'So let no man judge you in food or in drink, or in regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.' {Colossians 2:16-17}

In his book The Republic, Plato tells a story about a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners. That’s essentially the point that Paul is making here.

It’s about Jesus. It’s not about some feast, it’s about understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of each feast. It’s not about keeping the Sabbath, its about realizing that He is our Sabbath rest. The feasts and dietary laws and even the Sabbath were all pictures or shadows of Him.

The Christian is one who has learned to see the reality to which all shadows point. In Christ, we see the fulfillment of every picture, and the substance of every shadow. And that changes the way you go through life. So think back to the last time you marveled at a beautiful sunset. You know those sunsets that are so beautiful they just take your breath away. There are colors in there that we don’t even have names for. As Christians we don’t just see a beautiful sunset. We see the artisonship of a master painter. When we look up into the heavens on a starlit night. We don’t just see the vast expanse of the heavens. We see the glory of God being displayed because the Psalmist tells us that the heavens what, declare God’s glory right.

And so here’s where we start to get off… We get off when we place more emphasis and weight on the shadow then we do on Christ. So rather then seeing the beauty in creation and letting that propel our hearts to worship the God who created those things, we worship the creation. We take the things that God has made, that were meant to point us to Him, and we elevate those things and begin to worship those things over the creator. And in doing so, we become idolators. And just as an example of this… We’ve got these two dogs and they’re more or less our vacuum cleaners. So I’ll drop some food on the ground from time to time and I’ll call my dog over to lick it up for me. But sometimes the dog won’t see the food so I’ll point to it and say, ‘No, it’s over there.’ And there have been times when my dog will start licking my finger. I’m thinking, what you want is over there. But they just don’t get it. That’s like us. We don’t get it. All these things we enjoy are like fingers pointing us to Jesus. He’s what we want. He is the fulfillment, the substance and the essence of it all.

God Bless,

Daniel

The Life of Faith

I often hear people say, ‘If all I have to do is believe God… If I'm saved by grace alone, through faith in what Christ has accomplished for me on the cross then what about the way we live? Doesn’t that kind of preaching lead to loose living?’ I don't believe so. Because the Scriptures are going to show us how those who have been saved by grace alone through faith alone always go on to live radically different lives. Because they realize they are not just saved by faith, they live by faith. Genuine faith is always expressed in radical obedience.

Hebrews 11 is this great chapter and its all about these men and women who did extraordinary things and lived extraordinary lives because they lived by faith… ‘Who through faith subdued kingdoms worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of aliens. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword…’ I could go on.

The point is, people who live by grace through faith live radically different lives then the rest of the world. Completely different lives. Why? Because they believe God. They know they don’t need the stuff so many of us try so desperately to hold on to. Because they know God is better and they know God is all satisfying. And so the trinkets and toys this world has offered to them are no longer precious to them because God is precious to them and they want God. And they believe God that He’s enough for them. So their not saying, ‘Well I’ve been saved by grace so I can just live in sin and indulge in the things of this world and live however I want.’ No. That’s not living by grace through faith. People who live like that know so little of grace and so little of faith.

The reason we don’t live radical lives like Hebrews 11 talks about, is because we lack faith. We need to believe God. To believe that he is good and that He is better then all that this world has to offer and that He is worth risking everything for. That He’s worth risking our lives for. Like the Psalmist we should be able to say, 'Because Your loving kindness is better then life, my lips will praise you.' {Psalm 63:3} You see, to many of us serve God because we think He can give us a better life. The Psalmist had it right. His lovingkindness is better then life. When we believe that, it leads us to lead lives of reckless abandon for the sake of the gospel. We need to be delivered from a lie that says, ‘I’ve received grace from God so I can live how I want and indulge in the things of this world.’ That’s not grace and that’s not faith. It misses the whole point. May God give us grace to live by faith!

Daniel

Holding All Things Together

Colossians 1:17 says that 'in Him all things are held together.'

By Him all things are held together. By Him all things consist. You see, here’s how this plays out in my life. I’ve found that when Jesus gets pushed off the throne in my heart and other things become more important than Him, my life seems to unravel. It begins to spin out of control. Do you know what I mean? I get short tempered. I find myself being dominated by my flesh. I become irritable. There’s a reason for that. The scriptures say that in Him all things hold together. So when I get away from Him or neglect my time with Him, things just start to unravel. But the opposite of that is also true. When I’m in the word and Jesus has the place of priority and preeminence that He ought to have in my life, it doesn’t really matter what’s going on around me, I can be at peace. My whole world could be falling apart at the seems, but if Jesus is center in my life, then it doesn’t matter. He holds me together.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I’ve observed Christians going through the hardest trials. I mean really difficult stuff. And in the midst of those trying times, I’ve seen the Lord sustain them and hold them together. That’s not to say that they don’t struggle or experience pain, but in the midst of that pain, their life doesn’t come apart at the seams. The Scriptures say, ‘He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him.’

