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JD Wetterling |
Tribute to Friends | High Flight | Bio | Reviews | Short Works | Links | Testimonials | Invitation | Email JD |
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TRUTH
"...captures
the [Vietnam] experience better than anyone I've read or heard." "...exciting
journey into the soul of a Top Gun fighter pilot."
"...right
on the mark "...JD
passionately reflects his combat missions, his rage...and his humanity,
quite a combination for a Top Gun." To Order: Interview with JD -- Speaking & Media Dates -- Pictures -- Email JD
F-100D Super Sabre
Published Work in Periodicals
A Different Sort of Retirement
A Different Breed of Cat
High-flying Standards
Arrogance and Airplanes
God, Country,
Forgiveness
Thank God
Greater Love Has No Man
The Warrior's Prayer
Salute to a Veteran
An Excellent Adventure
Walking Furrows with Father
Sinners in the Hands of
A Christmas Devotional
MISTY
Eulogy
Are you good enough
to get to heaven?
Are
You Bad Enough to Become a Christian?
The
Prayer of Jabez (New Testament also in audio) Enter words or a phrase Example: John 3:16 or "for God so loved" If you had this you could check my scripture references instantly!
Daily Devotional
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Red River Valley
Fighter Pilots Assoc.
(River
Rats)
My favorite books. You can get them all at Amazon.com
Can you know a person by the books he reads and rereads? The books listed below are all at arm's length as I type this.
Full disclosure: If you buy them through these Amazon links, they give me a modest reward.
Reformation Study Bible
[ESV-my favorite study Bible]
Foundations of the Christian Faith:
A comprehensive &
Readable Theology
by James Montgomery Boice
[Keep this right next to your Bible]
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
(2 Volumes)
by John Calvin
edited by John T. McNeill, translated by
Ford Lewis Battles
[Make sure you get the Battles translation. Keep these two on the other side of your Bible.]
Morning & Evening
by CH Spurgeon
[This never quits sounding new, year after year.
Master theologian.
Master wordsmith.]
[Don't walk into a pulpit without reading this.] by CH Spurgeon
[My mentor at his best.]
Westminster Confession
of Faith:
A Study Manual
by G. I. Williamson
[This will turn on lights all over the place.]
The Heidelberg
Catechism:
A Study Guide
by G.I. Williamson
[There will be no dark corners left.]
Humility: True Greatness
by C.J. Mahaney
& Joshua Harris
[My egomaniacal office walls are now all bare...but
I brag.
My review]
Jonathan Edwards:
A Life
by George M. Marsden
[The gold standard for Edwards bio's.]
The Bondage of the Will
by Martin Luther
trans. J.I. Packer
& O.R. Johnston
{I use a different color marker when I reread a
book. Every page of this one looks like a rainbow.]
George Whitefield:
The Life and Times... Vol 1
by Arnold
Dallimore
[There will never be another witness like this man.]
George Whitefield:
The Life and Times... Vol 2
by Arnold
Dallimore
[Heard by more people than any preacher ever, and you'll see why.]
The Mathers:
Three Generations of Puritan
Intellectuals
by Robert Middlekauff
[The men behind the men of 1776.]
The Plain Mr. Knox
by Elizabeth Whitley
[Plain...until he opened his mouth or picked up a
pen.]
Don't Waste Your Life
by John Piper
[If this doesn't build a fire in you, your kindling will never burn.]
Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis
by George Sayer
[An intellectual pilgrimage
to eternity.]
John Adams &
1776
both by David McCollough
[Buy everything this
guy writes--3 Pulitzers!
My review of 1776.]
Total Truth
by Nancy R. Pearcey
[You'll never be intimidated by a pagan again.]
Putting Amazing Back
into Grace:
Embracing the Heart
of the Gospel
by Michael Horton
[This holds the record for the most books I ever gave away...except for
my own.]
Praying Backwards:
Transform Your
Prayer
life
by Bryan Chapell
[Transforming indeed! My favorite living reformed
writer.]
The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions
Arthur G. Bennett, Ed.
[Get the leather copy. You'll wear out the paperback.
LORD, teach me to pray like my Puritan brothers of old.]
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
by Adam Nicolson
[Gripping account of the extraordinary men and the
turbulent times that brought about this great translation.
My review.]
JD Wetterling’s MIDWEEKLY REALITY
CHECK
Fear and
Trembling
April 29, 2008
We topped a ridge of the Wet Mountains westbound, a few miles east of the twin cities of Westcliffe and Silver Cliff. When the silver boom was on over a century ago, Silver Cliff was the third largest city in Colorado. Today the two cities combined barely qualify as a hamlet in south central Colorado, but they were a sight to behold in the center of a vast flat, nearly treeless valley below us. From the massive stacks scattered about the valley, hay must have been the cash crop. But it was not the hamlet centered in the broad green valley with golden stacks of hay that took the breath away, it was the ragged rocky, snow-covered Sangre de Christo Mountains towering over the valley on the opposite side. As far as the eye could see from right to left was a line of Pikes Peaks. Five of Colorado’s fifty-three (or 58, depending on how you count) famed “fourteeners”—peaks over 14 thousand feet high—were among them. Such grandeur sent my spirits soaring with awestruck gratitude to their Creator, who did this for His glory and my enjoyment. Legend has it their name derives from the red glow of the range at some sunrises and sunsets, especially when the mountains are covered with snow. To my mind they could not be more aptly named—pairing His glory as Creator with His act of love, the greatest act of love the world has ever witnessed: “the blood of Christ.” I could have pulled off on the shoulder and spent the whole weekend right there and called it a spiritual mountaintop, but God had something even better in store.
