March 31, 2021
Galatians 6:14,” But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
God created Adam and Eve in His own image according to Genesis 1:27,” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Before they sinned against God, these first humans were sinless and represented the perfection of God and if it were possible to travel back in time to observe Adam and Eve before their fall, we would be unable to look on them because of their blinding glory: The glory of sinless perfection. To say that Adam and Eve were created somehow flawed would be saying that the Almighty Creator was imperfect in His workmanship but we know these first humans possessed perfect genetics, perfect blood, perfect organs, and every detail of their being reflected the glory of their Creator. When they sinned against God, they were no longer glorious but stained by their hideous unbelief and this is when they looked down and realized they were naked, their former glorious perfection had vanished and what was visible then, was their dirt-constructed form and it was far less radiant than their former appearance. And whereas before their sin the Bible said they were not ashamed, they attempted to cover their form with clothes made of leaves. Since that day, all humanity has tried to find replacement glory any way they can and if they can find it no other way, they will even resort to glorying in their sinfulness and depravity as if is a badge of honor to be numbered with the most loathsome of sinners. Yet all that we do to become glorious: our looks, style, intellect, achievements, possessions, social connections, wealth, prowess, skills, and so on still leave us as described in 1Peter 1:24” For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away”. A trip to a nursing home will reveal the final stages of men and women who were formerly great respected people in their professions and abilities but now, often mindless and reduced to being diapered and fed like babies. Jesus told Peter in John 21:18,” Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.”
There is a glory we can wear that is so unlike anything this world has to offer because it can only come from the Lord, the One who gave man the original glory. The scripture says in Jeremiah 9:23-24,” Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD. The only way to receive this glory of understanding and knowing the Lord is to come to the cross of Jesus Christ and admit we are sinners worthy of death and place our faith in Jesus as our Savior. The Cross becomes our glory because it is what makes us what we are: the blood-bought, eternally redeemed children of God Almighty through faith in His Son. Then we glory that the cross of Jesus has made us heirs of God, joint-heirs of Jesus Christ, and we have His unfailing promise that we will inhabit eternity and Matthew 13:43,” Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Talk about glory restored! Yet this glory of the cross is no glory at all by the world’s appraisal. The Bible says in 1Corinthians 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. In the eyes of the world our faith is valueless and the subject of ridicule and scorn and in no way glorious, hence: foolishness. The rejection of the glory of the cross and the accompanying tribulation from the world, the flesh, and the enemy leaves us with the abiding hope of Romans 8:18,” For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.
March 30, 2021
Romans 3:24-25 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”
The word “propitiation” here makes Jesus the “Propitiatory” from the Latin of the verb “to propitiate” and means to appease, to placate, to make satisfaction and is the same word translated “mercy seat” in Hebrews 9:5, “And over it, the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercyseat”. This light shed on Romans 3:25, makes the Lord our mercy seat in the gospel and He is now made Propitiatory: The gospel of God declaring the only Begotten of the Father as the One by which the wrath of the Almighty against sinners was appeased, satisfying the demands of the law and displayed every aspect of God’s eternal glory: love, mercy, grace, holiness, justice, judgment, and righteousness. The Son of God propitiated the Father’s condemnation and judgment of those who come to Him by faith in the shed blood of Jesus. No wonder the enemy has vehemently attacked the doctrine of the cleansing blood of Christ and has turned entire theologies away from this truth, corrupting wannabe preachers, ministries, and entire denominations. No wonder the lies of legalism have been planted, watered, cultivated, and spread by the devil because just as God would have no contact with His people without the order of the tabernacle with its altar and the precious mercy seat, God’s throne of placated wrath, but also now His wrath will only be satisfied with faith in the blood of Jesus as the scripture declares in the above passage of Romans 3:25, Hebrews 9:12,” Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us”, and in Hebrews 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission (deliverance, forgiveness, liberty, pardon).
Our evil hearts of unbelief continuously try to retreat to the deception that we must in some way have a hand in our salvation either by works, association with others or organizations, conference of forgiveness by a religious leader, or at least through experiences, feelings, or emotions. But God completely refused to allow us to participate in our own redemption because His glory alone is revealed when we are eternally forgiven. May the Lord open our eyes to the preciousness of the sacrifice and blood of Jesus and anoint our lips to speak only the truth and declare His righteousness alone. One truth that’s often missing in our message of the cross is that not only did Jesus die on behalf of sinners, He also died on behalf of God because His life, shed blood, death, and resurrection was fulfilling the desire and purpose of God to restore all things unto Himself. The culmination of God’s plan is described in 1Cor 15:24-28,” Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he (Jesus) must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he (Father) hath put all things under his (Jesus’) feet. But when he (Father) saith, all things are put under him (Jesus), it is manifest that he (Father) is excepted, which did put all things under him (Jesus). And when all things shall be subdued unto him (Jesus), then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him (Father) that put all things under him (Jesus), that God may be all in all”. The indescribable provision God has provided in Jesus to be not only the eternal Propitiation for our sin but also the mercy seat and invitation to come boldly into the very presence of Almighty God and fellowship with Him face to face. This is our eternal purpose, purposed in Christ before the world began and it is the expressed love and desire of our Heavenly Father.
March 29, 2021
Exodus 25:22,” And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.”
After Adam and Eve were driven from the garden and from the presence of the Lord, the Bible says only that the Lord spoke to people or, as in the case of Abraham who was born several hundred years after the flood, the Bible says God “appeared” to Abraham and several times it says God spoke to Abraham but nowhere does it say God dwelt with Abraham or anyone else for that matter. The providence and power of God in dealing with His creation is evident in the scripture from Adam’s expulsion to the call of Abraham but the personal, intimate communion between Almighty God and the humans He created was broken by sin. This is why the last chapters of Genesis, when Jacob and his family moved to Egypt, their descendants multiplied into a great nation, and then God brought them out and began the part of His plan that would result in them living in the land He had covenanted to give to Abraham and his seed, is so important to us: He’s revealing His ultimate purpose is to bring the family of man back into full communion with himself. Exodus 25:22 is one of the greatest scriptures in the Bible because it is the first time since the fall of man in the garden, thousands of years before, that any opportunity has been given to humans to have the Almighty God, their Creator, Father, and Lord, living with them corporately. When God said “and there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat”, it puts us on shouting ground especially now that we know Jesus Christ is our mercy seat, our meeting place with God. As stated in yesterday’s devotion, from that point on, God identifies Himself as the one who “dwells between the cherubims” such as in 1Sam 4:4, “ So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from thence the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherubims”, in 2Kgs 19:15,” And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, O LORD God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims”, in Ps 80:1, “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims”, and in Ps 99:1,” The LORD reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved.”
Why is the mercy seat, which was the solid gold lid for the ark of the covenant, significant to us? There are many reasons but we will consider only a couple of main points here in this brief devotion. First, it is the place where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled: on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. The blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled there and left under the flaming eye of God’s judgment as proof that the sacrifice for sin had been offered. The mercy seat was not the place of substitution and forgiveness, that was the altar (in the case of our New Testament Covenant, it was the cross). But the blood was brought into the Holiest Place, into the presence of God, and placed on the mercy seat where His Holy, searching eye could see the evidence a sacrifice had been made and the blood remained there as a witness that the claims of God’s justice had been met. The blood spoke to God that judgment had already been executed on an innocent substitution, the wrath of the thrice Holy God was placated and God’s judgment rested with Him on the mercy seat. Then, because the sin of man had been atoned, God was able to dwell with His people without destroying them in His wrath. The mercy seat was God’s throne in Israel, as we have seen above, referenced several times in the scriptures. A study of the tabernacle shows that there was no chair or seat for the priests to sit in because they were never at rest in their work which needed constant repetition and they were never finished (note how this compares with what Jesus did when He completed our redemption Heb 9:12,” Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” After which the Bible says He is seated at the Father’s right hand) but the mercy seat is a place where a seated, satisfied God, after centuries of being separated from His creation, displayed His glory. Not only was His love, mercy, and grace revealed but the fact that His throne was a blood-sprinkled throne, there also revealed was His holiness, justice, judgment, and righteousness. To conclude this devotion, our God has redeemed us unto Himself and is carrying out the Plan He purposed for us before the world began: Job 11:7-9,” Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. “
March 28, 2021
1Corinthians 3:16-17,” Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
There are some who say these verses are speaking to either the church as a whole or to local churches as they are the meeting houses of the saints. For the latter thought, it would contradict Acts 17:24,” God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands”. Further clarification of this doctrine is in 1Cor 6:19,” What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” It one of the astonishments of the new birth where God forgives a person, then pronounces them clean and the Holy Spirit moves into that person’s body and remains there until either they die or they are raptured away. The Spirit of God lives in people individually and does not live in a church building and because of what 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, the temple spoken of as His living place is the human body. This mystery of Christ in us is declared in Colossians 1:27,” To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” and refers to the silence in the Old Testament about the indwelling Holy Spirit in Gentile believers and calls it “the hope of glory”. Through my Christian life, over fifty years, I’ve tried to fully grasp the truth that God lives inside me every second of every hour of every day and I have been unable to fathom it. I know He does because the Bible says it and His presence is real in me but beyond that, my human reasoning hits a wall. I don’t want to just perceive God heavenward, although that is also His throne and was seen by Stephen in Acts 7:55,” But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God”, but I want to be consciously aware of His presence in me and I believe it is to this is the intent of 1 Corinthians 3:16-17.
The day of Pentecost in Acts 2, was a defining moment in the plan of God and brought the reality of the New Testament part of His purpose as it began the next phase of the people of God from the resurrection of Jesus until His return as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In the Old Testament covenant, the dwelling place of God was declared to be “between the cherubims” (ex 25:22, Nu 7:89, 1 Sam 4:4, 2 Sam 6:2, 1 Kin 7:29 and so on) and He remained there with the ark of the covenant until the ark disappeared before the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BC and the Bible gives the picture of His departing in Ezekiel 10. That mercy seat throne of His presence, of which I hope to speak more about in another devotion, was thought by the Jews to be God’s permanent dwelling place and they believed God would never leave the temple. This is perhaps why they refused to believe the warnings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel to repent or face destruction because since they believed God would never leave the temple, then the temple could never be destroyed. But the Glory of God did depart and would not be seen again until Jesus appeared and John declared, “and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” St John 1:14. But the day of Pentecost brought the Holy Presence of the Lord into the bodies of all believers and began the fulfillment of God’s plan to once again be with His redeemed creation in a real and intimate way and from Pentecost forward, God will never be separated from His children again. We have almost blasphemed our flesh to the point we view it as totally decrepit and useless but the Word here calls the temple holy and from that view, how could Holy God live in us if His temple was unholy and defiled? Romans 8:11 and Ephesians 2:1 tell us the Holy Spirit has quickened , made alive our body which was dead because of sin and God has made us a suitable temple for His Holy presence. We have been made holy and have been called to practice a life of holiness (Rom 12:1, 1Pet 1:15-16). Maybe we should differentiate between our literal body and the nature of our flesh and be aware, by faith, of His choice to live in us as a part of His purpose and will to love us, help us, be with us, and enjoy our companionship. After all, since Adam’s sin, we have been separated from our God and He has been following His plan to remedy that and at this point in the redemption, He’s living in us and pointing us to Rev 21:3-5,” And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.”
March 27, 2021
1Peter 5:6,” Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time”
There are lots of examples in the Bible of haughty, proud people that the Lord humbled like King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:33,” The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws.” The Bible says when his time of chastening was over, God restored his senses and his kingdom and Nebuchadnezzar declared in verse 37,” Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase”. Even those who seem to be able to continue in their pride untouched throughout their life will be humbled before the Lord: Isaiah 45:22-23,” Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” It is then infinitely better for us to voluntarily humble ourselves before the Lord Almighty at His bidding as here in 1 Peter 5:6 than to have Him humble us because with the willing humility on our part, comes the promise that God will exalt us (lift exceedingly, elevate to the sky, over, above, and beyond) when the time is right.
