Monthly Archives: November 2020

HE DESTROYED THE BARRIER

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HE DESTROYED THE BARRIER

But now in Christ, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace (Eph. 2: 13-15a).

Racism is everywhere. It’s as old as humanity itself. People just can’t get along with others if they are a little different from themselves. If his skin colour or culture differs from your own, that is a reason to hate and to persecute him. Some governments have, in the past, built racism into their constitution and have made it legal to hate and to side-line those whom we want to hate. It seems that racism is deeply encoded into our fallen nature to despise those whom we consider less than ourselves.

It was no different in Jesus’ day. In fact, the Jews believed that God wanted it that way. He had instructed them, from the beginning of their history, to have nothing to do with the heathen. They were not to fraternise with their neighbours and they were under no circumstances to take part in their heathen worship.

Of course, God had a reason for giving them these prohibitions. He knew that any contact with the pagans around them was dangerous. They had already proved their fickleness when they were hardly out of the land of Egypt, where they had learned and adopted the ways of the Egyptians. They insisted on worshipping an object which they thought represented their God when He had forbidden them to worship a man-made image of Him.

They, unfortunately, believed that God hated the heathen. They thought that that was the reason for His antagonism towards them. He could not get them to understand that it was their evil religion that He hated, not the people themselves. The Israelites got into trouble with God and were severely punished for worshipping idols and adopting the wicked behaviour of the pagans. Because of that, they swung in the opposite direction, hating and despising the Gentiles to the extent that they tried to kill Paul for taking the gospel to the Gentiles in Europe and Asia Minor.

They had not realised their mission in the world was to obey God’s directions for living, recorded for them in the Torah, the five books of Moses, so that the heathen would see the true God through them and leave their idolatry to worship Him. They believed that God wanted them to have nothing to do with the Gentiles. It was perfectly acceptable for them to hate non-Jews because God hated them, so they thought.

However, the message of Jesus was completely different from their philosophy. Jesus came to reveal the Father’s true nature to His people – His love and compassion for the world which He demonstrated by sending His Son to live as a perfect son. and die a criminal’s death to pay the debt of sin of the whole human race. God’s plan was to reconcile all people to Himself, to do away with race, colour and cultural distinctions and to create a new race of people who love one another in His family.

There is no legislation that can get rid of racism. We have an inborn capacity to hate and be suspicious of those who are different from ourselves. Legislation won’t take it away and not even the decision to be tolerant will take it away. We cannot change our own hearts. Racial prejudice is part of our old nature. It needs the radical intervention of God to change our nature, give us a new heart, and release in us the love of God which views people from a different perspective.

The miracle of the gospel, the marvel of what Jesus did on the cross, is that God actually intervenes in our lives to activate His nature in us when we relinquish control to Him. He did what man cannot do. He took away our animosity and mistrust towards one another and replaced it with a new attitude of acceptance and love.

I experience this every day of my life. I belong to a church family made up of a spread of people from many different cultures and people groups. We experience unity and harmony in our fellowship that is deeply embedded in Christ. Racial tension has been obliterated and replaced with love and trust, patience and tolerance which is not forced on us. It is not unnatural or fake.

God, through Jesus, has taken away the reason for animosity. We no longer live in fear or mistrust of one another because we are not slaves but sons. God has given us the Spirit of adoption. We are now brothers and sisters in Christ, belonging to the family of God and having the same Father.

This is the remarkable miracle God does in the hearts of those who put their trust in Jesus and return to the family of God. By the power of God through what Jesus did on the cross, we come back to God’s original plan what we should be one with Him and with one another in the Father’s love and under His authority.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

WITHOUT HOPE

Bible Study, ,

WITHOUT HOPE

Therefore, remember that formerly you who were Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men) – remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2: 11-12).

What does it mean to be without hope? I think it’s like being in a dangerous situation without any promise or possibility of rescue.

I have read many stories of slavery in America before their emancipation as a result of the Civil War. Cruel slave masters, who cared nothing for the wellbeing of their slaves, ripped families apart. Mothers screamed and wept when their children were dragged away from them. Husbands and wives were cruelly separated. Their masters owned them and treated them like property. They were a people without hope.

