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The following question came from an international in our worship service.

Q: One of my relatives passed away when I was back home. And we had a three-day worship for him …  I know this situation will come again in the future because of the culture and what people think. So do you have suggestions on how to deal with this problem?

 A: I’m glad you see ancestor worship to be a problem. Not everyone does. Sometimes people view ancestor worship as just a cultural way to express grief and honor to a relative who has died. You, however, see that while your cultural practices may indeed be expressing grief and honor, they are also doing something else.

What then do you do?

1.  The first thing I would say is that you need to commit your heart and soul regularly to the Word of God, to prayer, and to God’s people. These things are essential to walking with God. I am not talking here about a specific course of action concerning this situation. I am instead talking about maintaining your spiritual health. This is just common sense. Healthy people handle difficulties better than sick people. Spiritually it is no different. You will need specific direction and strength to do God’s will. Both those things come from God. If you are not walking with God, you will conform to the culture in most every practice, but if you are walking with God, you will be in a much better condition to honor God at this difficult time.   Maintain your walk with God. Don’t let that slip.

2.  I would recommend that you find a mature believer from your culture and talk to him or her about this. I have not walked through this issue personally, but that believer probably has, and he or she will be able to give you more specific counsel than I can here. My response will stick with broad Biblical principles.

3.  It is important in this situation that you honor your family. Your family needs to know that you love and respect them, even if you might not be able to perform every function they would like you to. This means that your attitude is important. You are not to be disrespectful or arrogant about burial customs, even if you disagree with them. If you must say “no” to something, let your family know that you love them and that you want to honor them. They may interpret your “no” as disrespect, but don’t actually be disrespectful, for then you give them evidence to confirm what they think.

In order to show respect, I believe it is important for you to participate in as many of the funeral customs as you can without violating your conscience. Then, if you must say “no” to the request that you pray to a dead man, your family will see that you are making distinctions. If you say “yes” as much as you can, you are buying some trust.

But what if every aspect of the funeral and successive ceremonies requires you to violate your conscience? In other words, what if you can’t say “yes” to anything? First, I doubt that will be true. When someone dies, you will have people to visit, care to give, arrangements to make, and all sorts of activities going on. I believe you will have an opportunity to help. Death is an open door for ministry. But if the main ceremonies violate your conscience, you may need to skip them. You need to be prepared for that, and if you do skip them, you need to find another way to honor and respect your relative and family. The Holy Spirit will be crucial in communicating to you where you have a green light and where you have a red light.

4.  Because you need to honor your family, you will need to communicate well. Your family will not understand why you refuse to hold a vigil for the dead. You need to be clear to them where your boundaries are and why. If you must skip something, let your family know that your reason has nothing to do with disrespect and everything to do with the fact that you see the spiritual reality in a different way. Because you see the spiritual reality in a different way, you show honor in a different way, and you need to communicate that. They need to know that you are not rejecting them. What exactly you say, I will leave between you and the Holy Spirit.

5.  Death brings out the spiritual side of the human race, and our funeral and burial customs often reflect specific spiritual beliefs.   What you want to avoid is personal involvement in or endorsement of an alternate spiritual system. Worship of the dead, praying to the dead, leaving food out for the dead to eat, holding vigils for the dead, burning incense to the dead, reading unbiblical spiritual writings, and other similar practices are tied to a spiritual system. In Christ, you do not want to participate in that system.

Of course, your family may perform such practices while not believing any of the spiritual stuff. That does not mean, however, that the spiritual stuff is absent. When you pray to someone who is not God, you are doing something spiritual whether you know it or not. And if your family does not believe the spiritual teachings, their unbelief may be a path toward helping them understand you. That’s common ground.

6.  Some questions to ask yourself to help navigate what you can and cannot do.

• Is the practice I am being asked to do tied to an alternate spiritual belief system? Not every funeral custom involves unbiblical spirituality. If someone asks you to bring food to the widow, you may be just caring for the widow. If a funeral custom involves viewing a body, you may be merely showing respect. If you are asked to give a speech about your memories of the person, you may be showing him honor. None of these practices is necessarily tied to an unbiblical belief. You can think of other such practices.

• How central are the spiritual practices to what I am being asked to attend? Let me illustrate. Are you being asked to attend a worship service for the dead? Or a memorial that may include objectionable elements? In the first situation, the whole point of the event involves an unbiblical spiritual purpose. In the second situation, the whole point of the event may be to show respect to your dead relative. In the first situation, your presence could be considered an endorsement of the spiritual belief system. That’s the point of the event. In the second situation, your presence is not necessarily an endorsement of the spiritual practices that go on. That’s not why you are there. You’re there to honor your grandfather. In reality, over the course of several days, you may be asked to participate in both types of events.