The sin nature of our heart is a gruesome picture to see, Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” and even when we encounter teaching, like this devotion, that will help us and bring us promised blessings, we immediately begin denying we have a problem with pride. Our heart and mind launch the duck-n-dodge game by pointing out people who look like they are deeper in the shame-pit of pride than we are and arguing that we are really very humble and contrite: the heart is at its Adamic tricks of deceiving itself and us. We are far better at learning how to appear humble than we are of practicing humility yet the Word remains bedrock solid on the subject, James 4:6,” Wherefore he saith, God resisteth (opposes, is against) the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. Our pride is rooted in a misconstrued view of ourselves and God. Galatians 6:3 says,” For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” and we know that only in Christ, covered by His blood and with His righteousness imputed to us, are we of any value. Yet we, dirt-made, sinful, immoral, created beings with big mouths and long tongues come out of the womb demanding our way, arguing we are right and everyone else is wrong, renouncing anything we presume isn’t in our favor, and placing ourselves in the center of the universe. At the same time, we ignore the absolute Holiness, sovereignty, omnipotence, and glory of the Almighty Creator and act as if He is serving us and it’s downhill from there. May the Holy Spirit shine the light of Truth into our hearts and show us the supreme example of a humble man in the person of Jesus Christ and then give us conviction and power to learn of Him and follow His ways. Let us see how He made himself of no reputation (emptied himself of all he was as Deity) and took on the form of a servant, to the point he knelt before His disciples and washed their feet. See how our Lord Jesus refused to please or honor himself but always did the things which pleased and honored His Father even to the point where he would not seek to save his own life but freely laid it down as a sacrifice for people who didn’t deserve it and despised him. To live following 1 Peter 5:6, is to live carefully and deliberately with the knowledge that all we are and hope to be is only because God loves us, forgave us, is keeping us and has given His Word we are His forever and that while we are living, it is Him, not us, that is our life, our source, and our hope. Every breath we breathe, every beat of our heart, every movement of our muscles, every living cell of our body, every step we take, every bite we chew and swallow, every thought we think, all our abilities, all our talents, all our successes and mistakes, and everything else too numerous to mention are of him, and through him, and to him, to whom be glory forever. Amen, (Romans 11:36)
March 26, 2021
Psalms,” 142:4 I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.”
Every human emotion is portrayed somewhere in the book of Psalms: fear, confidence, love, hate, joy, sorrow, faith, unbelief, desire, disgust, happiness, sadness, anticipation, familiarity, and every degree of these and more. But the state of being pictured here in Psalms 142:4 is a description of someone who’s all alone, trapped, has run out of hope, and about to go under. Notice the phrase: “no man cared for my soul”. Like many scriptures in the Bible, this one has multiple meanings, and all of them are relevant on some level to people and their lives as they play out all around us. In some cases, the word “soul” refers to someone as a person and we might paraphrase this as: “no one cared if I lived or died”, or “no one cared or was concerned about me”. But on an eternal level, the word “soul” takes on a much more complex meaning and refers to us all being created as immortal beings who inhabit a body while here on earth but are destined, by Almighty God, for far more than a few years on this planet. When this phrase, “no one cared for my soul” came into my mind out of the blue today, I’m sure it was the Holy Spirit calling it into my memory because I didn’t even remember where it was in the Bible but when it came to me, it also came with a question that formed in my mind: “Do I care for people’s souls?” I wanted to immediately answer, “sure I do” but I also wanted to be honest before the Lord since I believed He was ringing my phone on this one so I thought, “let me think about that”, followed by a prayer, “Lord, don’t let me just say yes, show me the truth about my heart”. In this devotion, I’d like to share some of the thoughts and prayers that followed up with me from that point.
What do I really want for the people I know including those in my family? Consider the prodigal son when he was in the hog lot feeding swine for a living and we didn’t know the rest of the story. If this was someone I know, would my prayer and desire for them be that they get a better job, find a good place to live, meet a nice girl who also has a job, and then they would get in church and raise a Christian family? I mean, that sort of solves the problem, and the outcome is commendable. I believe sometimes this is the way I think I love people: by either solving or helping them solve their immediate problems and hoping that through it all, they will make a move toward the Lord, and then things will be ok. It shows I care for them and love them enough to want a better life for them but do I really care for their soul? When the prodigal returned home and his dad said “this is my son who was dead but now is alive!” doesn’t that make the ending of: he found a better job and so on pretty pathetic? When I care for people’s souls above all else, I want them reconciled to their heavenly Father because that’s their destiny, their purpose and it’s what puts all the other pieces of their life’s jigsaw puzzle into place. Then the sobering thought hit me that what if all the people I know lived out comfortable lives which I was able to help play a part in helping them, but lost their souls in the end? This made me think about the prayers I pray for people and the point of the prayers. In a lot of cases, I’m praying for their needs to be met and not for the salvation of their souls. I began praying, “Lord, fill me with the love for souls and see their eternal destination as a priority above all else. Help me attend to basic needs and have compassion for people’s circumstances but let me never be blinded to the truth that Jesus came to seek and save the lost and although it may not be socially or politically or even religiously correct nowadays to see people as saved or lost, please give me those eyes and give me that kind of heart.” The Bible says in Proverbs 11:30,” The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.” Lord, give me that kind of wisdom, in Jesus’ name, amen.
March 25, 2021
Judges 16:22,” Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.”
This has been one of my favorite Bible verses for a long time because it is a part of the puzzle of who we are and who God is, in spite of who we are. I remember sermons on Sampson when I was a boy and quite frankly, I recall the strong man being cast in a negative light because they preached things like: “He laid his head down in the devil’s lap”, referring to Delilah, and “this is what happens when people compromise with the world”, referring to Sampson being bound and made to grind like an ox and it all cast a sort of cloud of shame over a man who delivered Israel from the Philistines. Even as a kid, I secretly believed the preachers didn’t like Sampson because he had long hair and that, was with God’s permission and blessing and the long hair even had something to do with his great strength. Faced with that, they didn’t know how to deal with a long-haired semi-wild man being used by the Lord or explain how it was God’s will for him to not get a haircut. I was raised during the period when hippies roamed the earth and long hair on men was the source of often, if not constant, screaming rhetoric of condemnation from the pulpits of the churches my parents and I attended, along with threats of perdition for women who cut, colored or “over-styled” their hair or had the audacity to wear a pair of slacks. This all coming from a gaggle of preaching men who hovered around the front door of the church before and after the service, all smoking cigarettes that made it look like they were offering up burnt offerings. When people say we need to get back to the “old fashioned” times, I’d like to teleport them back to some of the “old-time” church stuff I grew up in and say, “Is this what you’re talking about?”, and especially introduce them to one fellow in particular that fumed flaming hot from their pulpit over the fact that people believed the world is round when, he said, “the Bible clearly declares it is flat”.
I was in my early twenties and was reading the Book of Hebrews when I came to chapter 11 and there, in verse 32, listed with the great men and women of faith in the Bible, was Samson: That long-haired, womanizing, bare-handed lion killing, jawbone of a donkey wielding, Philistine slaying wild man that all my life I thought had bordered almost on the side of evil. I couldn’t believe my eyes and stared at his name for a long time wondering if there could be two Samsons and this one was the good, righteous one because surely it was a mistake to include the Samson of my childhood memories alongside the famous patriarchs, although the verse prior, verse 31 also mentioned a harlot named Rahab being a woman of faith and that alone was enough to make a person blink twice and stutter a bit. But Samson was a man of great faith? When I went back and re-read his story, I came to Judges 16:22 and realized no one had ever mentioned this before and I got this picture of a strong, proud, and victorious man making a great mistake. Then I saw him with his eyes gouged out being forced to grind grain like an animal while people mocked him and sneered but all the while, his hair started to grow back and the Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth was seeing it all and loved this man, understood his weaknesses and his pain and was willing to not only forgive him but then to restore his power and purpose and allow his final victory to be the greatest of his life. Then, when it was all said and done, God Almighty wrote Samson’s name in Hebrews chapter 11 hall of fame of the faithful because Samson died in faith and victory. We like Romans 8:28 that tells us all things are working for our good, but few people go on to contemplate the next two verses: Romans 8:29-30,” For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Like it or not, Samson is who we are and God is who He is, in spite of who we are.
March 24, 2021
Romans 14:19,” Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.”
When the end times unfold, we are told that peace will be taken from the earth and people will kill each other (Revelation 6:4) and from the conflict in the world around us, it appears we are well on our way. Peace is a gift from God because what lies naturally within the human heart is anything but peaceful. The works of the flesh which reveal what’s actually inside people and cataloged in Galatians 5 include things like hatred, fighting, anger, rebellion, murder, conflict, and so on. That’s why Jesus said in St John 14:27,” Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you”: Because the peace that comes from the Lord has roots in His eternal love and not in the self-interest of protection or survival. The world only makes for peace when it’s in someone’s best interest to escape pain and death or protect investments. In my generation in this area, we’ve come from not needing to even lock our doors when I was a child, to installing security cameras, stockpiling ammo, burglar alarms and dashboard cams on our cars, buying identity theft insurance, and running background checks on the guys our daughters and granddaughters are dating. When you add all this up and more, like the stress of the everyday commute to work and back with people swerving into your lane, driving like morons, and acting like it’s all your fault, we are reminded of the verse of Luke 21:26,” Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth”. People live in fear that their marriage will not last, their job may end, they might have a terminal illness, they can’t pay their bills and a myriad of other things. In a lot of ways, it looks like peace has already been taken from the earth.
Here in Romans 14, the Lord tells us to follow after, (to pursue, to run after, chase) the things which make for peace and which build each other up and while in the context of this chapter it is written to encourage believers to conduct themselves in such a way that the exercise of their liberty in Christ does not create discord in the body and offend weaker believers, it is also referenced to 1 Peter 3:11 where it says if we want to enjoy our lives and have good days, one of the ways is to look for peace and follow(pursue) it. Peace is one of the marks of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power in a believer’s life and when we bear the fruit of peace, we are well-pleasing to our God and in a state of being to have the joy of life. All around us are people and circumstances which are always at work to rob us of this God-given gift of peace and it is so easy to listen to them or allow their influence to put us into a mind of disorder, stress, anger, and misery. A few years ago, I became aware I was a news-junkie because all day I was reading news, watching news, and listening to the news radio stations in the car, and over time, I hadn’t realized how angry a person I had become. I was blaming politicians, upset at government policies, arguing with people about politics and programs, upset at people for taking advantage of government services, wishing ill on certain leaders, and all the time it was things I had no control over, and sometimes, it may not even have been the truth but just someone’s interpretations. Every evening while we were eating dinner or had just finished dinner, there on TV were the newscasters, looking stone-faced and concerning into the camera telling how bad things are in the community, nation, and world: crime, robbery, war, stock market problems, environmental issues, and all of it 24-7. One day, my wife and I decided to turn it all off and start listening to a Bible study while we ate dinner and discuss God’s Word. We decided to only catch up on some news now and then but not make it a daily diet and concentrate on praying for our family, reaching out to people who need some encouragement, exercise together, and follow the things of peace. You wouldn’t realize the difference this one change has made in our home and our frame of mind. We decided to limit our time with problem-causing, trouble-making people and avoid them whenever we can: Those that are always angry about something, complaining about everything, playing the blame and accusing game, and in general, forever the source of misery and chaos. These are people you can spend your entire life and resources trying to help them be happy but they are addicted to misery and refuse to chose any other ambition but to remain miserable and pile wretchedness on everyone they can. We can and will pray for them, but until they decide to walk in faith and be thankful for the Lord and His blessings, we have no common ground and the Lord has not called us to bathe in their poison. Simple steps like these and others, have put us on a path towards great peace and my wife ordered a big mural of Psalms 118:24,” This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it”, made a big picture from it, and hung it on the bedroom wall. Every day, we wake up, look at it and make the choice that we will follow peace and uplift everyone we can every day, all day.
