The Bridge

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. It emphasizes the need for a mediator between God and man, which is fulfilled in Jesus. It explains that works and following rules do not justify us, but rather it is our heart attitude that matters. It emphasizes the importance of loving God and loving our neighbor, which enables us to fulfill all the commandments. The transcription also mentions the story of Job and how fear caused him to lose God's protection. It concludes by emphasizing that Jesus paid the price for our sins and through him, we are saved and can have a relationship with God. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Job 9.34-35 Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid. Then I would speak and not fear him, for I am not so in myself. Sorry, you haven't caught me at my best. If only I was back to my usual self or better, then I would be okay. I'd be able to talk then. But this is God Job is talking about. And there's a pretty huge gap between where we are and where God is. How can we possibly justify ourselves? Well, just previous to these verses, Job had asked for something. Verses 32-33 For he, God, is not a man as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. There is no umpire between us that might lay his hand on us both. A mediator. Job asked for a mediator. God can be where he is. There would be a mediator between them. Better than Job, but less than God. And then Job in his best shape. Then Job figured he'd be able to talk and to justify himself and not be afraid in the presence of the Almighty. Now, it's admirable, it's logical, and it's ridiculously human thinking. Like a clean bill of health, a new set of clothes, and someone to translate for us is all we need to justify ourselves before God. To be able to point to all that we do. All the Bible reading, all the going to church, all the right living, all the prayer, all the everything that makes us righteous people in the eyes of everyone who sees us. As if all of that makes us pure before God. Works do not justify us. Attitude doesn't justify us. And following a bunch of rules doesn't justify us. All of that does nothing but make us Pharisees. Pure in deed, but corrupt in heart. Because we can't justify ourselves. And being a really good person means nothing on the scale of heaven. The Bible isn't a set of rules. A series of do's and don'ts. It isn't that God doesn't care about whether or not you do what he says. But keeping his statutes is more than doing what the Bible says. If I go through my whole life and don't murder anyone or kill anyone in any other way, I'm not going to get to heaven and get patted on my back. Why? Because I'm not supposed to kill anyone. I'm not supposed to murder. I will have done the bare minimum. If I don't murder and kill because it's a rule, I've done nothing special. But if I don't murder and kill because I reverence life, well, then I will have followed a rule because my heart's attitude puts me in a place where I cannot do anything but follow the rule. If my heart has the right environment, I will automatically do the right things. If I am right, then my behavior will be right. The only problem is I'm not right. My heart is the heart of a human. It has spent my whole life focused on me. My flesh has been given the rule of the roost. When we get saved, we naturally follow the same pattern. We read the Bible. We try to do what it says. And we assume that our heart will fall into line. Or we think that the doing of the things is our heart falling into line. And that's why we struggle. That is why we can see ourselves as sinners saved by grace, as a current self-portrait. That is why we see a repeat of our behaviors. Because the flesh cannot inform the heart. The flesh will not do right on its own. It is not a trained animal. It is not in possession of a doing-good automatic switch. We are self-centered, period. When we think we are doing our best, it will still, at its core, be about us. Taking care of the poor and the destitute. Oh, aren't we doing good. Let's pat ourselves on the back. That's selfish. We feel good about ourselves because of what we did. Where is God in that? Nowhere. It's all about us. Even if we're doing it because the Bible encourages us to, God is not in that. That's just us doing something. The Pharisees did all the right things. They followed all the rules of God, plus a bunch they added because they felt that they helped them to follow the rules of God. Or that they helped you embody the spirit of the rules. Jesus said to them in Matthew 23, 23, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone. It wasn't enough that they followed the rules. They didn't have a heart attitude. They were outwardly holy, but inwardly dead. Works are about this world. Heart is about heaven. What good is it to focus on the first and ignore the second? Jesus said in Matthew 16, 26, For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? And that brings us back to Job. The inability of Job to be judged by the standards of God. Let him take his rod away from me. But God isn't placing arbitrary rules on us. He isn't up there in an ivory tower demanding obedience. God, in fact, doesn't demand obedience. He simply states, both gently and firmly, that obedience is the only way to maintain rightness before Him. The first and foremost commandment of God, the most important thing to obey and should obey, even if you ignore all else, is to love God. To hold Him first in your life and to worship no other thing. That is heart attitude, not deed. The second foremost commandment of God, again, the second most important thing to obey and should obey, even if you ignore all else but these two things, is for us to love our neighbor. To treat them the same way we treat ourselves and to make no distinction between us. That's heart attitude, not deed. Heart attitude. Thing is, though, heart attitude will cause deeds to happen. It's inevitable. Jesus said in Matthew 22, 40, the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. That means if you keep those two commandments in your heart and live according to your belief, you will fulfill and do all the other commandments. Now, how is that? Well, you don't kill someone when you're loving them. You don't lie to them, cheat them, covet their possessions, sleep with their spouse, or seek to harm them or one-up them in any way. You won't cheat on your own spouse. You won't treat them as a servant, but as an equal in