamped PAID.

• that Jesus, now in heaven, will return and bring a final judgment into this world along with a new heaven and a new earth.

• that until that day, we have been given the Holy Spirit to guide us and teach us with His wonderful gifts: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against which there is no law.

The truth of the Gospel is that belief matters. We all believe in something and the object of our belief sets us on a course for all eternity. Believe in something too small or too slippery or upon which you cannot rely, and you sow a fresh field with thorns. It may come up green at first, but there will be no harvest.

If you survive that winter and are given another season, then you will have a choice: Try it again and hope for a harvest, or literally turn around (the Bible would say, “repent”) and tear up the thorns to plant real, life-sustaining crops.

The more seasons of thorns we plant, the harder it becomes to stop, but the wonderful thing about linear time is that we never have the opportunity to turn around toward the past. Our only opportunity to turn around, to repent, to plant different crops, and to believe is in this very moment. The winters are getting longer for all of us and the very wind, moon, sun, and stars all await your decision to repent and believe.

“But your salvation is not dependent on your commitment to God, but based on your belief in His perfect commitment to you.”[221]

It is not the sowing and reaping that will save you, but your willingness to turn around, repent, and believe.

Imagine three people—a man and a couple—standing atop a cliff with a rope hanging down. The man tells the husband and wife that the rope is strong enough to save them if they were to fall off the cliff. The husband says OK, but the wife really studies the rope, gauges its thickness, checks its mooring, and determines with certainty that it would hold her.

If the man fell off the cliff, how much belief in the rope would he need to actually save him? Keller says only enough to grasp the rope.

This may seem like an escape hatch, but the truth is that the wife’s additional certainty in the rope no more saves her than the husband’s grasp. None of us are saved by the quality of our belief. All of us are saved by the quality of the rope.

This truth should help you in one of two ways.

First, if you’re certain in the quality of your faith, don’t be.

Those who spent years with God continually failed, looked to other things for their provision, and denied Him. The bit of belief that you have been given is a gift from God and nothing that you should boast about more than sight.

Instead of shining a light on your belief, shine that light on your unbelief. Find the things in your life that are crowding out your Fundamental and seek to eradicate them. Every one of us has sown a crop or more of thorns, and because of that, no matter the quality of our belief, the thorns will show up from time to time.

Lean on belief in the sacrifice of Jesus to root out those thorns and to produce a bountiful crop for which the Lord will have much regard.

Or, if you’re uncertain that you have even the smallest amount of belief, know that in this moment, you hold the power of the universe within your breath.

If you will turn from whatever you have placed your belief in and repent—if you will open your eyes and see yourself standing in front of the prison gate with God standing in front of you—if you will place your fears and love and actions into the hands of the One that has been there all along—then you will begin to feel your hand tighten around the rope and your descent will slow as the great Creator begins to move across the universe, into your heart, and bears you up.

Just as the extremely faithful cannot boast of the quality of their faith, you must not demur from the smallness of yours.

Don’t tarry there (the husband falling off the cliff certainly wishes that he’d seen and believed in the rope sooner), but don’t think for a moment that God didn’t die so that you would utter the words He’s been dying to hear all along. He did.

This has been a long chapter, but I’ll leave you with one thing we discussed at its beginning. In the New American Standard Bible, the word “believe” or “believes” or “believed” is translated 259 times. The word “belief” is translated zero times. You could argue that instead of using the word “belief” the translators used “faith” (378 times), but I think there is something else at play.

“Belief” is something that you can put on a shelf. “Belief” is a project that you look into, make a decision about, determine where you come down on it, and then move on. “Belief” is a noun.

“Believe” is a verb. It requires action. It doesn’t sit idly by while you ignore your spouse or watch bad television. “Believe” follows you around like a tattoo on your face. It defines a house like its paint color on the outside AND the mantel on the inside.

You might have a lot of “beliefs,” but what you “believe” defines you.

Put some action behind it. Jesus gave His life so that you might believe and the entirety of heaven moves to the tune of it.

Join us and believe.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 21 through 23

Mark Chapters 12 & 13

Luke Chapters 17 & 18

John Chapters 15 & 16

CHAPTER 10

The Great-ceful Dance

God paid dearly for us and this world. The perfection that He has laid into it tells me there is something that we’re all supposed to do here—something that each and every one of us need in order to truly become one who can’t not be with Him in heaven. Getting into step with the Great Dance is something that we can only do here by pulling the cross into our hearts as our Fundamental. Practice the step, feel the beat, and own the tune.

If you’ve ever driven with me, you know that I’ve spent a day or two in traffic court. I’ve seen them in at least three states and tens of jurisdictions, and they’re all frighteningly similar.

Everyone gathers at the time written on their citation and is directed by name to a specific courtroom. Once there, the bailiff begins a roll call. As each name is called, he instructs the room that there are two options. (There are three, really, but no one understands what nolo contendere means.) Each can claim to be guilty or not guilty.

If you declare yourself guilty of the crime, you move to the front of the line. You get out sooner than everyone else, but leave bearing the full punishment of the crime. Some folks get a fine; others leave with jail time. For each and every crime in traffic court, there is a punishment attached, based on how much the community has been diminished.

The people in that line cut across every hedge we have built to separate us. There are Christians and atheists, black and white, short and tall, poor and rich, college graduates and the illiterate, Atlanta natives and Kenyans. It is a truly astonishing amount of diversity, but the scene always makes me sad.

There are a couple of folks for whom their traffic infraction, whether a DUI or a slow roll through a stop sign, is a very big deal. Four hundred dollars represents all they have saved or their kid’s tuition or the seed money to buy tools to grow their business. Three days in jail is enough to send their whole family into homelessness, because no job waits for them. They may have committed the same crime I did, but for them, being judged guilty represents the end of the line.

I also see the men who have walked this road before them. They show up—they have to show up—because they didn’t have the money for the fine. The judge calls them forward and asks if they now have funds to pay their fine. When they don’t, they’re given another day to show up and pay the fine. It is another opportunity to miss a half-day of work they can’t afford to miss to tell the court they can’t cover the fine. And if they miss that date, then they’ll go to jail.

There’s another group, though. I’m not typically part of this group, but I have been, and I know them a lot better. They show up too, but when their name is called, someone stands for them. An attorney they’ve hired speaks for them. He gets to go places in the courtroom and have discussions with the judge and the prosecution that the accused cannot. His advocacy makes a difference in a real-world courtroom.

We don’t like to admit that having an advocate in court helps, but if you drive like me, you know that it does. I saw a man who felt so badly about the shame his DUI brought upon his family that he just wanted the whole thing to be over. He signed the paper stating he was guilty and the judge sent him to jail. He couldn’t believe it. Instead of putting this behind him, he had cavalierly faced a shame that marked him forever.

Some judges are more patient than others, but I have felt the accused’s fear and hopelessness there in the speed and efficiency of traffic court. For some, it’s a new start, but for others, it feels like the beginning of the end.

Try and hold this scene of the traffic court in your mind as we close out this journey through the Gospel Story. Having traveled through antiquity, I’d like to bring the story to the doorstep of the heart and lay out how this begins to work in our lives as we seek to enter the Great Dance.

If you’ve ever been to a party or a dance, you know that it always begins with an invitation. Even public dances print an invitation in the newspaper. For the Great Dance, there is also an invitation.

In previous chapters, we got a peek behind the curtain to see what went on at this Great Dance, why we should thirst for it, and the cost of including us in it.

In this chapter, we’re going to look at the invitation, see how the invitation is delivered, consider how to respond to the invitation, and determine how we will wait until that great day of the Great Dance.

LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE INVITATION. Even if you’ve never received one, consider yourself invited.

What if you got this invitation one day, printed on heavy cardstock and wrapped in purple velvet—something akin to a British Royal Wedding invitation? What if, instead of an undetermined date, it had a specific date written on it for the Great Dance to begin? What if there was a phone number to call, or better yet, what if your response was required via writing? Not the pre-made kind:

_____ will attend, or

_____ will not attend

But just a blank sheet of paper on which you were to write out your response to this beautiful invitation. How would you indicate your attendance?

Take a few minutes and write out a response indicating your attendance. Write out a short note and tuck it into your Bible.

Well, let’s back up to about six hours before you actually get this invitation, retrace your day, and see HOW THE INVITATION WAS DELIVERED.

When I think of how I have viewed sin throughout my life, I have looked at it one of two ways. I have either considered sin no big deal or I have considered it forgiven by God’s grace.

Both of my assumptions have been wrong.

For me, before I really believed, I figured that I was good enough. I followed the rules somewhat closely, and aside from my scrapes with traffic court, I’d put up a decent record.

But for my adherence to the law of God, the thoughts and actions of my heart, God had no regard. In many thousands of years, only One lived a life good enough and mine wasn’t even close.

Looking past the lies, idolatry, gluttony, disrespect, greed, hatred, lust, and murder I’d committed on earth and/or in my heart, I still felt I was a pretty good guy. I measured my sin in inches while God saw it in acres. Not only was my unit of measurement too small, it didn’t even begin to hold the dimension of my sin. I, the debtor, saw my sin as no big deal while He, the creditor, knew differently.

I grew up in the church and I believed in Jesus, but I never made a decision based on the cross. At work one day, I even scoffed at another Christian who purported to believe many of the things I’ve laid out here. I said that I believed; I may have even believed that I believed. Yet nothing in my life, when viewed through His light, would have proven or supported my belief.

I followed the rules because they served me, and even when I happened to follow the law, my obedience was insufficient in the light of the love God gave me.