March 23, 2021
2Kings 21:16, “Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.”
The reign of King Manasseh was one of the most repugnant periods of Judah’s history ranking in evil alongside Kings Ahab and Ahaz. Manasseh rebuilt the altars to baal and other idols that his predecessor, good king Hezekiah had destroyed, put idols and altars to heathen gods in the temple of the Lord, sacrificed his children to baal, practiced witchcraft, and killed many innocent people. To make matters worse, he did this for over fifty years and led the nation into dark apostasy, turning the hearts of the people away from the Lord God Jehovah. When we read the account of his leadership and his evil in 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33, we wonder if there is any hope for people who go so far away from God and practice sin that is of the darkest nature. God called him and the nation to turn away from their wickedness and idolatry but they would not listen. So, the Lord brought the Assyrian army against Judah and they captured Manasseh, bound him in chains, and carried him off captive to Babylon and there, in his suffering, Manasseh turned his heart to the Lord. The Bible record says, 2Chronicles 33:12-13,” And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God.” Manasseh then removed all the idols and their altars, removed the graven image from the Lord’s temple, began to sacrifice offerings of peace and thanksgiving to the Lord, and commanded the people to follow the Lord. It is another account of God’s grace, mercy, and goodness and His willingness to forgive us even when it seems we have passed the point of no return.
Some people live their lives weighted down with guilt because of their past, choices they have made, addictions that enslave them, repeated cycles of sin they have committed, and messes they have made that involved not only them but others as well. The enemy is always there, whispering: “There’s no way back to God, you’ve crossed over a line that God won’t forgive, you can’t expect any mercy after the mess you’ve made, you’re hopeless, you’ve thrown away your future for success, you’ve proven you’re a born loser, you’ve used up all your chances”, and on and on. But these are his lies, not the truth of God’s Word and His amazing promises. Look at the example in the Bible when Peter came to Jesus and asked: Matt 18:21-22,” Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”. If the Lord tells us to forgive one another over and over, would God refuse to do for us what He commands us to do for each other? See the trap of lies the enemy tries to use to break our faith in God’s mercy, love, and grace? Not only did the Lord forgive Manasseh but He delivered him from captivity and restored the Kingdom to him showing God means business when He declared Romans 5:20, “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” He doesn’t want us to continue in sin but He also knows who and what we are when He said in Psalms 103:14,” For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust and the provisions for His mercy is in accordance with His goodness to us and He acts toward us, not in justice, but in compassion. Even if He chastises us it’s always in mercy and for our benefit, as stated in Hebrews 12 where He says,” For whom the Lord loves he chastens, for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness and bear the fruit of righteousness.” The gospel of grace is not a message of gloom and doom but one of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance(self-control).
March 22, 2021
Song of Solomon 2:11-13,” For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle (dove) is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.”
This passage comes to my mind every spring when I start to feel the warmth of the sun and see the signs of life in the vegetation and the wildlife. This particular winter we just finished, with the pandemic overshadowing most everything we did, put a longing in my heart for spring. It may not be yet safe to resume a “normal” life of what we have always been accustomed but at least we can sit outside and enjoy the warmer weather with the bonus that the days are longer and everywhere we look, that beautiful light-green is showing in the trees and bushes. All that winter represents here in Song of Solomon: The dark, cold, freezing winter rain, short days and long nights, bone-chilling wind, and absence of color in the landscape except for dark grays, blacks, and shadows, can also be seen representing periods in our lives when we are going through trials, valleys, and seasons of seeming unfruitfulness. When we enter one of those cycles, and even though we know the Lord is with us and will bring us out on the other side because He has a purpose for us being there, it’s still difficult to praise Him in the storm, thank Him in the valley and worship Him through the trial but we do it by faith because we know as surely as there is a winter, it will be followed by spring. If we relate this to the natural realm, many people who live nearer to the arctic circle and endure the long winter months where in some places they don’t see the sun from a period of mid-November to mid-January, suffer from a winter depression called “Seasonal; Affective Disorder”. Those people who live in such climates as Norway have learned to prepare themselves mentally for lies ahead long before winter’s “Polar Days” begin. They know what they face is inevitable and look for ways to enjoy the seasonal cycle by planning to embrace what nature throws at them. Their outlook has been studied by scientists and the results show that when they are mentally and emotionally prepared for what lies ahead, they can avoid the pitfalls of winter depression. The Lord as given us His Word that although we will go through trials. tribulations, situations with no answer that we can see, He will prepare us for them and will walk through these “winter” times with us.
This spring is reminding me of the faithfulness of the Lord because when this past winter season began, I was in the hospital having cancer surgery. My vocal cords were removed and due to my time of recovery combined with the pandemic, my wife and I have spent the past five months confined to our small house. But during this time, we have both grown closer to the Lord and each other than at any other time in our lives. God has revealed Himself in this trial in a way I could never imagine and I have such peace, joy, and contentment I’m unable to describe it: It is truly joy unspeakable and full of glory. What I have learned, could not be learned any other way, one thing being, I learned I’m not afraid to die because when the Doctor made the cancer diagnosis, the Lord flooded me with peace and took away all doubt and worry and I know at that moment the meaning of Psalms 23:4, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me”. Even though I had memorized it when I was a child, mentioned it often in church, read it at many graveside memorials, I didn’t, I couldn’t, know the reality of it until the moment I was in the operating room watching all the commotion around me as they prepared to anesthetize me to cut me from ear to ear and remove the cancer and with it, my ability to speak. I had no fear because the Lord was with me and I knew at that moment if I didn’t make it through the surgery, I belong to Him and my life is His. Even now, while I’m typing these words and crying in joy while I do, raising my hands to the Almighty King of Heaven and Earth, my winter is past and the Lord has brought me into spring. I see the sights, hear the sounds, and feel the warmth proving God is still on heaven’s throne and it is well with my soul. Other winters may lie ahead but what I’ve learned is that by God’s grace, it will be ok and another spring will follow.
March 21, 2021
Philippians 4:8,” Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
If movies, television, awards shows, radio talk, and people’s general language are any indication of what’s going on in their minds, the thoughts of the human race must a fetid cesspool and they flounder in it continually. For ages now the hallowed halls of education have been prophesying mankind will rise to some elevated state of enlightenment when they shake off the puritan morality that has long held them bound. Looks they need to reexamine their forecasted landing spot because it has turned out to be a toilet bowl. How about these numbers collected from data: Over 200,000 Americans are classified as “porn addicts”, 40 million American people regularly visit porn sites and 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography. As if that’s not shocking enough, almost 60% of church-going men, over 50% of pastors, and 30% of churchgoing women watch porn regularly. We wonder why anxiety, anger, and unstable families are now hallmarks of our society, and all the time we push the real evidence away and vehemently refuse to accept it: we are poisoned and polluted and instead of repenting and returning to the ways of decency and integrity, we belly up to the hog trough and gorge ourselves on the slop. Then we march into a church, bring a “sermon” or delight in our “worship”. This world finds humor and entertainment in the very things that are an abomination to the Lord and we never cease taking His name in vain, profaning His places of worship and offering Him putrid sacrifices, calling it praise. That emotion we feel running down our spine is certainly not the blessing we think it is, it is our own generated electricity of self-convinced self-righteousness. We are like Samson in Judges 16 when he had compromised his vow to the Lord and woke up from sleeping on Delilah’ in his fallen condition, the Bible says, “And he wist not (didn’t know) that the LORD was departed from him.”
There is a way back but it requires a change of mind and a change of heart. Repentance is acknowledging we have done wrong and changing our mind about it by denouncing it as offensive to the Lord. When we repent, and own-up to our wrongs in remorse to God and turn away from them, God fixes our heart. Our mind was not created to be a garbage can and God tells us here in Philippians 4:8 how to fill our minds with the things that bring us real peace and a stable thought life that enriches us and brings God’s favor. Completely shut off the world’s supply of trash to our minds by allowing the Holy Spirit and just plain old common sense to reveal to us what is true, honest, morally clean, positive, well-spoken of, excellent, commendable, and righteous and only allow these things to occupy our minds. This means the trash from what we listen to, watch, hang around with and allow ourselves to concentrate on: change the radio station, stop the movie/tv/entertainment filth, stop the illicit surfing and internet, avoid the nasty jokes and innuendos and all things that we know are an offense to the will of God for us. The ways of this world never bring contentment but they are a vortex that pulls us deeper and deeper into a miserable life and a prison that advertises itself as freedom but is a pit of hopelessness that once entrapped and addicted, the same system offers no way to escape but continues to whisper the lies that now we are normal because we are “like everyone else”. Thank God we can live free with our minds uncontaminated, our language clean and a good example to our children and grandchildren, and our homes clear of the ungodly mess parading itself as entertainment and it is well-pleasing to the One who has called us out of the darkness into His marvelous light: A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar (set apart) people (1 Peter 2:9)
March 20, 2021
Numbers 14:24 But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.
When the Israelites were delivered from Egypt, the Bible says there were six hundred thousand men besides women and children, as many as two million people, that came out marching towards their promised land. But their unbelief kept all of them except Joshua and Caleb and their families from entering the land. The Bible said in Numbers 26:65,” For the LORD had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.” What a sad testimony for people who were set free by the hand of God, saw great miracles, and actually met with the Lord at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:17) only to plunge into a horrible state of unbelief and fail to enter into the abundant land of life God had prepared for them. The two men who didn’t suffer the same fate, were different because they remained faithful and they not only entered the Land of Canaan, but here’s what Caleb testified at eighty-five years old: Joshua 14:11,” As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.” When we examine this from a New Testament point of view, it serves as a type to teach us not to follow the majority’s example because the Lord has much better things for us than just to deliver us from sin and He warns us against mirroring their behavior in 1Corinthians 10:6-11,” Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
God’s will for us is that we live in the fullness of His blessings and our example in the scripture of Numbers 14:24, is Caleb, a man that God said: “had another spirit”. Caleb was different because he refused to follow the rest of the Israelites but remained steadfastly loyal to the Lord and trusted the Lord completely. When the spies came back from checking out Canaan, the people were in unbelief and despair because they didn’t believe they could defeat the Canaanites but Caleb said, “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:30). When everyone else gave a negative report, Caleb said, ” Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God” (Joshua 14:8). When everyone else was blaming God and angry at Him, Caleb said, “And now, behold, the LORD hath kept me alive, as he said” (Joshua 14:10). When the other Israelites had succumbed to fear and refused to trust the Lord, at eighty-five years old, Caleb said, “Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said” (Joshua 14:12). And when the rest of the people had fallen in the wilderness while complaining and murmuring in their unbelief, Caleb not only entered into the promised land but the Bible says he defeated the race of giant men who were there: Joshua 15:14,” And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak.”
The Lord has called us to not only be saved by faith but to walk in faith and this makes us different like faith made Caleb different. When God’s people fill their minds and hearts with the thoughts, outlook, and attitudes of the world around them, they will stagger in unbelief in their journey and miss God’s best for them. Those who dare to walk trusting the Lord, fill themselves with His Word, and even when against hope, believe in hope, will enter into blessings that only faith can secure. Our enemy is well aware of this and has designed the system around us to set all the traps, provide all the distractions, and voice all the unbelief possible to keep us out of the most enriching, enjoyable, rewarding, and satisfactory life possible through the grace, plan, and provisions of our Eternal God.