We were inbound to a men’s retreat at a Christian conference center on the lower slopes of one of those majestic mountains—Horn Peak—just into the Aspen and evergreen trees. It was the third Christian Conference Center I’ve visited in the last nine months (counting the one I worked at for six and a half years), and I noticed a distinct similarity in spite of three dramatically different wilderness venues—the Rockies, the Blue Ridge and Gulf coastal Florida. That common characteristic was, sadly, the look of deferred maintenance. When I was on staff we called it “rustic.” But, as was also common to all three, the enthusiastic heart and soul of staffers on subsistence wages or less (volunteers) more than made up for the lack of financial resources.
In an upstairs meeting room constructed in post-and-beam style from the pealed trunks of tall evergreens on the property, before a massive native stone fireplace, we listened to the amazing story of a man who lived in a world far removed from our idyllic setting. Over a decade ago he moved his family into a Harlem tenement and took a job in the neighborhood. I just happened to pass through that part of New York City back then, at night during a business trip, and I confess I was thanking God I did not have to get out of the car.
At one of the first neighborhood social functions he attended with his family, his wide-eyed seven-year-old daughter, one of four adopted African-American children, said, “Daddy, you and Mommy are the only white people here. Aren’t you afraid?”
That selfless family man began a Bible study in his apartment and invited his neighbors, and today he is the pastor of a thriving church in a renovated office building that had long stood vacant and falling down just up the street. His church is also leading a handful of neighborhood development projects that include tutoring school kids, a computer learning center available for anyone in the neighborhood to use, and another renovated vacant building that serves as affordable housing for eight families, the first of one-hundred planned, a neighborhood café that provides jobs for people in the community, and not least an inner city seminary.
He had a great deal to say to his audience of mostly upper middle class men, living in comfort in one of America’s most beautiful and prosperous cities, about God’s call on our lives. His words, though profound, were overpowered by his deeds, of which he spoke with reticence and humility, attributing it all to God’s grace. It left me staring up into the dark from my bunk, and walking into trees as I hiked through the mountains, wondering why I call myself a Christian, an experience that has haunted me more times than I can count. Real Christians bear fruit that is self-evident to the most casual observer. Paul’s words to the Philippians (2:12) echoed in my brain: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling….
It is men like my new friend from Harlem who are changing the world while I sit on my slothful back side and scribble, pondering Pikes Peak through the window. It is so much easier to teach the Word than to live it. The only solution is found in the very next verse of Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:13): for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Dear God, work in me.
April 9, 2008
Janet
Carlson Kooistra
February 10, 1942 – April 6, 2008
The LORD gave, and
the LORD has taken away;
blessed be the name of the LORD.
(Job 1:21b).
Jan Kooistra joined the church eternal early last Lord’s Day. Praise God she is pain free at last and learning first hand what 1 Corinthians 2:9 means, after years battling cancer. I will miss her hugs and her light-up-the-room smiles in the midst of what seemed to me an endless roller coaster of trauma. She is one of a handful of saints who prayed my last book into publication in the midst of all of that. It is my prayer that if it is God’s will that I glorify Him with a slow death in the crucible of cancer, I might, by His grace, be the kind of witness my friend Jan was. I want to honor her with her own words in a rare public address, delivered last July at Ridge Haven and posted here with a brief intro July 17, 2007.
For the fifth year in a row it was my great joy, this past week at Ridge Haven, to serve missionaries just home from the field at the Mission to the World Summer Conference. I’ve made many friends through this conference and many other MTW gatherings, but none dearer than Paul and Jan Kooistra. Paul heads MTW, one of the best run missionary operations anywhere, while Jan bears a quiet but no less shining witness to her Lord and Savior. This is Jan’s story, told at the women’s luncheon while the men and children enjoyed a cookout:
When
Steve Collins asked me if I would give the devotional at this luncheon,
the answer came quickly and easily—No! I’m not a public speaker…getting
up in front of a group absolutely terrifies me! But the Holy Spirit
started talking to me just as quickly. In essence, He said, “Jesus went
to the cross for you, you know.” He did not have to say more and here I
am, in front of you. I could do no other.
First of all, I want to thank all of you for the prayers you have offered up on my behalf, as well as prayers for my husband and family. Those prayers have given us the strength and encouragement to keep on keeping on, to trust in the only wise God and to love Him the more as we walk through our Gethsemane. Because this is way out of my comfort zone, this is probably more a sharing of my life than it is a devotional.
