Category Archives: Christian Life

GOD HEARS THE BLEAT OF THE LAMB

Christian Life, ,

GOD HEARS THE BLEAT OF THE LAMB

“I love the Lord, for He heard my voice; He heard my cry for mercy. Because He turned His ear to me, I will call on Him as long as I live.”  Psalm 116:1, 2.

For some inexplicable reason, the people of Israel were bent on worshipping idols. Despite the prophets pleading, cajoling, and warning them, they persisted in their idolatry until things went badly for them and then they cried out to God for help. The prophets often tried to show the people how foolish they were to worship things they had created that were deaf, dumb, and immobile. In Isaiah 44, the prophet points out the foolishness of crafting an idol out of half a piece of wood and using the other half to bake his bread. How can something created by a woodcarver, or a blacksmith hear a cry for help? But they refused to listen.

The idol is a burdensome object that must be carried by a beast of burden because it cannot carry itself. But God said, “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and grey hairs I am He and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Isaiah 46:3, 4.

In contrast to the powerlessness of an idol to do anything, the psalmist praised God for His tender love. He heard the bleat of the lamb and responded to his cry. It makes me think of Jesus – the Father’s personal representative on earth. How often He heard the faint sound of the lamb’s bleat and responded immediately.

Take the story of Bartimaeus, for example. Jesus was leaving Jericho, surrounded by an excited and noisy crowd. Bartimaeus was a blind beggar sitting on the roadside hoping for a handout. He heard the din and recognised the name of the healer who happened to be passing by. He began to shout to Jesus, crying for mercy and hoping He would hear him above the babble of voices. How could one voice be heard above the rest when Jesus was being mobbed by shouting people? The people tried to shut Bartimaeus up because, after all, he was nobody, unimportant, just a blind beggar, but Jesus heard him because His heart was tuned in to the bleat of the lamb.

Jesus always heard, and never turned away from a cry for mercy. He stopped and called him. The hostile mob immediately changed its tune. “Go, He’s calling you,” they urged him. Bartimaeus didn’t hesitate. He was up on his feet in an instant, flinging away his cloak and stumbling towards the sound of the voice that called him. – one voice responding to the other.

He had only one request, “I want to see,” and immediately Jesus responded, “Go, your faith has healed you.” Jesus hears every cry and answers it.

WHY DID JESUS COME? – 4

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WHY DID JESUS COME? – 4

“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.”  Hebrews 2:10, 11.

Jesus’ final reason for coming is beautifully summed up by the writer to the Hebrews. God is rebuilding His family, made up of all who are forgiven and cleansed of their sin, reconciled and restored to the Father and learning from Jesus how to live now as sons of God.

I am the mother of four sons. As they grew from infancy through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood to maturity, the way we expressed our relationship changed. I have never ceased to be their mother, but I no longer have to protect them from the consequences of their childish immaturity or to train them in the basics of being human. They are now married with children of their own whom they must train and lead by example to maturity as I had to do when they were growing up.

Being sons of God is a difficult road to navigate because, firstly, our Father is invisible and so different from us that we need a human being to show us how to be His sons. Jesus is the perfect model whom we can follow.  Secondly, we need to learn how to live out the new nature He has put in us through our new birth. We have been transferred from the kingdom of our old master, the devil, into the kingdom of light where we come under different rule, the rule of love. God has placed His Spirit in us, who witnesses with our spirits that we are the sons of God (Romans 8;16).

However, we do not automatically express God’s nature in our lives. Thought by thought, choice by choice, we change as we learn from Jesus how to live as He did. Jesus did not give us a complicated set of rules. Instead, He gave us one instruction – “Follow me”. Although we may find it easier to have a carefully-worked-out system, God is our Father and He wants us to live in close communion with Him as sons by watching and imitating Jesus.

Sons have free access to the Father. We do not need an appointment to have fellowship with Him (Hebrews 10:19-22)

Sons have all the resources of the Father at their disposal. We do not need to beg for God’s supply. It is ours because we are sons (Philippians 4:19).

Sons are at home in God’s household. We are not strangers or aliens. We are family. (Ephesians 2:19)

Sons live under and have the authority of the Father. We are not slaves, we are sons. Galatians 4:4).

Sons are heirs of the Father and joint heirs with Jesus (Galatians 4:7).

What an awesome privilege to be the sons of God!

WHY DID JESUS COME? – 3

Christian Life, ,

WHY DID JESUS COME? – 3

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” John 14:6

Although this may be, for some of us, a familiar and well-worn verse of Scripture which we use to lead people to faith in Jesus, I think it has more than one meaning. The most obvious one leans on Jesus’ work on the cross.  According to my two previous articles, no-one has access to the Father but through Jesus. He paid the debt and cleared the ground for our return to fellowship with Him and membership of His family.

Hidden in that meaning, however, is one that we may not think about. Not only did Jesus clear the way for us to return to the Father, but He also takes us to the Father. A great deal of our evangelistic effort is to lead people to believe in Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and this is legitimate. But this often leaves people thinking that there is a conflict of attitudes between the Father and the Son. Jesus is the loving and kind member of the Trinity who died for us and calls us to believe in and follow Him. The Father is the angry one who waits to get us when we step out of line.

Way back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were estranged from their Father and were left as orphans to find their own way in a big and hostile world. God chose and called Abraham to be father of a nation that would experience Him as their Father once again by redeeming them from slavery in Egypt to Himself. They chose to reject His love and followed the gods of the surrounding nations.