Then there are those who are ensnared by habits which they cannot break – substance abuse, sexual promiscuity, anger, bitterness, greed and selfishness – people without hope. The Ephesian recipients of Paul’s letter would well remember when they were part of an evil and debased religious system which offered them no hope. They were at the mercy of cruel and capricious gods who demanded from them but gave them nothing back.

What must it have been like for them to hear the truth from Paul’s mouth and to respond in faith to the invitation to submit their lives to one who offered them hope? Instead of an uncertain life and an unknown future, what Paul taught them made sense and attracted them towards a God they could trust and a life that was free from fear, guilt and shame. The moment they put their faith in Jesus and their lives under His authority, they experienced the peace in their hearts that had eluded them all their lives.

O, the utter relief of being free from the uncertainties and insecurities that had plagued them all their lives! The hope that held them steady was based on fulfilled prophecy, historical fact and the indisputable proof of the resurrection. No longer did they have to pin their hopes on myths and legends that had nothing to substantiate them.

Their faith was built on the history of a nation that God had called, led and molded for Himself in preparation for the coming of His Son into the world. This nation received God’s covenant and all the promises that offered them hope. The God they worshipped, who had introduced Himself to them as “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving sins . . .” had miraculously intervened to meet their needs and rescue them from their enemies, time and again.

The Jews thought that they had exclusive rights to this God until Jesus came, opened the door to the Gentiles and sent His disciples out to tell the world that there was hope for them, too. Fanatical Jews were incensed by this move and mercilessly persecuted those who dared to obey the Master. Time and again, Paul experienced the effects of their vicious hatred, but he was never daunted by their prejudice.

He wanted his beloved converts to know that they were just as entitled to God’s mercy and grace as were the Jews because the message of Jesus was for the whole world. Although they had once been cut off from God and had no part in the life and benefits of His chosen people, they were now part of God’s people with full rights to all the benefits of His covenant and His promises.

What was this hope of which Paul spoke which had made such a difference to their lives? Have you ever baked a cake or crafted something according to a design? You gather all the materials and follow the instructions because you have a picture, either in your mind or on paper, of the end result. If you follow the instructions carefully, you will produce a replica of the picture before you. The picture is your “hope”.

God has intervened in our lives when we were without hope. We had no idea where we were going and, subsequently, we had no idea how to get there. Jesus made a promise to us. He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He also told us what to do. He said, “Follow me.” He promised that He would take us to the Father if we follow Him.

What is our hope? What will be the end result if we follow Him? He has promised us eternal life in the presence of the Father. Everything that had ruined and made our lives miserable will fall away. We will be perfected and we will have perfect and imperishable bodies, just like Jesus’ resurrected body, and we will live in perfect love, joy and peace with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit forever.

Is that not a hope worth having? There is nothing that can happen to us in this world that can destroy or take away that hope because God Himself has guaranteed and promised us that, if we follow Jesus, we will never perish but have eternal life.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com

HANDCRAFTED BY THE MASTER

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HANDCRAFTED BY THE MASTER

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2: 8-10).

What a different picture from the one Paul painted in the previous verses! We are no longer dead and stinking but alive to God and objects of His grace and favour. How sad that religion drives many branches of so-called Christianity. What do I mean by “religion”? Religion flourishes by rules and ritual. Religion is a “do-it-yourself” attempt to reach God or to satisfy the perceived demands of a god.

Even believers in Jesus often erroneously think that their response to what God has done for them is to “work for God”. But God’s word tells a very different story. God sent His Son into the world to rescue us from the plight sin put us in, not for our sake but for His sake. He wanted a family of sons and daughters bound to Him by love, not a group of slaves bound to Him by fear.

He did everything necessary to bring us back to His original plan because of His mercy. We did nothing to deserve His grace and we can do nothing to earn it. He did it for Himself so that the minions who rebelled against Him would be confronted with the truth – God is love.

Humans find it difficult to accept a free gift so great that it transfers us out of the devil’s clutches and places us in the hands and under the care of a gracious Father. We would rather attempt to repay God for His kindness in some futile way which does not impress God at all. God is not a tit-for-tat God like the gods of the heathen. If you do this for Him, He will do that for you. Everything He did to save us from self-destruction, He did for Himself, and He gives is to us as a free gift of His grace.

But that does not mean that we simply take everything and give nothing back. As sons and daughters of God, there is a response He requires of us, but it is not a response of repaying our debt. It is the response of the children of God who adore their Father and serve Him out of love and gratitude.

