Monthly Archives: November 2014

One In The Bond Of Love

Bible Study, , , ,

ONE IN THE BOND OF LOVE

“It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer; that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:7-11.

That’s quite a mouthful, Paul!

Paul made some powerful statements in his greeting to the Philippian church. He obviously had great affection for these people. They were his first converts in Greece. They loved him; they supported him in every possible way; unlike the Galatian church, they were steadfast in their faith in Jesus and they brought great joy to Paul. He could not help but tell them how much they meant to him in the midst of the trials and persecution he faced. At that very moment he was in prison for the gospel of Christ.

Paul thought about them constantly, as he did the many other small groups scattered all over Europe and Asia who had come to Christ through his preaching and teaching. In spite of his apostolic role, he didn’t lord it over them. They had an equal share in God’s grace with him. He needed grace to endure the suffering and humiliation of persecution and imprisonment for preaching the gospel. They needed grace to be faithful to Jesus in the face of opposition, accusation and misunderstanding and the ever-present danger of betrayal to the authorities, even by friends or family.

God’s grace was very real to Paul. On one occasion he was so traumatised by constant persecution that he pleaded with God to remove the “thorn” of angry persecutors that dogged him wherever he went and the hardships he faced as a travelling apostle. God’s response was not to remove the thorn but to give him strength and grace to endure. The same grace that supported him was available to every Philippian child of God for their daily struggles.

Paul’s written prayers give us deep insight into true prayer. He was more concerned about forming their godly characters than he was about their outward circumstances. As long as they were in this life they would face trouble. It was not his place to pray them out of it, since God was using the very adversities they faced to mould them into the image of Christ. In his prayers he affirmed God’s purpose to grow them in righteousness and godliness as a witness to His grace and power in the face of human wickedness in the society around them.

His greeting was “grace and peace,” his prayer for the increase of love and the fruit of righteousness so that their lives would be blameless, not sinless, and pure, not mixed with the ungodly practices of the pagans all around them. Their righteousness was the outflow of Christ’s righteousness which covered them as they lived in a sinful world, surrounded by pressure and temptation to conform in order to evade the inevitable suffering for Jesus’ sake.

Why the increase of love? Love is the very essence of who God is. His love motivates and permeates His every thought and action. Everything He does is for our good and He spares nothing, not even His own Son, to ensure our rescue and our freedom from the ravages of sin. The love of God that motivates us, heals and restores us as much as it ministers to others. The more we love, the greater our resemblance to our heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus.

The more we give of ourselves and our resources to meet the needs of others, the more we grow in our understanding of what the right thing is to do in every circumstance. What better desire could Paul express for these dear people who meant so much to him? They were an oasis in the desert of idolatry and wickedness. They were a breath of fresh air in the putrid atmosphere of ungodliness. They were a fountain of living water springing up out of the barren earth.

We can learn from Paul to view life from a different perspective. God is about changing hearts, not circumstances. The very struggles we hate are the things God uses to refine our faith and purify our hearts of our fleshly and selfish appetites so that we can feast on Him and become like Him to shine in the darkness of sin and unbelief.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

 

 

The Disposition Of A Man Of God

Bible Study, , , ,

THE DISPOSITION OF A MAN OF GOD

“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:3-6.

Don’t you just love Paul! God could not have chosen a better way to record His word for us than in stories and letters about real people, people we can relate to because they were just as ordinary as we are. With all his accomplishments, Paul reflects sanctified humanness in his letters.

 

Thankfulness, joy, confidence – these are the attitudes and emotions of a man who had walked a long and difficult road with Jesus. Even more telling was the fact that he was penning this letter from inside the royal palace guard in Rome, probably shackled to a Roman soldier, or at least under heavy guard as a dangerous criminal.

 

Why would Paul be regarded as a dangerous criminal? Because of his influence. It would have been well known that this one man had traversed a large section of the Roman Empire, sowing seeds of subversion against Nero Caesar, undermining his claim to be Lord, Saviour, the Son of God and the Prince of Peace. These were all false and arrogant claims, of course, because he was no god at all, only a deranged and ruthless despot. He murdered at will, including his own mother and innocent believers in Jesus because they would not honour him, Caesar, as Lord.

