City Church Houston

This scene with Zachariah shows us what it’s like to be in a real relationship with a real God. How can I be sure of Jesus? Zachariah wasn’t sure. He also did everything everything right and still did not get what he wanted. But our storyteller God is good whether you believe it or not. God's promises are true independent of you.

We are supposed to see ourselves as money managers rather than money owners. Because God made everything, it all belongs to him. When we are not living our lives in an open-handed way, it’s not that we are being stingy, but we are stealing. We are stealing from ourselves. Whatever you have, if you let it go, it not only benefits where others but gives you a freedom as well. In this parable, because of the rich man’s crises he needed to make decisions now based on the future. We need to make decisions based on eternity—based on people and the purposes of God. Our identity becomes entwined in what we buy because we want to be loved. We need a power who can go deep beneath the surface and reorder our root system. We were utterly bankrupt, and Jesus became poor for us, absorbing our debt in himself. He enriches our lives with the anticipation of entering into the place of ultimate return.

We are the Mona Lisa of God’s artistry. The picture in the Bible is we are God’s. But we are currently estranged from him. God did not simply lower our debt; he paid it. He bought us with the cost of his Son. When you have been hurt by someone, forgiveness is less of a transaction and more of a process. If forgiveness is less of a line you cross and more of a road you take, you can’t go that difficult road alone. We are all debtors who all need the bridge of mercy. Jesus walked the road of forgiveness and reconciliation all his life. Receive God’s uncommon generosity.

When do you find another person’s character most attractive? Isn’t it when you see them give of themselves freely to care for others? We need to let the beauty of this conversation stir us. Christianity at its core is about beauty. The Bible is a story about God’s radical, beautiful generosity. The Bible tells us about the the source of generosity. Our relationship toward society should be one of generosity. We all have things competing for the heart’s attention. Those passions and desires displace in our lives the beauty of God’s open-handed beauty. But our bounty in Christ releases us from being enslaved to those passions and desires. We are not our own. We are bought with a price. When we let the beauty of his generosity stir us, when we let it stretch us, don’t be surprised when God uses you to bring heaven to the pockets of despair in other people’s lives.

In those wilderness years, God’s plan for Moses entails raising up a leader to enter the promise land. Moses will not be entering the promise land, and it seems as though Moses’ dreams and desires don’t get to come true. This wasn’t God‘s “plan B.” When we don’t see our dreams materializing, we compare ourselves to other people and their dreams. When we find ourselves comparing ourselves to people, assume a posture of a servant of God—we don’t know what God has for us and we don’t know everything that other people go through. When we find ourselves comparing, look to God’s Word. His Word gives us a pathway to access his presence. When we instead are lead by our natural desires, we become like animals. Our desires are good servants, but horrible masters. They will delude us. But God turns his face in love toward us, and through his power, our desires can become reordered.

A concern for those in the margins is not only a modern concern, but a biblical one. What does the Lord ask of you? He wants you. His love for us is grounded in God’s character; it’s not just mere sentiment. The Christian faith is substantive, and it is a relationship that is central to that faith. When we are in relationship with God, we can care for those on the fringes. Stretch your view of God and this will stretch your view of others. Christ left the comforts of his home and was cut off from the land of the living to be an outside in our place. His love pushes us outward.

We are a stiff-necked people. But God does not love us because of anything we do. We fashion idols for ourselves when we try and take a good gift that God gave us and make it an ultimate thing. But our idols will never satisfy. God destroyed the idol that the Israelites made. Jesus takes the idols we make and goes up the mountain of Calvary to be consumed for us.

Even though this world is mostly wilderness, we see glimpses of the promised land. The constant in these places is who God is. He is present and active with us in both places. God is taking you somewhere. We can trust that God will get us where we need to go because Jesus does the obeying for us on the cross.

Christianity looks at the exclusive claim in this passage, a passage that Jesus later quotes, not as exclusively legal but existentially loving. The way he talks about love is not a modern understanding of love driven by emotion. But this love of God is driven instead by covenant. He is committed to us. And as a response to his relentless love toward us, we love him. His love and our obedience can not be segmented into only some parts of our lives because we are his. He has come to extravagantly love us, so then we are able to love him.