every way. You'll treat your parents with respect because they are your parents. None of their own merits, be they good or bad. You'll reverence God and worship Him out of love of Him. You won't worship other things or put anything before Him. You see? Those two commandments enable us to do the others. And that's just scratching the surface with the Ten Commandments. That isn't even getting to the rest of the law and everything the prophets instructed them. The question is whether we can, in and of ourselves, keep those two commandments. And the answer is no. Scripture clearly shows us that Job was in the fix he was in because of heart attitude. Job followed all the nitty-gritty, which is good. But he did not have the right heart attitude. His attitude was fear. Fear of loss. Fear that his children weren't doing right. Fear that they weren't holy before God. Fear of losing his possessions. Fear ruled God. Fear is not faith. Fear is not the language of heaven. Fear is the language of not God. Because he chose to fear, God walked out of God's yard. He left the hedge of God's protection and stepped into the enemy's territory. Because of that, the enemy could bring calamity against Job. Following the nitty-gritty isn't enough. No matter how well we do at it, no matter how blessed we become because of it, sooner or later, the human in us kicks up. Sooner or later, we wander from God's yard. Remember Job's plea in verses 32 to 33? For he is not a man as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. There is no umpire between us that might lay his hand on us both. That's what we need. Someone to talk us up to God and someone to talk God into us. God knew it, too. And he provided it. Because we didn't need someone slightly below God and slightly above man. We needed God. We needed a perfect man. We needed both. And we got it in Jesus. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to full knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony at the proper time. 1 Timothy 2, 3-6 Jesus paid the price for us. We can talk us up to God, reminding him that the price is paid and sin is not on us. We are no longer sinners saved by grace. We are saved by grace from sin. No matter what occurs, we can repent because we're covered by the blood of Jesus. Because the blood of Jesus eliminated sin. This is not a license to sin. This is salvation. It goes hand in hand with Jesus talking God into us. When Jesus lives in us, we have the holy righteousness of God inside us. Our spirit is his spirit. Our nature is his nature. We are redeemed, praise the Lord. If we let him, Jesus will spend the rest of our time on earth taking us from where we were to where we can be in him. A process of sanctification where we move ever onward toward perfection. That's not sinning because we can repent. That's being enabled to never sin again because Jesus doesn't and didn't sin and we have the ability to do what he did. The Holy Spirit, his spirit, lives inside us. We have to do this because it is right. Radio station on in our heart 24-7, 365 and a quarter. If we listen and if we obey, we will never ever sin again. I know that's a big yes. That's okay too. But if we do, we won't sin. Sin is not in our nature anymore, you see. We're clean, pure, holy, him. We're him. But the Bible doesn't promise us instant perfection. Not in our whole self. We have instant perfection. Perfection in our spirit, our soul and flesh. It promises sanctification through Jesus. A process of becoming. We may miss it from time to time, but he is there to comfort us. He is there to receive our repentance. He is there to steer us his way so that we won't go back. Will we sin? Well, yes. Because we're human. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1, 7-9 Not a get-out-of-jail-free card, but a promise to bind our wounds and heal our transgressions when we operate at all times out of an honest heart of repentance. Isaiah 53, 4-6 Jesus is there for us. He's our mediator. He can put his hand on us and his hand on God and say he has paid the price for our sin. For sin, period. Our sins are wiped away. We can walk in Jesus, abide in Jesus, and in him, participate in the process of sanctification. To live not according to a set of rules, but to live according to our love of God. In loving him from our heart, we will find lessening desire for anything that is contrary to his morals. We will find ourselves doing the things that make him smile and shunning the things that take us out of his yard. We will align ourselves with his will through his word. It will transform our thinking and our hearts into altars of worship to Yahweh God. Then we will have no fear. Then we will have his presence with us, which will make us right with him because through Jesus we are sanctified, justified, and made clean. No rod, no fear, just love. Perfect love. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Isaiah 46, 3-4. We are not alone. We are not abandoned. We are not having to crawl our way before a wrathful God to beg. We are not coerced. We are not forced. We are loved. Is there hell? Yes. But the entire working of God is to prevent that occurrence. It is bent on getting us as far from it as he is, saving in spite of us. He carries us along and we kick and scream like a totter throwing a fit, but carrying us he continues to do. From the womb, throughout our lives, unto our last moments, he carries us. He doesn't want us to rely on ourselves. He does not want us getting tired in our own strength. He does not want us to accept sickness, certainly not because of anything this world tells us is normal. He does not want us lacking. Persecutions will come, but he does not want us suffering. He wants us to inhabit his joy, which isn't about circumstance. It's about location, us in him. He takes responsibility for us. He is steadfast. He is faithful. He is he who bears us. Realize where you are today, in his arms, loved, cherished, his. As we close, remember that you have earth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I... Now you fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love, and no end to the things about you that he loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you, just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent his only-born Son into the world, that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin, and it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because he first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.