worship

Jesus and His Sustaining Power Over Creation

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

Back when I was a child, one of the most popular things to play on in the playground was a merry-go-round that kids would climb on and spin around until you would get dizzy. To make extra exciting, we would sometimes throw sand on it to make it slippery, and then everyone would climb on and we would have one person run around spinning it as fast as they could. The centrifugal force mixed with the slippery sand-covered deck would cause any unfortunate soul with a weak grip to be flung off of that merry-go-round. Last one left holding on was the winner. What fun!

We played that game before we understood the ideas related to physics, or had ever heard of centrifugal force. We just knew that if you go fast enough in a circle (as in carnival rides) you get pulled away from the center. It’s fun to think about these things, but they also remind me of what Paul wrote to the Colossians about Jesus Christ, the sustainer of the universe.

“And He [Christ] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Col. 1:17)

He is Before All Things

This means that Jesus has priority and primacy. “He is before all things” means that Jesus existed before anything was made. He existed before the universe began (John 1:1-2; 1John 1:1). He existed before Abraham, father of the Jews (John 8:58; Ex. 3:14). This is shown in Col. 1:17 when it says that “He is before all things,” not he was before all things. This isn’t poor grammar, but points to the eternality of Jesus Christ. This can also be clearly seen in the references to Jesus in Revelation (e.g. Rev. 22:13).

And in Him All Things Hold Together

Jesus Christ is not only the Creator of all of creation, but he is the sustainer of it all as well. Hebrews 1:3 says “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

The mighty power of Jesus which created the world with a word so that the universe leapt into existence, also is the same word that continuously since the creation sustains the universe by the same power.

The power of Jesus Christ is staggering when looked at in this way. Compare the fact that on the cross, not only could he have called down a legion of angels to save him, but he could have withheld his sustaining power from the universe and it would have all ended.

Even science is at a loss to explain how the universe is held together. Scientists don’t understand how the nucleus of an atom holds together. In describing the phenomenon, they call it “The Strong Nuclear force.” Here is how scientists from the Astrophysics Group of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab describe it:

“The Strong Nuclear Force (also referred to as the strong force) is one of the four basic forces in nature (the others being gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the weak nuclear force). As its name implies, it is the strongest of the four. However, it also has the shortest range, meaning that particles must be extremely close before its effects are felt. Its main job is to hold together the subatomic particles of the nucleus (protons, which carry a positive charge, and neutrons, which carry no charge. These particles are collectively called nucleons). As most people learn in their science education, like charges repel (+ +, or – -), and unlike charges attract (+ -).”


We as Christians know who made and sustains the Strong Nuclear Force, gravity, the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force—Jesus Christ.

Consider what 2Peter 3:5-7, 10 says:
“For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. …But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

Did you catch the emphasis on the effect of the Word of God in those verses?
By God’s word the world was formed.
By God’s word the world was flooded.
By God’s word the world will be destroyed.

All the Lord has to do is remove his sustaining hand from this universe and all of creation will cease!

George Gamow, one of the founders of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe wrote, “The fact that we live in a world in which practically every object is a potential nuclear explosive, without being blown to bits, is due to the extreme difficulties that attend the starting of a nuclear reaction.”
Gamow, recognizes the power of the Strong Nuclear force that keeps all of us alive.

Think of what will happen when the Lord who made the force removes his hand! John MacArthur writes, “Jesus must be God. He made the universe, existed outside and before it and preserves it.”

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the Colossian believers for a minute. They were being pursued, on one hand, by those who denied the deity of Jesus Christ. Paul set out to demolish that idea and leave them no other alternative than to see that Jesus is God.

On the other hand, they were also being influence by Jewish influences that said that Jehovah God was the creator of the universe and that he is to be worshipped, not Jesus. Paul, likewise demolishes the idea that Jesus is anything other than God himself.

Yes, God made the universe and God sustains it, and yes God is to be worshipped. But God has been revealed in his Son Jesus Christ. To worship God while denying His Son is unacceptable.

Colossians widens our understanding of Jesus Christ. We begin to see a glimpse of Who it was when John saw the risen Lord in Rev. 1:10-18. May God give us greater insight into the glories of Christ, or Lord.

Praying for True Revival

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“Restore us, O God of our salvation, And cause Your indignation toward us to cease. Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger to all generations? Will You not Yourself revive us again, That Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your lovingkindness, O Lord, And grant us Your salvation.”