Once I believed in Jesus, despite my—sometimes best and sometimes mediocre—attempts, I still sinned. I began to follow the Law because I wanted to follow the example of Jesus—even though I constantly fell short.

But something was different.

I now had a realization that my sin fell to my account, that it separated me from God and that even the smallest sin in my life was a big deal. My view of it changed. I no longer wanted to be far from God or hurt the One I was orienting my heart toward.

Still, I continued to sin. I was comforted that my acceptance of the sacrifice and my belief in Jesus covered my sin, but I thought it was God’s grace that forgave me.

I was still wrong, or at least I’d skipped a major step.

I always had the vision of the unbeliever, standing in judgment in front of God without an Advocate in Jesus. I’d seen a hint of the destruction that causes and the crippling cycle that comes from the never-ending rotation of poverty, presence, and judgment in traffic court. But the court of God’s judgment has infinitely worse consequences for those who present guilty without an Advocate.

Keller crystallized this for me.[226] I thought that the sin I had committed, laid bare in front of God, was an unwinnable case for Jesus. An all-knowing God didn’t need evidence. He knew my guilt.

So Jesus, like all advocates with no case, laid Himself on the mercy of the court. He said:

“Yep, Bryant’s back. I know we’ve been here a lot over the years, and there are a lot of charges pending here, sir, but can You give him another chance? I know Bryant personally and he is on our side. The evidence proves that he committed this crime and he has committed it previously a couple of times, but we know that You’re a great Judge and that You have shown mercy to others, so I ask for Your grace again today.”

This is NOT how it works.

When we view God’s grace as the forgiveness of sin, as ultimate patience from Him, and frankly, as charity, then we run into two problems.

The first is that a God of truth and ultimate justice would never convict one person for a crime and force them to endure judgment and allow another to commit the same exact crime (or a worse one) and go free. When this happens in traffic court, we hate it. We hate it that one who can afford an advocate gets different treatment from one who cannot. It happens, and it is unjust. Whether you or your advocate knows him, a just and righteous judge must rule the same for you as he would for another under the same circumstances.

The second problem is that, at some point, the accused assumes there is a line beyond which, if crossed, no forgiveness, patience, or charity can be given. Some Christians may bristle at that, but those on the front lines of helping the hurt can’t go far without finding someone who feels their belief is too insufficient to receive forgiveness for the depth of their sin.

So know this: God’s grace is not the forgiveness of sin. God’s grace was His gift to us of Jesus to pay for the sin.

In court, many thousands of times, instead of throwing Himself on the mercy of the court, Jesus says:

“Lord God, You are a God of justice. Bryant has committed this sin and the punishment for that is established but, as You know, He knows Me, so I have paid for that sin. My account overflows—and it would be unjust for You to punish Him. I ask you to close this case.”

God does just that.

This may seem like a nuance, but if you’re stuck thinking that something in your past is too big to forgive, or if you think that there is some work you need to complete before you can come to or be accepted by God or embark on belief, know that in Jesus, the law and grace fit like never before.

The Law must be followed, because if it is not, then I’m lost. I slide farther and farther away from that on which I’ve set my heart. This truth in the Law is hard and painful, but it is required in order to properly love.

The alternative is sin and sin widens the chasm.

But grace comes along and heals by bridging the vast gap. Not cheap grace, but grace paid for at an extreme cost—grace bought with blood and a scourging and on a cross. This kind of grace doesn’t subvert the Law, but it affirms the Law. It points to the Law’s eternal significance and then it instantly heals our inability to fulfill it.

In the courtroom, Jesus called sin out as sin—and then He paid for it. And as you walk out of the courtroom with Jesus, you marvel at Him, your head spinning from what has just been paid and the consequences you’ve just averted.

As you marvel, you remember how He said to “love one another.” Could this have been what He meant? Being Jesus, He hears you, leans in close, and says,

“I don’t condemn you. I want you to leave your life of sin and, if you don’t, I love you; and if you can’t, I love you; and if the woundedness and shrapnel of your sin leave you in a place where you’re not even sure that you’ll be able to walk away from the complexity of your sin, I love you; and if someone has sinned against you and it has sent you into a spiral of self-destructive behavior and you’re not sure you’ll ever recover, I love you.

“The truth is that you’re a sinner, but through grace I don’t condemn you and no one will ever love you any more than I do and I couldn’t love you any more Myself.”[229]

If you have been wounded, or if you’re carrying righteousness around in a bag labeled self or if forgiveness seems a bridge too far, this view can be a game-changer.

The law is important, because disregarding it means moving farther away from God, but grace is important, too. We’re already separated and without it—without God sending Jesus and Jesus actually going—there is no other way home.

So, you receive this invitation. If you believe, you’ll receive it from the hand of Jesus on the way out of the courtroom, headed toward eternal life. If you’ve yet to believe, He hands it to you, sitting alone preparing your case at the defendant’s table, as He leaves with a believer.

He’s glad one believer is coming home, but would be extremely overjoyed, dancing in the street, if the other would respond with even the faintest, “yes.”

Thus, the stage is set for two different people: one believes and one doesn’t. Both must DETERMINE HOW TO RESPOND TO THE INVITATION.

The Bible is clear how judgment falls to those who fail to believe. Without an Advocate, the debt for sin must be paid by the sinner. The very act of RSVP’ing to the invitation brings Jesus running back to the court, vouching for the sin, and setting an additional place in heaven.

I’ve heard any number of reasons that folks deny Christ, but as virtually every person in the New Testament, The Misfit, and even modern-day scholars show, Jesus leaves you no room. Either you toss it all away and follow Him or you must kill Him. No one left Jesus to have a pleasant afternoon and see a matinee or said, “What a nice young man.”

Those who don’t believe respond to this invitation in one of two ways. Either they spread everywhere the lies that they want to be true, making snide remarks and pushing others farther away from the truth—responding to Him with a loud and emphatic “NO,” or they ignore His invitation, passing their time watching television or filling their mind with distraction. They wait and wait and wait—thinking they’re keeping their options open until that final day comes—and it is too late. They are sent into the courtroom where those with no advocate go.

If you’re this person, currently sitting at the defense table alone and preparing a case as best as you can;

if you’re this person that just watched Jesus walk out of court and notice your teeth are clenched in anger; or,

if you’re this person that’s been so amused here on earth, making the best of it, trying to focus on happy things, and you’ve never really thought about it; or, if you’re somewhere in between, but you want to accept this invitation you have just received, pray this prayer:

Jesus. Thank You for inviting me to this Great Dance. I have done nothing to deserve Your invitation. In fact, I have given You plenty of reason not to invite me. I have sinned against You, and I’m sorry. I turn from that life and I answer You now: Yes! I have counted the cost, and I know that You require me, my life, and my love and my will. I lift it all up to You now. Take me, Lord. I have no idea where this will go or where it will end, but I give my life over to You. Going forward, I will serve You. When You direct me, I will follow, and when I’m in the dark, I will use Your Word as a lamp. I will not stand on righteousness, because I know that I will fail. The fact that I believe I am following You does not mean that I am actually doing so, but I believe that a desire to please You does, in fact, please You. I ask that You lay in me a desire to serve others as You did, covered in miles of love and built on a foundation of this belief in the sacrifice that You made for me. Help me grow all of this in me. Amen.

If you want to pray this prayer, but something is keeping you from it—if you lack belief or love or if you’re holding on to something else too tightly—then it’s enough to want to want Jesus. Jesus will start there.

Start by asking for belief. Earnestly pray for it. If you ask God for belief, He will give it to you, because He’s dying for you to have it.

Do it now. Don’t wait. You may not get another invitation, and even if you do, on that day, you’ll wish you had done it sooner.

How does the believer respond to the very same invitation?

For the believer, the answer is yes. It can be, “sure,” or it can be an overwhelming, loving, loud, and emphatic, “YES!” Each and every day, we are given an opportunity to respond to this invitation and turn from our own ways toward God’s way.

In this invitation, eternity abounds.

Part of our response should be wrapped up in a surprisingly unknown part of our faith known as the Bema, or the Judgment Seat of Christ. In ancient times, the Bema was a meeting place in town where achievements were acknowledged.

Christians, those who believe and have answered yes to the invitation of Christ, will forgo God’s judgment. Our names are on the list of the Lamb’s Book of Life, and we will enter on the right into heaven directly, because Jesus paid for our sins. Just like my grandfather has never been summoned to traffic court, because he has no violations, Christians will skip God’s judgment—our accounts are settled, justified (just as if they had never happened).

But once there and at the end of days, the entirety of Christendom across all geography and time will be given an audience with Christ where, through God’s grace, we are given rewards for the work the Holy Spirit has done through us on earth.

This is a hard concept to nail down, but take a few minutes and imagine, on that day, and in the presence of thousands of years of believers, how would you want to be known? Would you want to be known for a tepid, “Sure,” or a deathbed confession of faith? Or would you want to be known for sacrificing greatly, helping others, and using your love mercifully? With a video of your life showing overhead, for what would you want Paul or DL Moody or John Wesley to know you wept?

Staring into the eyes of the great Advocate, Creator and Christ, what would you want your greatest love to be? With your parents and all those whom you know, how or what or who do you want them to know that you served?

The Bema is not a place of judgment—all who see it have been saved—but there will be much rejoicing there and much regret. Those who are able to live life with a focus on that presentation and that day—those who have humbled themselves for that time—those who have made themselves poor for it—those who led out of weakness and yet believed because of that day, will rejoice greatly.

For each and every one of us, we can begin today, living this day in light of that day. This is where we come to realize the value of a life professionally lived. This is where our time, talents, and treasure grow extremely dim in the light of an even more real Jesus.