Everyone knows, I’m sure, that I’ve been living with metastatic breast cancer for almost 4.5 years now. It’s the one word, in any language, that strikes fear in everyone. The original diagnosis in 1995 was frightening, but after 2 surgeries and 5 years of oral medication life returned to what seemed “normal.” We had almost forgotten that I HAD cancer. But then….
A scan revealed a lump on my clavicle. A doctor palpated my neck one Monday afternoon and said, “I can tell you right now, you’ve got cancer!” And he left the room. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. We went home in shock, returning the next week for more biopsies and scans. And he was right. It was metastatic breast cancer, which is incurable—I would be kept alive as long as possible.
My mind was numb and at the same time in a whirl. I wanted to grow old with my husband. I wanted to see my grandchildren grow up to love and serve the Lord. I didn’t want my aged mother to have to watch her daughter die, nor did I want my children to have to watch. I wasn’t ready to leave this world. And the questions that raced through my mind…. Who would take care of my husband? Wash his clothes…iron his shirts…cook his dinner…pay the bills…make sure the taxes were paid…and on and on I would go.
All that took about another week, but then the word spread and we started hearing from people all over the world. It was obvious they were all praying, for we found peace—peace in knowing we were in the loving arms of the Lord Jesus. Peace that could not be conjured on our own, peace that only He can give. Peace in knowing that God was in control.
And so the endless trips to Winship Cancer Center, this doctor, that doctor, this scan, that scan, this chemo, that chemo. Some chemo’s worked, some did not. Cancer is tricky—it changes properties. There were hospital stays for blood clots in my lungs, a long bout in the hospital after finding that my liver did not have the enzymes needed to metabolize the chemo I was taking at the time. It destroyed the mucus membranes, from my lips and mouth all the way down through my intestinal tract. That was a very frightening time, though again, knowing I was in the hollow of His hand brought the peace that can only come from Him.
There are those in the medical field who have urged me to join their support group and can’t understand why I decline. My family is my great support, and of course the faithful prayers of so many. Frankly, it has amazed and humbled me to hear of the people who have not tired of praying for me, so many that have prayed daily and continue to do so.
Paul Jr., our son. moved his wife and 3 little girls from St. Louis to within 5 miles just so they could be near us. He is always full of questions about the latest treatment, cat scan or bone scan. He’s fed us many of his gourmet creations, gives great hugs and calls just to say, “I love you, Mom.” His wife is always ready to run errands for me or bring her famous chicken and cheese soup. And who can resist a 2-year-old’s sloppy kiss on the cheek, two chubby hands holding your face and the words, “MY gramma.” Or watching her 6-year-old sister push herself to the limit on her swim team to bring home a first place ribbon.
Shary, in St. Louis, calls daily and keeps me posted on Sam’s Little League games and Maggie’s last craft project. Though I think she finds it difficult to talk about my cancer, I know she is daily in prayer for me and would cheerfully run the vacuum or clean the bathroom for me if she were about 600 miles closer.
Sidney, who is here with me today, was living with us from last Christmas until just a couple of weeks ago, when she and her husband found the house the Lord had for them to move into. She has been a great help with cooking meals, being my personal nurse, and ever my cheerleader. Their children have kept me smiling with questions like, “Gramma, is your hair falling off?” Or when 8-year-old Alysia, upon asking me to remove the scarf covering my bald head, gave me her most horrified look and then quickly wrapped me up in her arms and said, “You’re still beautiful to me, Gramma.”
And of course my husband. THE example of “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” His constant prayers, love and encouragement have been unfailing. And he’s learned how to use the washing machine, where to find the vacuum cleaner, and has advanced his culinary skills way beyond peanut butter sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. Other than my own salvation, he is God’s greatest gift to me.
The Lord has given me a wonderful doctor. Though not a Christian, he is the most caring and compassionate man. He never enters or leaves the room without a hug…for both of us. Believe me, he has heard much about the Lord, and though he’s firm humanist, the seeds have been and are being planted.
The nurse who has taken care of me week after week is a Christian and has become a dear friend. In the unbelievable maze of Winship Cancer Center, she has cut through many obstacles for us and made our trek through that maze a little easier. Unfortunately for us, she was recently promoted to Assistant Director and we are now left to God’s divine intervention in other ways.
We’ve become friends with the pharmacist there, who is a Christian and very active in mission work in Kenya.
Of course there are those around me in the other chemo chairs. Some know the Lord, others do not. We meet their loved ones, we share stories, we weep together, we rejoice together, we laugh together. We share terrible chemo jokes, like “Why don’t they have an express lane at the grocery store for cancer patients? After all, we don’t have as much time as other people.” Or, more seriously, we questions things like, “Should I buy a new pair of shoes? After all, will I be here to wear them?” It’s amazing the things you think and talk about when you have cancer.
Sometimes I go in and find that one of those friends has died. Those are really bad days. I’ve known one who left life with no interest in the Lord whatsoever, another who claimed to once know Him but over time rejected Him, and one who was filled with the love of his Savior and was a testimony of God’s love and care until his home going.