One more thought on this verse … How does He hold all things together? Hebrews 1:3 says, ‘He upholds all things by the word of His power.’ It’s His word that upholds us. When you’re overwhelmed. When you feel like you’re about to unravel. When life seems to be falling apart, it’s God’s word that comes to you and upholds you. His promises are brought to bear on your life and on your circumstances. This is why it’s so important that we memorize scripture. Because it’s through His word that He upholds all things.

--Daniel

Freedom in Christ

In Galatians 5:1 Paul writes, 'For freedom Christ has set us free.'

Now, that’s a concept that we as Americans are familiar with right. Freedom is this powerful idea that has come to define American culture and values. We sing about freedom. We talk about freedom. We fight for freedom. America has been billed as ‘the land of the free and home of the brave.’ And might I just say at this point that I thank God for the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans. I think we take some of our freedoms for granted. We are free to worship God. That’s not the case in many parts of the world. So I’m especially grateful to the men and women who serve our country and risk their lives to protect the many freedoms that we enjoy.

So in one sense we’re a free people, but there is another sense in which a person is never truly free until they surrender their life to Jesus Christ. I mean, we believe that we are a free people, born into a free society and that we can do whatever we want. But the Bible paints a different picture. It says that we’re not free, but that we are all born into slavery. It says that we’re enslaved to sin and death. Jesus said, ‘Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin.’ Anyone who’s ever tried to stop sinning understands this. We can’t. We’re all born with a sinful nature and we’re slaves to that sinful nature until Christ sets us free. It’s like our whole social structure has been built to help us deal with sin. That’s why we have counselors and attorneys and cops… But no matter how many systems we develop and programs we create and social structures we put in place, none of it works. We are slaves to sin.

Likewise, the bible says that we are all slaves to death. As one person said it, ‘The statistics on death are rather impressive. One out of ever one persons who are born die.’ I don’t care how much you go to the gym or if you eat your vitamins and veggies and make sure to wear sun-block and avoid everything that’s bad. One day, you will die. That’s why Jesus came. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh and redeemed us so that now we don’t have to die, we can live forever with God. And we don’t have to be enslaved to sin, we can walk in freedom and newness of life. Jesus said, ‘If the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed.’

I know a lot of people who think of Christianity as this thing that strips you of your freedoms. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have been set free from the bondage of earthly passions and pursuits. We are free to love God, and serve Him and worship Him and walk with Him. This is true freedom. Walk in it. Fight for it. Stand in it.

God bless,

Daniel Bentley

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

In Galatians 5, Paul writes that if we 'walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.' · If your walking step by step day by day in the Spirit, you’re not going to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. So how do we do that? How do we walk in the Spirit? I think that Jesus is our example in this area, as He is in every area… Jesus did life in the power of the Spirit. I think we forget that sometimes. The scriptures tell us that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. They tell us that after He was baptized the Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. He was filled with the Spirit. In His first sermon, Jesus said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor…’ His miracles were performed through the power of the Spirit. His preaching was done in the power of the Spirit. He cast out demons through the power of the Spirit. At one point we are told that He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. So He overcame temptation through the power of the Spirit. Everything Jesus did while on earth as a man, He did in the power of the Holy Spirit. So that’s what it looks like to walk in the Spirit. And then one of the last things Jesus says to His disciples is, ‘You will receive power when the Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.’ And so you look at the book of Acts which gives us a record of the early church and you find the Holy Spirit everywhere.

So here’s what that means for us. Walking in the Spirit is about cultivating a heart that is sensitive to the Spirit’s leading. It’s about cultivating ears that are tuned to the Spirit’s voice. It’s about cultivating eyes that are open to the Spirit’s working in your life. You see, when your walking in the Spirit, you’ll find that you’re being led. He leads us to people who need a friend to talk to. He leads us to scriptures that impart wisdom to us and that are applicable to situations that we are going to face in that day. He leads us into situations where God’s love can flow through us. That’s what it means to walk in the Spirit. And as you do that, you’ll find yourself defeating your enemy, the flesh…

God bless

Daniel

INVITATION

Jesus shows up on the scene and He is this Rabbi who teaches like nobody’s ever taught before. He has power over disease and over the wind and the waves. And He’s getting ready to launch His public ministry so the first thing He does is He gathers a group of men and begins to disciple them.