• Are you an observer or a practitioner? Are you watching someone burn the incense or are you burning it? Are you merely present when someone asks the dead for good fortune or are you asking the dead yourself? Do your parents have an altar to the dead in their home or do you have one in your home? Do you merely see the feast left to the ghosts or are you laying out the feast? It is true that in some situations, God may not want you even to observe, for sometimes observation is participation. But that is not always the case, and when you move from observing to practicing, you are going to a different level. Observing may be OK in some situations. You can’t control what other people do. But you can control what you practice.

7.  Be prepared for difficulty. Peter tells his readers that they are aliens, exiles, foreigners, outsiders in their land (I Pet 1:1,17; 2:11). Christ makes us an alien where we live. In the case of ancestor worship, you see this. In Christ, you have become a spiritual alien within your own family. This is not bad. In fact, you can love your family better because of Christ in you, but it does cause problems. Your family may be angry. Your parents may slander and insult you because of your stance just as the Roman culture in the first century slandered and reviled the Christians Peter wrote to (I Pet 3:9, 16-17). You may face difficulty, but in Christ you are victorious in the end. Let that fact encourage you. Be patient with your family. They do not understand Christ. And if you must suffer their scorn, do so with joy, for God sees your faithfulness and He will reward it in the end.

I pray that when this happens again, Christ will fill you with His wisdom, grace, and strength to honor Him and your family.

AIF has been preaching through I Peter on Sundays, and to make I Pet 3:15 practical, we took questions about Christianity last week and answered them. If you want to listen to those answers, go to the media page on this website and click on the sermon for Feb 19^th. On that day, however, we had many more questions than we had time for, and since we will not devote more time in church to those questions, I thought I would take time and address some of them in the blog. Today is the first week of that project. This means that I will be taking a break covering the Christian teachings on the human race.

Q: Why Christianity and not other religions?

A: Wow. That’s a hundred questions all in one. If a Muslim asked that, he would likely mean, “Why Christianity and not Islam?” If a Jew asked it, he would likely mean, “Why Christianity and not Judaism?” If a universalist asked it, he would mean, “Why Christianity and not any religion?” And my answer would be a bit different to each of those situations. Therefore, for the purposes of this blog, I will have to paint with broad brushstrokes, but please understand that I would not normally paint this way in a live situation with a real person. Instead, I would first ask some questions to see where this person is coming from: “Why do you ask the question? Which religion do you think is as good as Christianity? Why?” I would then address my answers to the specifics, but here I can’t do that.

So then, Why Christianity and not other religions? Here are some thoughts:

1.  Let’s turn the question on its head for a minute and ask, “Why other religions and not Christianity?” OR “Why no religion?” OR “Why all religions and not one?” If we are going to ask the question one way, we should be able to ask it any of those other ways as well. Now I’m not saying that a Muslim or a Hindu will give you no reasons to adopt his faith, but I am saying that if you see the question as a sort of criticism of Christianity, then it is equally a criticism of any belief —including the beliefs of the person who asks it.

2.  Why Christianity and not other religions? Let me give a short answer with an explanation. The short answer is Jesus. I know that may sound trite, and I don’t mean it to be. I’m dead serious.  You see, Jesus sets Christianity apart from all other religions. In no other religion will you find anything like the Christian teaching that God visited Earth to save people from themselves. This idea is radical. The Bible teaches that in Jesus, God came to Earth to die, that His death was the payment for sin, that He bodily rose from the grave on the third day, and that all who trust in Him are made new now and will inherit His future later. This death and Resurrection brings you to God, and the One who did the work is Himself your Creator, to whom you will bow.

These teachings are either true or false. If they are false, then Christianity is the biggest hoax ever played upon the human race. But if Christianity is true, then other religions will not lead you to God. If the problem of the human race is that “your sins have separated you from your God” (Is 59:2), and if God came to Earth to remove your sin and called you to trust in what He had done, then you cannot move toward God by praying to idols in your living room, by emptying yourself of desire, or by fasting at Ramadan.

Let me put it simply. If Jesus is risen from the dead, then all these other options are not options. If Jesus is not risen from the dead, then Christianity is not an option. You can’t have Jesus and other religions at the same time.