March 19, 2021
2Corinthians 5:17,” Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
The Lord doesn’t just forgive us, He regenerates us and this verse is a declaration that it is for anyone, the meaning of “any man”. Salvation isn’t turning over a new leaf, adopting a different perspective, leveling up or any other explanation that attempts to understand the change that takes place when someone is born again. The term “born again” signifies a new birth not a change in the old one and is the beginning of the new life in Christ of the newly created being. To the world that is filled with self-help evangelism, motivational theology and the all-encompassing business model applications, this Biblical truth that when a person believes Jesus is the Son of God and trusts Him as Lord and Savior, they literally become a new creation, is poppycock. But to those who passed from death unto life, it is the eternal truth. A mystery type of this new birth can be seen in the Old Testament in the person of Jacob, son of Isaac. It has been shown that his name actually means “deceiver, trickster” and when he was being born, although his twin brother Esau was born first Jacob was born holding on to Esau’s heel as if trying to hold him back to take the first-born status. When the boys were of age, Jacob began a career of deception including disguising himself as Esau to deceive his dad, Isaac, to give him the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. But years later, after being on the run from his brother that he had deceived and living separated from his family and his heritage, Jacob chose to return to the land of blessing. On the way back, he encounters the Lord and wrestles with Him and in the course of this encounter, Jacob becomes a new man and the Lord gives him a new name, Israel. Jacob, the deceiver, is renamed Israel meaning “God rules”. An account of this showing the angel Jacob wrestled with was God, is found in this passage of Hosea 12:3-6, “He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength, he had power with God: Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Beth-el, and there he spake with us; Even the LORD God of hosts; the LORD is his memorial. Therefore, turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God continually.
From then on, sometimes he is called Israel, sometimes Jacob because even though he is a new man with a new name, a part of the old man remained and so it is with us. The old man was deemed dead because of sin but until we receive our new, glorified bodies, he’s still trying to come back to life and get back in control. But praise God, the Holy Spirit is in us and is forming the new creation we are into a Christ-like person and every day He is ordering our steps, guiding us, reminding us, and helping us become what God has called us to be. This is the plan of God for us: that we begin as newborn babies (1 Peter 2:2), begin walking in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and grow up into a person like Jesus (Ephesians 4:15). In all this the Lord is at work in us and for us to complete what He has started, with one example of this taught in Philippians 1:6,” Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” and in Hebrews 12:2, He is called the “author and finisher of our faith. Don’t fight against all that comes your way, as if it is all from the enemy. Sometimes we are rebuking and pushing back the very tools God is using to shape and fashion us into the new creation He purposes for us to be. It took a lot of twists and turns in Jacob’s life to get him to the place where was supposed to be and even then, he wasn’t perfect just being formed event by event and obstacle by obstacle, all the while pushing the old man, Jacob the deceiver, out of the way so the new creation could prevail with the Lord. God will complete what He has started in us and whenever when we are tempted to attribute what He is doing to the work of the enemy, remember that the Lord never turns his workmanship over to anyone to form us into what He has determined for us. For Joseph, being sold as a slave then being falsely accused and locked in prison might look like the tactics of the wicked one but it was God, busy making a new creation as he did in the life of Jacob the deceiver. We are a new creation because everyone who comes through the Door of salvation is a new creation and God is working all things in our life for good and his purpose is to make us like Jesus and He will complete exactly what He has purposed because He is the god that cannot fail. Will you say, “Praise the Lord and Hallelujah”?
March 18, 2021
Genesis 1:1,” In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
The opening words of the Bible form a sentence, in the English, ten words long and are stated matter of fact and without any embellishments, arguments, explanations or excuses. When I was young, I had some doubts about the existence of God and spent a lot of time arguing about it with people. I would use the same stale arguments over and over, mostly quoting the babble of others who had written books and such in denial of God and then use the arguments against the Bible by pointing out alleged discrepancies of timing, dates, seeming contradictions and the failing of religion in general to do what it said it would do: solve mankind’s problems. Later in my life, when I came to a place where I at least acknowledged God, I started arguing whether or not there was a huge time gap between verse 1 and verse 2 and if it is possible to reconcile evolution and the Bible. But one day I took a look at Genesis 1 and verse 1 and realized you either believe it or you don’t: that is the test of faith. It’s not whether either side can muster enough ammunition and rhetoric to declare a clear win but simply that you do or don’t believe. Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Notice it does not say he that comes to God must believe in Jesus, in the cross or anything else because none of those things are the foundation of faith but it says we must believe God IS. The existence of God or the non-existence of God is a matter of faith on either side. Those who argue against the existence of God argue with what they think is reasoning and logic but they are just trying to use what they think to be true in a closed universe and even that, use laws and rules that only apply to what we can actually measure and understand. They accuse the God-believer of being stuck in pre-scientific times but they are stuck in a system of theories that only extend as far as we can measure with our still crude, incomplete tools and resources. Both sides operating on faith: God believers believing the Bible and God nonbelievers trusting someone else’s statements, theories and limited abilities to measure and compile data.
I was thinking about this today when my wife, puppy and I were driving through the countryside, taking a little break from being cooped up in the house for several days and we were seeing the first signs of spring: willows were showing green, daffodils and Lillys in full bloom and the cows enjoying the wild onions coming on. Faith filled my heart and remembered back when I was a young man and when I refused to give God the honor for His creation and how miserable and incomplete I was during those years, often angry, argumentative and unthankful. Not everyone who has denied the Lord may be like that but I was and I thought how glad I am to know, by faith that God IS and that how having that foundation in my life has brought me peace, contentment and real joy. It brought me saving faith because once I believed God IS, then I believed the record, that He has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son, Jesus (1 John 5:11). This ever-expanding faith has grown in my heart for these many years and I didn’t create it but it is creating me and to think that I am one of those I used to call simplistic, duped, too weak to accept reality (now there’s one, isn’t it?), naive and an uneducated bumpkin. Without the Lord, I had no personal answers, I only knew how to repeat back what others had said and I actually thought and argued that was “real freedom” but now my mind is free and filled with peace. I want others to be free and to know God IS and let His presence and power fill their hearts with joy and appreciation for not only this life but the hope of eternal life. It’s not the true knowledge of God that brings the negativity that is the foundation for our unmanageable world, but it’s the denial and lack of Him that sets the stage for uncertainty, decay and that sense of impending doom. After all, without God, all that’s left is entropy.
March 17, 2021
Philippians 3:10,” That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection”
Some people reject Christianity because they think it is just a form of religion and as a religion, Christianity is just that: one more system of beliefs. That’s why when they argue against it, they use the same reasoning they use with all other “faiths” and show the slap-shot mess religions have made and are continuing to make the world over with their endless errors and horrific histories of wars, abuse, intolerance, murder, suppression, political power structures and wealth by fear extorsion. They use “God” as a means to manipulate mindless people through rituals and brain washing methods and Christianity is no different from the rest and in the hands of evil people, it has just been another tool to exploit. We can claim the reformation was an answer to some of the great abuses but the protestants quickly followed the same paths just under a different banner. Some of the “leaders” of the reformation were no more than murderers and hoodlums themselves and it’s shameful to the extent that we still to this day exalt them and give them honor as though they were infallible and we excuse their evil behaviors without a second thought. How soon we forget that religion fueled people to beat Jesus into a pulp, strip Him naked, nail Him to a cross and jeer at Him while He was dying in agony. Religious leaders led the mob that stoned Stephen to death in Acts 7 and throughout history religion has killed multiple millions with one example being The Thirty Years War (1618-48) fought between Protestants and Catholics in Central Europe, which killed an estimated 2 million to 4 million people: both sides fighting, killing and dying in the name of Jesus. We who just desire to follow Jesus and want no part of the ungodly mess called religion, usually get stereotyped and lumped into the same cauldron of religious insanity with all the rest. It’s heartbreaking to me when I know people are rejecting Christ because of what they think is true about following Him when they just don’t understand what it means to know Him and follow Him in truth. Their minds are set against Christ because they have established arguments and beliefs, they think are accurate, built upon what they think is true of Christianity. They can’t grasp that we also detest the lies that have disguised themselves as Christianity but are actually the rancid garbage of hate and destruction.
This passage in Philippians is the heartbeat of a follower of Jesus: That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection. The Greek word for “know” means: to know in a concrete manner, and not merely from a personal perspective or experience and to absolutely know, based on personal observation or perception, and also based on actual rational truth; not just that which is established on or bound only by sight and experience. This knowledge can’t be grasped by religion nor can it be explained to those who have already determined that our faith is just another form of belief and written it off, but it is from personal experience through the new birth, the baptism of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ and the intimate relationship we have with the Spirit of God and the Word of God which reveals Christ to all parts of our human trinity: body, soul and spirit. We don’t have just a pattern of stuff like going to church, claiming the Bible and spouting the monikers but we truly know the Lord apart from all the baggage which has been attached to His name and we always long for an even fuller knowledge of Him and He never fails us but always leads us deeper and deeper still into this revelation and true personal knowledge. How do you interpret that to someone who just thinks we have “religion”? I’m sure they toss it aside and try to explain it away but we have tasted and eaten the bread of life and we know what that statement means. When Jesus said that we abide in Him and His Words abide in us, we not only know what that means, we experience it daily. When the scripture says the Spirit, who lives in us quickens our mortal bodies, we are fully aware of it and it is a part of who we are in Christ. The Bible declares that those who belong to Jesus are new creations and we boldly confess that it who we are, not because it’s some mantra we chant, but it’s a real, describable and knowable thing: not just a passing emotion or experience, but a change in reality. Now try to explain that and more to those who think we’re just brainwashed.
March 16, 2021
Psalms 42:11,” Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
The Psalmist is down-and-out and Psalms 42 discloses exactly how he feels and lists several reasons why he is the way he is. But we know there doesn’t always have to be a reason because most people can swing from mountain top, sun shining ultra-happy and contented one minute to down in the dirt despair the next and there’s often not a real reason for it: it’s just because we’re human. Other times we have our list, like David, and sometimes, staring at it all, our situation seems to be hopeless or at least for the moment, overwhelming. It not only robs us of happiness and joy, but can take away reason and common sense. Experience has told us that in some situations, the cleanup, repair and restoration process can be a nightmare: like coming home from work to discover a water pipe has busted and water starts flooding out when you open the front door. Or on a Friday afternoon your supervisor comes by with a stack of pink slips in his hand and you hadn’t even seen the layoff coming. Or, on another level, like a few days ago when a church down the street announced their pastor had resigned and they were closing the church and we remembered back a year ago before the pandemic they were growing and busy in the community with a lot of activity almost every day. We began to pray for all the people that had started the ministry there with a lot of hope and faith and knew many of them must be feeling a lot of disappointment and their soul must be cast down. Counsellors and pastors engage a lot of people who can identify with this Psalm because they are cast down, dismayed, depressed and discouraged and it has affected them to the point they are in despair. When I was a young preacher, an older minister gave me this advice. He said, “If you get stuck and can’t think of anything to preach about, preach on discouragement because at any given time, half the church will always be discouraged about something”. It’s odd when you think about it, that people who have the greatest hope can be the most crestfallen and this Psalm is the proof. Of all men that ever lived, David would seem to be one that would have the most confidence that we serve an amazing, powerful and unstoppable God and David’s entire life is a testimony that God was with him every step of the way by all the miracles that he saw.