Was this really what Paul was doing? Was it his intention to undermine Rome’s authority and destabilise the empire? Of course not! Paul was preaching the message of another kingdom, superimposed upon Rome that would bring people under God’s authority once again, and transform them into model citizens of Rome. Yes, he stood against cruelty, injustice and lawlessness, but not to undermine Caesar’s rule. His aim was to reconnect people to the living God through the cross of Christ so that society would be transformed by people who lived righteously and at peace with one another.

The message of Jesus had first of all changed him. He himself had been a ruthless killer – hunting down Christians and dragging them off to Jerusalem to be condemned and executed by the Jewish high court for their faith in Jesus. But the risen Christ had intervened, and one encounter with Him had changed his life forever. His walk of faith in this Jesus, “through many dangers, toils and snares” as the hymn describes it, had taught him to trust Him and to rejoice in every good thing and in the worst of circumstances.

So now, incarcerated in a top-security prison in Rome, Paul was full of gratitude and joy, because he had left a trail of Jesus-followers who would perpetuate his work where he was no longer free to go. He was delighted with the transformation in their lives, from pagan idolatry to faith in the living God, and from lawless and ungodly living to chaste and upright lives because his message was powerful, able to change men’s hearts.

He was confident that the change in them because of their faith would continue and be completed when Jesus came to receive them home. Why? Because it was not about a one-sided effort. They were in partnership with the God of the universe and the Holy Spirit who resided in them. This was the guarantee that what God started in them He would finish.

Unfortunately, Jewish and Gentile unbelievers didn’t see it that way. Believers in Jesus were counter-culture traitors who should be hounded and exterminated as vermin. However, the very torrent of persecution they unleashed against them produced even stronger faith, courage and hope in the followers of Jesus because they looked beyond this life to a life to come in the very presence of God. The hotter the hatred against them, the more secure they became in God.

Paul was able to revel in these beloved believers in Philippi, and to praise them for their faith and loyalty through difficult times. He encouraged them with his persistent prayers and expression of confidence that they would persevere, not matter what, until God completed what He had begun because they were not alone in their struggle.

We can also take heart from Paul’s declaration of confidence in God. We may not be in the same circumstances as these Philippian believers but we have our own adversities to contend with, and our own tests and temptations to endure. Will we give up in the struggle or will we hold on to the hope that, when it’s all over, we’ll still be on the winning side, purified in our faith and full of thanksgiving and joy because we made it to the end?

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

A Church Is Born

Bible Study, , , , ,

A CHURCH IS BORN

“Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all God’s people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Philippians 1:1.

Today we embark on a journey through another of Paul’s letters, this time one with a completely different tone and motive from his letter to the Galatians. The people of the Galatian church had been influenced by the Judaizers to believe that they needed to become Jews by adhering to all the Jewish laws and customs before they could become followers of Jesus. Paul had to write a very strong letter to them straighten up their understanding of the gospel.

His letter to the Philippian church, by contrast, was a happy one, prompted by deep love for the people in Philippi who were the first on European soil to believe in Jesus.  They had been generous to Paul, sending him financial help on more than occasion. He wrote to thank them and to encourage them in their faith despite the odds stacked against them in the Roman Empire. Paul himself was a prisoner in Rome at that moment, having been sent from Jerusalem for trial before Caesar.

Paul was evangelising in Asia Minor on his second missionary journey when he had a vision. He was in Troas, having been prevented from travelling north by the Holy Spirit. In his vision he saw a man from Macedonia, a province in Greece, calling him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Assuming that it was God’s Spirit speaking to him, he responded immediately and set sail into a new region.

His first convert in Macedonia was a wealthy Greek woman, Lydia, who lived in Philippi. She and some other women who believed in God, met for prayer beside a river outside the city. Paul and his travelling companion, Silas, joined them and Paul grabbed the opportunity to tell them about Jesus. Lydia’s heart was moved by the Holy Spirit. She believed in Jesus and was baptised. She offered her home to the travellers and they remained with her during their stay in Philippi.

