Jesus Loves Whores & Hypocrites -- Video Testimony

Pastor Leonce Crump of Renovation Church shares his testimony of how "God shows his love in this that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). I pray his testimony helps us remember how Jesus saved us by his grace and love and gives us the confidence and boldness that he will save & continue to save others as the Gospel goes forth.


Jesus Loves Whores & Hypocrites - Pastor Leonce Crump II from Renovation Church on Vimeo.

99 Problems, but I'm Not One

Everyone has a book coming out on problems. The problem with your marriage. The problem with the economy. The problem your anger. Everyone seems to have an answer in a problem filled world, but nothing seems to be giving any long-term help or satisfaction. Yes, some problems allow for a quick fix every now and then, but we no nothing of long-term joy, contentment, and hope. In the category of self-help we have aimed for too practical and haven't thought enough about the big picture. We haven't rooted our problems back to the underlying cause behind everything. In short, we need a Savior. Someone outside of ourselves to save us from ourselves. All our problems can be boiled down to 2 realities. Only 2, really? Think about it.

1.) Too Much of Man
This is the beginning of all of our problems (noticed I said all). Every single one of us sits on our own throne and thinks the world revolves around us. Pride is at the root of all sins (Proverbs 16:18). It is what made Lucifer fall and what made Adam and Eve forsake God's perfect rule for an apple. Pride got us into this mess in the first place and it still ruins us to this day. Why do you get mad when someone cuts you off in traffic? Why do you get worried about the future? Why do you get angry at a friend? It all goes back to the fact that we want our way. We love our way. This is the essence of sin. Sin isn't a behavior problem, but rather a treasuring problem. We treasure ourselves more often than God and this in turn leads us into trouble. What are you treasuring? I think we'd all be lying if we didn't say us. We love us. We have made the finite (man) seem infinite and in there lies all of our troubles.

2.) Too Little of God
If you take a honest look at the world today, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with me here. We have made much of us, and in turn made little of God. It always works like that. You can't have a high view of man and God. John the baptist agrees: "I must decrease. He must increase" (John 3:30). Paul Tripp, a biblical counselor, claims that "only the worship of God can destroy the worship of yourself." God is not worshipped because we don't see him how he really is. We see watered down versions of Him in our culture, entertainment, and, God help us, in our churches. When God becomes small, man becomes a big and problem on top of problem begins to multiply. So what do we need? We need to discover the Godness of God. We need to see God not just for what he can do for us, but for who He is. Who God is goes a lot farther than what He does. We need a bigger God.

What about Jesus?
But isn't the Bible about Jesus? How does Jesus fit into this theory of "bigger God and smaller you" fixing all of the world's problems? Check out this chart.

As we get a greater awareness of who God is and what's He's done (aka Bigger God), we will get an awareness of our sinfulness (aka smaller man). This is what happened to Isaiah:

"I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with 2 he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!' And I said: 'Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:1-3, 5)

Don't miss this. If we think we are something great and worthy to be praised, we are missing who God really is. A greater, grandeur view of God will always make us feel small. Really small. Too often we hold ourselves into comparison with other people that we've handpicked because we know that we are better than them. But when we bring ourselves into comparison with a Holy, perfect God we always come up way short. Now enter Jesus into Isaiah's vision:

"Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: 'Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." (Isaiah 6: 6-7)

As God becomes bigger in our lives, we become smaller and the cross becomes greater and more precious to us. The cross always puts us in right standing before God, despite of our sin because Jesus took our sin and gave us his perfect righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). A sign if we are growing in our faith is if we need Jesus more and more each day, because we are seeing God as bigger and seeing ourselves as smaller. Day by day of this (less of me, more of Him, treasuring Jesus) will change the world. We need to see a bigger God. We need to see a smaller of us. We need to see how great Jesus truly is.

Christ is All

I have talked a little recently about the Godness of God and how we need to see all of who Christ is. This video is 18 minutes. These 18 minutes might change our lives forever if we would let them. Watch in awe of your God the one who paid it all for us.

"All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:16-17)

Knowing God

I have had a lot of people in the past ask me if they can have assurance if they truly know God. I can resonate with this question because throughout the Christian walk we all have doubts and the dark nights of the soul. Can we know if we have a relationship with God? If so how? How can we know if we truly know God?

The following is adapted from J.I. Packer's classic Knowing God.

"Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives. We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God. Disregard who God is and you end up wasting your life and losing your soul."

Evidence of Knowing God

1.) Those who know God have great energy for God
This energy for God is not just about public gestures. In fact, it doesn't even start there. People who know their God before anything else are people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers. We might be old, or ill, or otherwise limited by our physical situation. But we can all pray about the lack of God in everyday life all around us. If, however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.

2.) Those who know God have great thoughts of God
In the Old Testament, Daniel is facing the might and splendor of the Babylonian empire which had swallowed up Palestine and the prospect of further great world empires to follow. It dominates the people of God by every standard of human calculation, but the book of Daniel as a whole forms a dramatic remind that the God of Israel is King of kings and Lord of lords, "that Heaven rules" (Dan. 4:26), that God's hand is on history at every point, that history, indeed, is no more than "his story," the unfolding of his eternal plan, and that the kingdom which will triumph in the end is God's
What do you think about when you think about God? Does his tremendous sense of Holy majesty, moral perfection, and gracious faithfulness keep us humble and dependent, awed and obedient, as it did Daniel? By this test, too, we may measure how much, or how little, we know God.