3.  Why Christianity and not other religions? Let me describe what I said above in reverse. Let’s suppose all religions could get you to God.   Why then would God need to send His Son to die on a Cross? If you were God, would you submit yourself to the pain of Crucifixion for no reason? If the Cross of Christ is not necessary for human salvation, why go through with it?

4.  Why Christianity and not other religions? I find Christianity to be the most realistic to the human condition and the most focused on God. I’m going to make general statements for the sake of space, but here is how most other religions work. In Buddhism, you practice the philosophy and reach nirvana. In Islam, you do good deeds, including the Five Pillars, and maybe Allah takes you to heaven. In Hinduism, you live a good life, worship the gods and goddesses, practice the right rituals, and you escape the cycle of rebirth. The central point of these religions is what you do. Christianity is quite the opposite. The central point of Christianity is what God has done. The Cross and Resurrection are God’s work, not yours. This is immensely freeing. This means that you do not have to perform to perfection in order to attain God. God has attained you. In Christ, God has given you a gift. Himself. In Christianity, our responsibility is not to perform but to say, “thank you.” It takes faith to say “thank you,” but when we do so from the heart, God comes to live inside us. He makes us new creatures, and we then go on to live new lives.   The new life does not bring us to God. God brings us to the new life.

This puts a greater emphasis on the glory of God. In addition, it is the simplest religion on the planet. I don’t mean simplistic, just simple. In Christ, salvation is a gift. This fact makes salvation accessible to everyone on Earth. A three-year-old with a right heart can do this.

5.  Why Christianity and not other religions? If you have been following what I said above, you see that you cannot have Christianity and other religions together. They operate on different principles. Whether it is Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, spirit religions, whatever, you are going to have to perform. You will have to be good in order to achieve the ultimate goal. You will have to perform the prayers or the incense or the rituals or get rid of your sin. But Christianity says that you don’t have to do any of that stuff. God loves you and has died for you while you were yet a sinner (Rm 5:8). Christianity says, “Come as you are. Confess your sin. Believe that Christ has wiped it away, and receive the gift of God.”

Christians call this approach grace, and the reality is that you can’t have a grace-based religion and a performance-based religion at the same time. The moment performance is part of your salvation, grace isn’t. These two approaches can’t both be true. You will have to choose which you think is the better approach. If you pick performance, I hope you perform well because God is holy. If you pick grace, you’re picking Christ.

Those are a few reasons why I would say Christianity and not other religions.

This past week my daughter, Rebekah, made a wreath out of paper roses. She made it for a purpose. She wanted to give it as a gift to my wife, and she wanted it to be pretty. Then on Tuesday, she made an apple pastry. It, too, had a purpose: she wanted us to eat it. The reality is that everything we make we make for a purpose. When Ford makes a car, the car has a purpose. When a construction company builds a home, the home has a purpose. A screw has a purpose. A broom has a purpose. A painting has a purpose. A doorknob has a purpose. Everything we make has a purpose. In fact, if no purpose existed, we wouldn’t make anything. And the purpose doesn’t always have to be physical. Sometimes the purpose is simply to show love, like my daughter’s wreath. Sometimes the purpose may be to learn or to explore. Sometimes the purpose may be to express beauty. But our experience shows that created things have a purpose, and based on what we can see, they have a purpose 100% of the time. When you find something created, you find a purpose. Period.

OK.  What then do we do with this universal human desire for purpose? The desire is certainly not proof that there is a purpose, but it does seem as if, deep down, we humans have yearnings you would expect us to have if we were created. Created things have purpose; we want purpose. Hmm.

Now this desire we have for purpose is not just generic. We do not want merely for life to have meaning in some vague sense; we each desire personal fulfillment in our own lives. Purpose gets personal. You want to reflect the purpose for which you exist. You do. This is what a fulfilling life would be. The pursuit of purpose is a pursuit of fulfillment.

Even the atheist wants this. He wants to be helpful, useful or good. He wants to positively impact people. He does not wish to let life pass by without living it. The pursuit of “the good life” is a pursuit of fulfillment. The grabbing of power, the quest for influence or fame, the indulging of pleasure are all attempts to gain fulfillment and purpose from life. The single woman thinks a husband will fulfill her, so she pursues one. The executive thinks that turning around a flailing corporation will fulfill him, so he pours his life into the project. The young couple think a better home and nicer vacations will fulfill them, so they work toward that end. A father and mother believe that a respectful son will fulfill them, so they live for him. When people pursue whatever they pursue, they are really pursuing fulfillment. They want purpose.