Philippi was also the place of unexpected miracles. Paul and Silas were detained for releasing a slave girl from bondage to a demon. The resultant uproar stirred up by the slave girl’s owners who had just lost their source of income because Paul had evicted the demon who used the girl to tell fortunes, landed Paul and Silas in the city jail, fastened in the stocks and brutally mutilated by a whipping.

In their pain and discomfort they could not sleep. Instead of complaining about the injustice they were suffering, they began to sing. An unexpected earthquake rocked the prison, burst open the doors and set all the prisoners free. The outcome was another miracle. The jailer took the two men home, washed and cleaned them up, treated their wounds, fed them and listened with astonishment to the gospel. He and his whole family believed and were baptised there and then, adding another whole family to the infant church in Europe.

They were released from prison the next morning, and escorted from jail by the very magistrates who had sentenced them, having been informed by Paul that they had mistreated Roman citizens. Thus began the strong relationship that Paul had with the church in Philippi. Lydia’s house became the centre of the fellowship there.

Paul gives us a small insight into the leadership of the church. He mentions overseers (elders) and deacons. These were not so much offices as functions. There seems to have been a plurality of elders – a wise safeguard against dictatorship which can so easily creep into the church. There was also a group of people who served, called deacons. We can glean the function of a deacon from Acts 6 where men were chosen to serve food to the widows in the church in Jerusalem.

There was no pomp and ceremony in the early church. Everyone was equal, even those who led and those who served. Their leaders were servant-leaders, carrying a great responsibility to ensure that the people were guided by the word of God and were walking in the truth. According to Peter, the role of the elders was to give themselves to the study of the word and to prayer. It was their task to understand and interpret Jesus’ yoke according to His disposition and to bind it on the people, loosing them from every other yoke that brought them into, or kept them in bondage.

How far the church in many quarters has wandered from its original pattern. It is up to us to return to the simplicity of Jesus’ call, “Come, follow me!”

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The Rule Of Faith

Bible Study, , , ,

THE RULE OF FAITH

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule – to the Israel of God. From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear in my body the marks of Jesus.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.” Galatians 6:14-18.

In spite of the efforts of his opponents to discredit him and to rob him of his apostolic authority, the real Paul comes out in the final words of this letter. It’s not about circumcision – it’s about the cross. To his last breath Paul would fight to defend the efficacy of the death of Jesus. While the Judaizers might boast in their conquests over the souls of men, Paul will only boast in the power of Jesus’ death to save from sin through the grace of God and to recreate men and women in His image through faith in Him.

The cross of Jesus is, in the end, the great divide between sinner and saint, between those who insist on seeking God their own way and those who humbly submit to the way He chose to bring us back to Himself.

To the Jew it was distasteful to think that a man who claimed to be God would choose to die, and to die in such an ignominious way at the hands of the Romans, to reconcile men and women to Himself. They preferred to dodge the writings of their own prophets rather than to believe that Jesus was their Messiah.

To the Gentiles it was equally foolish to believe in just one of many thousands of “criminals” who had been executed by crucifixion. What could that do to bring peace to their conscience and change their lives? Their own gods could not save them. What could a dead Jew do to make the difference?

To Paul, however, the cross was not an object of shame to dodge but the very cut-off point between his old life of pointless self-effort and a new life of the forgiveness, freedom and righteousness he did not have to earn. He bore in his body the marks of his commitment – the scars of human hatred which were mute testimony to his faith in Jesus so tenacious that nothing or no one could tear him away from loyalty to Him. Were the Judaizers willing to suffer for sake of circumcision?

With all the confidence in the world, he could pray a simple benediction over those who read his letter and believed the truth, be they of the first or twenty-first century and everyone in between: “Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule – to the Israel of God.” The true children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are not those who rigidly try to keep rules but those who adhere to one simple rule – the rule of faith. When faith rules, the heart is at peace in the full assurance of God’s mercy.