It is very fascinating as God weaves the fabric of my life, bringing His people, and some who are not, to minister to me in a variety of ways. And if God has used me in any way in that place, then it is my privilege to be there.
So, how do I walk with cancer day by day, week by week, month after month and year after year? First of all, I take one day at a time. I remember the blessings throughout my life. I remember how good life has been…and still is. I remember that I was not created for this world, but for eternal life in heaven, with my God and King. As the old spiritual aptly says, “this world is not my home, I’m just passin’ through.”
I remember Tim Keller once said, “Never, never, never think that God is not at work because you cannot see it. And never, ever, ever, ever think you can figure out what God is doing.”
Do I ever have fears, do I have doubts, do I have anxiety? Of course…there are moments, hours, and sometimes days when I wonder if I can keep going. I am human, I am frail, I am imperfect and in constant need of the Savior. I need to begin every day anew with Jesus. He is my comfort, my strength, my peace. And I remember Psalm 139. “You formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb…your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written, everyone of them, the days that were formed for me.” I remember Moses telling Joshua, “be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
I remember John 14:1-3. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” I remember Isaiah 26:3. “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” And I remember Psalms 31:14-15a. “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand….”
Amen.
INTERVIEW WITH JUDAS
March 20, 2008
(Reposted from Easter, '06)
“Welcome to Channel XVI evening news, reporting tonight from Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth, controversial itinerant preacher, alleged miracle worker and nemesis of the Jewish religious authorities, was crucified today. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, the ruling council came up with an unprecedented midnight—some experts say illegal—conviction just five days after he received a tumultuous welcome to the city by thousands of jubilant Jews. In an odd twist of fate, the man whom John the Baptist called ‘the lamb of God’ died just as the Jews were sacrificing their paschal lambs on the great temple’s altar, a centuries old ritual. Details of an extraordinary day follow these words from our sponsors.”
* * *
That’s how it might have sounded if network news existed in the first century Roman world and a TV reporter was in Jerusalem to cover Passover the year Christ was crucified.
This holy week nearly 2000 years later, millions of people worldwide commemorate this last chapter of the central event of history, the most amazing act of love the world will ever witness. Jesus Christ, God’s son, intentionally suffered and died like a sacrificial lamb as an atonement for the sins of his people. He died as our substitute because, since Adam’s fall, we are all inherently incapable of meeting God’s requirements of holiness and righteousness. According to a plan designed in detail in the throne room of God before time began, a sinless Christ, our Savior, was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities…and with his stripes we are healed, as Isaiah prophesied 700 years in advance. And because Jesus rose from the dead on Easter, all who have faith in him and his work on their behalf can look forward with certainty to a similar great resurrection morning—though he die, yet shall he live, by Christ’s own promise. This is the gospel no human mind could conceive or invent, so straightforward and simple it is mind-boggling in its divine execution, the best “good news” that could ever enter the mind of man.
A critical part of this passion week drama concerns a man named Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples, who betrayed the best friend he could ever have. Judas, a sinner not unlike you and me, turned his back on eternal bliss for cold, unsatisfying, transitory cash; Judas, a master of self-delusion, as is everyman, convinced himself the wrong thing was the right thing to do; Judas, an impatient, egocentric man, just like the rest of us, forsook waiting on the Lord and took matters into his own hands.
We do not know all the details and we can only surmise the thoughts that ran through Judas’ mind, so I have taken what is known from the biblical record and filled in the blanks with my imagination based on a lifetime of Bible study. I cannot know the heart of another, especially a traitor like Judas, but sometimes I think I know my own heart, and I confess I am appalled. My thoughts are sinful all the time, and when my words and deeds are not, my motives are. And I know that, absent the sustaining grace, the utterly unmerited favor of God who loves me beyond my comprehension, I could have been a Judas. It’s not just my personal problem, it’s a universal problem of mankind’s existence—human depravity. Listen carefully to the anguished excuses of Judas Iscariot—his last words before stubbornly dispatching himself to eternal damnation—and ask yourself, “How much of Judas is there in me?”
* * *
When the commercial was over the screen faded back to the Garden of Gethsemane, outside the city’s eastern wall on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives. It was just 24 hours after Jesus’ was arrested there. The on-the-scene reporter continued.
“It was a day full of fearsome occurrences that this city will not soon forget. From noon till three p.m., while Jesus and two other men were writhing on their crosses, it became dark as midnight and torches had to be lit. No one is calling it an eclipse. It was eerie in the extreme. I was at the scene of the crucifixion on Golgotha and, just as Jesus cried out and breathed his last, an earthquake shook the darkened city. Large rocks split apart like dropped melons. The taunts and jeers of those watching the gruesome spectacle turned to cries of alarm. Some thought the world was coming to an end. I overheard the centurion in charge exclaim to his frightened guards, ‘Surely, he was the Son of God.’ Across town at the temple thousands of terror-stricken worshipers fell to the ground as the earth shook violently under them. The massive 4-inch thick, 30 by 30-foot curtain screening the Holy of Holies ripped apart with a deafening noise that drowned out screaming women and children on the temple mount. A visibly shaken priest on duty, who witnessed it, told me it tore in two from the top down, ‘as if by some invisible giant hand.’ Amazingly, no other damage was reported to that architectural marvel. And if that were not enough panic for one day, numerous sightings were reported, unconfirmed at this hour, of known dead holy men come to life and walking the city streets.
