Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

John 3:1-21

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? John 3:11-12

I continue my study of John, and today, I start to unpack John 3:1-21 using the Sword Bible Study Method, looking at vv1-15, and tomorrow I will look at vv16-21.   

• What do we learn from the passage about God?: As Nicodemus questions Him, Jesus prefaces His response with "truly, truly" (3x - vv3,5,11).  He does this to emphasize that what He is saying is absolutely true because He is the King of Kings and source of God's Word (see John 1:1).  Jesus then focuses on the important doctrine of regeneration - that believers must be born again to have faith.  See also Ezekiel 36:26 where God alone gives His people a new heart, replacing the heart of stone with a heart of flesh.  There should be no mystery about how one comes to faith - although it works like the wind (v8) in the sense that the timing or circumstances are not known, faith comes from God alone via the Spirit living in our hearts (Ephesians 2:8).  God wants us to have faith - even when we cannot see or comprehend everything.  It is true that many aspects of faith are hard to understand (more accurately not fully understood on this side of Heaven) but there are aspects of faith that should be absolutely clear from both the OT and NT - we all sin, need a Savior, and Jesus is that Savior (see also Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8, Romans 3:10, Psalms 14:2-3, 53:2-3).           
• What do we learn from the passage about people?: People want answers for everything yet people will find it futile because we cannot understand all there is to understand - see Ecclesiastes 1:1-10. Israel (and any other non believer) did not believe even with both earthly and heavenly signs - see also Romans 1:20. 
• Is there anything from the passage God wants us to obey (SPEC: Sins to avoid,Promises to claim, Examples to follow, Commands to obey?): Avoid leaning on own understanding (Proverbs 3:5); but instead acknowledge, trust and follow God; belief in Jesus will give new/transformed life and eternal life; we should follow Nicodemus' example and earnestly seek Him and Truth because God promises that if seek Him with all of our heart we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13).    

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My Prayer: Father God, You are an awesome God who loves and saves!  Thank You Jesus!  I am not deserving of how You love and save.  My sin is great and it continues...daily.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please continue to heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

Romans 10

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. Romans 10:1

I continue to lean on DesiringGod.com's Solid Joys daily devotion, which today looks at how we pray for unbelievers - similar to yesterday where John Piper sought to help us see what kind of prayer pleases God. Piper looks at Romans 10, where Paul - a Jew - seeks to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Israelite nation. He points out that Paul does not pray for "ineffectual influences, but for effectual influences," and that we should pray as such. Effectual influences are described (not exhaustively - see also this post) as promises of God and examples from scripture provided by Piper include:

• God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone and give them a new heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 11:19)
• Circumcise their heart so that they love you! (Deuteronomy 30:6)
• Father, put your Spirit within them and cause them to walk in your statutes. (Ezekiel 36:27)
• Grant them repentance and a knowledge of the truth that they may escape from the snare of the devil. (2 Timothy 2:25–26)
• Open their hearts so that they believe the gospel! (Acts 16:14) 

The implication here is that while we can pray for positive earthly influences for unbelievers (a gospel-centered church, Godly friends and disciple-makers, etc.), there is no substitute for God in how He is sovereign and provident over election and salvation.

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus - You are so good and You saved me - pursuing me and giving me a new heart of flesh - that I can desire and seek You.  Thank You Jesus!  Amazing grace - of course I am not deserving.  My sin is great and it continues...daily.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior - circumcise their heart so that they love you!  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age).

Hebrews 9

By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age). Hebrews 9:8-9

I continue my study of Hebrews, assisted by the commentary Christ Centered Exposition: Exalting Jesus in Hebrews. My focus this morning is Hebrews 9:1-10, specifically on the text of 9:6-10, leaning on my commentary for its observations on the second division entitled "The End of Mediated Access to God".  Here, my commentary focuses on how the work of the high priest during the period of the First Covenant to atone for sins of the people was incomplete - it needed ongoing repetition - every year on the Day of Atonement. As a starting point, the commentary describes the pervasive nature of humanity's sinful nature, including sins of commission (intentionally doing wrong), omission (not doing what God seeks for us to do), and "sins committed in ignorance or unintentionally."  The commentary then points to how in v8-9 the Holy Spirit was pointing to a new way that allowed direct access to God, not relying on a mediator.  It shares: "the Holy Spirit was indicating something through the architecture of the tabernacle: even he was crying out for the day when the final sacrifice would come. As long as there was a curtain between the holy place and the most holy place, the people were not fully in the presence of God. They could not draw near to God with confidence. Thus, the veil between the most holy place and the holy place indicated incompleteness and an inability to approach God." Of course, when Jesus declared that "it is finished" (John 19:30) on the cross, believers in Him, could access God directly as Jesus became the once and for all, final sacrifice for the sins of the people, eliminating the need for repetitive sacrifices tearing down the veil that separated the people from God.  The commentary wraps by describing how Christ's sacrifice on the cross also did something else critical for us: it provided a means for not just ritual and external cleansing of sin, but it provided inner cleansing by giving us God in our hearts.  Praise God!

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You for the work You did on the cross, giving me access to You directly and for working in my heart!  I am grateful!  But I also know that I am undeserving.  My sin is great and it continues...daily.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

...[B]ut I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

Pages: 197-210, John 5, 8 and Ezekiel 11, 36

...[B]ut I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” John 5:42-47

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, Part 2 The Super Natural Act of Reading the Bible, chapter twelve - Why the Pharisees Couldn't Read.  Here, Piper seeks to help us understand more deeply what stops us from reading the Bible supernaturally.  He uses the Pharisees and the Sadducees as examples of those who had read the law but did not recognized or believe in Jesus and so misinterpreted both the law and who Jesus really is; Piper states that the problem was "moral and spiritual....What prevented the reading that Jesus expected was not skills they lacked, but sins they loved.  The problem was not mental deficiencies, but misplaced desires."  Piper then goes on to list those misplaced desires as desire for "human praise, money, etc."  He points to John 5:42-47 where the Jewish leaders are challenging Jesus and seeking to persecute Him.  Piper then points to John 8:42-44 where Jesus then "links this love of self-exaltation to Satan.  "[Jesus] says that [the Jewish leaders] cannot welcome the words of Jesus because their desires are in sync with the Devil[.]" 

Piper wraps up the chapter by pointing to Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26 for how God gives us a "heart of flesh" to help us grow in our sensitivity to "God's worth and beauty[.]"

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are truly and amazing God and my Lord and Savior!  Thank You for rescuing me, adopting me into Your family, and for helping me see Your worth and beauty.  I am not deserving for all that You have done and do for me.  My sin, worry, etc. continues.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You. Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.