(Psalm 85:4–7, NASB95) 

What is true biblical revival? Where does revival come from and what needs to precede true revival in order for heartfelt change to occur in each person? And what about the broader culture? How does a revival in the Church spread to a revival in society? All of these questions are answered in these verses, leading us to seek the only true source of life–God Himself! 

Although verse 4 is a cry for restoration, restoration was not enough for Israel. They knew that their disobedience betrayed an ugly truth about their spiritual state. They were spiritually dead. They needed to be brought back to life; they needed revival.

When the Bible refers to “revival” we need to know that it is not simply whipping up some experience in the church. It’s not a tent meeting. It isn’t where the Holy Spirit shows up with a special outpouring in a new and fresh way like being slain in the Spirit, or some other ecstatic experience. These aren’t even biblical practices. So, what is a revival?

Walter Chantry helps us to understand it a little better when he writes, 

“There have been outstanding periods in the history of the church when the intensified activity of the Holy Spirit has amazed her. Such times are known as revivals. True revivals do not result from some special work of the Spirit of God different from his normal gracious influences! Rather they are the effect of an increased measure of precisely the same power and grace which operate at every time and in every place that the church has been found since Pentecost. In revival times the Spirit’s work remains what it has ever been since Pentecost, namely, the work of inwardly convincing the unconverted by the Word, inwardly regenerating sinners by the Word, inwardly teaching and sanctifying saints by the Word, and inwardly prompting worship of Father and Son by the Word.”[i]

What I want you to see in Chantry’s definition and as seen in Psalm 85:4-7 is that revival, as biblically defined, is a mighty work of God, and not of man. Just like forgiveness, which must come from God’s mercy, so too revival is a result of the mercy of God, or else we would never have it.

Secondly, I want you to see that revival is an inward work of God that results in soul-work—reviving of a person who is dead in their trespasses and sins, bringing them to new life. They are vivified, they are born again. So, when a church wants to see revival, it must recognize that it is speaking of two related but different matters—either it recognizes that it is spiritually dead and filled with many unbelievers who think that they are believers and need new life, or it is speaking of evangelism outside of the church. Often true revival of the church will have the effect of spreading out to the community around it when those newborn Christians begin to live and speak for the glory of God.

With these things in mind, let us turn tour attention to Psalm 85:6-7. Again, “revive” refers to being made alive, to recover life. This verb in Hebrew is in the piel form, which means that God must put into action what the psalmist is asking. To say it differently, just like normal human life finds its origins in God, so too God must bring revival. If God does not bring it about, it will not happen.

There is an amazing picture of revival found in Ezekiel 37:1-14. I’ll leave you to read the passage for yourself. But in it the prophet Ezekiel is shown an old battlefield where there are probably hundreds of human skeletons lying about on the ground. These bones have been here for a long time because they no longer have flesh on them and are bleached out from being exposed to the sun. The Lord asks Ezekiel if these bones can once again become alive. The prophet wisely says that it depends upon God, who alone knows. After all, unless God raises dead bones, they will remain dead. 

Then God tells the prophet to speak to the bones….

Notice a few things about this biblical illustration:

  • The question of whether the bones could be made alive again was not dependent upon the response of the bones, but God-v. 3.
  • Although it was ridiculous, the means that God chose to “activate” these dry bones was the Word of God as spoken by his servant Ezekiel-vv. 4-10.
  • Also notice in those words of prophecy that the power for life comes not from the bones, nor from the prophet, but from God alone who can cause these dry bones to live-v. 5.
  • Finally note that this whole scenario was set by God to show Ezekiel that God alone revives the spiritually dead.

Every time that God saves a person, he revives their dead souls. But that isn’t what we mean by revival—a soul saved here and there. That happens all the time. Revival is the accelerated work of God, whereby a small stream of people saved join together to become a torrent of saved souls. When this happens, the work of God is the same, but He acts in a wider and broader way with more people.

But with an increasing work of God in revival, there is more than just increased activity of the Spirit bringing about saving faith—there is a sudden influx of new Christians whose changed hearts are producing changed lives and then changing society around them. 

We need to keep ever before us that when the gospel message changes a heart, it will change a life, and that means changed actions. This makes sense because our allegiances and loyalties are radically altered from darkness to light and from the evil one to Christ. When God changes a heart, he changes a whole life.