That’s why the question asked is a good one: Why are you cast down oh my soul and why are you disquieted (to be troubled, to be in great commotion or tumult, to rage, war, moan, clamor) inside me? Has God shown Himself to be faithful, merciful, compassionate and true? Has God ever failed us, forsaken us, deceived us, left us hung out to dry? Has He been unable to help us or lacked the power, wisdom and grace to come to our aid? Has he ever laughed at us or sneered and belittled us when we were calling on His name and putting our trust in Him and in His Word? Then why is our soul cast down and in great commotion or why are frustration and anger raging up inside us? These are the times when we need the Lord in a way that can only be satisfied by knowing the depth of who He is on every level, touching the very depth of our need: Ps 42:7-8,” Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.” The depth of our need calling out to the depth of His lovingkindness and while we are overwhelmed, He Himself overwhelms us by turning His face, His countenance, towards us (V.6) As the writer, when we are speaking to ourselves, asking why are we feeling as we are, we remind ourself to hope in the Lord and when this hope prevails and because it is inseparable from our faith in our God who was, and is and is to come, the almighty creator, sustainer and the only all-wise, all-powerful and all-knowing Lord God, we anchor deep within the vail and our trust is restored, our faith honors God by trusting Him and He lifts us out as He always does and always will.
March 15, 2021
1Corinthians 9:22-23,” To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake”
In this portion of scripture, from verse 19 through 23, the Holy Spirit allows us a peep into an aspect of Paul’s ministry that often either gets overlooked or at the worst, ignored because of what people may think he is practicing. This is not Paul saying he compromises the doctrine, waters down the message or collaborates with unholy ways but it is speaking of the adaptability of the man of God to the environment he is in. Along those lines, note that Paul does not say “to the drunks became I a drunkard” or “to the thieves became I a thief” because he’s not talking about identifying with unbelievers by following them in the practice of sin. He is speaking of ways he forms bonds with people for the purpose of winning them to the Lord and the Bible gives us some examples of his tactics. In Acts 16, Paul meets Timothy and although his mother was a Jew and Timothy could claim Jewishness, his dad was a Greek and Paul has him circumcised to keep the doors of the gospel open among the Jewish people who would consider Timothy an apostate. Paul certainly didn’t believe obedience to the tenants of the Law were necessary but this was his practice of becoming all things to all men that he might win them to Christ. In Acts 21, Paul follows the Jewish rite of purification before he went into the temple and when he is accosted, he declares before them all he is a Jew and several times in his journeys, he declares his Roman citizenship. Look at the example of our Lord Jesus which the Bible says in Hebrews 7 He is holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners but in Matthew 11 and Luke 7, He is called a “friend of publicans and sinners”. His ministry brought Him into the lives of lepers, gentiles, prostitutes, children, religious people, soldiers, farmers, fishermen, tax collectors, beggars, widows, rich people, poor people, city dwellers, country people, political leaders and self-righteous snobs and everyone who needed Him found a friend in Him and an open door to eternal life.
To be all things to all men that by all means we might win some to the Lord, requires a steadfastness, a level of maturity and a devotion to the bottom line, which is: Christ Jesus came into this world not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance and an acknowledgment of 1Timothy 1:15,” This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” I often think back to when my dad came to Christ. He was a drunk and uninterested in the ways of God but a Christian neighbor of ours would often stop by and visit him and became my dad’s friend. They found common ground in livestock, farming and fruit tree cultivation and it was around those things our neighbor approached my dad with an earnest desire for his soul. He was faithful over a period of a few years to extend his friendship to my dad and one day, dad gave his heart to the Lord and later, God called my dad to preach and he became a pastor and pastored until his death a few years ago. I’m so thankful for our neighbor who took an interest in my drunken father and became “all things to him” and with patient friendship, won him to the Lord. We’ve seen those whose tactics are like divebomb air raids where they come in, drop the heaven-or-hell bomb from an elitist altitude, then fly off when it doesn’t seem like there were any “takers”. How about Isaiah 58:9, “if thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not”: A part of becoming all things to all men for the purpose of bringing them to the Lord. Our religious ways should not be a barrier to those who need the Lord because the Holy Spirit will do the wooing when we lay aside ourselves and find heart-to-heart identity with those who need a Savior.
March 14, 2021
1Kings 3:9, “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people? And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing.”
The Bible says in 2Timothy 3:16,” All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”, and one of the traps people fall into when studying God’s Word, is that they’ve been told to identify to whom a particular passage was written with the implication that it may not be relevant to them. But the Lord said all scripture is profitable for doctrine and instruction in righteousness and a good example is the entire Levitical law. Now that we are living under the covenant of the New Testament, we no longer keep the requirements of the law as a remedy for our sin, but the words of the law are an infinite storehouse of God’s wisdom and reveal Jesus to us in minute detail so to dismiss the law as unprofitable to us and ignore it, is to miss a rich and deep understanding of the person of Jesus and the mind of God concerning sin, righteousness, relationships and a host of other eternal truths. Such is the case with the passage in 1 Kings 3:5: “In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee.” This was an open door for Solomon to obtain anything he wanted from the Almighty God. But what he asked was so profound, that the Bible says God was pleased with Solomon’s response and He not only gave him what he asked for but also all the good stuff he didn’t ask for such as riches, honor and a long life if he would walk in the ways of the Lord. Solomon humbled his heart before God, confessed he was truly inadequate to know right from wrong in being a good leader and asked God to give him and understanding heart to be the best king he could be. What happened there is a great instruction to us when it comes to approaching the throne of grace to get answers to our prayers and obtain favor from the Lord.
Solomon laid himself aside when he could have asked for anything he wanted and this was noted by the Lord who said to him, “Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies” which was the basis for God giving Solomon exactly what he asked for then throwing in the big bonuses. Consider this in the light of James 4:3,” Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” where we are told selfish desire in our prayers keep them from being answered. Sometimes our prayers are simply me, me, me and they’re all about asking God to get us out of situations we’re in, to supply some need we have or at least think we have, relieve us from an uncomfortable circumstance, help us with our various aches and pains and so on. The truth is, all our needs have already been provided and we could just thank God for doing what He’s already promised to do and move on to praying in the wisdom of Solomon which, if it pleased the Lord when Solomon prayed it, it would please the Lord today when we pray it because the Lord put it in the Bible for instruction in righteousness. A good prayer for a husband and dad might be something like, “Lord, give me wisdom, patience and equip me to be a husband and dad that will know wrong from right in leading and serving my family and pointing them to You.” This would be similar to Solomon’s prayer and it would please God to answer this because the family, parenthood and children are all God’s creation and purpose and any man that would honesty seek this would be also a candidate for great favor from the Lord: It could be called a priority prayer. In every situation, this kind of wisdom is such that it intreats the Lord in all our ways, acknowledges our need for Him and honors Him by placing our personal desire aside for the benefit of others and God’s kingdom and a type of such prayers prayed over our jobs, our friends, our enemies, our neighbors our ministries and everything else in our sphere of life would be well pleasing to God. It would mean we stop describing all of our problems, personal miseries, materialistic desires and self-seeking plans to the Lord, as if He doesn’t know them already in detail, and focus on being the best we can be for the glory of the Lord, walking in the wisdom of His ways. What an impact Solomon had and the time of his leadership was a time of peace.
March 13, 2021
Galatians 6:9,” And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
In this last chapter of Galatians, we are reminded of God’s principle of sowing and reaping and given the pattern that if we are led by the Holy Spirit, we will reap a harvest of blessing and life but if we follow the desires and will of our flesh then the consequences will be corruption: the word meaning to shrivel or wither, failure, spoil or ruin and death. This is not God introducing some law that says we will always have bad things happen when we do bad or vice versa, because if that was the case, we would all be hopelessly wrecked, but it is a general reminder that whatever the farmer plants, that’s what his crop will be. Woe be to those who have fleeced the flock by distorting this passage and others like it to prey on people’s greed by their own rapacious schemes and hornswoggle gullible sheep by telling them this is God’s get-rich-quick plan and all they have to do is to sow their money into the swindler’s “ministry”. But it is both a warning and an encouragement to us that when we are going what is right before our Lord, we are not wasting our time but we are following a path that will bring us a harvest we can be very thankful for. A companion passage of this is found in Romans 2:7-11, “ To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life: But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; But glory, honor, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: For there is no respect of persons with God.”
The verse of Galatians reminds us there is a danger of getting weary and fainting. The phrase “faint not” means to lose heart and it has been said its root meaning refers to a woman who has grown very weary and fearful during the time of labor before the delivery of her baby. This is because the crop we are going to reap does not appear suddenly after we have plowed, sown seed, watered and waited a while. Consider it in the natural when the farmer breaks the sod, prepares the soil, plows the furrows, drops the seed then covers it up and waters the seed in. Some crops take a long time until the harvest: tomatoes-150 days, garlic-200 days, asparagus- up to 6 years from seed to harvest and all the farmer can do is be patient and wait for harvest time. We have God’s promise that when we practice “well doing” we will reap a harvest of good and it applies to all areas of our life not just forms of ministry, but in our family life, raising our children, our business dealings, interactions with friends and neighbors, encounters with people who don’t like us and even the things we do in our leisure time. By faith, courage and integrity, we run with patience the race that is set before us knowing that the Lord will keep His promise and even when it’s tempting to cut corners and slack off the principles, we press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. In Short: we keep doing, saying, thinking and upholding what is good and right until it becomes the only way we operate. The enemy and our flesh will wage a war of resistance against us because it is hard in some situations to keep doing what’s right when you are being persecuted, passed over, sneered at and frowned on and all the while others seem to be doing just as well or even better and living nowhere near the bar that has been raised by your conviction of what is right and wrong. Times like that make us weary, exhausted and frustrated and this is exactly the moment the Lord is talking about when He tells us not to faint but keep pressing forward. Hebrews 12:3 tells us during those times, to look to Jesus who endured such adversity and pain, lest we get weary and faint in our minds: not a physical exhaustion but one of the minds and enough to push us away from sowing to the Spirit. The Lord will not forget our labor of love for our harvest is ahead and when the crops come in, in their season, we will be rejoicing and bringing in the sheaves Psalms 126:6.
March 12, 2021
Exodus 3:7-8,” And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey”
This statement was God’s declaration to Moses that the time had come for Him to do something about the predicament of His people, and it is the beginning point of one of the most remarkable progression of events in the entire Bible. All the connecting aspects of the story, set the stage for the establishment of the nation of Israel and their unique identity: the deliverance from slavery, crossing the red sea, the giving of the law, the construction of a place of worship and the elaborate ordering of a society built around their faith in the One True God. When Jewish people look back to their beginnings, sure they recognize the covenant God made with Abraham and they honor their heritage there, but it was the exodus, the revering of Moses the prophet and the giving of the law that truly solidifies their unity as a people and all the rituals, ceremonies, festivals and observances that they still keep to this day, are rooted in those events. It is their possession of these things and the value they ascribe to them, notwithstanding the covenant-Word power of Almighty God also, that have kept them from being destroyed by time, enemies and their absorption into other nations and cultures that has been the fate of all people and societies of history. But the verses in Exodus 3, right before Moses makes his way to Egypt to begin the exodus, raise a question that seldom gets answered in our studies and sermons, and that is: If these are God’s people and if He cares so much about them as is stated in these verses, why did He wait four hundred years and allow them to suffer and be degraded at the hands of the Egyptians before He makes a move to deliver them? After all, their arrival in Egypt was not an error on their part, but the Bible says, when Joseph met his brothers right before he relocated the entire family of Jacob to Egypt, Genesis 45:7-8,” And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God”, making God the one who sent His people into Egypt 430 years before.
