Monthly Archives: April 2021

WITHOUT EXCUSE

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WITHOUT EXCUSE

“But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: ‘Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world.’

“And again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, ‘I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.’

“And Isaiah boldly says, ‘I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.’

“But concerning Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.'” Romans 10:18-21.

So that’s it! Why did God turn away from His own people and open the door of faith to a people who were not in a covenant relationship with Him? As much as God’s people hated the Gentiles, from a human perspective, they only had themselves to blame for rejecting their Messiah and opening the way for the Gentiles to become part of God’s family of believers.

In their zeal for God, the Jews believed that their way of attaining righteousness through observing the law was the right way. They refused God’s invitation to receive the righteousness of Christ by faith as a gift, and forfeited their place in God’s family. Instead of simply believing the message about Christ, which is the way in which faith comes and grows, they stubbornly persisted in trying to do it their way.

There was no lack of opportunity to hear the message – it was proclaimed all day and all around them, but God’s judgment was on them because they were obstinate and disobedient. God does not arbitrarily condemn anyone without giving him an opportunity to believe in Him at the level at what they can see, hear and understand. Even if they never hear the words about Jesus, creation itself speaks of His power and deity to anyone who will listen.

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress that truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”  Romans 1:18-20.

However, God is determined to have a family. Since the Jews both refused to obey Him and refused to be His messengers to the Gentiles about Him, He opened the door to the Gentiles anyway, every though they did not purposely seek Him. Such is the love and mercy of God that He offers His free gift of grace to anyone who will receive it. He does not force Himself on those who do not want Him. The message is clear, even in the world around, but if people choose to believe that the universe just happened, or that it was produced by some hypothetical explosion caused by who knows what, then it’s up to them to believe the lies and take the consequences.

Truth can neither be altered nor destroyed. Truth is truth, whatever humans may say. People may decide that the Bible was corrupted or that it is myth or fable or untrue or whatever else they may think about it, but they cannot change the fact that it is the Word of God and that those who believe it are transformed by what they read.

God has mercy and grace for everyone who hears the message and receives Jesus Christ as Messiah and God. For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13.

Acknowledgement

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

FAITH COMES BY HEARING

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FAITH COMES BY HEARING

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

“But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our message?’ Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” Romans 10:14-17.

What a gem of a chapter is Romans 10!

Paul, in this one chapter, sweeps away all the complicated arguments and explanations about religion, even the religion of the Jews, and reveals the simplicity of the message about Jesus. It’s all about believing – not just giving intellectual assent to, but entrusting oneself to the truth that Jesus is Lord, and He is the way to the Father.

You don’t have to search for Him. He is right here – wherever you are – as close as your breath and the words of your mouth. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. There is no longer any distinction because the door is wide open for anyone who believes in Him to enter the kingdom of God and receive the gift of righteousness and eternal life.

To receive this gift and the assurance of eternal life takes nothing more that listening to  the message about Jesus and believing the good news that He has done everything to clear the way for us to return to the Father and be reconciled and restored to Him as His sons and daughters.

But, in order to receive the message, people have to hear it; and in order to hear it, someone must preach it; and in order to preach it, someone must be sent; and that means all of us. To His disciples Jesus gave the commission: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” John 20:21.

Who are His disciples? Surely not only those who physically followed Him during the three years of His public ministry? He commissioned them to go and make disciples – followers who would make more disciples, who would make more disciples…right down to today. If you are a follower, the instruction is for you and for me to tell the message so that others can believe and tell the message.

But hearing the message is not enough. How many times did the Israelites hear the message in the Old Testament era? How many times did the Jews hear the message from the lips of Jesus and from the lips of the apostles and the early Christians, yet they still rejected it? Paul prayed for them and grieved over their stubborn unbelief but nothing would persuade the majority of them of the truth that is in the message about Jesus. But while they refuse to believe, there are many millions that have believed and have experienced the truth of the message.

In verse 17 Paul gives us a little gem about faith. What is the origin of faith? It doesn’t just drop out of the sky. Faith must have a foundation, a substance, some truth that generates confidence and gives us something stable to stand on. What is that foundation, that substance upon which we can pin our hope? It’s the message about Jesus. Every time we read or hear something more about Him, our confidence in Him can grow.

