Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

Judgment and Grace

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Judgment and grace are two prominent themes within Holy Scripture.  You will not find one without the other so that we cannot ignore one over another.  We all need to struggle with the tension between God’s Word to us, and our words to God; between God’s judgment, which opens our souls on a spiritual operating table; and, God’s grace which jumpstarts our broken hearts.  Our most fundamental need above anything else in this life is the need for God’s mercy in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:12-16).
 
            God intends that our outer lives and our inner lives match each other.  It is when the two are out of sync that we come under the judgment of God’s Word.  The early Hebrew Christians had slowly drifted from the truth so that their inner and outer lives did not line up well.  Some of them were still performing the outward duties of being a Christian, but were inwardly despising their hard situation.  A growing vacuum was occurring on their insides as they slowly started letting go of Jesus as their object of devotion.  Their hearts began to harden because of their troubles.  On the other hand, there were other Hebrew Christians who began drifting in a different way.  Inwardly, they tried to maintain their devotion and commitment to Christ, but began compromising their outward life to match the culture around them.  In both cases of hardening inwardly, and of compromising outwardly, they each shared the situation of drifting away from their original commitment to Christ.
 
            Even today, it is a very real temptation to try and avoid suffering, to grow weary of our present circumstances and look for a way to get out from under the pain and find a quick fix.  Whenever we find ourselves in such a situation, the remedy is to be reminded that we must continue to hold firmly to the faith we profess because of who Jesus is.
 
            Jesus is our great and ultimate high priest.  He did not enter the temporary sacrificial system of the Old Testament to deal with sins for only a year.  Jesus not only took on the role of high priest, but became the sacrifice, as well.  As a result, we now have a permanent forgiveness of sins through Christ.  So, any Christian who considers going back to an old outdated system needs to be brought back to his senses and embrace the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. 
 
            Let us then approach Jesus with confidence, with boldness, knowing that with him there is mercy and grace.  Jesus did not just suffer for us; he also suffers with us right now.  Jesus is not detached from us, but is our great high priest, the One whom is intimately involved in every nook and cranny of our lives.  He knows what you are going through, and he is ready to give you grace to help you through whatever it is you are going through right now. 
 
            What is so wonderful about this is that coming to Jesus has nothing to do with being good enough to do so.  Coming to Jesus is all about grace.  Whenever we find that we have drifted from God and are confronted with his Word cutting us to the heart in judgment, the end result is not wrath; the result is mercy.
 

 

            Like the early Hebrew Christians, we all face situations out of our control that wear us down and cause us to become weary.  It is in such times that we can be tempted to let our commitment to Christ slide in some small way.  Over time, the small compromises of faith can snowball into a big slide away from God.  But Jesus is not sitting in heaven frustrated or confounded.  God is not looking for a reason to punish people.  It is just the opposite.  Jesus, the Son of God, our great high priest, is looking for a reason to show grace and help us in our time of need.  He is waiting for us to approach the throne of grace with confidence.  Right now, Jesus is alive.  He is scanning this world, and his church, looking to extend mercy to those who need it.  Thank you, Jesus.

Hebrews 3:7-19

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Although many people do their outdoor grilling with propane and propane accessories, there are still some who go with the old charcoal grill.  The key to a good hot grill is in the stacking of the briquettes into a neat pile before lighting them.  If this is not done, it is likely the white hot fire will never get going.  At the most, the briquettes will become warm but quickly grow cold and die.
 
            The New Testament lesson for today operates with the same principle.  “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”  Just as a pile of charcoal needs all the individual briquettes together in order to become hot and not grow cold, so every Christian needs other Christians to speak into his/her life every day.  If this dynamic does not happen, the heart will grow cold and hard and eventually lead, if unchecked, to a falling away from the faith.
 
            There is much we can learn from the Korean church on this matter.  Every day they have opportunities early in the morning to gather together for prayer and encouragement before going off to their jobs and busy lives.  There is a reason that the Korean church has grown hot for God with many Christians and lots of missionaries going all over the world.  It would be not only wise, but necessary to re-think and re-do our American spiritual practices to better accommodate and reflect an obedience to these very verses in Hebrews.
 

 

            Blessed Holy Trinity, I have been made in your image – the image of the triune God.  Help me to reflect that image every day by encouraging my fellow believers and allowing them to exhort me toward love and good deeds in the faith of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Psalm 55:1-15

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            We all know of the modern day proverb, ‘the squeaky wheel gets oiled.’  The saying is often used in reference to someone who is loud, even obnoxious, about what they want.  In today’s psalm, David cannot avoid the squeaky wheel.  There are people in his face.  All we know about David’s enemies from the psalm is that they were nursing a grudge against him for something.  David was hurt and betrayed.
 
            So, David prayed.  “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy!  Attend to me, and answer me; I am restless in my complaint and I moan, because of the noise of the enemy… in anger they bear a grudge against me.”  David felt the ache of certain persons speaking against him.  For whatever reason, they had an axe to grind and were determined to make David’s life difficult.
 
            Although, like David, we sometimes feel like flying away and being at rest from the turmoil, we must deal with the insults, the untrue and half-true rhetoric of others.  The way David confronted the problem was primarily through prayer.  When David prayed, it was never a quick on-the-run sort of prayer to God in the rush of dealing with all his kingly duties.  Instead, David offered specific, agonizing, timely prayers asking, even begging God to not let the violent speech and actions of his enemies prevail.
 
            Out of the range of possibilities that we could do in response to sins of the tongue against us, prayer needs to be the primary weapon.  Heartfelt, passionate, detailed, and pointed prayers need to be offered to the God who hears the righteous in their grief.  If you are in such a position of being oppressed by another, a sage way to begin addressing the situation is through praying the very same psalm that David did when he was under duress.
 

 

            Listening God, you hear the cries of the righteous.  Give ear to my plea.  I cry out to you for respite from those allayed against me.  I ask for justice so that the wicked and the unrighteous do not have their way in this world.  In the mighty name of Jesus I pray.  Amen.

Job 8:1-22

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            There are various kinds of suffering, and the biblical character of Job experienced them all.  One of the most severe kinds of hurt, and the one that gets far more attention than any other in the book of Job, are the short-sighted rebukes from Job’s “friends.”  God had a severe mercy for Job.  But the friends lived in a black and white world.  Bildad expressed: “God will not reject a blameless man.”
 
            For Bildad, personal suffering equals personal sin and God’s disfavor, period.  Bildad could only see a linear connection, a direct line from sin to calamity.  It was simply out of his equation to think otherwise.  Since Bildad saw suffering as the direct result of sin, his remedy was to exhort toward confession of sin.  The problem with this view is that we, as the readers, already know this to be a patently false understanding of Job’s suffering.  Bildad saw the suffering, but did not discern the unseen dimension of good and evil contending behind-the-scenes between God and Satan.
 
            It is only normal to wonder if we have sinned against God whenever we find ourselves in the crucible of suffering.  But if we have done patient work to determine there is no personal reason for the pain, perhaps there is something going on that is much bigger than us.  Our task, like Job’s, is to entrust ourselves to God.  We might chafe at such counsel because we like to fix things that hurt.  But suffering will not last forever; it will eventually pass.  And God will always have his way in the end.  We must continually keep in mind that permanent faith transcends temporary pain.
 

 

            Loving God, take pity on my life as I seek to embrace you in both good times and bad.  I belong to you, therefore, I will not forsake you no matter how much I do not understand the suffering.  In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.