But this pursuit is hopeless apart from God. Without God all the money in the world will not satisfy. Fame, influence, accomplishments, seeing the world, sexual encounters, a husband and wonderful children all fail to deliver what we hope they will. Many of those things are good; but when we try to make them ultimate, they cannot fill the shoes. Ultimacy can be met only through that which is ultimate, and life on earth was never created to be that thing. The good things in life are just pictures. They are not the real thing. I may keep a picture of my wife on my computer and pull it up and look at her and derive some enjoyment from it, but the picture will not hold me, talk to me or care for me. If I want those things, I must leave the picture behind and go home to the reality. The pursuit of earth is an attempt to replace God with His gifts. It is pursuing God in all the wrong places.

You see, in the end, there is no purpose apart from God. Genuine purpose goes beyond a shallow survival of the species or a “let’s all be happy” mindset. Those ideas will give no purpose to your life, and deep down you know it. If you want real purpose, you need a Creator. Because … purpose … flows out of … creation.

“… everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”  (Is 43:7)

Lord, you have made me for your glory.  May I, by your grace, reflect that glory for which I was made.

Last week we talked about the fact that everyone is a moral creature, that we all believe some things to be right and some things wrong. Of course, every now and then, you hear someone say that moral absolutes do not exist, but these people do not believe what they say. If someone were to walk up to them and slap them in the face for no reason, what do you suppose they would do? Would they say, “That’s OK. You could not have done anything wrong since wrong doesn’t exist”? Of course not! Instead, they say, “Hey, you can’t do that!” But if there is no such thing as right and wrong, why can’t you do it? What’s wrong with it? As long as we are talking about vague, general theory, these people can convince themselves that right and wrong do not exist, but once we get specific and wrong them, they contradict their theory. Real life gets in the way. Deep down, they know right and wrong exist because deep down they are human.

Now once you start thinking about morality, you must begin to acknowledge the existence of some other things that go with it, like personality, authority and purpose. Without those things, morality makes no sense. Today, let’s talk only about purpose. Imagine a world that had no purpose. Why would it be wrong to kill my neighbor in such a world? You say, “Because killing your neighbor harms him.”

“But if there is no purpose, what is wrong in harming him? He had no purpose.”

And you may say, “But the human race cannot survive if people were to consistently behave that way.”

“But if there is no purpose, why should the human race survive? We have no purpose. You are still assuming a purpose.”

You could continue this dialogue a long way, but once you assume it is wrong to kill your neighbor, you also assume some kind of purpose that the killing violates. The purpose may be in you, in your neighbor, or in the fabric of the universe, but the existence of right and wrong seems to point to some bigger purpose in life.

Instinctively, we all sense this. We all desire life to have purpose, and most people believe it does. To be sure, there are scientists and philosophers who say we are nothing more than a collection of atoms, but they had to work hard to get their thinking where it is, for they have had to fight constantly a powerful and pervasive sense everywhere they turn that there is more to life than atoms. Such thinkers are in the minority even within their own fields. To think as they do is not natural. As long as humanity shall exist, such thinking shall be paddling upstream, for the stream of human experience flows against it.

Even the atheistic existentialists write of the despair that their thinking produces. It is ironic. They claim that life has no purpose and then despair of that belief. But the despair they write of is a curious phenomenon. It indicates that their very insides feel that their philosophy ought not be. Their despair arises from the fact that they desire meaning in life. They may believe no such meaning exists, but deep down they wish it did. They are human. This universal desire for meaning (held even by those who deny meaning) is difficult to explain if we are just atoms. Why should atoms care that life has purpose?

“You shall not … You shall not … You shall not …” Ex 20:1-17

Lord, we praise you.  You care for what is right because you are good.

Here in America, right now, many people are protesting the actions of Donald Trump.  We’ve seen marches on Washington, protests in many cities, placards, a refusal to cooperate in Congress, even a riot at Cal Berkeley.  Now I mention these actions not to argue for or against Trump but to illustrate a point.  You see, all of these protests, in whatever form they take, occur because the protester believes something is wrong.

Yes, it’s true.  Everybody believes in right and wrong.  Republicans believe Democrats are wrong, and Democrats believe Republicans are wrong.  We believe racists are wrong and that Hitler was wrong.  You believe it is wrong for someone to cheat you or lie to you.

We are a moral people.  I do not mean we are all good. I mean that we all have a sense of what good is like and we all know that we ought to be good. This sense is universal, for you will find it in communist China, Muslim Yemen, and Latin American Peru.  You will find it in ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, and 20th century Africa. You do not have to believe in God to believe in an absolute right and wrong.  The fact that there are laws and rules everywhere you go indicates that you are around people who think something is right and something wrong. Such laws may differ from place to place, but the differences tend to be more on the periphery than the essence of morality.