A study of the gospels will reveal that there are five characteristics of a true son which Jesus mirrored in His life on earth.

  1. A son loves his father

A religious leader once asked Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment?” to which Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” Love for God is the atmosphere in which a son of daughter lives.

  1. A son trusts his father

If there is no trust between a father and his child, he then lives like a slave in fear. Love and trust are the basis of the other three characteristics of a son or daughter.

  1. A son submits to his father

Jesus is the perfect model of a submissive son. Even when He faced His greatest battle in the Garden of Gethsemane, He submitted to the Father’s will, and not with gritted teeth but with love and trust.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Hebrews 5:7

  1. A son obeys the father

A son does not grudgingly obey or give in to the father under compulsion. Obedience is the hallmark of love. Jesus said to His disciples, “If you love me, you will do what I command you.”

Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 1 Hebrews 5:8-10

  1. A son serves his father

This is not the service of a servant but the service of partnership, doing the Father’s will with Him to fulfil the Father’s greater purpose of establishing His kingdom on earth.

The good works of which Paul speaks are not random acts of kindness because we feel sorry for people in need. They are the integrated actions of God’s people which reveal His character to an ungodly world. When we live in harmony and fellowship with the Father, He will reveal His will to us and enable us to carry out His plans in partnership with Him to bring a wayward family back to Himself.

Whatever it involves in the way of acts of compassion and kindness towards others, God wants to reveal Himself through us so that those who have been deceived by the devil into hating God, will see Him in us and turn to Him in faith.

Paul said that we are God’s masterpiece, handcrafted by Him to carry out His will on earth by doing what He planned for us to do long before we were born.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

 

DEAD AND STINKING!

Bible Study, ,

DEAD AND STINKING!

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit which is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were all by nature objects of wrath (Eph. 2: 1-3).

Have you ever smelt the stench of rotting flesh? It is not pleasant, to say the least. If dead flesh smells bad, what do you suppose a dead spirit smells like to the Father? From God’s point of view, we were dead in our sinful nature and lifestyle – dead to Him because our sin created a chasm between Him and us and left us lifeless and alone.

What a gloomy picture of the people in the world who have nothing to do with God and are therefore nothing more than empty shells with no real life in them! Paul vividly describes all of us in our state of alienation from God – selfish, ungodly, and living only to gratify every craving and desire with no thought for the way our lives and behaviour affect others.

The world of entertainment and what it dishes up, including the filth that Hollywood spews out and everything that flows from the mass media – scandal, violence, illicit sex, crime and every form of unsavoury behaviour – is the diet we feed on, and then we wonder why the world is so bad. Sin is like a snowball. The more sin we feed on, the more sin we practice.

Paul makes no excuse for anyone. Whoever we are, if we are not in “Christ”, we are all in the same boat. It’s just the degree that varies. Even the most respectable of people are separated from by God by their sin.

Unfortunately for us, unlike the belief system of some religions, God does not weigh our sin and our good deeds in the balance. We were infected with a sin nature from our conception, which we inherited from Adam and which makes us dead to God before we took our first breath. No one has to teach a child to sin. It is as spontaneous as breathing. Even if we teach him to live a moral and upright life, the nature within him pulls him towards sin. No one can see the sins of the spirit – greed, selfishness, lust, jealousy, resentment, bitterness – and the list goes on, but they are there in all of us.

Paul calls us all “objects of wrath”. How can we be under the wrath of God? How fair is that when we were born in sin? Unfortunately, we had no choice in the matter because we are all descendants of Adam. As representative man, he chose to defy God’s instruction and brought condemnation on the whole human race. But not only that. Every time we do what is natural to us, we confirm our own status under God’s wrath. God must punish sin because it is a violation of His holiness.

But, because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raise us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 4-7).

Out it comes in a rush! It’s almost as though Paul enjoyed painting as gloomy a picture as he could about our sinful state so that he could pour out in lavish language, the magnitude of what God has done for us in His Son. How sad that many so-called preachers of the gospel miss it altogether. They present Jesus as the cure for all ills. They preach a message and issue an invitation that makes it sound as though we do God a favour by “accepting Jesus as our personal Saviour”.

God was not obliged to do anything for us. His wrath falls on us because we are responsible for everything we have said and done.  We can blame whoever we like but, in the end, whatever we do and however we live is our choice. We decide how we will respond to whatever life dishes up for us.