The plight of Israel in Egypt was all about God’s purpose, His plan to carry out His covenant with Abraham and His timing to bring it all together. We are impatient and we can’t often accept that God’s ways are His own and He does according to His will whether or not we agree with Him or understand what He is doing. We want instant fixes to things and are quick to point a finger at God when we think things should be different than they are or if we don’t get the results in the time or way want or think we deserve. God promised Abraham He would make a great nation of His descendants and he started the whole business with just one son, Isaac and his son, Jacob. Had God left Jacob alone in Canaan, his descendants would have scattered all over the country in time as nomadic shepherds and undoubtedly intermarried with the pagan tribes of that area and never unified into a nation with structure and a national identity. But by placing them in one place in Egypt, he forced them to remain together while he took 70 people, the family of Jacob, and birthed them into a nation of over two million people, all together and all sharing a common heritage. Because they were shepherds, and shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, Genesis 46:34, the Israelites didn’t intermarry with the Egyptians and when they left Egypt, they left as a united nation, all descendants of Abraham and not a mixture of tribal families. Some people have referred to Egypt as the womb of the Jewish nation.
All they endured in Egypt gave them strength both physically and as a people that we see in them even to this day: they are tough and independent. Their story of being in bondage and the miracle of their deliverance defines them as God’s people and sets them apart from being just “another nation” because they have a common theme to their existence and they celebrate this individually, as families, as communities and as a nation. Their religion unites them as a part of this story and serves as a common denominator to all the functions and aspects of their lives. God purposed all this and carried it out in the details of the move into Egypt, the education of slavery, the sending of a deliverer, the exodus, the meeting with the nation at the mountain when He gave the law, the construction and details of the tabernacle, the wandering in the wilderness with all its miracles and finally the possession of the land He had promised as a part of His covenant with Abraham. This is the way with God even in our Lives today: He has a plan and purpose for us but He will do it His way and when we submit to His wisdom and simply do as He asks, trusting His Word in Hebrews 10:36, “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise”, there is nothing but victory for us ahead. Four hundred years with included suffering, seems like too much and too long but that’s exactly what it took for God to carry out His plan and we might as well batten down the hatches and wait when it comes to our own lives. He will do according to His plan and faith in His Word assures us He is doing all things for our good and He is operating in our life in love, mercy and grace but He’s doing it on His own schedule. In the meantime, while we are waiting and trusting, He is with us, He is for us, He is blessing us, He is sustaining us, He is working for us and when He is finished we can’t help but say, Psalms 138:8, “The Lord will perfect (complete) that which concerneth me”
March 11, 2021
Hebrews 12:15 “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled”
There are so many things in life that can cause us to be bitter, it’s no wonder that a lot of people carry some form of bitterness to their grave and what’s amazing, is that the people who should be the sweetest, kindest and most compassionate, the followers of Jesus Christ, are sometimes the ones that are driven by this “root of bitterness” the Bible warns against here. Just because we are God’s family, does not mean everything in life will be perfect for us and in fact, we face the same things as everyone around us. People betray us, we get cheated, we get passed over sometimes for promotions, we have afflictions, our water pipes break and the house floods, people abandon us, our children go bonkers and so on leaving us all seeds of bitterness that can lodge within us and begin to grow. Add to this, the enemy and our flesh is always right there, whispering in our ear, telling us: Other people don’t have it this bad, we need to get even with them, it’s God’s fault because he let it happen, things are never going to work out, we’ll never get ahead, look what happens when You’re good to people, they stab you in the back, it’s no good to keep going to church and being a “good Christian” because it doesn’t help and a million other reasons we should hold a grudge, get revenge, allow worry and angst to dominate our outlook and in short, water the seeds of bitterness. Soon, the seeds become what the Bible calls, “a root of bitterness” and then soon the root begins to bear bitter fruit. You probably know someone like this or perhaps you’ve been down this road yourself. A change takes place and this bitter filled person becomes cynical, argumentative, negative, easily angered, moody, inconsiderate, judgmental, sarcastic, snide, unpleasant, unsatisfied and arrogant. If they are a Bible thumper, that makes it worse because they will start to use the Bible as a weapon while pretending to themselves and attempting to convince others, that they are “standing firm on God’s Word” when in reality they are full of disgruntled debate.
They key here, is the “looking diligently” where the word looking, means to inspect thoroughly and it is pointing to the danger of failing to see and understand God’s grace in our life. The Lord is showing us that the path of peace and holiness that is admonished in verse 14, comes from knowing how God has extended grace and the accompanying mercy to us and we live showing that grace and mercy to those around us. Thinking of the grace shown in the nature of Jesus towards others, such as when He was dying on the cross and looking down at those who had nailed Him there and He cried “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”, when we inspect ourselves diligently it will reveal the seeds or roots of bitterness within us and by the grace of God, we can allow the Holy Spirit to purge us to holiness. When we fail to grasp and hold to the truth of God’s grace, the power of our flesh will always seek its own will and although we may attempt to pursue the things of God, we will do so on a path of legalism and self-righteousness with the emphasis always on legalistic duty of what we should do for God and pointing out how others are failing to serve God as they should with the emphasis being on performance instead of rejoicing in what the Lord has done for us. Bitterness is always somewhere in the mix and will rob us of the peace the Lord has intended for us and prevent us from reaching to the underserving with the love and compassion that God’s grace has for them. In short, the bitterness will blind us to the truth of who we are apart from God’s covering of grace and we will present ourselves falsely as though we are somehow superior and have the right to scorn and belittle either by word or attitude those who are in reality just the same as us. We become defiled by the root of bitterness, defeating the very call of peace and holiness upon our life because peace and holiness comes only from walking with a view, awareness and total acceptance that apart from the grace of God, we couldn’t be seeking revenge on anyone or forcing our will because we would already be burning in hell. Ephesians 1:6-7,” To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace”.
March 10, 2021
Exodus 3:2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
The Bible says Moses was in the backside of the desert in the mountain range of Horeb and at one peak: The Mount of God, which was Sinai. In this barren, empty desert, the Lord appears to him in the miracle of a bush that is burning with fire and yet is not consumed. The scripture of this passage says “an angel of the Lord” but this is referring to a manifestation of the Lord Himself as the only other place in the Bible the Hebrew word for “bush” is used, is in Deut 33:16 “And for the precious things of the earth and fulness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush”, the word for “dwelt” here is “shall-chan” and is a reference to the Shekinah Glory of the Lord. This vision of the Glory of God is a view which God has revealed to many He calls: Isaiah in Ch 6, Ezekiel in Ch 1, the disciples in Matthew 17:12 and Paul in Acts 9 and in the case of Moses answers to the verse in Hebrews 12:29,” For our God is a consuming fire.” But in this case, the bush was not consumed and raises the question: How can a Holy God whose presence consumes everything which is not in accordance with His nature, reveal Himself to sinful man without the judgment of His glory instantly consuming the sinner? Consider Habakkuk 1:13,” Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity”. So how is it possible that God is able to have anything to do with humans except to consume them in Judgment? The answer begins to appear here when we look at the word for the bush here, which is “seneh” and means “thorny bush” or “to prick with a thorn” and is a reminder of both the curse and of the crown our Savior wore. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can answer how God, the consuming fire, can reveal Himself to not only Moses here, but to all mankind without consuming them, because into the place of the curse entered our blessed Savior and He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, 2 Corinthians 5:21. The flames of God’s wrath enveloped Him but He was mighty and He was life itself and the fire could not consume Him, Psalms 89:19,” Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people.” He did not and could not perish because Acts 2:24, “Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.” . Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life”.
As Moses gazed upon the Glory of God in the thorny bush, the Lord declared in Exodus 3:6,” Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”, a verse quoted by our Lord in Luke 20:37,” Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him”, revealing the eternal life that God purposed before the creation of the world and declaring it in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob even before the actual event of the cross: In the mind and plan of God, Calvary had already happened when Moses encountered the Lord at the bush. What happened there in the desert showed the reality of God revealing Himself to Moses and calling Him as a deliverer, and also presented us with a type that speaks forward to the eternal work of Jesus Christ as the complete substitute for our sin. God called it “Holy Ground” and told Moses to take off his shoes and there stood a sinful man, barefoot and unworthy within himself, before a humble bush of thorns aglow with the fiery, consuming glory of God but eternally alive with resurrection power. We have lost sight of the “Holy Ground” of the One who has called us into His kingdom, and has, in His Holiness, delt with us in mercy and grace through Jesus. The miracle of the burning bush stands before us every day revealing Christ to us and reminding us that although we should be immediately consumed, the thorns or our Lord and the power of His resurrection, have allowed unworthy, barefoot sinners to enter the presence of a Holy, Eternal God without any fear of His wrath. Praise be to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
March 9, 2021
Exodus 3:1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
Moses was almost eighty years old when the event of this verse occurred. He had been raised in Egypt as the son of Pharoah’s daughter and had all the rights as a child of Egyptian royalty but at a turning point in his life when he made a choice to stand up for his blood heritage against the injustice of the Egyptian system, the direction his life took then was a startling change from what it had been. While he lived in Pharaoh’s household he was immersed in all that was Egyptian and Egypt was at that time, the pinnacle of civilization and splendor. It was busy, cosmopolitan, artistic, powerful, wealthy, colorful and well developed with roads, chariots, food, luxury and entertainment. Moses could have anything he wanted at his fingertips and could have lived out his life in luxury, prestige and glory. But the Lord had a different course for him that was foreshadowed by his being saved from death when he was a newborn, being pulled from the river in his little ark and the events in his life took the drastic turn when he fled Egypt into the desert. The Bible tells us that Moses’ choice to leave Egypt and all it offered was a choice he made by faith, Hebrews 11:24-27,” By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.”
His flight of faith landed him in the desert country, far away from the splendor and luxury of Egypt and for forty years he lived a life that was no comparison to the life he had left behind. Here, he is revealed as a shepherd working as an employee of his father-in-law when he went into the “backside” of the desert and the Bible said he came to Horeb which means barren, desolate, parched. Because of the light Hebrews 11 shines on Moses, we have every reason to believe he was a man of faith and just because he didn’t want the particular job the Lord had for him, which was to return to Egypt on a mission to confront Pharaoh, does not in any way mean he was living in rebellion against God. But it is significant the he was in the backside of the desert: in a desolate, barren place when God’s call came to him from the burning bush. From the luxury of the King’s palace to forty years in the care of sheep, God was preparing him for a job for which only the Almighty could equip him. There is no standard schooling in the university of God. Each servant is prepared according to his particular needs and educated with a set of tools and a perspective to the particular work God has appointed him to do and in Moses’ case, the lonely, patient life of a shepherd for forty years displaced all the bling and allure of Egypt. John the Baptist was also educated in the desert and in the wilderness there is nothing artificial and man-made, no clinking of the coins of commerce, nothing to fill the heart with human pride, nothing to tempt the eye or the flesh but it is a place for the soul to contemplate the things of God without the contamination of the world system.
It is good for us to be led to the backside of the desert in our lives and even though for a while we might miss the pull of the world we were immersed in, we need a place where everything is set aside and we have the simplicity of being where everything is real, free from any pretenses and the fool’s gold of life where we can hear God’s voice, see things in His light and grow to be who He has called us to be in the stillness of His presence. The backside of the desert, at Horeb, is better than any degree in religion, any study of literature and any number of hours poring over church doctrine and church history because it is there we are individually and personally educated and prepared by the One who created all things and that called us to His purpose. Don’t fear those times when God sets you apart for a while because even though you may feel that you’re wasting your time, God is in no hurry to expedite your learning but as Isaiah 28:16 says, “he that believeth shall not make haste.” He is preparing you for what lies ahead and your time alone with Him is a precious gift to enjoy His presence, dig into His Word, bow at the throne of grace and let Him equip you for a task He has ordained for You to accomplish.