So, determined to attend, HOW WILL WE WAIT UNTIL THAT DAY OF THE GREAT DANCE?

If you were invited to a royal wedding, how would you wait for that? If you knew there would be dancing, how would you prepare? If you knew that an integral part of the festivity was a short film on the value of your life, how would you live?

I would think about it constantly. I would play out what it would look like and what to expect. I would research all I could find on it to make sure that I didn’t embarrass myself, my wife, or other guests. I would buy things required for it—clothing, plane tickets, hotel accommodations. If we were to dance, I would learn the steps. I would practice and listen to the music and try to be as excellent as I could. If there was a film on my life, I would do all I could to make it the best life I could with the time I had.

Let’s look at these things separately.

I would think about it constantly. We talked a lot in Chapter 1 about developing this thirst for heaven. If you still struggle with this, there are other resources. If you have that ember of longing for heaven, protect it.

A couple of years ago, I threw a surprise birthday party for my wife. It was a great time with a lot of friends, but after the party, she politely told me that she didn’t want any more surprise parties. She said that part of the fun was looking forward to the party and imagining how it will be.

Christians can start off well without a picture of heaven, but when things get tough or consequences have big ramifications, it is extremely hard to stay faithful to the promise of God without an understanding of the promise of heaven. Said another way, it is hard to give your all without knowing that there will be a time, later, to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Without that in view, we all check up and rest along the way. If the journey is the reward, then one journeys differently. An Olympian journeys toward the Olympics differently than a spectator.

My prayer for those who read this and get a taste for heaven is that we all cross that line, into heaven, having left nothing on the field.

I would play out what it would look like and what to expect. I came across this quote attributed to A.W. Tozer:

I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.[239]

I’m not ready to draw the line that far, because it comes too close to final judgment, but I can say that, in my experience, when I went from believing that Jesus died to believing in Jesus—when this became real for me and I began to make hundreds of decisions daily with consideration of the cross—worship opened up for me. I became voracious in wanting to hear how God’s Word was presented and to provide my praise to God, and this was the game-changer.

I stopped dragging myself into church on Sunday, looking for a nugget or a truth that would help me. I stopped treating our 8:45 worship service as a soup kitchen, where I went to get a little something warm to tide me over. I stopped saying things like, “I didn’t really get anything out of that message.” I stopped yelling at everyone to get ready in the morning because we had to be on time and I’d overslept.

I started seeing worship in our church as an opportunity to lift up an offering. I started treating our 8:45 service as a chance to show God how much I loved Him and to thank Jesus for His sacrifice and to love the Spirit of His community. I started saying things like, “Thank You.” And mostly, I began to see Saturday night as a preparation to provide the sacrifice, so that Sunday morning, I could lift up my praise to God with a pure heart.

I would research all I could find on it to make sure that I didn’t embarrass myself, my wife, or other guests. When you first fell in love (maybe as a teenager), what did you do? You surely thought about him or her constantly and did all the research you could on the object of your affection. You asked friends for details about possible interests and talked together on the phone for hours. You asked about family, so that you would know how to act. Each time you met, you would try to come up with some new thing to discuss that brought you closer together.

We do this same affection for God through study of the Word. God wrote a love letter to mankind and protected it throughout thousands of years. He put one in nearly every household and hotel room in America.[242] Six to eight billion copies of the Bible have been printed, making it the most printed and widely read book of all time.

The statistics are incredible, but the Bible is more important than just a book.

God has chosen to reveal more of Himself than ever before through the Word, and it enables me to constantly reorient my life toward Him. Without even the smallest amount of Scripture on a daily basis, my focus shifts off the Way, my grasp loosens from the truth, and I lose touch with the life I’ve been given. Things begin to crowd out my love and I begin to serve myself and the well of my belief drains low.

Scripture is the anchor that keeps me inside God’s great regard.

I would buy things required for it—clothing, plane tickets, hotel accommodations. If we’re honest, an invitation to a royal wedding would mean a disruption in our lives. It would take us away from our money, work, family, and what we’ve built at home. But that’s OK, isn’t it? Any one of us would weigh the cost and determine that the benefit is worth it. For all time, we would be able to tell our children that we attended the royal wedding. The experience would be an honor and the cost would be worth it.

Why don’t we look at Jesus’ invitation like that? Perhaps it’s because the cost is so much greater. Maybe it’s because the event seems to be decades away.

But it’s a little more complicated than that. The truth is that your belief in the Groom has gotten you an invitation to this Great Dance and so a place has been set for you. But what you wear, how you’re perceived, and everything about you is determined by how well you prepare for this Great Dance. If you wait until the last minute, you will present in front of the royal couple in tattered rags that fail to cover even your modesty. But if you begin now, using all that you’ve been given, your time and talents and treasure in preparation for this day, it will not only fulfill your greatest desire, but it will define you for all time to come.

If there was dancing, I would learn the steps. I would practice and listen to the music and try to be as great as I could. We’ve talked about these in Chapters 7—Step This Way, 8—Truth Beats Love, and 9—Tune into Life’s Belief, but do you see how each is important? Do you see how they are no more three than one nor one than three?

Let’s look at them, again.

Sacrificial service without love or belief is just a shame. It is a wasted opportunity. Imagine that a man saved a child from drowning, but in the process suffers an injury. Without love or belief, that sacrifice made for a child means everything to the child who is given another chance at life, but nothing to the man who spends the rest of his life nurturing a hatred for himself, the child, and the world.

Envision the same scenario, but this time, the man has love and no belief. Driven by his love, he continues to serve. He gives of his time and energy and spends his days looking for opportunities to save other children. This, admittedly, is better with love, but without belief, his only motivation of love diminishes over time. There’s enough love to go around for a while, but when his love runs low, the service starts to sputter, and there’s nothing else to recharge either.

A life lived loving and in sacrificial service without belief eventually is consumed, using its own mechanisms for fuel.

As I’ve said before, true love never exists without sacrifice. It’s just a market transaction where one party exchanges something of worth for a good or a service of similar value.

Consider the love between a mother and a child—either the mother pours herself out for 15 years, giving up her needs or the child is poured out and lives the rest of his life in need. Love without service or belief is just a good start. There’s no action to it—like a can of gasoline without a match or an engine.

Imagine a young girl sitting alone in a cottage in the country with endless love in her heart, but who does nothing about it—she loves, but never shows it to another. She is overflowing with love, and yet has no one to love. Jesus and His brother James warned us about love and belief with no works to show for it.

Every dance starts with the tune—the music—and this one is no different. Scripture affirms that everything hinges on belief and the two without the third are useless. Service and love require belief. In fact, if you have none of the three, begin at belief and from there, nurture love.

Out of this growing belief and love, sacrificial service does seem a burden, but like your first love as a teenager, the opportunity to serve the One you love becomes an absolute pleasure.

If there was a film on my life, I would do all I could to make it the best life I could with the time I had. This is where our analogy for the royal wedding breaks down. Time would limit this to no more than a mention, and it would be extremely unpopular to go out and give a bunch of money or feed a slew of homeless folks to have some good photos for the film. Only the most vain among us would attempt that type of polish job.

But the only reason we can be cool about this is because, here on earth, a true documentary of my life is impossible. No one on earth will know my thoughts or my soul. But with the Great Dance, all of these impossibilities fade away. Scripture affirms that we will have this opportunity to review the life we have lived and the works that He accomplishes through us. With time taken off the table and a new ability to synthesize data, a total review of the lives in front of all Christendom is possible. To see the complete works of Paul or the unknown lady down the street, in a spirit of love at the Bema, will be absolutely incredible.

We’re given time, too. We may have a day or a month or 70 years, but here on earth, with a heart turned toward God, it is nothing short of a pleasure to order a life centered around these ideas of service, love, and belief; practice the joy and peace that will consume us in heaven; and manufacture three or four great things to talk about with your great love. Even if I only have six minutes left, wouldn’t I use those to put at least two points up on the board? I could forgive or restore or refresh someone and at least guard against a shutout.

Christians will look to the Bema with eternal hope, to hear those great words, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

Or they will look to the Bema with regret at a life poorly lived. They’ll still be in heaven, but as they march up those stairs, regret will slow their step, and as the years of their lives flicker by, they will be struck by the opportunity lost. The minutes they’d been given will be lost forever, and Jesus will remind them that they left their true love, but that their true love never left them.

If you can’t wait to get started, great! Go out and create a life that you will be proud for your Great Love to see.

But if this seems like a burden to you, then don’t start. This fire to live in the light of that day, to believe, to love others who aren’t loveable, and to serve is something that God is dying to give you.

Start by asking Him for the light to build a fire inside you, and as you raise yourself from your knees, go out into the world knowing that all you have asked has been given to you.

Before you go on to the next chapter, take a few moments to read one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 24 & 25

Mark Chapter 14

Luke Chapters 19 & 20

John Chapter 17

AFTERWORD

Questions from the Front

To round out this book, I will share with you two of the hardest questions I have been asked from those who have heard the story of the porch, shared in my introduction.

Q. Doesn’t the fact that God knows Jesus will return to Him soften the blow of this sacrifice?

This one is a hard one. Jesus modeled service and love for us—and He certainly believed in His own story—but for Jesus, belief is different. It seems less accurate to call His faith in God “belief” and more accurate to call it knowledge. Because of His community with God for all time and His experience with the Father and His presence at creation, Jesus wasn’t given the opportunity to believe. He wholly knew. To us, He brought the opportunity to believe.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, He is the picture of calm. There is excitement (in His escape from temple elders, the Transfiguration, and Satan’s testing in the wilderness), miracles and drama, but He faces every turn as One Who knew this story and was prepared for it—until Gethsemane.