In bringing us the Ten Commandments, God is not just bringing the law but bringing himself. When we reimagine the law the way it was originally designed it is not enslaving, but liberating. We flourish when we function within our design. The law also functions as a mirror. It drives deeper than the external ethics. It drives deep to the heart of the matter. The law isn’t there to be a consultant or a burden. It was there to show us Christianity is impossible. It is coming at the end of ourselves that we see following the law will never get us out of slavery. Christ brings himself to us and rescues us out of slavery and then brings us the law to show us how to flourish in obedience. When this goes backwards, when the law comes first, it messes everything up. What we could never done, Jesus has done it in our place. In this way, we can rejoice in the law.

Love must be understood in the larger biblical context that God is also a consuming fire. Coming near to him, his fire will shape your life. God speaks his words out of the fire, and you can meet with God there and not be consumed. And the words he gives there become transformative. His fire is disruptive, but it brings new life, and that spreads to others. Sometimes Christians are on fire in a way that is more toxic than helpful. This passage shows the only way to move forward from that. God is jealous for exclusive loyalty. What do you go to when look for something to make you feel okay? Whatever that is, we often make idols of those things—we give our hearts to other things instead of to God. Jesus never gave his heart to an idol, yet he was consumed by God’s fire in our place.

What do we need to enjoy a full life? How do we find life at its fullest? We need words, direction, and the wisdom to listen. God made us, so he knows better than we do about how to find a full life. We desperately need God’s Word. It is wise for us to listen to it because we are people of the wilderness. The wilderness is a dry place where temptation and doubt are prevalent, and it is where God meets us. What should have been a short journey into the promise land for Israel ended up being a long journey to nowhere. God is the Lord of the wilderness, and he keeps his promise to deliver. Deuteronomy is really a love story to God’s undeserving people. Jesus constantly identified himself with us. He is the forever faithful son who was treated like he had rebelled. He was forsaken so we can be welcomed into a full life for us to enjoy. Don’t just exist. Take hold of the life that is truly life by leaning into the love of the Lord of the wilderness.

When life centers around me, it will always be meaningless. When our work feels meaningless, you can always find meaning in it when you find God in it. No matter how meaningful your work feels, it can feel meaningless unless you find God in it. Jesus makes our work meaningful and sometimes does so in mysterious ways.

Naaman is one of the least likely people to find God, but God finds him. Naaman is a picture of faith and work and a face of growth. The hero in this story is a slave girl who forgives Naaman. God sends the message of salvation through the suffering servant.

What is the thing in your life that makes you feel unknown, isolated? For Naaman it was leprosy. But his leprosy became an occasion for finding God. Naaman looks for God in the way he learned how from his culture. But God is not an extension of our culture; he is the judge of our culture and our hearts. Naaman’s obstacle to finding God was pride. He tried to buy his way to God, but the deeper issue is the internal leprosy of Naaman’s soul—sin. We find God because he hunts after us.

Before we love, we have to know we are loved. The king in this story provides us a glimpse into God’s heart. The cripple in this story shows us a glimpse of our heart. To grow spiritually is to see yourself as both. You may feel forgotten, but God, the ultimate King, knows you and invites you to eat every meal at his table. Then, once you have received, receive also the challenge to become like the king and show love to the vulnerable. The Gospel will be offensive to everyone. But the love in the Gospel will produce generous love in you.

Human friendship addresses the human need to draw close to God. When you have mutual affection, part of you will cry out, wherever you’re going, that’s where I want to be. And it’s a relationship that will make you sad when it ends. We are made for holy friendships with one another, and connecting with others is connecting with God.

Growing in godliness is growing more into the image we were originally designed for. Hannah grows in her godliness through suffering. Her suffering is complex: the pain from not being able to have children and the pain from being in a polygamous marriage, and then all the cultural expectations that go along with those things. She offers her prayer to God, and she is at peace. She knows her God, who was good to the core, new her pain and would answer her however he felt best. In suffering, find rest in the gracious God who hears you.

Job is more known more for his perseverance than his patience. He goes on a spiritual journey that has lingering agony, which brings up some of the big questions we have about suffering. His friends are no comfort, but God is not indifferent to our suffering. God reframes Jobs suffering, and ultimately God enters into our pain to endure the ultimate odyssey of agony for us. Jesus is our faithful friend who is our advocate and guide in the midst of suffering.