The man who, according to eyewitnesses, last night led authorities to Jesus of Nazareth right here where I am standing, was one of his closest associates, a man named Judas Iscariot. According to those who knew him best, none of whom were willing to talk to this reporter on the record, the betrayer was an enigmatic sort, a mixture of altruism and selfishness, devotion and duplicity, idealism and egotism…a pretty typical citizen, actually….”
Something stage left, off camera, caught the reporter’s attention. A distraught, disheveled looking man, deep in thought with a coil of rope in his left hand, was wandering aimlessly through the garden.
“I believe that is…yes it is.” The reporter realized excitedly that he had the news scoop of the ratings season and quit reading the teleprompter.
“Cameraman, if you could pan to my left, here he is now. Judas…Judas Iscariot!”
The man looked up, startled at the sound of his name.
“Judas, you look like a tormented man…and for good reason, I hear. Here’s your chance to justify your traitorous act before the world. Speak to us.” He walked over to the man and held the microphone in his face while the man stared back angrily.
“Speak…you want me to speak? No matter what I say you’ve already condemned me. You’re a sorry sounding sinner with that holier-than-thou tone of voice. Who gave you the right to judge me?
“Judas, the world is watching. You’ll never get a better chance than this to justify yourself.”
Judas stared at the ground and sighed as he pondered his options, then dropped his rope and wrung his hands. He began in a pleading voice full of self-pity.
“Do you know what it is to long for recognition? For acceptance? Do you know that awful, lonesome feeling of an outsider? You know, in my whole life no one ever said to me, ‘Judas, it’s good to see you.’ I wanted so badly to be somebody special. Am I so strange? Haven’t you had longings like that? I bet you didn’t get where you are without them. With me it became an obsession. I’d pay any price…any price whatsoever.” He paused and took another deep, quavering breath and rubbed his bewhiskered face with both hands.
“Okay, here’s the story. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m beyond forgiveness. Let my life be a warning. There is not a viewer out there who is not capable of doing the same terrible thing I did.” As he talked he shook a pointed finger right into the camera, then stopped, dropped his hand to his side like a dead weight and looked up into the branches of the olive trees. With another uncomfortable pause, he resumed.
“It all began so well. I was born in Kerioth, in Judea. Home of God’s chosen people, home of this holy city, home of Almighty God’s magnificent temple. I alone was a true Israelite—the rest of the disciples were from Galilee. Galilee…whose only claim to fame is that nothing good ever came from there! And I was the only one of the bunch who had a resume worthy of the job. That’s why Jesus made me treasurer.” With that he threw his shoulders back and thrust out his chest.
“Like all Jewish parents, mine were so happy at the birth of a baby boy. My father proudly announced that my name would be Judas. That means ‘praised of God.’ Did you know that? Judas, praised of God!” An ephemeral smile crossed his countenance as he stared into space over the head of the interviewer.
“I was raised like all Judean boys. I was taught to fear God and to await the promised deliverer. That’s what attracted me to Jesus the first time I saw him. He had that aura of authority. I heard him on several occasions and he stirred me like no teacher ever had. Then that amazing day came when he delivered that sermon on that mountainside. Wow! I was sure that the kingdom he kept talking about was the promised kingdom we’d all been waiting for. At the close of his sermon I stood there starry eyed…transfixed. And he came right up to me, looked deep into my eyes and said, ‘Judas, follow me.’ And I did! He was irresistible!
“Jesus chose me!” He looked incredulous at the thought, but his tone of voice was prideful. “He chose me, along with a few others…and I had the purest, noblest intentions when I shouldered my knapsack that day.”
“Why did he choose you, Judas?”
He hesitated for a moment, then replied, “Why would he choose you? Only he knows.”
“In those early days we were such great pals. We hung on every word that came out of his mouth. Then, out of his presence we were always trying to guess when his revolution would begin.
“How do you explain the change that came over you that led you to do such a thing, Judas?”
“I…I don’t know if I can. It was a gradual thing. You know we lived like vagabonds and paupers, and somehow dissatisfaction and impatience just crept in. With the passage of time…what an awful lifestyle…and no move on his part to declare his kingship of Israel, I just grew more and more disenchanted. My old greedy ways returned. As treasurer I found myself filching coins, telling myself I’d pay them back…but somehow never did. Jesus saw the change in me. He warned me. ‘Judas, beware of covetousness. A man’s life is not measured by the things he has, Judas. There is nothing hid that shall not be known, Judas.’
“But as terrible as my greed was, it was nothing compared to my desire for recognition. I hungered for that more than I hungered for food. And yet people laughed at us, called us names, chased us out of town. I had given up everything for Jesus and they made me feel like the scum of the earth! And the folks we hung out with—down-and-outers, lepers, cripples…. Poverty-stricken hordes dogged us day and night. And when we complained to Jesus about it he always said, ‘My job is to do the will of my father.’ How can you argue with that?” Judas stared at the reporter as if he were looking for agreement. He pressed on with increased intensity.