In Gethsemane, we see the picture of Jesus’ panic—He was fully committed to God’s will, but felt a moment of the flesh in outright rebellion. The detail in Luke, where the angel strengthens Him and Jesus sweat drops of blood, is a picture of duress. This condition, hematidrosis,[259] is rare and seen only in cases of extreme stress.

The begging and groveling in Gethsemane belies the argument that Jesus’ sacrifice was lessened by His knowledge of eternity. If Jesus’ knowledge that He would return to an eternity in heaven with God was a comfort, there must have been something else of immense consequence that wiped out this comfort.

Also, note that others died better than this. The account of the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr after Christ, shows one whose belief was great (but certainly less than the knowledge of Jesus) and he died without fear.

Ignatius, in 110 A.D., was sentenced to die in Rome by being thrown to wild beasts. His Christian brethren wanted to plead for clemency, but he begged against it, writing, “May the wild beasts be eager to rush upon me. If they be unwilling, I will compel them. Come crowds of wild beasts; come tearings and manglings; wracking of bones and hacking of limbs; come cruel tortures of the devil; only let me attain unto Christ.”[261]

At a time when being a Christian was dangerous, Polycarp led publicly in 155 A.D. In front of a Roman judge and facing death, Polycarp was given the option to deny Jesus and save his life. At each threat, he answered for Rome to bring its best. He stood defiant in the face of death, and as he was being led to a burning stake, Polycarp requested that they not bind him there, saying “Leave me as I am, for God will give me the strength to withstand your torments.”

The soldiers did as he requested, and observers noted that Polycarp stood still as fire engulfed his entire body. It wasn’t until a soldier stabbed Polycarp that the fire finally consumed him.[262]

This is merely three of thousands of examples of Christians dying with a view fixed on God. These were incredibly faithful men, but would anyone bet their belief against Jesus’ knowledge?

Did Jesus’ knowledge of an eternity with God provide some relief? It must have. But, while Stephen, Ignatius, and Polycarp were able to face death looking forward to a unity with God, Jesus’ death meant a separation from God.

It is likely that Jesus knew that He would be reunited with God, but having been with God for all time, the separation that began in Gethsemane was absolutely excruciating. This separation, which we cannot fathom other than to imagine the earthly separation of a parent and son, was the true consequence of Jesus’ sacrifice.

The death was terrible, but mere mortals have experienced that. Only One has experienced eternity with the Father, and then lost it.

This is yet another example of the greatness of heaven and an eternity spent with God. How great must something be that One endowed with perfect knowledge and perfect motives and perfect love—a veritable connoisseur and master of excellent things—can hardly bear a few hours or days without it? So precious is it that to lose it for even a moment changes His physiology and makes sweat turn into blood.

Heaven and God’s presence are going to be so great that we can’t even imagine the splendor.

Q. What does it mean in Chapter 1 to break off the porch and head home?

I’ve got a friend that always asks men, “How’s your walk?”

That question is so telling, because it implies care for the person, concern for their well-being, knowledge of what is really important, but also, it implies movement. Lao-tzu is credited with, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Jesus affirmed the holiness of movement with Scripture and in the mechanics of the universe. A pool of stagnate water rots. A home without movement becomes stale. The universe is in constant movement. The story of Jesus’ ministry seems a constant parade of activity and motion.

Breaking off the porch means setting into motion a new course.

If the house represents a life of sin that each of us has created, then the first thing to do is to walk away from that sin.

I recognize this is cavalier to say. Some are so broken and wounded by sin—theirs or others’—that they can’t imagine living apart from it. Others have nurtured a lizard of sin so large that their lives are consumed just tending to its needs. Even those who count themselves as lightly under the yoke of sin feel that life with a taste of sin here and there is fuller than the alternative.

With the caveat that addiction and self-hatred is serious, and professional help may be necessary, I suggest these four steps to breaking off the porch and beginning a walk home:

Repent. Of all the things Jesus taught us, this is the one that He could not model for us—this was His one prescriptive action. It was so important that it defined the ministry of John the Baptist and was a central theme of the ministry of Jesus Christ.

A perfect life in communion with God was Jesus’ greatest achievement and also the reason that the cross was so difficult to bear. In our lives, we walk daily—apart from God—and wonder why we lack peace. I’ve told of the power that repentance has had in my life, but all revival began with earnest repentance.

All of us stand filthy in front of God, but our belief in Jesus makes us clean.

From there, true, genuine repentance for our sin is the straightest path home along a highway called righteousness. Failure to repent is an act of war against God. But wouldn’t it be just like Him to put the keys to a kingdom within the reach of a child or a soldier lying wounded on a battlefield or a father searching for a place for his family to sleep?

We are forgiven for our transgressions through the blood of Jesus, but there is something about the humility required to repent for sin that reveals the presence of God. For me, the additional cost of doing it in front of others adds sacrifice, and every time I repent in front of men, God shows regard for my sacrifice.

Repentance—literally meaning to change your mind and go the other way—brings redemption, justice, and rightness within the world. There really isn’t a downside, so long as it is true. But don’t let that definition throw you. The physical activity of repentance is pleasing to God.

Don’t wait.

Immerse yourself in Scripture. It takes five minutes to read a chapter of the Bible, yet setting aside that time is extremely difficult.

There is something bordering on mystical that happens in your life when you commit to reading and studying Scripture. Just like nine ladies cannot have a baby in a month, the steady plodding of reading a little or a lot each and every day begins to work miracles.

In my life, if I read seven chapters all at once each week, I forgo the power that reading a single chapter a day for a week unlocks. I cannot cite specific Scripture about it, but I dare you to produce different results. Ten times out of 10, when my heart gets off track or I’m developing self-centered relationships or I grow unthankful, it’s clear that I’ve not been in the Word lately.

Men died for the Bible. Did you know that? Thousands died in pursuit of a reliable, readable translation written in a language that people actually spoke. Other men, who spent their lives studying Scripture, felt its power was too great for you and me to even access. Doesn’t that make you want to read it?

With repentance, you’ve got to want that yourself. You must love God so much that you don’t care about embarrassing yourself or digging up forgotten corners of your life.

But this is different. You can will yourself to read for a while, but eventually it will slip. Ask God to change your preferences and to build a thirst for Scripture in you and to increase your curiosity about Him. We sometimes think God won’t affect our free will, but if it is our will for it to be affected, He’ll do it—if you ask.

Spend time in Scripture as one seeking its truth and you’ll see the world through different eyes—His eyes.

Pray. Mountains have been written on prayer. We teach our children to begin praying when they are young, but what is prayer’s purpose?[269]

If you view prayer as an opportunity to tap into God’s power to serve you, then not only is prayer frustrating, but it’s boring. The purpose of prayer is not to conform God to our will, but to submit our hearts to God’s will.

Matthew 6 holds the Lord’s Prayer and the way that Jesus taught us to pray. Look at each of the verses here and roll them over in your mind. In verse 9, Jesus instructs the listener how to pray and says, “Our Father…”

These two words have moved mountains for me. Not only is Jesus reaffirming His relationship to God, but He is pulling you and me and mankind up into brotherhood with Him and sonship with God. It is incredible.

Does that matter to you?

We’ve talked about how everlasting life and the Kingdom of God is something that most of the world yearns for out of their oppression. Do you really care whether you wake up tomorrow in your house or within the Kingdom of God?

We’ve talked about how love can power our obedience to the Law. Do you really care whether you are on the field for God or are you good with nosebleed seats?

We’ve talked about how God gave us belief. Do you really see God providing your provision, or does your labor feed your family?

We talked about repentance. How much are you willing to give up to move closer to God? Are you willing to make a change today—even a small change—in light of that day when you will stand in front of Christ? Will you drop everything because of the sacrifice that Jesus made? Will you pick up anything?

How long should we pray, anyway? When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, He prayed for only a few seconds—and even said He’s only praying so that others will know God did it and not Him.

But in Gethsemane, as we just saw, Jesus prayed through the night and until morning. Read Matthew 26 again, closely. I used to remember Him asking for God to take the suffering away, but that’s not what He did. He didn’t pray like I would have prayed, asking for relief or escape.

He prayed for God’s will to be done. He prayed that His will would be conformed to God’s will. He prayed.

This is harder than it looks. Try praying with someone that is dying or sitting with someone who is jobless or homeless and being OK with God’s will being done. God wants to know our requests, but when we can look at our menu of requests and truthfully say, “I’ll have what He’s having,” we receive God’s true gift here on earth: Peace.

Andy Stanley, a nationally recognized pastor in Atlanta, said, “The length of your prayers should be determined by how long it takes you to get to the place where you can say, with all your heart and all of your soul and all of your strength, ‘Thy will be done,’ even if I hate it.”

Start there. It may take a lifetime, but syncing our hearts with God’s heart is the purpose of prayer.

Listen. Have you ever had lunch with a friend who shows up late, talks for the whole hour, telling you exactly what’s going on in her life, and then throws twenty dollars on the table midsentence and runs out? You’d say, “No. Wait a minute. Let me tell you what I think. Don’t you care what’s going on with me? You’ve got a couple of things wrong about me, and I want to make some plans with you later. Wait.”

Often, this is exactly what we do to God.

Starting today, after prayer and in a quiet and private spot, set a timer for a couple of minutes. Just sit silently and listen. Have a pen and paper to jot down anything that comes to mind because, more often than not, God has something that He has died to tell you. Take a moment and just listen for it.

When I do this, I’ve had things placed in my mind that I hadn’t thought of in 15 years. It could be a sin or a person to call or a job left undone. Get quiet with God and give it time. I’ll also guarantee that, at first, you’ll feel like it’s fruitless or that you’re doing it wrong.