If you disagree, I challenge you to spin the globe and randomly pick a country. Then go there and steal something from someone’s home. See what the reaction would be. Repeat in a hundred cultures and observe the pattern. Or try taking a man’s wife for a week. Do her no harm. Merely keep her for a week so that her husband does not know where she is. Then return her and observe the reaction. Repeat in a hundred cultures and note the pattern. You will find that punishments will vary from place to place, that certain values will be emphasized more in one region and less in another, and that some cultures will be more amenable to special circumstances. But despite all these differences, you will find a universal condemnation of stealing and kidnapping. No one will tell you what a wonderful soul you must be for taking Abu’s only goat.

Even the atheist who touts the problem of evil as evidence that God does not exist must appeal to a sense of right and wrong which he understands and which he expects you to understand too. The problem of evil is not a problem if evil does not exist.  Nor is it a problem to us if we have no moral sense.

We are moral creatures, and our sense of right and wrong contributes to our understanding of the world. It also helps us know what the Bible means when it says “God is good,” and it gives us a framework with which to understand some of the specific ethical commands of Scripture. We approach Scripture with an inherent ability to comprehend moral right and wrong.  We are wired with a moral sense, and we can’t escape it.  Have you ever thought why?

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26-7)

You have made us, O God, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Praise You!

Have you ever worked those puzzles that are mazes? You know, the ones where you have to draw a line from the start to the finish, but in between are all sorts of false paths. In order to solve those mazes, you must know two things: your destination and your current position. Traveling is like this. If a pilot wants to fly to Tokyo, he must know the coordinates for Tokyo, but he must also know where he is right now.

Walking with Jesus is the same way. To walk with Him we obviously must know about God, but we also need to know ourselves. Who are we? What are we like? Why are we here? What is our current situation? The answers to these questions are essential in order to determine the direction of our lives. In fact, the good news of Jesus makes little sense unless we first understand what the Bible says about ourselves. And the Bible has a lot to say. Over the next few months, we will be talking about God’s view of the human race.

Today we will begin that discussion with an amazing claim. Scripture says that when God created the human race, He created us in His image. That statement, by itself, is wondrous, crammed full with meaning, and we need to unpack that meaning a bit.

Let’s start by talking about what God’s image does not mean. When God made Adam and Eve in His image, He did not make new gods. Even when Adam was in a sinless state, the human race was finite, weak, dependent, and created. The Bible is clear that being created in the image of God does not make us divine, part of the divine, or able to become divine. In God’s view, a Grand Canyon exists between humans and God. God is separate from us, wholly unlike us in many ways, and He will be so forever. This means that Christianity cannot share beds with philosophies that talk as if people were part of God or can grow into gods. This eliminates such belief systems as Emerson’s transcendentalism (which has influenced modern Unitarianism) or contemporary Mormonism, which says that as God is, so shall we be (if we follow all the Mormon practices). These philosophies are not Biblical. They misunderstand what it means to be created in God’s image. We are not God and we never will be.

So what, then, does it mean to be created in God’s image? That’s not an easy question to answer, and I don’t pretend to fully understand all of the ramifications of being God’s image bearer, but an image gives a picture of something. This means that you and I, in some way, have the potential to reflect God. In addition, Genesis ties God’s image with God’s likeness.  In some ways, we are like God.  We share with God certain abilities, and these abilities help us know God and relate to Him.  Scholars may debate the details of what God’s image means, but at a minimum, it means this: God created humans with the ability to know Him. You and I are not just smart apes. We are qualitatively distinct, and we have some astounding capacities for knowledge, all of which help us know and reflect God.

We can see, hear and touch; we can think, feel and intuit. We can reason abstractly; we have a sense of right and wrong; we believe life has purpose; we have a desire for fulfillment and do not find anything on earth that meets the desire; we have a sense of the Holy and of beauty; we can love, and we desire intimacy. We are born with the necessary software for processing certain information. Some of that information is physical, some is abstract, some emotional, some aesthetic, some is personal, and some spiritual.

Concerning our abilities to observe through our senses and to reason, I need not write. But I ought to speak briefly about other abilities we have — like our sense of morality or our desire for purpose — for these abilities are part of God’s image. They point us to God and help us understand and reflect Him in ways that a monkey never could.  Therefore, for the next several weeks we will look at different capacities that come with the package called “the image of God.”