In the New Testament, as the gospel swept through the world, people were changed. These changes weren’t a fad, or even popular among unbelievers. These new Christians were despised and rejected of men, like their Savior. They had to survive wave after wave of persecution from the unbelieving world around them.

But they did it. 

And as Psalm 85:6 says, if God will bring about revival, it will bring about the result that his people will rejoice in him. You see, rejoicing will not come until revival in the heart has occurred. Revival will not happen until God does his cleansing and saving work in us. 

[i] Chantry, Walter, Signs of the Apostles: Observations on Pentacostalism Old and New. Banner of Truth, 1976, 129-30. Italics in the original.

Examining the Fallacy that Being Like the World Will Attract The Worldly to Christ

/ Richard Bargas / 1 Comment

“Our Lord attracted sinners because He was different. They drew near to Him because they felt that there was something different about Him. And the world should see us to be different. This idea that you are going to win people to the Christian faith by showing them that after-all you are remarkably like them, is theologically and psychologically a profound blunder.”

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There is a very troubling scenario that played out in Sodom just before it was destroyed by God. Having been warned by a pair of angels that the Lord was going to drop a heavenly nuke on his city, Lot scrambled to get his family together to get them to safety. Among those he warned were the men betrothed to his daughters:

“Then the two men said to Lot, “Whom else have you here? A son-in-law, and your sons, and your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place;for we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, “Up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city.” But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting.”

Genesis 19:12–14, NASB95)

Having seen the power of God demonstrated by the two angels’ blinding their attackers only a short time before, Lot knew that the warning was deadly serious. One can only imagine that a sense of panic has set in, and his urgency must have shown on his face and in his voice. When Lot went to the men who would marry his daughters, you would think that they could read the outward signs of his terror. But the text says “he appeared to [them]…to be jesting.” How could this be?

Earlier in Genesis, Lot’s uncle Abraham asked his nephew to choose the plot of land he wanted to live in, and Lot chose to set his tent near Sodom. At that point, Lot was outside the city and still living the life of a nomad and herdsman. But in Genesis 19, this has all changed. Lot lives in town, which may have meant that not only was he no longer living as a nomad in a tent, but that he has given up the life of a herdsman.

When he comes upon the two men who are angels preparing to stay the night in the town square, he asks them to come stay with him knowing that this wicked city is not safe. So, why had Lot settled there? And when the homosexual mob demanded that these men be turned over to be raped by them, he offered the mob his daughters in their place. What could have changed in Lot that would make him think that this was even an option?

All of these tie together when we come to the actions of the young men engaged to his daughters, the disobedience of his wife, and the later actions of his daughters. Something had gone terribly wrong in Lot’s family life. What could it be? We can’t be certain, but it appears that Lot had made several compromises along the way which are illustrated in his physical movement toward Sodom. His heart had made a journey as well, and it drew him further from God and closer to the ideals and ethics of Sodom. And worse, it had saturated the hearts of his family members.

The Apostle Paul observed a similar troubling element in some of the Christians in Corinth. To them he wrote:

“Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.“Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord. “And do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you. “And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me, ”Says the Lord Almighty.”

(2 Corinthians 6:14–18, NASB95)

Reflecting on the continuous influence of the pagan nations on Israel, Paul alerted the Corinthians that the people of God are to continue to be set apart from those that are standing against our God. As with Israel, God walks among us and in the Church Age, even dwells within us. Should we then partner with darkness? Paul answers with the same thing that the Lord spoke to Israel–come out from among them!

Some misguided Christians have said that God intends for His people to be among the sinners of this world, and in saying this they have meant that we are to be non-judgmental and even participate with them so that we might befriend them and show them the love of God. But that is not what God called Israel to do, and it is not the practice of anyone in the New Testament–even Jesus! It is a lie to claim as one Christian brother told me, that Jesus “partied with the pagans.” To say this is to slander our Lord.

Instead, Jesus was kind, and was not willing to avoid or cast away those who were in their sin as they came to him seeking forgiveness and redemption. Jesus welcomed them. He was a friend of sinners, drunkards, and prostitutes because he demonstrated not only the love and patience of God, but also because he pointed them directly to their need to repent so they could be made right with God.