Try to clear your mind—I concentrate on the color black and when my thoughts wander, I bring back a black screen to clear my head. As you progress, add a minute or two. Don’t think about the time, just enjoy it and sink into the quietness of it.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[275]

If you will give audience to God’s whispers, He won’t have to shout. And if He does shout, you’ll recognize it as a loud and resounding, “I love you.”

Lastly, Curate.

In a large city, a number of years ago, a curator put on a wonderful show at a prestigious museum. He worked to assemble what he hoped would be the greatest representation of the canon of work by the Dutch Master painter Rembrandt. Over the years, he had amassed a single example of every subject that Rembrandt ever painted.

Before the opening night, the curator invited a major patron to view the collected works. This patron’s financial support and connections could push the show into a wider circle throughout the community and increase its visibility.

One night before the opening, the patron showed up 20 minutes late and walked through the gallery, viewing the masterpieces the curator had assembled. For the next two hours, the curator listened as the patron shared his breadth of knowledge on Rembrandt and critiqued the paintings. He said:

“We can’t include that painting,” and

“I wouldn’t put those two together,” and

“Couldn’t the artist have lit this one better?” and

“How could he have chosen her to paint?”

As the evening came to a close, and the major patron had opined on each and every work, he finally said what he’d been practicing saying all week: “Well, old man, I’m in. If you’ll make the changes I suggested, then I’ll sign on to sponsor the show.”

Ever so softly, the curator said, “Thank you for coming tonight. Your sponsorship won’t be necessary. This artist’s work has been established by all history, and when viewing a masterpiece, it is not the painting that is on trial, sir, but the patron.”

What you think about and how you view the Gospel is of monumental and eternal importance. There may be no greater decision you make than how you view God’s very Word. Do you mold the Bible to fit your life and sensibilities, or do you shape your life, choices, and preferences around its truth? What you think of the masterpiece that is the Gospel in no way changes it. You may disagree with this commentary or the way I’ve laid out this story, but chalk that up to my shortcomings. It was never the Gospel that was on trial.

There will be a day when how well each of us conformed our lives around the Gospel will be, by far, the most important thing about us. Choose today to become a curator of God’s truth. When things look askew, look deeper into the Word to determine how God’s truth lives in it. Don’t become a patron. Don’t assume that your small corner of the world’s outlook, built upon a single moment in time, can in any way second-guess a masterpiece that has stood for thousands of years.

In these five—repentance, Scripture, prayer, quiet listening and curation—we find no greater opportunity to leave the porch. Start there.

This list isn’t the only way to run home. The entire story of the Gospel and this Gospel Story is packed with wisdom for honoring God. But, again, throughout the Bible, God honors those that take something they should have loved and put it on an altar to Him.

If you don’t yet know what that means in your life, then following these disciplines for ten days will tell you. Whether you’re OK, drowning in sorrow or feeling pretty good, these disciplines—just 30 minutes a day—will lead you toward eternal life here on earth, while we wait for God’s perfection to return.

And so we end where we started.

A rooster once crowed cannot be uncrowed. The first crow of the rooster is familiar. It is the moment you recognize something as true and stop to try and remember how you know it. The first crow of the rooster is the reminder that you’re late, but still have time to make it on time. It is the moment of opportunity.

But the second crow is coming. The moment when it is too late to believe, but we will all know. The second crow brings grief and weeping and that empty feeling of opportunity lost.

Right now, we’re there with Peter and the girl from Chapter 1, standing on the porch, with a moment of opportunity. We can still change. We can still believe. We can make decisions that are authentic to our beliefs. We can break off that porch and run into the arms of the great Creator. Or we can turn around and walk back into getting things done that same way the world tells us that things get done.

This moment, before the rooster crows twice, is our time. It is the age of the church and a moment of opportunity to be ready.

Be ready.

Curate one or more of the following:

Matthew Chapters 26 through 28

Mark Chapters 15 & 16

Luke Chapters 21 through 24

John Chapters 18 through 21

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bryant Cornett grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in Amarillo, Texas. He graduated the Johns Hopkins University and spent the next two years starting a business in Vietnam. In 2009 Bryant began an earnest pursuit of God and intensive study that led (in a not-so-straight path) to A Rooster Once Crowed. Bryant is also a commercial real estate broker in Atlanta living with his wife, a native Mississippian, three kids and a puppy named Cocoa Cola Cornett. Bryant currently attends Peachtree Road United Methodist Church. To connect with this ministry, or see upcoming books or events, contact us at:

Full Porch Press

info@fullporchpress.com

or visit www.fullporchpress.com

A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

My prayer is that this book has touched, taught and tangled with you in some way and that you share my heart to spread its message farther.  If you want to share it with someone you know, I’ll do everything in my power to make that happen. From the beginning, I have made each and every decision with an eye for removing obstacles and making it as accessible as possible.

If you’re willing, your review (a star rating and a few words) are extremely critical to getting the message of the Gospel out to more readers.  If you will click here and turn the page, it couldn’t be easier to ensure that the next person searching for truth will find the Gospel just as you left it.  Thank you for the honor of the greatest thing you have—your time.  I pray that the house that keeps this book and the one who reads it is blessed.

- Bryant Cornett

ENDNOTES

1. And Jesus said [to Peter], “Truly I say to you, that this very night, before a rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny Me three times.” But Peter kept saying insistently, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” And they all were saying the same thing also. …

But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out onto the porch. The servant-girl saw him, and began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too.” But [Peter] began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he began to weep.

- Mark 14:30-31, 68-72

2. for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

- Romans 3:23

3. … seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

– Matthew 7:7b

4. In the beginning God …

- Genesis 1:1a

And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

- Genesis 1:2b

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

- John 1:1-5

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all…

- 2 Corinthians 13:14

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

- Matthew 28:19-20

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.

- Mark 1:9-12

The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

- 1 John 4:8

My prayer is not for [the Disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

- John 17:20-21

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

- Genesis 1:1

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.

- Revelation 21:1

God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it [the day] He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

- Genesis 2:3

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

- Genesis 2:8

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them…

- Revelation 21:2-3

The material of the wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

- Revelation 21:18-21

The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city, and its gates and its wall. The city is laid out as a square, and its length is great as the width; and he measured the city with the rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal.

- Revelation 21:15-16

Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.

…

I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it…

- Revelation 21:6-7, 22-26

… and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

- Revelation 21:4-5

Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.

- John 16:22

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

- Mark 10:45

And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

- Luke 22:25-27

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.… Love never fails… And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 8a, 13

Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.

- 1 Peter 4:8

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.

- Mark 1:15

Do not be afraid any longer, only believe.

- Mark 5:36b

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

- John 3:14-16

My prayer is not for [the Disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

- John 17:20-21

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

- Romans 4:3-5

Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

- Matthew 10:32-33

Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

- John 20:29

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

- Matthew 18:6

He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

… like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.

- Luke 6:48, 49b

Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

- 1 Thessalonians 6:16-18

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

- 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

5. In the beginning God …

- Genesis 1:1a

6. And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

- Genesis 1:2b

7. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

- John 1:1-5

8. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all…

- 2 Corinthians 13:14

9. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

- Matthew 28:19-20

10. In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.

- Mark 1:9-12

11. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

- 1 John 4:8

12. My prayer is not for [the Disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

- John 17:20-21

13. Plantinga, Cornelius, “Engaging God’s World…” on Amazon Kindle.

14. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

- Genesis 1:1

15. If I’ve got to cite this, I’m extremely disappointed…

16. Randy Alcorn’s 2004 book, Heaven; Joni Eareckson Tada’s 1995 book, Heaven: Your Real Home; Don Piper’s 2007 book, 90 Minutes in Heaven; and Todd Burpo’s 2010 book, Heaven is for Real are several really great places to start.

17. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth pa ssed away, and there is no longer any sea.

- Revelation 21:1

18. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it [the day] He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

- Genesis 2:3

19. Jewish tradition states that the foundation stone of Creation—where man was made and Eden—was on Mt. Moriah, the site of the modern day Dome of the Rock, a Muslim mosque, in Jerusalem.

20. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them…

- Revelation 21:2-3

21. The material of the wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topa z; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

- Revelation 21:18-21

22. The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city, and its gates and its wall. The city is laid out as a square, and its length is great as the width; and he measured the city with the rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal.

- Revelation 21:15-16

23. I’ve shown the New Jerusalem over the United States here to give the reader an idea of scale. There is nothing to support that the New Jerusalem will actually be in this location and plenty to support that it will be placed in the location of the modern-day Jerusalem. These images are only rendered to convey scale.

24. Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be My son. … I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed, and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. …

- Revelation 21:6-7, 22-26

25. and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

- Revelation 21:4-5

26. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.

- John 16:22

27. Initially heard in Tim Keller’s sermon “Watching for the Son”

28. Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce, (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 111-112.

29. Lewis, C.S., Perelandra on Amazon Kindle, Chapter 13

30. Dante, Paradise Lost, The Angelic Orders: http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/Paradiso28.htm

31. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

- Mark 10:45

And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

- Luke 22:25-27

32. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.… Love never fails… And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 8a, 13

Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.

- 1 Peter 4:8

33. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.

- Mark 1:15

Do not be afraid any longer, only believe.

- Mark 5:36b

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

- John 3:14-16

34. My prayer is not for [the Disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

- John 17:20-21

35. Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories (New York: Fall River Press, 2009), 43.

36. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

37. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

- Romans 4:3-5

38. Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

- Matthew 10:32-33

39. Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

- John 20:29

40. but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

- Matthew 18:6

41. Stephen Hawking lecture, “The Beginning of Time” http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

42. Ross, Dr. Hugh, The Creator and the Cosmos

43. Attributed to Sir Fred Hoyle, Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics, Oxford University

44. Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species

45. he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. … like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.

- Luke 6:48, 49b

46. Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

- 1 Thessalonians 6:16-18

47. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

- 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

48. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

- Genesis 3:3-7

The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

- Genesis 2:16-17

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

- Genesis 5:1-5

“Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

- Genesis 3:14-16

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

- Genesis 3:17-19

Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop … And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

- Matthew 4:5, 18-19

Pilate then took Jesus and scourged Him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him; and they began to come up to Him and say, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and to give Him slaps in the face.

- John 19:1-3

The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

- 1 Corinthians 15:26

The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.

- Isaiah 11:8

… and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.

- Revelation 21:4

There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.

- Revelation 22:3-4

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

- Romans 5:12-21

49. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

- Genesis 3:3-7

50. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/06/revisiting-the-explosive-growth-of-federal-crimes.

51. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

- Genesis 2:16-17

52. This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

- Genesis 5:1-5

53. see Lon Solomon’s sermon on Genesis “#6 Satan’s Strategy Against Eve” available on iTunes

54. “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

- Genesis 3:14-16

55. Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

- Genesis 3:17-19

56. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop … And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

- Matthew 4:5, 18-19

57. Pilate then took Jesus and scourged Him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him; and they began to come up to Him and say, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and to give Him slaps in the face.

- John 19:1-3

58. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

- 1 Corinthians 15:26

59. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.

- Isaiah 11:8

60. and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.

- Revelation 21:4

61. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.

- Revelation 22:3-4

62. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

- Romans 5:12-21

63. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.

- 1 John 3:11-12

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.”

- Genesis 4:1

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,

So are the children of one’s youth.

How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;

- Psalm 127:3-5b

I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children…

- Genesis 3:16a

Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

- Genesis 4:2

So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.

- Genesis 4:3-5a

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

- Genesis 3:21

So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

- Genesis 4:5b-7

By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.

- Hebrews 11:4

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.

- Romans 7:14-16

So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

- Genesis 3:24

Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

- Genesis 4:8

So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.

- Romans 14:12

[Jesus] came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name…

- John 1:11-12

Then [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.

- Genesis 15:6

Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

- John 12:3

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name; you are Mine!

- Isaiah 43:1b

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.

- Matthew 7:21-23

But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’

Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

- Matthew 25:31-34, 41, 46

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions…

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

- Romans 1:18-26a, 28-32

64. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.

- 1 John 3:11-12

65. Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.”

- Genesis 4:1

66. Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,

So are the children of one’s youth.

How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

- Psalm 127:3-5b

67. I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children…

- Genesis 3:16a

68. Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

- Genesis 4:2

69. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.

- Genesis 4:3-5a

70. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

- Genesis 3:21

71. From the NET Bible Translation notes

72. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.

- Hebrews 11:4

73. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

- Genesis 4:5b-7

74. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (New York: Collins, 1974), 168.

75. For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.

- Romans 7:14-16

76. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

- Genesis 3:24

77. Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

- Genesis 4:8

78. So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.

- Romans 14:12

[Jesus] came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name…

- John 1:11-12

Then [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.

- Genesis 15:6

79. Tozer, A.W., The Pursuit of God, (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread Publishers, 1982), 64.

80. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

- John 12:3

81. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!

- Isaiah 43:1b

82. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.

- Matthew 7:21-23

83. But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

- Matthew 25:31-34, 41, 46

84. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions… And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

- Romans 1:18-26a, 28-32

85. Then [Adam] and [Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden…

- Genesis 3:8a

Then Enoch walked with God …

- Genesis 5:22a

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.

- Genesis 6:9b

Now the Lord appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. …

Then the men rose up from there, and looked down toward Sodom; and Abraham was walking with them to send them off.

- Genesis 18:1, 16

Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. …

So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.”

- Genesis 32:24, 30

But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”

- Exodus 33:20

No one has seen God at any time…

- John 1:18

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.

- Isaiah 6:1

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”

- Genesis 6:5-7

… for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

- Romans 5:13

Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

- Genesis 4:4-5

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

- 2 Peter 3:8

86. Then [Adam] and [Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden…

- Genesis 3:8a

87. Then Enoch walked with God …

- Genesis 5:22a

88. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.

- Genesis 6:9b

89. Now the Lord appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. … Then the men rose up from there, and looked down toward Sodom; and Abraham was walking with them to send them off.

- Genesis 18:1,16

90. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. … So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.”

- Genesis 32:24, 30

91. But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”

- Exodus 33:20

92. No one has seen God at any time…

- John 1:18

93. In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.

- Isaiah 6:1

94. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”

- Genesis 6:5-7

95. for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

- Romans 5:13

96. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

- Genesis 4:4-5

97. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

- 2 Peter 3:8

98. Lewis, C.S., The Problem of Pain, (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 34-35.

99. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

- Genesis 19:24-25

When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.

- Jonah 3:10

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

- Matthew 7:13-14

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

- Romans 5:6

As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down.

- Luke 21:6

My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch. And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.

- Mark 14:34-36

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

- Proverbs 11:24

But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.

- Luke 23:34

100. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

- Genesis 19:24-25

101. When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.

- Jonah 3:10

102. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

- 2 Peter 3:8

103. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

- Matthew 7:13-14

104. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

- Romans 5:6

105. I would ask that you treat the scene in this paragraph very carefully. While it may have actually occurred and I did see it, it is not directly supported by Scripture. There is no description of this happening. This may have happened and it may have not happened, but there is also, more likely, a third option that we just can’t see yet. In this, use with care.

106. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads

107. http://www.artba.org/about/faqs-transportation-general-public/faqs/

108. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads

109. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilician_pirates

110. Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Jerusalem, A Biography, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 60.

111. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

112. Montefiore, Jerusalem, A Biography, 60.

113. ibid, p. 82

114. As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down.

- Luke 21:6

115. ibid, p. 112

116. My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch. And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.

- Mark 14:34-36

117. http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/03/08/arian-foster-remembers-his-moms-sacrifice/.

118. There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

- Proverbs 11:24

119. But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.

- Luke 23:34

120. On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Haggai the prophet, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Ask now the priests for a ruling: If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?’” And the priests answered, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered, “It will become unclean.”

- Haggai 2:10-13

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

- John 1:5

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.

- 2 Corinthians 8:9

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

- Matthew 4:17

Two things I asked of You,

Do not refuse me before I die:

Keep deception and lies far from me,

Give me neither poverty nor riches;

Feed me with the food that is my portion,

That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?”

Or that I not be in want and steal,

And profane the name of my God.

- Proverbs 30:7-9

The rich and the poor have a common bond,

The Lord is the maker of them all.

- Proverbs 22:2

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of Men.

- John 1:1-4

When the days of her purification are completed, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the doorway of the tent of meeting a one year old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. … But if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, the one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she will be clean.

- Leviticus 12:6, 8

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:8

… whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

- Mark 10:43b-45

And a Leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. And He sternly warned him and immediately sent him away, and He said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere.

- Mark 1:40-45

As for the Leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

- Leviticus 13:45-46

[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

- 2 Corinthians 5:21

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.

- Mark 1:15

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

- James 5:16

The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.” Then Moses said, “I pray You, show me Your glory!” And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”

- Exodus 33:17-19

121. On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Haggai the prophet, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Ask now the priests for a ruling: If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?’” And the priests answered, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered, “It will become unclean.”

- Haggai 2:10-13

122. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

- John 1:5

123. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.

- 2 Corinthians 8:9

124. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

- Matthew 4:17

125. Two things I asked of You,

Do not refuse me before I die:

Keep deception and lies far from me,

Give me neither poverty nor riches;

Feed me with the food that is my portion,

That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?”

Or that I not be in want and steal,

And profane the name of my God.

- Proverbs 30:7-9

126. The rich and the poor have a common bond,

The Lord is the maker of them all.

- Proverbs 22:2

127. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of Men.

- John 1:1-4

128. When the days of her purification are completed, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the doorway of the tent of meeting a one year old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. … But if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, the one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she will be clean.

- Leviticus 12:6, 8

129. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:8

130. whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

- Mark 10:43b-45

131. And a Leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. And He sternly warned him and immediately sent him away, and He said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere.

- Mark 1:40-45

132. drawn heavily from Tim Keller’s Sermon Series, King’s Cross: The Gospel of Mark (Part 1-The Coming of the King) and particularly the lesson titled Prayer, Word and Deed.

133. As for the Leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

- Leviticus 13:45-46

134. I can just hear him in heaven now, I HAVE A NAME, YOU KNOW!!! I’M NOT A LEPER ANYMORE—take that up with Mark, buddy!

135. [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

- 2 Corinthians 5:21

136. http://redeemercitytocity.com/content/com.redeemer.digitalContentArchive.LibraryItem/503/Hope_for_Your_Work.pdf

137. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.

- Mark 1:15

138. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

- James 5:16

139. He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.

- John 14:21

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

- Luke 10:25-28

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

- Deuteronomy 6:4-5

It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul…

- Deuteronomy 11:13

You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

- Leviticus 19:17-18

But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”

- Luke 10:29-36

As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

- Mark 10:17

And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.”

- Mark 10:18-20

Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.”

- Mark 10:21-22

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

- Romans 13:8-10

But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends…

- Luke 15:29

And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

- Luke 10:37

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.