Through Jesus’ death on the cross, God confirmed the work of redemption He effected before the foundation of the world. Perhaps Jesus’ simple story of the wayward son who left the father’s house and wasted his life and resources on wild living, most vividly pictures what has happened to humanity. We left home, we chose to disassociate ourselves from the Father and live as orphans until Jesus came to take us back home. Now the choice is ours.

Salvation is not only about the life to come when we will reap the eternal benefits of Jesus’ death. It’s about now. It’s about living in Father’s house now. It’s about enjoying the Father’s presence and experiencing the Father’s joy and peace in a messed-up world now. It is tragic that God’s children so often have an escapist mentality, holding on with white knuckles and waiting for death so that they can “go and be with Jesus.”

As members of God’s forever family, we are entitled to the grace that makes us overcomers and the blessing of fellowship with a Father who passionately loves us. Jesus wants to take us into the bosom and heart of the Father. Will you go with Him?

WHY DID JESUS COME? – 2

Christian life, ,

WHY DID JESUS COME? – 2

“God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them…” 2 Corinthians 5:19.

Jesus’ coming to reveal the Father was the first step in the process of restoring the broken relationship between God and His estranged family. Who would want to be in fellowship with an angry God? It was imperative that God come in person to show people what He is really like.

Bu that was only the beginning. There was a huge obstacle, called sin that blocked the way back to the Father. Sin is an unpayable debt, an unbridgeable chasm that separates us from Him, violates His perfection and prevents us from fellowship with Him. God is a just God and requires just payment for the debt we owe Him. He cannot brush sin aside and ignore the penalty He demands for transgressing His law. To cancel the debt required a perfect human sacrifice for which no one qualified except Jesus because He alone lived a perfectly sinless life as a human being and then willingly laid down His life in our place.

He rose from the dead to break death’s power over man, to prove that He was innocent and that the Father’s justice was satisfied. He was ready and qualified to carry out the next step in His assignment – to reconcile us to the Father. It is one thing to know that there are no more obstacles between us and the Father, but quite another to remain estranged from Him because we have not personally been reconciled to Him.

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:19, that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, but the effectiveness of that reconciliation is only felt by one’s personal appropriation of what Jesus has done. It is tragic to know that millions of unbelieving people have never availed themselves of the right to fellowship with the Father through Jesus’ death for them because they don’t know or because they refuse to receive His gift!

When two parties are estranged because of offense, it is the offended person’s responsibility to forgive by cancelling the debt, and the offender’s responsibility to seek reconciliation based on the offer of forgiveness. God, in Jesus Christ, not only paid the debt Himself so that He can hold out the offer of forgiveness, but He also takes the next step by initiating the reconciliation that will restore us to full and unrestricted fellowship with the Father as His sons and daughters.

Although there is still another step in the process of restoring the human race to God’s original purpose, which will be explained in another article, up to this point we have seen that the obstacle of sin has been removed, the chasm bridged by God Himself through Jesus, and the way wide open for anyone who believes in Jesus, to return home and to be accepted and embraced as a son or daughter of God in His forever family.

SUPERNATURAL HARVEST

Christian Life, ,

SUPERNATURAL HARVEST

Do you not say, “Four months more and then the harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. John 4:35.

Imagine the disciples’ surprise, when they arrived back from the village of Sychar where they had gone to buy lunch, to find Jesus deep in conversation with a Samaritan woman. They were reticent to question Him. Instead, they urged Him to eat, but His mind was still mulling over the encounter He had just had with the woman and the stunning outcome it had produced. His response was almost as though He were talking to Himself. “Doing God’s will is more satisfying than just eating lunch,” He murmured.

In the meantime, the women abandoned her water jar in her haste to tell the villagers of her life-changing encounter with a Jewish rabbi who said He was the Messiah. Gone was her guilt, her shame, and her embarrassment in the presence of the other villagers. She sought them out, instead, to announce her discovery and to invite them to share her joy.

To His disciples Jesus proceeded to explain a spiritual principle that needs to be taken out of the context of a missionary appeal that we often put it into, and placed where it belongs – in the ordinary, everyday encounters that we have with people who, like the Samaritan woman, are thirsty for “living water” but are drinking at the wrong fountain. By offering her water that would forever quench her thirst, Jesus sowed a seed which, unlike natural seed, which takes time to mature into a harvest, had the power to produce new life within minutes.

In that one short encounter, a lonely, guilt-ridden woman was transformed into a new creation, forgiven, cleansed, and filled with joy, her thirst quenched and satisfied by a new love that would enable her to become a woman of dignity and beauty and a worshipper of the true God because she was fully accepted and loved by God.

Ephraim, the Syrian, in the 4th century, said, “Jesus came to the fountain as a hunter. He threw in the grain before one pigeon that He might catch the whole flock. At the beginning of the conversation, He did not make Himself known to her, but first she caught sight of a thirsty man, then a Jew, then a rabbi, then afterwards a prophet, last of all, the Messiah. She tried to get the better of the thirsty man, she showed her dislike for the Jew, she heckled the rabbi, she was swept off her feet by the prophet, she adored the Christ.”

How this should encourage us, who want to follow and imitate Jesus, to believe that the word of God, sown into the soil of the human heart, has the power to awaken desire and to produce a harvest of new life, not in “four months” but the moment that soul believes that Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God.