March 8, 2021
Matthew 25:6-7 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
Most people have never trimmed a lamp because they have never needed to and probably most people don’t even know what it means. But before electric lights became the norm, from the beginning of creation people had to constantly trim their lamps. Lamps used oil, like olive oil, or a form of petroleum, like kerosene, as fuel and the fuel, which seeped up through a wick of cloth by capillary action, was lit to give light. After the wick had burned for a while, its tip became carbonized and hardened and the quality of the light diminished and the lamp began to smoke excessively. At that point, someone would trim and shape the edge of the wick to make it smooth and rounded again and when the lamp was relit, it was much brighter and less smokey.
In Exodus 25, the Lord gave Moses the instructions for making a golden candlestick that had seven oil lamps on one structure to provide light in the Holy Place of the tabernacle and tending to this light and keeping it burning, was a daily task for the priests. Each day they would fill it with oil and trim the wicks and burn incense while they were doing it and while the description of this lampstand, like all the parts of the tabernacle and its furnishings, is an amazing and wonderful study, for our devotional, we will look at the filling of the oil and the trimming of the lamps and how this relates to our target verses of Matthew 25:6-7. All throughout the Bible, oil is a type of the Holy Spirit and in its connection as a type to lamps, it is the source of power for those that belong to the Lord. The scripture teaches that believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit when they are born again and He brings into our being, the power and wisdom of God. In fact, the bible says in Romans 8:9,” But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”, thereby making the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not an option but a mandatory part of God’s salvation plan. So then, as we are fueled by the third part of the Godhead within us, we have the oil to be what Jesus has called us to be in Matthew 5:14,” Ye are the light of the world” and the ability to obey Matthew 5:16,” Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
The wise virgins had oil in their lamps and this was what set them apart from the foolish virgins who had no oil. The difference between people who are saved and those who are religious but lost, is the indwelling oil, the presence of the Holy Spirit and any light we show in the darkness of this world will be through the power of this oil. When the call went out that the bridegroom was coming, they began to trim their lamps, to clean up the wicks to shine the brightest light possible for the bridegrooms appearing. This speaks to us in these times of darkness, because we know the appearing of our Lord is eminent, it’s time to ask the Lord for grace to remove the charred remains of yesterday’s fire and trust Him for a fresh anointing and clear vision: free from this world’s distractions and contamination. May it be a time of rededication to the Lord and a purging of all that is not of Him. This will be the trimming of our wick that allows the oil to light us to be all that God has called us to be. Because the soot buildup on the wick takes place gradually and our eyes get accustomed to the gradual dimming of the light and the progressive diminishing of the flow of the oil, sometimes it takes an awakening cry or an abrupt disruption to jar us to our senses and that is the prayer we pray: Ephesians 1:17-20,”That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places”.
March 7, 2021
John 4:3-4 “He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria.”
In yesterday’s devotion, Jonah’s decision to run from God’s will for him and follow his own path, was the theme to reveal that our ways often get us in a place where we don’t want to be. But in this account in John 4, our Lord was traveling with His disciples and took a route that no real Jew of His day would ever take: Through Samaria. Samaria, and its population, was a place the Jews detested and when they traveled, they would always go around Samaria even if it meant going a great distance out of the way. The Samaritans were a mixed culture of Jews and Gentiles that merged after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and the Jews hated them and considered them enemies and vile. But we know Jesus always did the things His Father wanted (John 8:29) so His decision to go through Samaria was a calculated choice based on the Father’s will. It was there in Samaria, while his disciples had left him for a while to go shopping for food, that Jesus met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and then we understand His purpose for traveling there: The people in Samaria needed Him.
It’s sometimes hard to understand why there are people that hate others but this conflict between the Jews and Samaritans may as well be a picture of people of every age and culture because it reveals our heart and nature as opposed to God’s heart and nature. Ours is prone and inclined towards hatred, division and self-righteousness but God’s heart is strong with forgiveness and mercy towards all people of every race, nation and age as the scripture says in Rev 5:9,” And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation”. What we saw happen the past few months here in our country, and the continuing fall-out from it, is proof that no matter which side of the fence you are on, there is unsettled animosity that would not exist if we would allow Jesus to journey through our Samarias. All lives that were lost, people who were wounded, property that was destroyed and hatred that was stoked was a result of roots of lawlessness which are a living picture of Psalms 37:35,” I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree”. But when the Lord stops by our well and exposes who we really are, as He did at the well in Samaria, we are confronted with a choice that will determine our destiny: Like the question asked by Pilate in Matthew 27:22,” What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?”. Those who decide to follow Him will learn that in His kingdom, the barriers between Samaritans and Jews are removed as stated in Galatians 3:28,” There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”.
The Bible doesn’t tell us what went through the disciples’ minds when they came back from shopping and found Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman but the Bible does say, “John 4:27,” And upon this came his disciples, and marveled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, why talkest thou with her?”. The word marvel here is a word that means to admire, have in admiration, marvel, wonder and causes us to think that as they watched and listened to Jesus talking to her and then witnessed not only her conversion but that of the villagers and then Jesus and the disciples actually stayed in the Samaritan town for two days with people that formerly had been their enemies, change was taking place. This is the change that after Jesus went back to heaven would result in Peter opening the door of salvation to the gentiles in the home of Cornelius in Acts 10 and Jewish Paul declaring in Acts 18:6,” from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles”. Our personal journey with Him may detour us into Samarias and to people that we have once despised, hated or at least, disliked for some reason but the Lord must needs go through Samaria because there are people there that He loves, that He died for and that He wants to pardon and make children of the King.
March 6, 2021
Jonah 1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 2:1-2 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
Jonah could have saved himself from the nightmare of being trapped onboard a ship in a horrible storm, then being tossed overboard, swallowed by a whale, being inside the whale’s stomach for three days and nights and finally being vomited out onto the shore by simply doing what God told him to do at the onset. On the other hand, if he had, we wouldn’t have had this amazing account in the Bible, so generations have been blessed by his disobedience. Jonah isn’t the only character in the scriptures that ended up in a mess because they decided to take matters in their own hands and then suffered the consequences. The whole human race started out that way with Adam and Eve choosing to ignore God’s will and instead, do what they pleased: They were driven out of the garden and we were all judged guilty. Abraham chose to interfere with God’s plan for him and Sarah and the result of his impatience started a war between his sons, Ishmael and Isaac, that continues to this day. The entire nation of Israel spent forty years walking around in a circle in the desert because they refused to believe in God’s promise to them. There’s the story of the prodigal son in the New Testament about a boy who threw away his inheritance by doing things his own stubborn way and ended up in a place of misery.
Jonah’s journey, and all those like it in the Bible, are a statement to us all that sometimes when we’re living life the hard way and in hot water, we wished we’d never seen, it’s a result of us refusing God’s way and following our own plans, schemes and ambitions. Maybe you have your own “Jonah” story to tell or maybe it’s one of your children who is, or has been, in “the belly of hell” and the suffering, torment, enormous cost and emotional toll has been something you never want to go through again. If so, there is a common theme through it all: God’s grace is with us even when we’ve abandoned the faith, followed the flesh and broken the fellowship with our Lord. The mercy of God was with Jonah through the storm, in the deep water, inside the whale’s stomach and when the whale upchucked him onto the shore, God’s mercy followed him all the way into Nineveh and extended through him and his preaching, to the entire city. When we sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”, we’re singing about ourselves, Jonah, Abraham, prodigal sons like John Newton who wrote the song and we’re testifying that we all, like sheep, have gone astray but the Lord who is rich in mercy for His great love by which He loved us, covered us with such grace that we can’t even describe. Romans 11:32-33 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
When we, or someone we know, are in a whale’s belly, and wished to heaven we hadn’t made the choices we did, Jonah’s little book in our Bible tells us it’s not the end of the story because we might make our bed in hell, but Psalms 139:8 says the Lord is even there. Jonah found grace in a place we would never suspect it and there is hope for us all that where sin abounds (greatly increased), grace did much more abound (super-abounded) Romans 5:20. It’s time to cry out as Jonah did, “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9)
March 5, 2021
Jeremiah 9:2 “Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men (a lodging place for travelers); that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.”
Jeremiah goes from a place in verse 1 of chapter 9 where he feels so much sorrow and heart-breaking anguish for the people of Israel that he wishes he had enough tears to cry day and night for them, to this very next verse where he wants to move away from them all to a place in the wilderness: a no-man’s desert land. That swing of feelings is not uncommon in us when we look at the world around us and see the debauchery, injustice, turmoil and outright evil and at first feel deep compassion and have hope for their redemption, followed by a desire to run away from it all to a place of safety and solitude where we don’t have to daily deal with it. Remember the Bible says Lot’s soul was vexed every day by what was going on around him (2 Peter 2:8). Maybe we imagine that if we could own our own island or a place so remote and away from all the chaos, we would finally get some peace of mind and be able to live undistracted by this present evil age and concentrate on the things that bring us closer to the Lord. And at the same time, offer a place of protection for our children and grandchildren. Or maybe we decide to take more vacations but the problem is, even when we take our vacations, we often end up in places that are much worse than our hometown.
We do need places of refuge in our lives where we can retreat from time to time and refocus our gaze on Jesus, the prince of peace and allow the Holy Spirit to clear the fog out of our heart and mind and strengthen our determination for our purposes and plans for ourselves and our families. Even the Lord, when He walked this earth, would go away from people from time to time and get alone with His Father to refresh and rest, oftentimes praying all night. In our lives, we battle our schedules, the pace of our life, the many demands we have committed to and the growing stress of trying to make all our ends meet. Even the weekends or days off are so pre-filled with work and errands, that there’s no time for a respite and everyone gets so used to this type of life they don’t even realize they are swallowed up by a mad race God never intended for us to run. All the while, our souls are being vexed, like Lot, by the licentiousness around us, the barrage of media craziness, the tension and strife that’s been creeping into our culture and the growing apostacy.
Our home should be the main refuge we have and dads and moms can make a commitment to each other and the Lord that they will not allow the enemy and the coercion of this world system to rob their family of the haven of their home. If your house is a home that is built on God’s principles of truth and you choose to make it a place where God is honored, strife is forbidden, prayers are frequent, the Bible is central, anger is not tolerated, disrespect is banned, peace and quiet are treasured and love is the foundation, the floor, the walls and the roof, then you will have that sanctuary, that stronghold, that hiding place that Jeremiah desired. We have been robbed of this by the forces that are against the home and the family and it’s time we take it back because Joshua shouldn’t be the only one that declared “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”, but all of us should make that the slogan of our Home: our place of refuge. The Lord would have us with a home where the Holy Spirit is ungrieved and worship is welcome. Where words are like apples of gold in pictures of silver: fitly spoken (Proverbs 25:11). Where children and grandchildren know they are safe and they hear their parents and grandparents pray, see them honoring God’s Word and treasure up memories they will carry their lifetime. Does this all sound too Pollyannaish and naïve? I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of anchor and refuge I need for my life and by God’s grace my wife and I intend for our home to be just that kind of place.
March 4, 2021
Ephesians 1:13-14,” In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.”
The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, is so much an important part of who we are as new creations in Christ, that His significance, as revealed by the scriptures, cannot be overemphasized. Yet His role and purpose has been either dismissed as practically irrelevant or misconstrued by teachings that He is primarily a means by which we become emotionally elevated. The fact that he, and the determination the Godhead purposed for Him in our lives, has been largely ignored and has resulted in much of what is done in the religious realm, being done in the energy of the flesh: people’s ideas, ambitions, agendas and such all without the leadership, power and direction of the Holy Spirit. Consider what the Bible says about Paul and Silas in Acts 16:6-7,” Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.” If this had been most people, they would have charged ahead into Asia and Bithynia, raising money as they went, telling people they were on “the Lord’s mission” and from all appearances, because they were preaching, holding revivals, and doing all the “religious stuff”, it would have appeared they were precisely in God’s will: except they would have been entirely on their own, in the power of their own decisions apart from the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Just because it seems people are getting results from what they are doing, doesn’t mean God is behind it. Again, looking at Paul and Silas, when the Holy Spirit forbad them to go into Asia and Bithynia, He led them instead into Macedonia where they ending up getting beaten with many stripes and locked up in prison. And although the Lord delivered them from the prison, some people would equate that as a dismal failure but if they had had made “great progress” by human standards in Asia and Bithynia, it would have appeared they were successful in the ministry. I fear much of what has been done and is being now done in the religious world in the guise of the Lord’s work, is “sensual, having not the spirit” Jude 1:19.