“Well, finally I got up my nerve to make my move. You see…I figured that if he really was the Messiah, then his legions of angels would protect him from anything. And if he was not who he claimed to be, well…then…he deserved to be exposed, and the man doing the exposing would be proclaimed throughout the land. Judas Iscariot! I would be somebody!”
“What about the money, Judas?”
“The money…? The Sanhedrin sits on a hoard of money. What they were willing to pay for information was chicken feed to them. And it was chicken feed compared to what I gave up these last three years to go with Jesus. And they would have caught him anyway…sooner or later. He even predicted they would….”
“So I set it all up with the Chief Priests for his capture, then joined the others in the upper room for the Passover Meal. I was so nervous…. I had never done anything like that before…. Just before the meal was served, Jesus did the most demeaning thing imaginable: he washed our feet. You know in our part of the world showing the sole of your foot to another person is the most insulting thing you can do to him. Servants wash feet,” he shouted indignantly.
“When he was done he said, ‘All of you are not clean.’ I knew who he was talking about. He added, ‘One of you will betray me.’ Just like all the rest, I said, Is it I, Lord? I might have fooled the others but I didn’t fool Jesus. My heart was beating so hard I feared everyone could hear it. So when he leaned toward me and said, ‘Do it quickly,’ I got out of there. The man was reading every thought in my head.
“Well…you know the rest of the story. Jesus allowed himself to be condemned in a trial that was the biggest travesty of justice Israel has ever seen. Then he let them kill him in the most hideous way they knew how. They scourged him—ripped the flesh off his bones till he was unrecognizable and nearly dead—and then crucified him…and he went like a lamb to the slaughter…and I knew…I had made a big mistake.” Tears were running down his cheeks into his beard.
“Jesus was forever preaching about repentance and forgiveness…and I know have sinned and need to get down on my knees and repent…but I cannot bring myself to do it. I have betrayed innocent blood—I have killed the Son of the Most High God. I can’t forgive myself. How can I ask anyone else to forgive me? I took the cash back and threw it in their faces, but my guilt…and my despair have consumed me…and I can’t stand it any longer.” Judas was almost incoherent now. He buried his face in his hands and great choking sobs were broadcast to the world. He spun away from the camera for a moment to compose himself, then he slowly turned back and said with resignation, “Hmmph. I have my recognition now. The world will never forget my name….”
Judas picked up his coil of rope and studied it for a moment. A demonic look came over his face. He turned and resolutely walked off through the trees.
“Well, you heard it here first, folks. More details on XVI News at XI. Back to you in the studio, Brutus.”
* * *
The Bible states that Judas hanged himself outside the city in a field called Akeldama, the Field of Blood. To this day, when you go to Jerusalem, tour guides will show you where he took his own life rather than ask a merciful God for forgiveness.
This Holy Week consider the sins of Judas, and where he spends eternity, and remember that Christ died for the sins of those who believe in his life, death and resurrection and are sincerely repentant. There is no sin so great that Almighty God cannot forgive a truly contrite heart but for the asking, nor will the smallest unconfessed sin in thought, word or deed be overlooked on Judgment Day. Human effort will never be perfect enough to earn admittance to the perfection of God’s heaven. Christ has finished the work. Faith alone in his atoning act of love alone, is our passport to eternal glory with him. Blessed is he whose…sins are covered.
The night Jesus was arrested, his disciple, Peter, was so frightened he denied even knowing Jesus. A few weeks he later declared to the same authorities who crucified Christ, with a boldness that astonished them: …Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead…has become the cornerstone…there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. It was a resounding affirmation of Jesus’ own glorious proclamation of his “gospel in a nutshell.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
This Easter don’t be a stubborn rebel like Judas. It is a futile thing to rebel against God. He will subdue you…by grace or by judgment. So why not take refuge in his amazing love? With faith and repentance, receive freely what God offers for nothing. It’s the only basis for peace and Christ’s own joy in the human soul.
Why Christ Had to Die
March 14, 2008
In the providence of God this Easter season, as we celebrate the greatest act of love the world has ever known—the atoning death and miraculous resurrection of Christ—we have witnessed the sordid spectacle of a powerful leader self-destructing on the world’s stage. He was a brilliant but abrasive man, enforcing the law as zealously as another Jewish guy named Saul two millennia earlier. An adoring electorate had propelled him to the pinnacle of the power pyramid with an historic margin of victory. By any worldly measure he had it all…but, inexplicably abandoning judgment and morality, risked it all repeatedly, in defiance of what he publicly professed to stand for, until he ruined himself. Outrageous Annie Coulter called it “…the most complete coup de grace imaginable, short of an assassin's bullet.” And it was self-inflicted. Lord willing, it could yet be a Damascus Road experience for this disgraced latter-day zealot, but surely it was spectacular demonstration of the Doctrine of Total Depravity, which points to the need for the Son of God to die on a cross, the Son whose resurrection we celebrate this Easter.