Like patience and all the other virtues we long to possess, faith can be cultivated by exposing ourselves to the message. The more we can discover about Jesus, the more we will be able to trust Him, not only with our eternal destiny but with the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives.

There is no one who cannot respond to the message in faith. It takes nothing more than hearing and believing. No ritual, performance, ceremony, offering, sacrifice or even a pastor or counsellor is necessary to facilitate believing. Just believe and Jesus Christ is yours.

Acknowledgement

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

SO SIMPLE, REALLY

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SO SIMPLE, REALLY

“Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: ‘The person who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that is by faith says: ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:5-9.

Why do we humans make complicated what God has made so simple that even a child can understand?

Righteousness which is achieved by keeping God’s law, takes hard work, is uncertain, and in the end is unattainable. No matter how hard anyone tries, he has already blotted his copybook because he was born with a sinful nature. He is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner.

Where does that leave us? Judged, condemned and sentenced to death! But God threw us a lifeline – Jesus. And Paul says, “You don’t have to try to find Him in heaven or in the grave. All you have to do is speak His name – Jesus, Lord – because He is alive and as near to you as your breath.”

“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess faith and are saved. As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'” Romans 10:10-13.

Can it be any simpler? For the Jew and for the Gentile it is exactly the same. It takes no more than the conviction of the heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and  confession of the mouth that God made Him “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36) to catapult us into the blessings and benefits of a new life in Christ Jesus.

God is not asking for an emotional “meltdown” before we can experience His salvation. The realisation that Jesus is alive and that He is the Son of God, is all that is needed to change the direction of our lives and secure our destiny as sons and daughters of God. Repentance may or may not be the result of an emotional storm, but it does require a change of mind. All God asks of us is that we understand what He has done for us, and receive it by believing it in our hearts and confessing it with our mouths.

In that one simple act of faith and confession, God sets us on the path to recovery; He begins the process of restoring us to whom He designed us to be in the beginning, sons and daughters created in His image to be one with him; and what He made us to do – to manage the earth in partnership with Him as His vice-regents.

He is doing what the Hebrews called tekkun olam – fixing everything that was broken, to the horizon, i.e., into eternity. What a hope! And He does this through His representative -Jesus. This is salvation – it is not a free ticket to heaven when we die; that is only one of the benefits and the end result of the process which begins when we believe and receive Jesus as Lord. Salvation is the journey to wholeness, back to where the human race began before sin intruded and interrupted God’s plan.

God has already determined, from before the foundation of the world, what we shall be and what we shall do as members of His forever family. He has an inheritance for us – our allotted possession which is ours by right as His sons and daughters. What is our inheritance and how do we possess it? According to Peter, our inheritance is His divine nature which we possess through His very great and precious promises.

“His divine power had given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises so that, through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:3, 4.

And all this by simply believing and receiving Jesus Christ as Lord!

Acknowledgement

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

ZEAL WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE

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ZEAL WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE

“Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they might be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” Romans 10:1-4.

How dangerous is zeal without knowledge and sincerity without truth!

Look what those who are zealous for their religious beliefs are doing to those who do not believe as they do. Look what the apostle Paul did to believers in Jesus before he came face to face with Jesus and learned the truth about Him. Look at what Hitler did to the Jews because of his zeal and the zeal of those he brainwashed into believing that they were vermin and needed to be exterminated.

According to Paul, the Jews themselves believed they could achieve righteousness by observing the law. In their zeal, they tried to bulldoze out of existence everyone who believed that Jesus was the way and followed Him as the way to God. In their sincere conviction that they were right, they became guilty of breaking the very law they were trying to uphold.

How could they justify hatred and murder as God’s way of dealing with those who did not believe as they did? Just as Jesus said, they were manifesting the very characteristics of their father the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning.