The aspect of the Holy Spirit stated here in Ephesians 1:13-14, is that He seals the believer and that is the earnest, or down payment of all that our God has promised us: our inheritance. The word “seal” here means to stamp with a signet or private mark for security or preservation and explains that God gave us the Holy Spirit not only to accomplish all the things listed in John chapters 14 through 16, but also, He placed His own personal mark on us to claim us as His very own and this mark signifies our eternal covenant with Him through our Lord Jesus Christ. Whenever the enemy tries to lie to God’s people about their sonship, they can use this truth to declare the deal is done and sealed, the down payment has been made, the God of heaven and earth has placed His divine private mark upon them and their names have been recorded in heavens eternal book as belonging to the Lord. This is grounds for continual rejoicing because it is part of the “things which are not seen” spoken of in 2Cor 4:18,” While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” This down payment of our inheritance is very real proof and a reminder that the best is yet to come and nothing on earth or in heaven will be able to separate us from what God has done for us and has prepared for us. The fact that some often think the purpose of the Holy Spirit is just to make us feel good or help us out of some situation we’re in, is overlooking the truth that His being within us is positive proof we have nothing to fear and that we are already confirmed as citizens of heaven: Philippians 3:20,” For our conversation (citizenship) is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ”.
March 4, 2021
2Timothy 3:7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Who can fully understand the pace of life we are subjected to every day and the amount of information at our fingertips simply by entering a search on our computers or cell phones? In 1858, the first transatlantic cable was completed and queen Victoria sent a 98-word greeting to president James Buchanan. It took 16 hours to send the message through the 1988-mile cable, still considerably much less than the method prior to the cable: 10 days for a steamship, carrying messages, to cross the Atlantic and 10 more days to bring back the reply. Other cables were later laid and these transatlantic cables were used up to 1948, transmitting Morse code messages between the continents. Even though it’s been less than 75 years ago, when the first phases of the explosion of knowledge happened, it has been so fast, it has spread into all areas of the culture and is continuing to accelerate at what has been called exponential growth. In 1900, human knowledge doubled about every 100 years. By the end of 1945, it was doubling every 25 years and now, it is doubling every 13 months and increasing to the rate it will soon be doubling every 12 hours. As mentioned in a previous devotion, the Bible prophesied in Daniel 12:4,” even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro (accelerated pace of life), and knowledge shall be increased” and like many of the prophecies concerning the time of the end, this one is staring us down every day.
The verse in 2 Timothy3:7, is part of a segment that begins with,” in the last days, perilous times shall come” and even though we can look at every generation and call them “perilous times” to some degree, there has never been a portion of history when all humanity could be literally destroyed with nuclear weapons and that’s only one of the many concerning issues we face and it’s not the purpose of this particular devotion to make a list of perilous things around us. In considering 2 Timothy 3 as a prophetic passage, what’s astounding, is that in spite of this inconceivable amount of knowledge accumulating by the hour, we have completely lost sight of absolute truth: always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of truth. Even in areas of study and thought, areas of reason, philosophy, religion and such, where the common pursuit is supposed to be the preservation of truth, there is only the foundation and structure of error, again, a testimony that truth, absolute truth, has been long abandoned and we have collectively and deliberately exchanged the truth for lies, Romans 1:25. The subtle serpent’s poison, like the venom of a cobra, has spread throughout all the disciplines of study and thought, all the moral structures of society, all the principles of political systems and paralyzed our world from benefiting from the explosion of knowledge by eroding the foundations and channels of truth and even for those few that remain, there is a constant attack to destroy them also.
It probably sounds cliché, but more than ever, our hope is in the Lord, who is the Truth and His foundation of Truth is eternal: those that stumble on this Rock of Truth shall never be ashamed (confounded) (Romans 9:33). Even in their times of great apostacy, the Lord did not leave Israel without a truth-believing remnant. In the days of Elijah, there was a great departure from the Lord God and His truth and it appeared idolatry prevailed over the entire nation. The worship of Baal filled the land from the throne room of the king to the paupers in the shanties and there was a point where Elijah honestly thought he was the only person left that was for the Lord and following God’s truth. But God informed him in 1 Kings 19:18,” Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” God will always have a witness on this planet that believes His truth, honors His truth, upholds His truth, promotes His truth and will always refuse to bow to the lies of the spirit of the age! We are not of those that draw back to perdition, but believe to the saving of our souls (Hebrews 10:39). And to all those who are discouraged, saddened by seeing what’s around you, hurting from the battering of this life’s stress and feeling all alone, look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He loves you, He will never abandon you and through Him and by Him we are overcomers, more than conquerors, children of the King and soon returning Savior!
March 2, 2021
Matthew 5:20 For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
This verse is from the part of Jesus’ teachings we call the beatitudes and they form the core of His message. This statement in particular set the whole belief system of the Jews on its head because what it seemed to imply is that no one could become worthy to get into heaven. The religious group called the Pharisees were so strict in their teachings and lived such careful, deliberate lives adhering to the most minute details of religious rules, that if one had to live in such a way to become righteous on a level of morality above and beyond, exceeding, that of the Pharisees, then they might as well throw up their hands and quit trying to get into heaven. But what the Lord was doing, was opening our understanding of what it really means to be righteous by smashing our preconceived notions and traditions of righteousness and then will come the explanation of how God will do for us that which we can’t do for ourselves: He will make us righteous by what He calls “a new and living way”. If righteousness is required for entrance into heaven, and if the Pharisees, who appeared to be the most righteous people on the planet, were failing in their efforts, how on earth can people become righteous enough to satisfy God’s demands? To answer this, we have to first look at the misconception that the Pharisees (or anyone for that matter) was even righteous to begin with, no matter how they appeared on the surface.
The Pharisees operated on a belief system that taught whenever someone followed and obeyed the moral code of the Jews called “The Law”, a set of over six hundred rules and adhered to these rules as closely as humanly possible, then their actions caused them to be righteous and so they had refined every aspect of their lives to better carry out the demands of the law and in the process, had expanded God’s initial set of rules to ensure that they had every base covered. For example, the law stated that eating certain bugs or crawling critters was unclean so to make sure they didn’t accidently ingest one of these creatures, they would pass everything they drank through a strainer to remove any unclean thing. But they missed not only the whole point of the law God gave them, they completely misunderstood what God considered to be righteous.
God never intended the law to create righteous people because the law could corral people’s behaviors but couldn’t change what was really the root of human sin and that is our heart. Listen to the words of our Lord in Matthew 15:19-20,” For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashed hands defileth not a man.” In other words, correcting actions do not change who we are. Correcting behaviors help us in our interpersonal relationships, help keep us out of legal troubles and perhaps can protect us from harm but our heart, which is the source of our sin, is a problem that is much more troublesome and its sin-contamination is so deep and hardened, there is nothing we can do (or not do) that will make it righteous. Concerning how righteousness is accomplished, the Bible says in Gal 3:21,” Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” so clearly trusting the law to achieve righteousness is a mistake.
If it seems like we cover this issue over and over, it’s just because irregardless of how often it is taught, many people just will not believe that no matter what they try to do, or not do, they remain unrighteous before God and rather than accept what the Bible teaches about it, they will argue against it and continue in their sin, convinced that God will accept their good works, which they hope somehow outweighs the bad, and give them entrance into heaven. The only way our righteousness can exceed the righteousness of the most righteous people we could imagine, like the Pharisees, is to have the covering of the exquisite righteousness of Jesus upon us so that when God sees us, He only sees what we are covered with: the righteousness of Christ. It would be like saying unless your goodness exceeds that of Billy Graham, you can’t get into heaven then find out that when you believe Jesus is the Son of God and trust Him to save You, in God’s eyes you become more righteous than Billy Graham and in fact, have righteousness that is equal to that of the Lord Jesus Christ! Here’s what the Bible says: Romans 3:21-22,” But now the righteousness of God without (apart from) the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference”
March 1, 2021
Matthew 4:18-20 “And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.”
These scriptures reveal so much about God, His plan, His methods and His eternal purpose that it’s easy to miss some of them with just a quick reading. Peter and Andrew were not educated, sophisticated, wealthy, religiously certified, elite and refined guys. They had an honest but humble craft: They were fishermen like their father before them and perhaps even their grandfather. They thought about boats, nets, water, currents, temperatures and most days, reeked of fish because the type fishing they did, put them in constant contact with all that smelled of fish as they, sweating, manually cast their nets over and over and hauled their catch over the side of the boat into the boat bottom where they were: touching, grabbing, handling the squirming, slick creatures of their employment and all the fish-tainted equipment the job required. In times before deodorant, air fresheners, perfumed soap, showers and washing machines, they were constantly connected to, and identified personally with, their fishing and all its occupational attributes and as far as careers go, it wasn’t exactly a class act. But the Father wanted these men and He appointed them to Jesus as is revealed in Jesus’ prayer to His Father in John 17:6 “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.”. God’s methods to use what He chooses, not what people would esteem worthy or qualified, is His own plan and by His own wisdom He forges ahead to fulfill His eternal purpose with these lowly fishermen. God doesn’t need or want our thinking, our ways, our “wisdom”, our advice and certainly is not swayed by our objections and demands. He uses fishermen and their types to make His own brand of fishermen.
So then, we too like Peter and Andrew, are fishermen. The religious world decided long ago that the only way to carry out God’s plan was to form organizations, qualify people, certify them as “competent”, educate them with their agendas and belief systems, weave all this into a fabric of economic structure and then rely on all this system to produce results which would be periodically analyzed, evaluated, brought before committees which would then make adjustments to produce better numbers. Fishermen? Not hardly, more like a mechanized sardine harvesting operation where no one comes in contact with the fish and no one has a personal vested interest in the real purpose of our Father which is to bring people into the lives of other people in intimate, Holy Spirit filled power to one-on-one present God’s love, mercy and kindness and willingness to save, deliver and bless the people He created. Organizations may serve a purpose in some cases but the real fishing is done by you and me daily as we cast the nets of truth, mercy and compassion that our Lord has provided us and we do it over and over again, personally touching the lives of people who are beaten, bruised and living in darkness without hope and longing for a God they have rebelled against. They are His creations and His methods to reach them won’t always fit our man-made criteria and patterns but He uses those He has called, qualified, certified and educated by His grace to accomplish His purpose: after all, it’s really His WORD and His Spirit that’s doing the fishing, we are just casting the nets. Even if we try to point to apostle Paul to show that his education and intellect made the difference, just listen to what he said after listing all his personal accomplishments and accolades: Phil 3:7-10,” But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death”. May the Lord raise up people, filled with the Holy Spirit, of humble hearts and reeking of the things of God to confound the things which are wise and mighty (1 Cor 1:27). May they cast their nets into the deep in their homes, where they work, among their acquaintances, and everywhere the Father directs them. May they fish outside the boundaries set by churches, religious methodology and man-made hierarchies and boldly declare that God’s fishermen have no restriction as to “fishing seasons” and types of fish and there is no limit on how many can be caught but they will fish according to 1Titus 2:3-4, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”