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Lord, I must listen to you, not to me or to my culture.  Please teach me your ways, that I may walk in your truth. 

Since most of you who read this blog are international, you understand some of the difficulties of living in a new culture. For example, a Chinese woman here in America once told my family that she was upset when an American lady referred to her as “man.”

“Couldn’t she tell that I’m a woman?”

“Are you sure she said ‘man’?” one of my kids said. “She may have said, ‘ma’am.’” The two words sound much alike, and “ma’am” seemed to better fit the situation, so the Chinese woman felt she had misunderstood the American lady and, thus, should not have been upset at her at all.

Perhaps you have had such problems in your intercultural experiences. Perhaps you have had difficulty ordering lunch at a café or buying groceries at a market. Perhaps you have driven on the wrong side of the road, or spoken out about something that the culture normally doesn’t speak about. Perhaps you filed the wrong paperwork or misunderstood an application process. Perhaps you have accidentally insulted a native or felt insulted when the native was not insulting you. It can be hard to think outside the norms of your own culture, and it is common to find that a foreigner (in any country) subconsciously and sometimes overtly views the new culture as inferior. “They shut up the shops at six? How stupid … My, aren’t they self-righteous prigs here … Do they ever pay attention to their customers? Don’t they know we’re paying their rent? … Their morals are so loose here … Look how they treat their women. It’s like going back to the 1600s … When do these people ever lighten up? … They have no order here … Look at how they drive; they’re maniacs … Why did she look at me that way? What did I do to her?”

Those are examples of judgments rendered on one culture from the lens of a different culture. Certainly such judgments can, at times, be legitimate, but they are more dangerous to make because the one doing the judging rarely understands the cultural values and rationale that lie behind the “stupid” practice. He simply thinks that his culture is right. He lacks information, background, and an appropriate grid to adequately understand the new culture. Consequently, he easily slides into ethnocentrism. I have done it; you have probably done it, too. It is really quite natural.

Now I want to apply this idea of ethnocentrism in a way that most people do not think about, for something like ethnocentrism occurs when we encounter God. You see, God is Himself a culture foreign to earth, and we can naturally slide into a sort of humancentrism that renders judgments against God from a limited knowledge base. Such judgments are dangerous.

Now, previously these blogs have focused on what God is like – the Father, Jesus, the Spirit. But we need to also talk about what we are like, and the moment we do that, we are switching cultures. We are going from heaven to earth. Sometimes we humans have strong opinions about what we are like, but we must understand that God does not view the human race the way most humans view the human race. If we are to understand the human race from a Biblical perspective, we shall have to be open to learning a new culture. We shall have to step out of our humancentrism and be willing to adopt a God-centered mindset. Such a change can be harder than moving to another country. But it is necessary. It requires humility and an open mind. If, however, we cling to our human ways of thinking, we shall miss God altogether.

Christmas is the most celebrated holiday on Earth. Every December half the globe puts up lights and trees, makes special foods, exchanges gifts, attends parties, travels to see family, and talks about peace on Earth. But why? What’s so special about Christmas?

Ironically, most people who celebrate Christmas do not understand what makes it so special. To many people, Christmas is nothing more than gifts and Santa Claus or a nice season to have parties. Oh, they do know that somewhere in the background the holiday is tied to the baby Jesus, but their knowledge somehow never reaches their hearts. Jesus gets thrown in the basket along with decorations, cookies, and presents.

The problem with this thinking is that Jesus never becomes anything more than a baby in a manger. And if Jesus is nothing special, then neither is Christmas. The beauty of the holiday rests on the beauty of the Savior. If we miss the beauty of our Savior, we miss the beauty of Christmas.

Christmas is special because at Christmas God invaded Earth.

Christmas is special because it means that the human race is not left to itself. We have hope.

Christmas is special because that baby died on a cross and took God’s punishment for your sins.

Christmas is special because Christ destroyed sin and through faith He makes you clean.

Christmas is special because Christ rose from the grave, and death no longer has the final say.

Christmas is special because it brings us peace with God.

Christmas is special because that baby is the King of kings — every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Christmas is special because it reveals the wondrous love of God.

The forgiveness of sins is tied to Christmas.

Our glorious inheritance in Christ comes as a result of Christmas.

Holiness and righteousness are ours because of Christmas.

Eternal life results from Christmas.

Christmas brings the greatest gift anyone has ever given.

If someone gave you a billion dollars, you would celebrate.

Well? At Christmas God gave you something greater.  He gave you … Himself.