Reformation theologian John Calvin defined total depravity this way in the Institutes of Christian Religion, II.1.8: “ that whatever is in man, from the understanding to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, is defiled and crammed with this concupiscence" [desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, lust]. The most casual reading of the Old Testament shows even the icons of the faith—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and King David—had feet of clay. Six thousand years of human history have validated the truth that the The Ten Commandments are not a humanly achievable standard, but a mirror of the depravity of the human heart, reflecting the desperate need for a Savior. Paul (the born again Saul) explained it in the simplest words of all: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God (Rom. 3:10-11). As King David said in his repentant Psalm when he was caught in a reprehensible act not unlike the gubernatorial sin the world has just witnessed, Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (Psalm 51:5). Former renowned liberal playwright David Mamet, in an otherwise risibly irreverent mea culpa, aptly stated this eternal truth in the vernacular: “… I do not think that people are basically good at heart.” Since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden all men are born in sin and incapable of believing in or even seeking after the God who created them.
This is why Christ had to die on Passover 2,000 years ago. He told Pilate at His trial, For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37). Since man is hopelessly lost and obliviously hell-bound, as the headlines daily affirm, God must act if anyone is to be saved from eternal damnation. That truth, which Jesus bore witness to with His words and miraculous deeds of infinite love, is clearly and simply stated in His own mostly monosyllable words found in six short sentences, all beginning with the unequivocal subject of No one…, in the Book of John.
NO ONE can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3:3).
NO ONE can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (John 6:44).
NO ONE comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).
NO ONE takes it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:18).
NO ONE can snatch them [true Christians] out of my hand (John 10:28).
NO ONE will take away your joy (John 16:22b).
This is the Gospel, the Good News of Grace, in the Son of God’s own words. Depraved man cannot even see the things of God without a spiritual rebirth, over which he has no more control than his physical birth. He will not come to Christ, the only avenue to eternal life, on his own, so God the Father “draws” him [literal translation of the original Greek: compel with overwhelming force]. He is incapable of adequately atoning for his sins against an infinitely Holy God, so God the Son provides the perfect atonement, the perfect sacrifice—His own blood, the blood that 2000 years of daily animal sacrifices in the tabernacle and temple pointed to. And that once-for-all atonement guarantees eternal life in the palm of the Savior Himself for all those he has chosen. No human mind could conceive of such a plan or even comprehend it (Isaiah 55:8) absent God’s grace.
Nota bene, each of these six steps in God’s plan of salvation for sinners is an act of God for the benefit of his elect. God did for his own what they could not/can not do for themselves. That is why it is called grace, God’s favor toward those who by nature deserve His wrath (Eph. 2:3). All that is left for the sinner to do is believe (Romans 10:9), and even that faith that Jesus was who He said He was is a gift (Eph.2:8-10), like the “No one…” promises, from an almighty, providential God. In what Martin Luther called the “Gospel in a Nutshell,” a concise, single sentence presentation of the Gospel in Jesus’ words, he told Nicodemus, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Now ponder these Gospel promises this Holy Week. Look them up, study them in context, see if you can twist any other meaning out of them. Deo volente, the Holy Spirit will use Jesus’ words to open your eyes, change your heart, and transform your life.
Such amazing grace is why the final divine truth is a joy that children of the living God celebrate this Easter and always, a joy that no one can take away, now and forever in the palm of the Savior. No sin is too great for the saving grace of a God who loves like this—our only hope. He can even be the certain hope of broken 21st century governors. That Old Testament governor in similar straits, in his penitential prayer, humbly reminded Jehovah, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:17).
Do your soul an eternal favor and flee to Him this Resurrection Sunday.
Come
to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
(Matthew 11:28)
A Change of Venue
Feb. 18, 2008
The heart of man plans
his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.
(Proverbs 16:9)
I love mountain views. Nothing speaks more to me of God’s glory than purple mountain majesty. The only real estate I own in the whole wide world is 3 acres of dirt, rocks and trees and a fabulous panoramic view on a Blue Ridge Mountaintop. But these days, in God’s providence, I’m composing while looking up at a mountaintop, not down from one…and what a majestic one it is, as you can see above! It was not our plan—the LORD established our steps.
We were 6 days into
full retirement after six-and-a-half years of
fulfilling semi-retirement (our last day of work in the Lord’s vineyard
at
Ridge Haven was January 31), delightfully decompressing in our new
RV parked on the eastern shore of Lake
Seminole,
a Corps of Engineers campground on the FL/GA border near Tallahassee. We
had dreams of seeing God’s magnificent North American creation from
ground level and Mach .075 till we got tired of traveling or the wheels
came off the RV.
Then the cell phone rang in our boondocks campsite. Karen's 87-year-old Mom was in the hospital with pneumonia, a dangerous disease at her age, and she wanted us to come to her. A month earlier we had offered to come straight to Colorado Springs at retirement and take care of her the rest of her days, but she preferred her independence. Well, the pneumonia changed all that.