3.) Those who know God show great boldness for God
Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. This was not foolhardiness. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They had measured the risk. This risk got Daniel thrown in the lion's den and got all of them thrown in the fiery furnace. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact he did. It does not worry them that others of God's people see the matter differently and do not stand with them. By this test we may also measure our own knowledge of God.

4.) Those who know God have great contentment in God.
There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God's favor to them in life, through death and on forever. This is the peace which Paul speaks in Romans 5:1 -- "since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ -- and whose substance he analyzes in full in Romans 8:1.

Do we desire such knowledge of God? Then 2 things follow.

First, we must recognize how much we lack knowledge of God. We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.

Second, we must seek Jesus. When he was on earth, he invited ordinary people to company with him; thus they came to know him, and in knowing him to know his Father.

Don't Confuse the Two

The following is adapted from C.J. Mahaney's wonderful little book The Cross Centered Life.

"One of the greatest hindrances to keeping the gospel central in our lives is our creeping tendency toward legalism. Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God. Legalism is works based righteousness or simply believing that salvation rests on your works and not on grace alone, through faith alone in Christs finished work on the Cross. 

Nearly every man and woman I've met who has struggled with legalism has had a faulty understanding of how justification and sanctification work together. These are big theological works that are in the Bible, so I encourage you to understand these theological terms, not so you can impress your friends, but because understand the differences between justification and sanctification is vital to defeating legalism. 

• Justification is being declared righteous. Sanctification is being made righteous -- being conformed to the image of Christ.
• Justification is our position before God. Sanctification is our practice. You don't practice justification. It happens once for all, upon conversion. 
• Justification is objective -- Christ's work for us. Sanctification is subjective -- Christ's work within us.
• Justification is immediate and complete upon conversion. You will never be more justified than you are the first moment you trust in the Person and finished work of Christ. Sanctification is a process. You will be more sanctified as you continue in grace-motivated obedience. 

So do you see the distinction? Now ... here's the mistake the legalist makes. He confuses his own ongoing participation in the process of sanctification with God's finished work in justification. In other words, he thinks that godly behavior and practices and good works somehow contribute to his justification. 

The Bible is clear that "no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law..." (Romans 3:20). None of us earn God's approval and love by our good works. None of us can add to the finished, complete work of Jesus on the cross. He paid the price of our sins. He satisfied God's wrath.

Our participation in the process of sanctification comes only after we've been totally accepted and made right before God through faith in Jesus. So yes, we work hard at obeying God's word. We read our Bibles. We pray. We meditate on Scripture. We memorize Scripture. We share the gospel. We serve in our church. We fast. God commands us in His Word to do many things, and our obedience is both pleasing to Him and brings His blessing to our lives. But none of these good spiritual activities adds to our justification. We're never "more saved" or "more loved" by God. Our work is motivated by the grace God has poured out in our lives. 

God's Lavish Language

"God doesn't seem capable of moderation or of understanding the basic concepts behind supply & demand. He constantly devalues his own products by giving us too much." (N.D. Wilson)

Paul would agree with Wilson's quote when he writes in Ephesians that God "lavishes" us with everything we have. Lavish. Don't you love that word? Paul is almost saying it's too much or its over the top. Why don't we see it like that? We spend most of lives grumbling and complaining all the way up into eternity. We don't enjoy our lives, let alone think that we have been given too much. God has done too much for us and maybe that's the problem. God has given us too much wonder. He didn't just give us one one little plant in nature to marvel at, but billions of them. He doesn't just give us one human life, but 7 billion of them all over the world. We are minimalists. We have the gospel too shallow. We don't realize what we have.

In his book Insourcing, Randy Pope describes our problem & the distorted or shallow gospel like this:

1. We lost a lot.
2. He did a lot.
3. We get a lot.

We lost a lot. We lost our perfection, because everyone sins, but we're not sinners right? We still have our goodness left which means that Christ did a lot. He came to earth. He lived a perfect life and he died for sinners. But he didn't do everything. Why? Because we did something. We took the goodness we had left in us after our sin and created some faith and repentance and belief. This may not seem like a big deal into you get the 3rd statement: if he only did a lot, we only get a lot. This makes the good news not quite so good, and the language of the Bible confusing. Every time the Bible talks about the gospel of who Jesus is and what he has done it talks about it in epic proportions and uses "lavish" language. For example:

• For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." (John 1:16)
• In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. (Ephesians 1:7-8)
• But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ." (Ephesians 2:4-5)
• "so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:7)
• "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior." (Titus 3:5-6)
• "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him." (Romans 10:12)
• To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ephesians 3:8)
• "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Romans 11:33)

Here is the true gospel, the one the scriptures so richly talks about:

1. We lost it all. (Romans 3:12)
2. He did it all. (Ephesians 2:4-5)
3. We get it all. (John 1:16)

Everything Christ is and everything he did we get. Fully known. Fully accepted. Fully loved. All  on the merit of Jesus alone. All because of him. Want to believe you got it all? Then you must begin to embrace the reality from scriptures that you have lost it all and he has done it all. Until we see the gospel as getting it all Jesus will not be everything. He might be important and a significant part of your life, but he won't be your absolute treasure that the Bible describes him as. Jesus can't be everything, until you realize you are nothing. You won't receive it all, until you realize you have lost it all, and Jesus did it all out of his great love for you.