God stepped in with a masterful plan to rescue us from our plight, and it had nothing to do with us. In fact, He didn’t even do it because He felt sorry for us. He did it to put His glory on display. It was His opportunity to reveal His true nature to the devil and his minions who are at war with God. He sent His own Son as a substitute for man, to take the rap for what we have done in rebellion against Him, so that we can go free. No more debt. No more guilt. No more barrier between Him and us.

He made it possible for us to have life, to forgive our sin, change our hearts and embrace us as His beloved sons and daughters. Who in their right mind would not respond in love to someone who did that for us?

It’s all about Him from beginning to end. God does not beg us to accept His offer. He graciously extends it to us, in fact, He commands us to repent and believe the gospel… but the response is ours. We can come home to Him and live under His authority and in His family, or we can remain in our dead and stinking state. He will not choose for us.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

THE HIGHLY EXALTED CHRIST

Bible Study, ,

THE HIGHLY EXALTED CHRIST

That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way (Eph. 1: 19b-23).

Jesus could go no lower than death. Death is the fate of the sinner; the body consigned to the dust from where it came and the soul consigned to eternal destruction, separated from God and never able to access Him again.

But it was impossible for death to hold Jesus because He had no sin of His own for which He had to pay. He suffered physical death and separation from the Father for the debt of the world, not for His own and, when the Father accepted the payment for sin’s debt, death could no longer hold Him captive.

It must have been the Father’s greatest moment when the Holy Spirit breathed life into Jesus again. He breathed life into the clay form of the first man, and that took power. But the power God used to raise Christ from the dead was greater power, because He lifted Him from the grave to the highest place in heaven and on earth. During His earthly life, Jesus was harassed by the devil who had the power to lure Him into independence from the Father and disobedience to His will. Jesus never succumbed to the devil’s temptations, but He willingly handed Himself over to death in obedience to the Father.

The Holy Spirit was there, in the tomb, waiting for the moment when He could release the life of God into Jesus’ physical body once again. Not only did He raise Jesus from death to life; He also raised Him from humiliation to exaltation. Jesus took His place at the right hand of the Father, carrying the position of all authority over every power that still claimed authority on earth. Every demonic being is subject to Him.

To be under His feet is a symbolic picture of the supreme power and authority Jesus has in the universe. In ancient times, a victorious king would put his foot on the neck of the vanquished ruler as a sign that he had conquered him (Josh. 10:24). Jesus has His feet on the necks of the devil and every demonic being under him. He has conquered them, and they are doomed. And He has His feet on the neck of death, the last enemy against us.

Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection, the guarantee that He will gather the harvest of men and women who have believed in Him and raise them up to share the glory of His resurrection with Him.

The Father also gave Jesus authority to rule the church. On one occasion a would-be disciple asked permission to follow Him. He wanted to be a part of the band of men who would accompany Him, night and day, year in and year out to learn from Him so that he could be like Him. Jesus declined his request with these words:

Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head (Matt. 8: 20).

As western-thinking people, we translate this statement to mean that Jesus was poor; He had no home and He could not, therefore, take on any more followers. Wrong!

Hebrew people would ask, “What do foxes do in dens; what do birds do in nests?” Dens and nests are the places of reproduction. Jesus was talking about reproducing Himself in the world. He was the head but He did not yet have a body on which to lay His head to reproduce Himself through it. Only after His death and resurrection, through the power of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, was the church born.

Now He had a body, and the Father appointed Him to be head of this body, so that the church, under His authority, could be His representative on earth, reproducing Him in the lives of those who believe in Him.

Some spiritual leaders think that the church belongs to them. They treat the members as though they own them. They mistakenly believe that it is their job to build the church. But Jesus gave His disciples a mandate, and it was not to build His church. He informed them that He would build His church (Matt. 16:18). Their task was to make disciples (Matt 28: 19-20). They would be the living stones out of which He would build His church (1 Peter 2: 4-5).

We must beware of ministers, pastors and priests who lord it over the laity, who claim absolute authority over them and who bind people to themselves. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The shepherd’s job is to care for the sheep under the authority of the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5: 1-4), not to own or control them.

Jesus is the head, and when the body and the head are fused together and functioning as one, He is complete in His task to build the church.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com