- 2 Corinthians 8:9

You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

- Leviticus 19:17-18

But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

- Deuteronomy 4:29

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

- Matthew 7:7

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words…

- Romans 8:26

Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

- Matthew 7:2-5

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

- Genesis 2:7

And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last.

- Mark 15:37

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

140. He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.

- John 14:21

141. prayer by Bryant Cornett, c. 2007, if it happened at all

142. Orthodox Jews still have something like this today http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/world/middleeast/rabbi-y-s-elyashiv-master-of-talmudic-law-dies-at-102.html?_r=0

143. And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

- Luke 10:25-28

144. Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

- Deuteronomy 6:4-5

It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul…

- Deuteronomy 11:13

145. The Shema consists of Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37–41

146. You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

- Leviticus 19:17-18

147. This verse is sometimes equated with the Golden Rule, stated in Matthew 7:12: “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Loving your neighbor as yourself is a higher standard than the Golden Rule. It is possible that you want to be left alone and not bothered by your neighbors. So you could fulfill the Golden Rule by disregarding your neighbor entirely. But in doing so, I would be far short of the standard of loving my neighbor as myself.

148. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”

- Luke 10:29-36

149. http://agapepartners.org/articles/97/1/The-Parable-of-the-Good-Samaritan-Unveiled—a-True-Story-of-Humankind/Page1.html

150. As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

- Mark 10:17

151. And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.”

- Mark 10:18-20

152. Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.”

- Mark 10:21-22

153. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

154. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

- Romans 13:8-10

155. But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends…

- Luke 15:29

156. And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

- Luke 10:37

157. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.

- 2 Corinthians 8:9

158. You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord. - Leviticus 19:17-18

159. Tim Keller’s Sermon Series Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living from the lesson entitled Strangeness and the Order of God

160. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

- Deuteronomy 4:29

161. Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

- Matthew 7:7

162. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words…

- Romans 8:26

163. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

164. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

- Matthew 7:2-5

165. Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

- Genesis 2:7

166. And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last.

- Mark 15:37

167. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

168. Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.

- John 6:68

Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

- Genesis 15:6

If they will not believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign.

- Exodus 4:8

So the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction, then they bowed low and worshiped.

- Exodus 4:31

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.

- Psalm 27:13

Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.

- Isaiah 28:16

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.

- Jonah 3:5

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.

- Matthew 8:13

When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.”

- Matthew 9:28

but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

- Matthew 18:6

For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.

- Matthew 21:32

He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him.

- Matthew 27:42

And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

- Mark 9:23-24

Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

They began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’

- Mark 11:31

Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.

- Mark 16:14

He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.

- Mark 16:16

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.

- Luke 1:45

Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.

- Luke 8:12-13

He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.

- John 1:7

He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

- John 1:11-13

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

- John 3:36

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “ He told me all the things that I have done.”

- John 4:39

So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”

- John 4:48

If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

- John 3:12-19

Many more believed because of His word…

- John 4:41

Jesus said to him, “Go; your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.

- John 4:50

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

- John 5:24

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.

- John 5:38

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?

- John 5:44

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

- John 5:46-47

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.

- John 6:35

But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.

- John 6:36

For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.

- John 6:40

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

- John 6:47

“But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

- John 6:64

But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

- John 7:39

No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he?

- John 7:48

Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

- John 8:24

But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.

- John 8:45

Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?

- John 8:46

Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him.

- John 9:35-38

But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep.

- John 10:26

If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.

- John 10:37-38

So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.” … Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” … Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” … Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

- John 11:14-15, 25-27, 40, 45

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

- John 11:47-48

While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.” These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them.

- John 12:36

Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. And Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me.”

- John 12:42-44

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.

- John 14:1

Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

- John 14:11

for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.

- John 16:27

So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

- John 20:25

Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. … “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

- John 17:7-8, 20-21

Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

- John 20:29-31

But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

- Acts 4:4

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

- Acts 4:32

And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number.

- Acts 5:14

As they went along the road they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

- Acts 8:36-37

Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.

- Matthew 7:27

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my Gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

- Romans 2:14-16

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

- Matthew 6:24a

You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

- Matthew 5:21-22

The servant-girl saw [Peter], and began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too.” But he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he began to weep.

- Mark 14:69-72

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

- Matthew 12:46-50

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

- 1 John 4:7-11

Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short

That it cannot save;

Nor is His ear so dull

That it cannot hear.

But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,

And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

- Isaiah 59:1-2

He gives strength to the weary, And to him who lacks might He increases power.

Though youths grow weary and tired,

And vigorous young men stumble badly,

Yet those who wait for the Lord

Will gain new strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not get tired,

They will walk and not become weary.

- Isaiah 40:29-31

For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

- 2 Peter 1:4

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

- Romans 8:28

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

- Philippians 4:19

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

- Romans 8:28

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

- Matthew 11:28-29

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord…

- Romans 8:37-39

For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

- Jeremiah 29:11

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.

- Isaiah 7:14

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.”

- Matthew 1:18-23

…just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her…

- Ephesians 5:25b

The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.

- Psalm 118:22

Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” So the Lord said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.” And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?” And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” He spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham the Lord departed, and Abraham returned to his place.

- Genesis 18:23-33

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…

- John 3:16a

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:8

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.

- Isaiah 11:4

Before the Lord, for He is coming,

For He is coming to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness

And the peoples in His faithfulness.

- Psalm 96:13

Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”

- Revelation 14:9-11

Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.

- Revelation 22:12

He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.”

- Ezekiel 37:3

But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

- Mark 13:32

But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

- John 16:5-15

Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

- Matthew 12:32

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

- Luke 12:10

Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

- Mark 3:28-30

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

- Galatians 5:22-23

But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.

- Matthew 10:19-20

“Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.

- Acts 1:16

… but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…

- Acts 1:8a

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

- Acts 2:4

And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.”

- Acts 5:32

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.

- Acts 9:31

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power.

- Acts 10:38

For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials…

- Acts 15:28

While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

- Acts 13:2

They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia…

- Acts 16:6

… for the kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

- Romans 14:17

… for our Gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.

- 1 Thessalonians 1:5

… for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

- 2 Peter 1:21

Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

- Mark 9:24

169. Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.

- John 6:68

170. Raising Arizona movie (1987)

171. Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

- Genesis 15:6

If they will not believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign.

- Exodus 4:8

So the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction, then they bowed low and worshiped.

- Exodus 4:31

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.

- Psalm 27:13

Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.

- Isaiah 28:16

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.

- Jonah 3:5

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.

- Matthew 8:13

When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.”

- Matthew 9:28

but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

- Matthew 18:6

For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.

- Matthew 21:32

He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him.

- Matthew 27:42

And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

- Mark 9:23-24

Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

They began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’

- Mark 11:31

Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.

- Mark 16:14

He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.

- Mark 16:16

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.

- Luke 1:45

Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.

- Luke 8:12-13

He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.

- John 1:7

He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

- John 1:11-13

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

- John 3:36

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “ He told me all the things that I have done.”

- John 4:39

So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”

- John 4:48

If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

- John 3:12-19

Many more believed because of His word…

- John 4:41

Jesus said to him, “Go; your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.

- John 4:50

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

- John 5:24

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.

- John 5:38

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?

- John 5:44

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

- John 5:46-47

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.

- John 6:35

But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.

- John 6:36

For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.

- John 6:40

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

- John 6:47

“But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

- John 6:64

But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

- John 7:39

No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he?

- John 7:48

Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

- John 8:24

But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.

- John 8:45

Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?

- John 8:46

Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him.

- John 9:35-38

But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep.

- John 10:26

If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.

- John 10:37-38

So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.” … Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” … Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” … Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

- John 11:14-15, 25-27, 40, 45

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

- John 11:47-48

While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.” These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them.

- John 12:36

Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. And Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me.”

- John 12:42-44

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.

- John 14:1

Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

- John 14:11

for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.

- John 16:27

So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

- John 20:25

Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. … “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

- John 17:7-8, 20-21

Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

- John 20:29-31

But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

- Acts 4:4

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

- Acts 4:32

And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number.

- Acts 5:14

As they went along the road they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

- Acts 8:36-37

172. Hugo, Victor. Les Misérables (Boston, MA: T.Y. Crowell & Company, 1887), Book Fourth:143. This chapter, called “Book Fourth.—Javert Derailed.” is worth a read at http://goo.gl/Oe3nVH

173. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.

- Matthew 7:27

174. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my Gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

- Romans 2:14-16

175. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees

176. It should be noted that although Pharisees and Sadducees were on opposite ends of the spectrum defined here, and were the two most visible Jewish sects in the New Testament, other sects existed (such as Zealots, Essenes, etc.) and many Jews of the time, much like today, would bristle at being labeled squarely within one group.

177. As a side note, Maccabean ruler’s errors brought about two of the factors that paved the way for Jesus: 1) their mismanagement led to the formal request of help from Israel to the Romans to finally rid them of Greek rule. The thing about Romans is that once you invite them in, they never leave, and 2) one of those forced to convert to Judaism by John Hyrcanus was an Edomite descendant of Esau who became the grandfather of Herod the Great. This single conversion changed the face of Israel for a thousand years and put the country in the hands of a madman.

178. No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

- Matthew 6:24a

179. Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

- Genesis 15:6

If they will not believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign.

- Exodus 4:8

So the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction, then they bowed low and worshiped.

- Exodus 4:31

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.

- Psalm 27:13

Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.

- Isaiah 28:16

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.

- Jonah 3:5

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.

- Matthew 8:13

When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.”

- Matthew 9:28

but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

- Matthew 18:6

For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.

- Matthew 21:32

He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him.

- Matthew 27:42

And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

- Mark 9:23-24

Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

They began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’

- Mark 11:31

Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.

- Mark 16:14

He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.

