Pick of the Litter

Have you ever gone to pick out a new animal as either a pet or maybe a farm animal? The first thing most people do when the start to pick out a new animal is to look all the available ones over and try to gauge the potential of each one. Then we try to pick the one with the highest potential to meet our current needs.

Jesus seems to have done the same thing when He was on earth with us, calling Simon Peter to be His first disciple. Jesus seems to have been drawn to fishermen, and Peter was a great example of what it means to be a man as well as a follower of Christ.

Peter had a blind faith like few people I have ever met. When Jesus came walking on the Sea of Galilee, Peter was the only disciple to ask if he could join in the water-walking (Matthew 14:25-31). Peter was also still a man, and shortly after joining Jesus on the water began to sink in doubt.

Peter also directly denied knowing Christ (Mark 14:66-72). However, as soon as he realized his mistake, he was sorrowful and wept. After His resurrection, Jesus reassured Peter of His love in a parallel to his betrayal, by asking him if he loved Him three times, and telling him again to follow Him (John 21:15-19).

After having betrayed Jesus, he subsequently renewed his faith in Him. Then, Peter soon preached the first Spirit-filled sermon on the day of Pentecost to the crowd gathering to see what the commotion was (Acts 2:14-41). Acts 2:41 says "Those who accepted his message", meaning Peter's message, "were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day." Peter's message led to the salvation of about 3,000 people in a single day!

What an amazing testimony Peter had. Certainly, Peter had his moments of failure, and some of them quite bad, but he always repented, and came back even stronger than before. As men we will sometimes fail; we sill stumble and fall, but we need to get back up and try again. Jesus will gladly restore our faith and make us even stronger than we once were if only we'll let Him.

Jesus saw the potential in Peter for a great man, and He wasn't disappointed. Sure, as God, Jesus knew that Peter would betray Him. As God, Jesus knew Peter would have doubts and fears. He knew that Peter was a man, and that Peter would make the same mistakes that we all make as men. Jesus still picked Peter first. How great it is that God looks at our potential for serving Him and chooses us, rather than looking at our potential for failing Him.

Going Half Way

Today we're picking up the story of Lot as he flees from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:15-17. Here we see the angels of the Lord as they've spent the night with Lot, and now they tell Lot it's time to get out. Lot has lingered and lived in his sin for so long that he has grown accustomed to it, and we see that he's hesitant to leave. The angels actually have to take him and his family by the hand and lead them out of the city. In Genesis 19:17, the angels tell Lot to not look back, don't stop, and flee to the mountain.

We've seen God's mercy and grace, and Lot's hesitation to obey now, but he continues his pattern in Genesis 19:18-20. He begs not to have to go to the mountain, using excuses about the city being smaller, or the disaster overtaking him. Already God has shown him favor by taking him out of the city of sin, and he lacks the faith outside the gate to trust God to get him to the mountain of safety. Instead, he dares to know as much as God, in that he finds another place, closer to the sinful condition he had been living in, and begs to go there instead.

Genesis 19:21-25 goes on to show God's mercy in allowing Lot to safely arrive in Zoar (a small city believed to have been as close to Sodom as Sodom was to Gomorrah) before raining down his wrath upon not just Sodom and Gomorrah, but all of the cities in the plain, saving only the city Lot had begged to flee to.

Then, in Genesis 19:26, we find that Lot's wife looks back, back to Sodom and Gomorrah, and is turned to a pillar of salt. Because of Lot's hesitation in following the word of the Lord, and his pride in thinking he could live so close to his sin and not effect his family, his wife was lost. We as men are responsible for ensuring the safety and salvation of our families. We have to follow God's instructions, even if we dare to think we're strong enough to resist temptation, lest someone who depends on our guidance is unable to resist.

Ultimately, we find in Genesis 19:30 that Lot ends up leaving Zoar in fear, and taking his remaining family to the mountains where God had originally told him to go. Lot was responsible for his family, for their very souls, and in his hesitation and pride, he let one of those closest to him slip through the cracks. When God in His grace and mercy sees fit to pull us from the depths of our sin, don't compromise, don't go halfway. We need to follow all the way, and remove ourselves far from our sin, lest one of those we're responsible for falls into the trap of our temptation.

Saved by Faith!

In the last devotion I wrote about a woman whom I had stopped to help on the side of the road. If you haven’t read that article yet, you need to at a minimum go back in time a day and read that first paragraph. Now, why did I stop to help this woman? As I stated in the previous article, most of the time I consider myself “too busy” to stop. Rarely is this really true, most of the time I just don’t feel like it. In this particular case, I just felt like stopping to help.

But now I want to examine things on her side of the white line. She obviously knew something was wrong with her car, or she wouldn’t have been sitting there in the first place. Think for a moment to yourself if there was anything that she could have done to MAKE me stop? If she had jumped out into the busy street waving her arms, she might have been hit. She could have put on some sort of show on the side of the road, or even used sign language. But none of that would have made me stop if I had not already decided to stop in the first place.

Now we know that we were once sinners, and that Jesus died to forgive us of our sins, but is is there anything that we can do to earn our salvation? Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.” So nothing we could have possibly ever done would have gained us the salvation that is now given to us by God through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. The only thing we can do for salvation is the same thing that everyone else has to: make Jesus the ruler of our lives, believe that God raised Him from the dead, and ask Him to forgive us of our sins.

You can’t buy yourself a gift from someone. Can I take a gift from the One who I have made Master of my life and say, “I earned this.”? If I earned it, then it’s not a gift, it’s a payment. If I could have earned my salvation or paid for it myself, then the sacrifice of Christ’s death on the cross is meaningless; I could have my salvation without Him. If there were some thing that we could do to be saved, then we would be equal with Christ; we would have to be spotless and without sin. This would be contrary to Romans 3:23’s statement that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

Instead of being prideful, and instead of bragging about how great we are that we are saved, we should do as the Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14: “But we ought always thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”