Those that believe that licentiousness and worldly living is a missional strategy and evangelistic method will sooner or later find themselves inching closer to Sodom, and will face a similar fate if they do not withdraw from that which is unclean. Love sends us into the sewage to seek the lost, but holiness draws us back to the Father’s side. As Lloyd-Jones says in the opening quote, may we shine as light in the darkness and by this show the world that we are profoundly different and may that difference from the world be attractive to those seeking a sweet respite from this dark world we live in.

Is Your Worship Like Gold or Bronze? (weekend repost)

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

The demise of Israel came quickly after the reign of Solomon. Although one could argue that Solomon’s kingdom was the pinnacle of Israel’s fame, wealth, and honor, there can be no doubt that spiritually the kingdom was a shadow of what it was under David. Solomon may have had great wealth, and there is no doubt that he beautified the kingdom and made a glorious temple, but internally there was a rot that would eventually lead the divided nation into apostasy and exile.

Read the full post here: Is Your Worship Like Gold or Bronze?

Is Your Worship Like Gold or Bronze?

/ Richard Bargas / 1 Comment

“Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked Him to jealousy more than all that their fathers had done, with the sins which they committed.” (1 Kings 14:22, NASB95)

“He [Shishak king of Egypt] took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house, and he took everything, even taking all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. So King Rehoboam made shields of bronze in their place, and committed them to the care of the commanders of the guard who guarded the doorway of the king’s house.” (1 Kings 14:26–27, NASB95)

The demise of Israel came quickly after the reign of Solomon. Although one could argue that Solomon’s kingdom was the pinnacle of Israel’s fame, wealth, and honor, there can be no doubt that spiritually the kingdom was a shadow of what it was under David. Solomon may have had great wealth, and there is no doubt that he beautified the kingdom and made a glorious temple, but internally there was a rot that would eventually lead the divided nation into apostasy and exile.

In 1 Kings 14, Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, watched as all of the external signs of his father’s success dissipated right before his eyes. Through a youthful foolishness he lost ten of the twelve tribes in a rebellion, and along with these he lost the favor of the people. Instead of humbling himself and turning to the Lord, Rehoboam turned to false gods and idolatry, just as his father did through the influence of foreign women he married.

As a picture of how degraded Judah had become, 1 Kings 14:26-27 mentions the shields of Solomon. More than a mere passing note of interest, the shields are a visible lesson for all that will watch and learn. In his days as king, Solomon saw gold become so abundant that it was said that silver was as nothing (See 1Kings 10:14-29). To show off this wealth, he had 200 large shields of gold, each made from about 7 1/2 lbs. of gold. Additionally, he had 300 more smaller shields made from almost 4 lbs. of gold each. Together these shields would have been fashioned out of 2,625 lbs. of gold, which for Solomon was nothing since 1 Kings 9:14 states that one year’s worth of gold income was 666 talents, or about 25 tons (50,000 lbs.) of gold! What was the purpose of these shields? Together they acted as a visible symbol of Solomon’s great wisdom and wealth.

With that insight, 1 Kings 14:27 reveals a great truth. In the face of utter humiliation as a result of his outrageous idolatry, Rehoboam chose to put on the mask of a hypocrite instead of facing the truth with repentance and humble contrition. In Solomon’s days, silver was as nothing–how much less bronze! Now Solomon’s wayward son is grasping to keep up appearances. He has replacement shields made to cover the naked walls, but not of gold, which he no longer had. Instead they would be made of bronze. Why make these shields at all? With foreign invaders from Egypt stealing their wealth and ransacking the kingdom, you would think that Rehoboam would have been more concerned with greater issues. Instead, we find him seeking to make things look the same as they did during the days of his father’s reign. Bronze shields would appear gold-like, giving the impression that nothing had changed. But they had–massively, and to a greater extend than these shields alone. A cheap substitute had taken the place of the valuable. Instead of the precious worship of Yahweh, a fake and common worship had been swapped out as if they were the same. But they are not.

Instead of playing games with God, Rehoboam should have broke. He should have seen the loss of gold and prestige as an opportunity to go back to the basics of humble worship as his grandfather David had demonstrated. David, clothed in only a linen ephod danced before the Lord, not caring about anyone else but the pleasure of his God. May we be aware of this shift in our own lives and ministries as well, never replacing the gold of true worship with a cheap substitute, because God isn’t fooled. When God is trying to get your attention, don’t double down and act like nothing is wrong. Go to God.