We broke camp and left the next morning and in five days crossed the country towing a two-and-a-half-ton RV behind an F-150 truck, 1,860 miles to Colorado. God was gracious and gave us five perfect weather days. We stayed south below the frost line in our three seasons home on wheels, amongst half the world’s truckers on I-10, till west Texas. It was not our planned method to behold the face of God in every nook and cranny of America, but it was the quickest way to respond to Mom. We then filled the plumbing with RV antifreeze and sprinted northwest to Raton Pass and Colorado Springs. We arrived just six hours before the snow began to fall and seven hours before they checked Mom out of the hospital.
She's got quite a battle on her hands, but under Karen's TLC and cooking she is making halting progress...and doesn't want us to even think about leaving. The RV is in storage and I don't know if we will be here a month or a year or more--but God knows and He's in charge, and that is fine with me. I'm sitting here in a beautiful condominium, waiting for the sun to rise over the Great Plains and light up snow-capped Pike's Peak, 14,110 feet above our old Florida bay front house and 6,500 feet higher than this urban mesa where I now sit. In the early moments of twilight the white Peak towers over the sleeping city before a deep blue backdrop too beautiful for words. Slowly the blue pales and the white gets whiter until an orange fireball on the horizon behind me casts a pinkish hue on the majestic mountain, filling the picture window in front of me. I'll be out hiking shortly, a sunrise ritual that goes way back, on trails with gorgeous views of these mountains and the Garden of the Gods (click on the “scenic” tab), a magnificent misnamed monument by and for the glory of our Creator, the One True God of the Universe. And what an inspirational place to write, just like the Blue Ridge Mountains only two miles higher and whiter!
From Blue Ridge Wilderness Cathedral to Rocky Mountain high and it’s not because I am the luckiest guy you and I know. Perhaps we could agree that I am the least deserving soul we know. There is not a chance that Karen and I landed at the foot of this mountain by chance. You see, my dear mother-in-law has heard the gospel passionately presented by both her eldest daughter and her eldest son-in-law, but she would be the first to say she does not believe as we do in the God of the Bible—in a heaven of sorts, perhaps, but not hell, and she does not go to church and does not want a funeral, though a party would be nice. It is an answer to years of fervent prayer that my bride and I are here with her mother as she stands on the threshold of eternity. The sovereign God of all mercy has directed our steps.
Dear reader, would you please pray with us for the salvation of this dear lady we love so much? And for our witness, that our actions might speak louder than our words, that we might serve her selflessly, and that our Almighty God, who existed before this magnificent mountain was ever brought forth by the power of His word, might work a miracle in her heart? Then together we will sing with these mountains and every tree on them, for the LORD will have done it (Isa. 44:23).
A Christmas
Devotional
reprinted
December 18, 2007
The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the
Father, full of truth and grace. (John 1:14).
Of all the gospel narratives of the Christmas story, these words of John the
Apostle are my favorite. But why did
John call Christ the Word? His
Gospel begins that way: In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made…. (John 1-3a)
It is certainly crystal clear that “Word” means Christ.
No one argues with that.
In the beginning was [Christ], and [Christ] was with God and
[Christ] was God…. [Christ] became flesh and made his dwelling among
us.
John’s objective in writing
his gospel was to prove that Christ was God.
But John must have been trying to convey more or he would have
used the word Christ. What might
that be?
There appear to be two reasons why John
used
“Word”
instead of
“Christ.”
He was speaking to two audiences, the Jews, of course, and Greeks
and Greek-speaking gentiles. He was
writing in Greek, after all. The
Greek language gets much more mileage out of words, and since it is the original
language of the New Testament, preachers begin their seminary studies with
courses in Greek.
The Jewish audience would have understood, In the beginning was the Word,
as a clear reference to Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And how did he do
that?
He created them thru the power of his word.
Let there be light and there was light.
Such is the power of God’s word.
Isaiah 55:11 says so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not
return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose
for which I sent it. A word
spoken by God is a deed done.
And Christ was the last and most important word of God the Father. We will not
find God apart from Christ (John
14:6,
Acts 4:11-12).
For the Greeks “Word” had even more meaning.
Logos, the original Greek word for “word" took on vastly more
meaning through the studies of a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus who lived in
As Dr. James Montgomery Boice tells it in Volume I of his commentary on John,
the Apostle is saying, “Listen you Greeks, the very thing that has most occupied
your philosophical thought and about which you have been writing for centuries,
the Logos of God, this word, this controlling power of the universe and
of man’s mind, has come to earth as a man and we have seen him.”
Now wouldn’t that be a blockbuster revelation to the Greeks?
It was a stroke of divine literary genius the way the Holy Spirit
inspired John to write it.
God became man. Marvin Olasky says
to think about man becoming a cockroach and you have the slightest inkling what
it must have been like for God to become man.
The
Logos, the Word, the controlling power of the universe became a man, full
of grace and truth, and to what end?
John 1:12 tells us: …to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become
children of God.
Dear
friends, all the gifts given in the world this season cannot equate to that gift
of a baby born in barn in