The Lack

 "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins." Ephesians 2:1....."If a bloody beaten Savior hanging from a crude, splintery cross is a picture of judgement, the sin under judgement must have been enormous, catastrophic, and deadly......we don't understand grace until we understand sin." Chris Tiegreen

God, speaking through His prophet, said to His people Israel, "My people are perishing because of their lack of knowledge." Knowledge of who He was, who they were, what they were without Him, and what they could be in Him. Eventually, Israel went into captivity, suffering terrible loss in it. Countless thousands died in the process. I think that we believers are in a very similar place here in the west. We are perishing due to our lack of knowledge....of Him, of our deep spiritual need, and of our general ignorance of that which is integral to a living faith..

Francis Chan has said that "nowhere in the Bible does it say that you simply pray a prayer and you will be saved, converted, transformed." I once wrote this in another devotional and a young college girl responded, challenging that, using the Scripture, "If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved." In this she was showing her basic ignorance of truth. Saying words, even biblical ones does not save us, or make us His. This can come about only as a result of an inner work of transformation carried out by His Holy Spirit. It comes when we recognize our condition apart from Him, confess not only our need for Him, but the hopelessness of a life apart from Him, and Invite Him to enter into our hearts and bring His healing, wholeness, and transformation. It involves confession, repentance, and a wholehearted desire to be made new. To step out of what leads to death and into He who gives life. Some time later, that same young lady was engaged in debate with another believer, defending the "right" of someone to live in what His Word clearly identifies as sin, yet were saved by grace because they had prayed the above prayer. There was no evidence of a transformed life, but they had prayed the prayer. I can't think of a clearer description of perishing for lack of knowledge than that. Yet a growing number within the church are perishing, and too few seem overly concerned about it.

We are failing to understand and state the grievous nature and result of sin. Countless preachers neglect this every Sunday. We are also steadily watering down the message of grace until the meaning of the cross and its necessity is diminished, and even lost.. People are being invited into a costless faith that focuses on a Jesus who in no way resembles the Christ of Scripture. He tolerates everything, judges nothing, and confronts the sin of no one. As a result, we have no real understanding of the message of the cross, the cost to the Three in One God in it, and the power of His shed blood for us. Grace is free and it is also cheap. And we have dishonored, diminished, and I think, disgusted God in all of it.

We love the hymn "Amazing Grace," but we rarely grasp the lyric, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me." We don't like to think of ourselves as wretched without Him. We prefer thinking of ourselves as "pretty good folks," who are made even better by adding Christ to our lives. And so we are deceived and ignorant as to the power of sin, our captivity to it, and the power of His grace and blood to set us free from all of it.

We see the awful effects of all this in the condition of the church overall. The fading message of holiness of life, an ever decreasing awareness of the supernatural life and power of God, and an ongoing diminishing of His miraculous works in our midst. We talk about having an abundant life while having little idea as to what true abundance is. We live in desperate lack and don't know it. We are perishing for lack of knowledge.

My challenge for each of us is, how true is any of this in our lives, our families, and our church fellowships? Where have we compromised His message? Where have we made a truce with a sin? Where are we living at peace with the enemy of our soul? Where do we need a fresh visit, perhaps a first visit, to His cross?

Blessings,

Pastor O