Whatever the outward circumstances might be, behind every national and international conflict lies the battle between religion and truth. People will kill and people will die for what they believe, whether it be lies or truth. Take the ongoing conflict between Muslim and Jew in the Middle East, or the battle between moderate and radical factions of this religion or that religion. Take the laws that are passed in parliament to wrest the freedom from people to practise their faith according to their conscience. Who or what is the source of all this animosity; this hatred; this belief that you are my enemy if you do not believe as I do?

If we watch Jesus for a moment, we will notice that, in all His dealings with people, be they religious fanatic or weeping sinner, He spoke the truth and honoured their freedom to make their own decision regarding what He had said. Never did He put pressure on anyone to believe His word by force or emotion. Again and again, He brought people back to God’s word as the foundation for what He told them.

“It is written,” was His “slogan”. He used it to silence the devil in the wilderness when he tried to lure Him into acting independently of His Father. He used it to pull the religious opposition back to the true foundation of their beliefs and behaviour. He dismissed their accusations with contempt because they were based on prejudice, not on truth. The words He spoke were an echo of His Father’s words, faithfully spoken in obedience to Him.

This was His way of dealing with unbelievers: “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn him at the last day.” John 12:47, 48.

On every occasion He spoke the truth and gave His hearers the opportunity to believe or reject what He said. Upon them rested the responsibility and consequences of their choices.

How important is the knowledge of the truth as the foundation for what we believe! For the Jews, zeal without knowledge led them away from God and into condemnation instead of the righteousness they worked so hard to achieve. For those who trust in Jesus for His gift of righteousness as God has promised, they are fully accepted, declared not guilty and restored to the family as dearly loved sons and daughters of God.

This is God’s way; it is the truth upon which we can base our lives with all the zeal in the world and, with a good conscience, we can invite others into His family as well.

Acknowledgement

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

ON OR UNDER THE ROCK?

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ON OR UNDER THE ROCK?

“What, then, shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as a way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.

As it is written:

“See I lay in Zion
a stone that causes people to stumble                                                                       

and a rock that makes them fall,                                            
and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”
Romans 9:30-33.                                                          

Isn’t the imagery of the Bible beautiful? Jesus…a rock? This statement conjures up all kinds of mental pictures about the one in whom we are called to put our trust.

Bedrock – strong, stable and immovable, a solid foundation upon which to build a life; cornerstone – holding the building together, giving strength to the structure; stumbling stone – causing people to trip and fall because they will not accept the truth of who He is; cleft rock out of whom flows living water like the water from the rock that satisfied the thirst of the children of Israel in the desert; crushing rock that destroys those who refuse to believe in Him; mighty rock in a barren land that gives shade and shelter to those who hide in its shadow.

Elizabeth Clephane – (1830-1869) – captured the spirit of these beautiful thoughts in her hymn:

“Beneath the cross of Jesus                                                                                       I I fain would take my stand,                                           
the shadow of a mighty rock                                           
within a weary land;                                                               
 a home within the wilderness,   
a rest upon the way,  
from the burning of the noontide heat,   
and the burden of the day.” http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh297.sht                                                                                                                                                                              

Why did the Jews stumble over Jesus? They thought they knew better. Isn’t that the reason why people still stumble over Him today? For whatever reason – religion; childhood traditions; beliefs they have accumulated through misunderstood life experiences – they choose to believe their own beliefs rather than the truth.

What is it about Jesus that causes people to stumble? The cross!

“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” 1 Corinthians 1:23.

Both Jews and Gentiles missed it. The Jews expected a warrior Messiah, disposing of the Romans with mighty acts as He did when He delivered His people from slavery in Egypt. A crucified Messiah was abhorrent to them! They missed the bigger picture – slavery to sin and death and the greater deliverance their Messiah came to bring. They tried so hard to gain acceptance with God through their puny efforts at righteousness, that they missed it because righteousness is a gift given to us at Jesus’ expense.

The Gentiles missed it because God’s wisdom made no sense. Their gods had to be magical and powerful, yet manageable… and visible and plural because one god couldn’t do everything. They needed to manipulate their gods to serve their own ends so they created them in their image. A God who was invisible and spiritual and loving was too much for their minds, so they also tripped over the rock.

The problem is that those who fall over the rock will one day fall under the rock. The only safe place is on the rock!

Acknowledgement

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