So the invitation of Jesus over and over and over again in the New Testament is to come and ‘follow me.’ ‘Come live as I lived.” Literally, “Come walk with me.” So He’s walking along the shores of the sea of Galille and He sees Peter and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea and He calls them to be His disciples and the invitation is, ‘follow me.’ And it says, they left their nets and they ‘followed him.’ Then he calls James and John to be His disiples and again it says that they left their boats and they ‘followed Him.’ So the call into discipleship always begins with this invitation to ‘follow Him.’

And here's the thing... When Jesus called them to follow Him, He wasn’t just inviting them to follow his teachings, He was inviting them into a brand new way of doing life. This much is made clear by the fact that when He called them to ‘follow Him’ they literally got up left their nets and physically began to follow Him. You see, back in the days that Jesus walked the earth, those wishing to study with a certain rabbi would follow not only that rabbi's teachings as closely as possible, but they would also physically follow him. The idea was that you would follow so closely, in order to not miss a word, that you would be covered in the dust from the road that your rabbi's sandals kicked up as he walked. So, there is this ancient blessing that is still used today among Rabbis and disciples, and the blessing is ‘May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.’ What that means is may you follow so closely behind him that as he walks and kicks-up dust, it gets all on you.

So to be a disciple wasn’t just about adhering to a set of doctrines or following a bunch of teachings, it was a way of doing life. In fact, when you go back and look at the first, Christians, they weren’t called Christians at all. They were called ‘followers of the way.’ In the book of Acts, which gives us a record of the first 30 years or so of church history, Luke uses the term Christians only once to refer to followers of Jesus and the rest of the time he uses this term, ‘followers of the way.’ And so from the very beginning, to be a Christian was all about a way of life. It was all about following the One who said, ‘I am the Way, the truth and the life.’ {John 14:6}

God bless,

Daniel Bentley

Amazing Grace

What’s grace? What does it look like? How does it work? Perhaps the best way to understand grace is to set it beside justice and mercy. Justice, is getting what you deserve. If I break the law, and then go to jail for my crime, justice has been served. Now mercy, has been defined as not giving someone what they deserve. I deserve punishment, but when you extend mercy to me, your absolving me of that debt. Your saying, I’m not going to give you what you deserve. Now grace, is something altogether different. Grace is doing good to someone who deserves the opposite.

Let me give you an example. We’re all familiar with Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables. In that book there is a wonderful picture of grace. You know the story. The main character, Jean Valjean is a laborer working to support his sister and her seven children. After a long dry spell with no available work, he breaks a window to steal a loaf of bread for them and is caught and sentenced to five years of hard labor at the notorious prison of Toulon. Through misbehavior and escape attempts, Jean Valjean ends up serving 19 years, and Hugo describes his gradual emotional decent as all hope and love are quenched in the crucible of prison life.

One night, Valjean is sleeping on a stone bench on the street, when a woman suggests that he ask for lodging at a nearby house, which she does not mention is the modest home of the Bishop of the town. The Bishop takes Valjean in, feeds him and gives him a bed. And while Jean Valjean is deeply grateful, he’s also pretty hardened at this point, and in the middle of the night, he gets up, steals the Bishop’s silver utensils, and flees. The next day, he is picked up randomly and discovered to have the silver on him. The soldiers bring him back to the Bishop, but rather than pressing charges against Jean Valjean, the Bishop tells the soldiers that he had given the silver to the convict as a gift. And then he also gives Jean Valjean two heavy silver candlesticks.

And then he says, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I am taking it away from black thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God.” That’s grace! That’s what God has done for us.

And here’s the thing about grace. Grace is always expensive to the giver. Shocking to the observer and traumatic to the receiver. First, it’s expensive to the giver. You see, in order to extend grace to us, it cost God everything. Our salvation was not cheap. It’s been said, Salvation may be free, but it wasn’t cheap. It cost God His life. So we can’t ever say that sins not a big deal. Or that it doesn’t really matter. We can’t trivialize it in that way. Because our sin cost Jesus His life. Peter puts it this way, ‘We weren’t redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold. But with the precious blood of the lamb.’ So grace is expensive to the giver.

Secondly, grace is always shocking to the observer. This is what its talking about back in verse seven. When the angels see us and they see how wicked and sinful we are and then they see God pour out His grace on us, it blows their minds. We should be blasted. But God loves us!

Thirdly, grace is always traumatic to the receiver. Think of Valjean. That one act of undeserved kindness changed his life and shaped the rest of his story. Surely all of us are familiar with the story of John Newton. John Newton was the captain of a slave trading vessel in the 1700’s. Of course, he went on to repent of his sins and became a driving force in the fight against slavery. It was he wrote the words to this beloved Hymn.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Truly this song is so beloved because it captures the essence of what it means to be saved by grace. Written by a man who understood the depth and depravity of the human condition. This song is our story.

God bless,

Daniel Bentley