That’s what makes Christmas so special.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  (Gal 5:16)

 Father, you call me to walk by your Spirit.  I see this is right, and I see the simplicity of it, but it is hard.  Be gracious to me and grant me to rest in your Spirit and to allow Him to fill me as I walk through life.

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, a man sent a car to his son who lived in a remote village. The father had a friend deliver the car, and he drove in late one night and parked just outside the son’s house. He placed a note on the windshield and then left in the night to make his way to a neighboring village. The note read, “Son, a gift for you. Dad.” At that time, cars were a new thing.  They were not everywhere like today.  In addition, the son was a teenager who had never left his village.  He had never seen a car before, so he wasn’t sure exactly how to use it. He saw that the car had wheels, however, so he knew it could roll, and he spent his time getting around in the most unusual ways.   Sometimes he hooked his car to a pair of oxen and let them pull it. Sometimes he used horses, and once he even got several men to help him push it. Now this parable is rather silly on the surface, but it does illustrate something.  This car owner did not understand what he had.

And neither does the church. Too often we are just like that son. We are busy exerting great efforts to accomplish something that would better be accomplished by turning on the engine. The Holy Spirit is the engine for living the life of God. In one sense living for Jesus is as simple as using the engine and letting it carry you. And yet so many who go by the name of Jesus are too busy pushing or pulling their lives to accomplish God’s will. We are more apt to live in our strength than in His Spirit. That is a problem.

The Bible talks about walking in the Spirit, and there are some principles involved in doing so, just as there are some principles involved in driving a car. This week and next week, we’ll look at some of those principles.

The Great Distraction

“Anything except the Spirit of God.”

That is Satan’s mantra. From his perspective, he will encourage you to visit the sick and fight injustice if those things will keep you away from the Spirit of God. If you are so busy doing good deeds that you have no time for God, Satan will take that. You may not be pushing the car in the direction that would be his first choice, but he will take what he can get. At least he has you pushing the car. You are no threat to him.

Satan will distract you from God with anything that works. He will use money. He will use fishing. He will use your family. He will use the church. He will use your desires, your pleasures, your comfort. He will use food, music, education. He doesn’t have to get you robbing and killing in order to own you. He has merely to get you to focus your life on something that is not Christ. His job is actually quite easy, for he has a great ally that dwells inside you. The Bible calls this your flesh.

Paul frequently contrasts the flesh and the Spirit (Rm 8:1-13; Gal 5:16-26). In these contexts, the flesh refers to our natural human desires and priorities and the common thinking of the world. A man who lives his life in the flesh is pursuing whatever he pleases and doing so in a manner consistent with the prevailing culture.

The flesh refers not just to those desires that are sinful but to those that are earthly. We desire food and drink, comfort and pleasure. We want to have fun. We want to travel. We want to try the latest ice cream flavor or see the newest movie. None of these things is necessarily sinful. They can be innocent pleasures. In fact, the Spirit may grant them to us as gifts to enjoy, but when they become the focus, we are in the flesh.

In addition, the flesh involves living in a manner consistent with the prevailing culture. For example, the world says, “If you want to grow a business, you offer a product the people want, you price your product affordably, you make your product easy to access, and you market yourself well.” Today, many churches have built themselves on these principles. The principles are actually good, but they were never meant to be the foundation for a church. Consequently, when a church does this, its growth comes more from the flesh than from the Spirit.

Many church people live in the flesh and never know it. Their life is devoted to basketball or research or parties or a boyfriend or a job or something else, but it is not devoted to God. They never see the problem with this because the pleasures they devote themselves to are legitimate. “Why, if I were stealing or hurting someone, I could see a need to repent, but what’s wrong with biking?”

Nothing. The problem is not biking. The problem is you. God wants His Spirit to reign in you, but you would rather go biking. Your comforts and desires are the driving force in your life. You think that as long as it is moral, you can do whatever you want. That’s not what God made you for. Unfortunately, that is how most people live.

Our flesh is, thus, the great distraction. The flesh is not always focused on sinful things, but a life focused on the flesh is always sinful. Paul’s point is that the follower of Jesus is to have a different source for life. We are to walk by the Spirit and not by our flesh. We are to turn the key in the ignition instead of pushing the car. We may find that when we turn the engine on, we end up doing some of the same things we were doing before. We may enjoy a good piece of music or a burger or a friend. We may fight injustice or sexual temptation, but in the Spirit these things are not the primary focus. We do not think that our strength will accomplish anything. It doesn’t mean we don’t work. Heavens no. It means that our work flows out of something other than our own abilities, and our thoughts are based on something other than our own pleasure. We seek His pleasure, not ours, but in doing so, He gives us greater pleasure and greater enjoyment of Earth’s lesser pleasures than we could ever imagine.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.  (Rm 8:9)

I come to you, Father, with amazement and gratitude at the fact of Your holy presence within me through Your Spirit.  God is in me!  Hallelujah!

