Daily Archives: February 3, 2015

God’s Mercy

Pastor's Desk,

Dear Family

I can only begin to feel and absorb the atmosphere of joy and total awe of God in which the Apostle Paul penned the follow-ing words in Romans 11:33-36: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

It’s like “WOW!” stuff. Who is this God, this incredible all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing One, who has chosen to give any regard to humankind at all? Who are we that He, the Creator and Lord of the uni-verse, should even waste a moment of His perfection to deal with this bunch of hat-ing, hurting, hopeless trash of humanity? And before the foundations of the earth were laid, Jesus was His plan for us to be able to be a part of His family! God’s mercy – indescribable!

Which is why the Apostle Paul goes on to urge us in Romans 12:1 to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleas-ing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”

I’ve been in church long enough now to know that we face a really silly season, where everything which happens through-out the year (apathy, bad church attendance, placing family and work above God and then using Him as an excuse, with-holding of tithes for worldly pleasures, etc.) is exacerbated. We throw caution to the wind and money at everything except the things of God. And it’s so easy to do. “Jingle Bells” had me singing along the other day whilst following my wife around the grocery store obediently (and eventual-ly grumpily) pushing the trolley. The spirit of this world loves this time of year, when it can fool believers into thinking this is a “godly” time. The bible refers to the ene-my as coming as an “angel of light” for good reason. We will waste money on the silliest of things, believing it all to be God-sanctioned. Ho! Ho! Ho! And yet, the poor, the hungry, the destitute are some-how just not on our radars. Instead, we’ll spoil the kids a little more away from God towards Satan’s Claus. And poof! The view we have of God’s mercy becomes a distant memory until the new year when we feel guilty and church fills up again for a few months.

So here is a challenge for our family at Ebenezer: Let’s aim at keeping God’s mercy in view this year, and stay in awe of our incredible privilege of sonship. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything, though we can give Him nothing except ourselves. All He asks is that we die to ourselves daily and follow Him. Will you?

How Does Suffering Deal With Sin?

Bible Study, , , ,

HOW DOES SUFFERING DEAL WITH SIN?

Therefore, since Christ suffered in His body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. (1 Peter 4: 1-3)

Again Peter’s words are puzzling. If we take them at face value, we may come up with some strange doctrines. If we suffer, do we become our own saviour? We must once again read them in conjunction with the rest of Scripture to get his meaning.

First of all, what was the purpose of Christ’s suffering? Jesus suffered in His body – as a perfect, sinless human being because He had to be our substitute in every way. His suffering and death as God’s sacrificial lamb atoned for sin, took sin away and brought about cleansing of the heart and conscience for those who believe in Him. He suffered in obedience to the will of His Father, without retaliation or threats, entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.

The theme of Peter’s letter is suffering, especially in the context of the cruel and unjust persecution of believers. How were they to respond to injustice? Peter’s message to them was – take it on the chin, just like Jesus did. Why should they? What good would it do them to be sitting ducks for every person who had it in for them for whatever reason? What benefit would it be to them?

Peter’s response: It’s about your attitude. Paul spoke about attitude as well. His words to the Philippian church were – have the same attitude as Jesus had (Phil. 2:5-9). He gave up all His rights as God to come to earth as a human being. He humbled Himself from being God to becoming a man, a slave and a condemned criminal. You can’t go any lower than that! Why did He do it? Because the Father required it of Him if He was to be the Saviour of the world.

Suffering for doing the right thing has a purging effect. Jesus said that persecution for His sake is a reason to rejoice, firstly because of our identity with Him and secondly because we are in good company (Matt. 5: 11, 12). The prophets of old suffered persecution and even death for proclaiming God’s word to His rebellious people. Persecution for Jesus’s sake sets people apart as belonging to Him. Who would be willing to lay down his life if he was not convinced of the truth?

One does not indulge in every form of wickedness and, at the same time, live in the conviction that Jesus is Lord. It just does not work that way. People are persecuted because their righteous lives are a threat to the wicked. Ungodly people hate godly people because godly lives show up the wickedness of the wicked. Their response is not to change but to get rid of the one whose good behaviour offends them. Religious people did that to Jesus and they will do it to anyone whose godly life offends them.

Peter’s counsel was: Don’t stop living a godly life because it gets you into trouble. Be like Jesus. He trusted His Father for justice and did God’s will anyway. If you take up that attitude, you won’t want to fulfil the evil desires that would pull you away from God. The people around you indulge every whim; they live to satisfy every lust, but your focus must be on doing God’s will. That’s the evidence of your true sonship.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2: 15-17)

To sum up then, the way Jesus lived and died is an example for us to follow. No matter what people did to Him, He trusted the Father and lived to do His will. His suffering did not destroy Him. On the contrary, it brought about our salvation. In the same way, if we suffer for our faith in Jesus, it will not destroy us. It will help to purge us from living sinful lives because we cannot experience persecution for our faith in Christ and live to satisfy our evil desires at the same time.

Our suffering does not take away our sin. Jesus’s suffering did that for us. However, it does take away our desire to sin because our hearts are set on living for Jesus and not for ourselves.

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.