Everything that Paul needed to say had been said. It was now up to his readers to believe the truth or leave “The Way” and do their best to undo their sinful past by doing it their way. How tragic that throughout the ages people still disregard the revealed will of God and try to bypass the cross!

We may wear it as an ornament around our necks; we may decorate our churches inside and outside with every shape and size of cross; we may even mark the place where someone lies buried with a cross. In the end, however, if the invisible cross of Jesus has not been the instrument of death to ourselves and our selfish ways, and the beginning of a new life in Christ, the cross will be as meaningless to us as it was to the Roman soldiers who routinely drove nails through the hands and feet of their helpless victims.

“In the cross of Christ I glory

Towering o’er the wrecks of time;

All the light of sacred story

Gathers round its head sublime…

“Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure

By the cross are sanctified;

Peace is there that knows no measure,

Joys that through all time abide…”

(John Bowring – 1825)

http://cyberhymnal.org/i/n/intcross.htm

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The Reward Of Faith

Bible Study, , , ,

THE REWARD OF FAITH

“See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they boast about your circumcision in the flesh.” Galatians 6:11-13.

This issue was so urgent for Paul that he even wrote this letter himself instead of using a scribe as he usually did. Apparently he was short-sighted, or he had some other eye problem that affected his eyesight. Some commentators believe that he had an eye disease which made him look unsightly, hence his comment in chapter 4:13-15.

As he struggled to pen his thoughts, he turned again to the men who were undermining the faith of the Galatians, and persuading them to take on the burden of a yoke God’s own people were unable to bear. Paul had walked that road himself and he knew how burdensome it was, and how glorious it was to walk in the freedom of knowing Christ Jesus and His forgiveness and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

These Judaizers, of course, had a hidden agenda. They knew the truth but they were dodging the offence of the cross. In Paul’s day, persecution came from two fronts. The Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah and turned their hatred on the believers. As an ambassador for Christ and in the forefront of the battle, Paul was prime target for their anger. They hounded him from city to city as he moved across the Roman Empire, using every excuse to take him out.

The Roman government and their representatives had it in for the believers because they refused to bow to Caesar as Lord. Nero, the crazy emperor during Paul’s time, used Christians as the scapegoat for his madness and invented more and more cruel ways to dispose of them, even killing them for entertainment in the great amphitheatre in Rome.

Whereas, in the beginning, the new “cult” of Jesus-followers was identified with Judaism and tolerated by Rome, later on the Jews dissociated themselves from the people of “The Way”. Rome tolerated the Jews and allowed them to practise their monotheistic religion but they rejected the Christians’ insistence that Jesus, not Caesar, was Lord and the Prince of Peace and Saviour. Christians were outlawed and killed for treason against Rome.

Hence these Judaizers who were supposedly followers of Jesus, remained under the umbrella of Judaism to protect themselves from persecution. To come out boldly and openly on the side of Jesus was suicidal. To proselytise and get a following of Gentiles for themselves was a protection against the anger of the Jewish religious leaders.

To follow the teaching of the Judaizers was to renounce Jesus and escape the offence of the cross in this life but, at the same it meant forfeiting God’s grace and the hope of eternal life. They could not have it both ways.

Having explained the implications of their actions, Paul was now calling on them to make a choice. If they chose Jesus, they would put themselves in the firing line for persecution and possible execution, but that was par for the course in this life. The reward of faith far outweighed the price they would pay for following Jesus.

These antagonists, according to Paul, were no advert for the religion they professed to follow. No one, not even they, were able to obey the law perfectly, yet they were insisting that their way was the way to God. Why believe them when their way did not work and never had worked, as the history of God’s people revealed? In the end, it was not their zeal for the law that drove them to seek a following but their cowardly desire to dodge persecution. Not only did they follow a false way themselves, but they also tried to drag others with them.

The way of the cross is the way of suffering, but the promise of God stands above it all as a beacon of hope.

“Now if we are children of God, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Romans 8:17, 18.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.