Perhaps the greatest mistake church people make is that they try to live a godly life without Jesus. The thrust of their life can be summarized something like this: “I will be kind to my children … I will memorize the Bible … I will work to spread the gospel … I will overcome my anger or lust … I will show patience with my boss … I will give to the poor … I will … I will … I will …” The problem is not the tasks they resolve themselves to perform. Those are often noble and upright. The problem is the source. These people actually think that their own efforts will amount to something. They want to live for God, but they are so busy living for God that they neglect to live from God. Most of these people would call themselves Christians, but this sort of life is not Christian. It is pagan morality in Christian clothing.

Jesus is the foundation for a vibrant, godly life. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. If we try to live out His ethic without His strength, we will fail. If we try to love as He loved but never rely on His love inside us, then we deceive ourselves. Jesus must be the source for how we live.  Of course, Jesus has risen and ascended from this earth, so he is no longer here in a bodily sense, but He is still here. Today, we have access to Jesus through His Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is central to righteousness, joy, and humility, but we woefully neglect Him. That is why the church is often rife with unrighteousness, joylessness, and pride. Sinful people are trying to live a righteous life out of the strength of their sinful nature. It does not work. You might as well ask a fish to be a bird. If we are to live God’s life instead of our own, we need God to do it. The Holy Spirit is that very thing — God doing it.

The Holy Spirit is not an attitude as we might speak of the spirit of the age or say that a woman has a humble spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, as we see in Star Wars, nor is He like the Great Spirit in some nature religions. He is, quite simply, God Himself. And He has come to live inside His people. The people of Jesus, thus, become God’s temple for the simple reason that God’s Spirit dwells in them (I Cor 3:16-17). The Holy Spirit’s indwelling is a gift of God. We do not have the Holy Spirit because we are good. We have Him because God is good. The presence of the Spirit is nothing more than grace.

On one level, this is crazy. God lives in us? On another level, it is pure joy. God lives in us! It is the only way for us to ever truly live the life of Christ. Thus, the people of Jesus must rely on the Spirit He sent. We have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit. So rely on the Spirit. Listen to Him. Call upon Him. Let Him fill you. Continually. He communicates Scripture (II Pet 1:21). He teaches and guides God’s people (Jn 14:26; 16:12-13). He convicts the world of sin (Jn 16:8). He gives new birth in conversion (Jn 3:5-8). He is our assurance of an unfathomable inheritance (Eph 1:13-14). He is our Counselor (Jn14:16, 26). He gives life and peace (Rm 8:6). He provides power for ministry (Acts 2 and 1:8). He provides victory over sin in our lives (Rm 8:13). He grants godly character (Gal 5:22-23). He is the source for all of these things and more.

The Holy Spirit has the power to do these things because He is God. He can work intimately in God’s child because He lives inside. God is not just a god way up in the sky. He has come to dwell inside His people. The Holy Spirit is how we experience God in our lives. Everyone who follows Jesus has the Holy Spirit inside (I Cor 12:12-13). In that sense, we do not need to ask God for the Spirit. In Christ, we already have Him. But having the Spirit and being filled with Him are different things. In addition, having the Spirit and recognizing we have Him are also different things. We often do not see what we have. Some understand intellectually that the Spirit is in them, but they don’t rejoice in it. They have heard the teaching, but they have not made it personal.  Hence, they acknowledge truth with their head but live life in their flesh.

The gift of the Holy Spirit means that you have access to the mind of God right now (I Cor 2:9-12). It means that you can have a conversation with God wherever you are. It means that God can communicate with you from the inside. The fact of the indwelling Spirit means that our prayer lives should be dialogues instead of monologues. It means that we should read Scripture through the eyes of the Spirit, and that when we do so, Scripture comes alive. It means that He should be central in our struggles for purity and righteousness. It means that we should seek and listen to Him for advice. It means that we should rely on His Spirit for the ability to love that annoying relative. It means that we have joy at our fingertips and peace forevermore.

It means all these things because God lives inside His people. On our own, we are frail earthen vessels, but inside this clay pitcher that I call “me,” God has placed a treasure of unspeakable worth. Why then, do we focus so much on the clay and ignore the riches inside?