- Mark 16:16

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.

- Luke 1:45

Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.

- Luke 8:12-13

He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.

- John 1:7

He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

- John 1:11-13

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

- John 3:36

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “ He told me all the things that I have done.”

- John 4:39

So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”

- John 4:48

If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

- John 3:12-19

Many more believed because of His word…

- John 4:41

Jesus said to him, “Go; your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.

- John 4:50

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

- John 5:24

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.

- John 5:38

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?

- John 5:44

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

- John 5:46-47

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.

- John 6:35

But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.

- John 6:36

For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.

- John 6:40

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

- John 6:47

“But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

- John 6:64

But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

- John 7:39

No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he?

- John 7:48

Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.

- John 8:24

But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.

- John 8:45

Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?

- John 8:46

Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him.

- John 9:35-38

But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep.

- John 10:26

If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.

- John 10:37-38

So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.” … Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” … Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” … Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

- John 11:14-15, 25-27, 40, 45

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

- John 11:47-48

While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.” These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them.

- John 12:36

Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. And Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me.”

- John 12:42-44

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.

- John 14:1

Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

- John 14:11

for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.

- John 16:27

So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

- John 20:25

Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. … “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

- John 17:7-8, 20-21

Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

- John 20:29-31

But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

- Acts 4:4

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

- Acts 4:32

And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number.

- Acts 5:14

As they went along the road they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

- Acts 8:36-37

180. Hugo, Les Misérables, Book Fourth:150

181. You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

- Matthew 5:21-22

182. http://stellarhousepublishing.com/gospel-dates.html.

183. The servant-girl saw [Peter], and began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too.” But he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he began to weep.

- Mark 14:69-72

184. While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

- Matthew 12:46-50

185. A great expansion of this can be found in Joy Davidman’s letter printed in Lyle Dorsett’s biography of her, And God Came In pgs. 112-116.

186. http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/1390

187. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

- 1 John 4:7-11

188. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

- Romans 8:28

For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

- Jeremiah 29:11

For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

- 2 Peter 1:4

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

- Philippians 4:19

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord…

- Romans 8:37-39

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

- Philippians 4:19

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord…

- Romans 8:37-39

He gives strength to the weary,

And to him who lacks might He increases power.

Though youths grow weary and tired,

And vigorous young men stumble badly,

Yet those who wait for the Lord

Will gain new strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not get tired,

They will walk and not become weary.

- Isaiah 40:29-31

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

- Matthew 11:28-29

189. Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.

- Isaiah 7:14

190. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.”

- Matthew 1:18-23

191. …just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her…

- Ephesians 5:25b

192. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.

- Psalm 118:22

193. Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” So the Lord said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.” And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?” And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” He spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham the Lord departed, and Abraham returned to his place.

- Genesis 18:23-33

194. from a Tim Keller sermon on King’s Cross

195. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…

- John 3:16a

196. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

197. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:8

198. O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find (Apple iBooks)

199. But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.

- Isaiah 11:4

200. Before the Lord, for He is coming,

For He is coming to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness

And the peoples in His faithfulness.

- Psalm 96:13

201. Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”

- Revelation 14:9-11

202. Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.

- Revelation 22:12

203. Milosz, Czeslaw. Discrete Charm of Nihilism. 1998 for the New York Review of Books

204. He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.”

- Ezekiel 37:3

205. But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

- John 16:5-15

206. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

- Galatians 5:22-23

207. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

- Acts 2:4

208. but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…

- Acts 1:8a

209. for our Gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.

- 1 Thessalonians 1:5

210. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

- Romans 8:26-27

211. And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.”

- Acts 5:32

212. While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

- Acts 13:2

They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia…

- Acts 16:6

213. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.

- Acts 9:31

for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

- 2 Peter 1:21

214. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials…

- Acts 15:28

215. for the kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

- Romans 14:17

216. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.

- Matthew 10:19-20

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power.

- Acts 10:38

217. But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

- Mark 13:32

218 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

- John 16:13

219 But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

- John 16:5-15

220. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

- Matthew 12:32

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

- Luke 12:10

Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

- Mark 3:28-30

221. Tim Keller in King’s Cross Sermons

222. Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

- Mark 9:24

223. …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

- Romans 3:23

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

- 1 John 2:1-2

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

- 1 John 1:9

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

- Romans 6:23

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

- John 14:6

What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

- Luke 15:4-7

He who hates Me hates My Father also.

- John 15:23

But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world

Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

- Matthew 25:31-34, 41, 46

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.

- 1 Timothy 1:12-14

Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

- 2 Corinthians 5:9-10

But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

- Romans 14: 10b

Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

- 1 Corinthians 3:8-15

Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

- 1 Corinthians 3:8-15

Your word is a lamp to my feet

And a light to my path.

I have sworn and I will confirm it,

That I will keep Your righteous ordinances.

- Psalm 119:105-106

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. … No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

- Matthew 6:19-21, 24

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.

- Matthew 7:16-20

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. … You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

- James 2:14-17, 24-26

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

- Matthew 22:37-40

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

- Revelation 2:4

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’

- Matthew 25:23

Another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? … Then he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ And they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten minas already.’ I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.

- Luke 19:20-21, 23-26

Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

224. …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

- Romans 3:23

225. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

- 1 John 2:1-2

226. Tim Keller’s sermon series King’s Cross sermon in a lesson titled Mocking Jesus

227. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

- 1 John 1:9

228. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

- Romans 6:23

229. Andy Stanley Sermon, When Truthie met Gracie, May 2012

230. Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

- John 14:6

231. What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

- Luke 15:4-7

232. He who hates Me hates My Father also.

- John 15:23

233. But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

- Matthew 25:31-34, 41, 46

234. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.

- 1 Timothy 1:12-14

235. Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

- 1 Corinthians 3:8-15

236. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

- Romans 8:1-2

237. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

- 2 Corinthians 5:9-10

238. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

- Romans 14: 10b

239. Tozer, A. W. Whatever Happened to Worship?: A Call to True Worship (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread Publishers, 2006), 13.

240. You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

- 1 Peter 3:7

241. Your word is a lamp to my feet

And a light to my path.

I have sworn and I will confirm it,

That I will keep Your righteous ordinances.

- Psalm 119:105-106

242. http://www.bibleteachingnotes.com/templates/System/details.asp?id=29183&fetch=7872

243. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. … No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

- Matthew 6:19-21, 24

244. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.

- Matthew 7:16-20

245. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

246. And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

- Matthew 22:37-40

247. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

- John 15:13

248. What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. … You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

- James 2:14-17, 24-26

249. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

- Revelation 2:4

250. His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’

- Matthew 25:23

251. Another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? … Then he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ And they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten minas already.’ I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.

- Luke 19:20-21, 23-26

252. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

- Revelation 2:4

253. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

- Mark 11:24

254. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

- John 17:514:32-36

They came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”

- Mark 14:32-36

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” … He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

- Matthew 26:37-40, 42

And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground

- Luke 22:41-44

Now when [the members of the Sanhedrin] heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, [Stephen] gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.

- Acts 7:54-60

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

- Matthew 7:13-14

But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

- Deuteronomy 4:29

Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

- Matthew 3:1-2

My shield is with God,

Who saves the upright in heart.

God is a righteous judge,

And a God who has indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;

He has bent His bow and made it ready.

- Psalm 7:10-12

Zion will be redeemed with justice And her repentant ones with righteousness. But transgressors and sinners will be crushed together, And those who forsake the Lord will come to an end.

- Isaiah 1: 27-28

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

- Matthew 4:17

Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.”

- Zechariah 3:3-4

Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

- Ephesians 6:13-17

So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

- Matthew 6:8-13

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

- Luke 9:23

Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.

- John 11:39-43

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” … He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

- Matthew 26:37-40, 42

After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

- 1 Kings 19:12

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

- Matthew 5:3-10

But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out onto the porch. The servant-girl saw him, and began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too.” But [Peter] began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he began to weep.

- Mark 14:68-72

255. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

- John 17:5

256. They came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”

- Mark 14:32-36

257. And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” … He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

- Matthew 26:37-40, 42

258. And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.

- Luke 22:41-44

259. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematidrosis

260. Now when [the members of the Sanhedrin] heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, [Stephen] gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.

- Acts 7:54-60

261. Bapetel, Eric. Supernatural Immunity: Exploring God’s Keeping Power from Psalm 91 and More, (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2012), 142.

262. http://www.saintpolycarp.org/Saint_Polycarp_bio.htm

263. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

- Matthew 7:13-14

264. My shield is with God,

Who saves the upright in heart.

God is a righteous judge,

And a God who has indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;

He has bent His bow and made it ready.

- Psalm 7:10-12

But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

- Deuteronomy 4:29

Zion will be redeemed with justice And her repentant ones with righteousness. But transgressors and sinners will be crushed together, And those who forsake the Lord will come to an end.

- Isaiah 1: 27-28

265. Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

- Matthew 3:1-2

266. From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

- Matthew 4:17

267. Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.”

- Zechariah 3:3-4

268. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

- Ephesians 6:13-17

269. For more listen to Andy Stanley at Buckhead Church, Red-Letter Prayers: Our Father at http://northpoint.org/messages/red-letter-prayers/northpoint.org

270. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

- Matthew 6:8-13

271. And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

- Luke 9:23

272. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.

- John 11:39-43

273. And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” … He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

- Matthew 26:37-40, 42

274. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

- 1 Kings 19:12

275. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 91.

276. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

- Matthew 5:3-10

277. But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out onto the porch. The servant-girl saw him, and began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too.” But [Peter] began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he began to weep.

- Mark 14:68-72

278. Thank you again and turn this page to provide a short review of this book.