Monthly Archives: December 2021

BUT WE SEE JESUS

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BUT WE SEE JESUS

But we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste of death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered. (Heb. 2: 9, 10).

God’s purpose for mankind is a lofty one – to rule over His creation as His vice regent. But we have a creation in rebellion, triggered by man’s rebellion in the beginning.

The writer to the Hebrews caught the vision of David’s song of praise to God, recorded in Psalm 8. As great and immeasurable as the universe is, God created mankind to have greater glory than the majestic grandeur of the universe. He made man in His own image and gave Him a role that not even angels have been given – to manage the earth for Him as kings and priests.

However, it has not yet come to pass as God intended. Man has squandered God’s resources and mismanaged His creation. He has interfered with the interconnectedness of the created order and brought destruction instead of maintaining order and harmony. God’s intention still stands but it would take a cataclysmic event to set everything right and get it back on track again.

This is where Jesus comes in. God’s sons and daughters failed to fulfil His mandate, choosing their own rules and messing everything up. God needed one obedient Son to put it all right, so He sent His own Son, made an exact replica of the original man, to do what the first man was supposed to do. Obedience to the Father was the key.

Just as Adam was the representative of the human race, but failed and brought disaster on us all, so Jesus was the representative of the human race to undo what Adam did. He lived the life of a perfect son, and then took the rap for all our failure. God accepted His death as a substitute for us and reckoned us to be perfect sons and daughters just as Jesus was a perfect son.

Angels can never be what God created man to be, and angels can never do what Jesus did to put right what went wrong. Jesus, as representative man, the last Adam (and there will never be another beginning to the human race because Jesus achieved what He set out to do), leads the charge to fulfil God’s plan for the whole of creation.

God never gave up on His plan to have a family of perfect sons and daughters, free of sin and living in union with Him, with all mankind and with all of creation. Through suffering as a human being, subject to the weaknesses of humanity, and suffering for the sin of the world as our perfect substitute, Jesus pulled off God’s rescue plan. Sin and its penalty gone, He is free to bring ‘many sons to glory’. What does that mean?

Does it mean that He will take us to heaven when we die? That and much more! Glory implies the radiance of who God is – His character and attributes. As heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, we have an inheritance that is our right as His sons and daughters. What is our inheritance? The Bible only hints at the nature of our inheritance in Christ, using all-inclusive words like the following:

1. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32) – God has given the kingdom to His true sons, but not to those who lives, not their words, deny their allegiance to Jesus.

2. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matt. 5: 5). Those whose strength is harnessed for service will have a part in managing the earth for God.

3.  He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? (Rom. 8: 32).

4. 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: 4).

These are all-inclusive promises summed up in Paul’s words:

‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived ‘- the things God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Cor. 2: 9).

The summit of our inheritance as God’s children is that we will once again be bearers of God’s image and His divine nature as he intended. Jesus will lead us into our inheritance as God’s perfect children just as He is.

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 MINISTRY OF ANGELS

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THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS

It is not to angels that He subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified:

‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour and put everything under their feet.’

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. (Heb. 2: 5-8)

Angels have their place in God’s order of things but, unlike mankind, they do not rule. They are spirit beings but they were not created in the image of God. They praise, worship and serve God; they rejoice over the works of God; they are instruments of God’s judgment; they carry out God’s will on earth; they protect God’s people and accompany those who have died. Although they are spirit beings, they are personalities who possess intelligence, emotions and will.

Whatever the Bible says about angels in the context of their most important function, to serve God, one thing is clear – they have a lower position and function in God’s order of things than human beings. They may be beautiful and powerful in their specific roles but they are lesser beings than mankind for three very good reasons:

1. They were not created in the image of God.

The glory they have is not the glory of God which He breathed into the first human pair at their beginning. God’s glory is manifested in His nature. Although the whole of mankind fell from that glory when Adam and Eve sinned, it was always God’s intention to restore Him image in redeemed humans so that they may be a reflection of Him to all of creation, and especially to the fallen angels who are against God.

As part of our inheritance, God has restored His nature to those who are reconciled and reconnected to Him by faith in His Son. Through His very great and precious promises we appropriate that nature and, by doing so, we escape the corruption that is in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1: 4).

2. They were not created to be one with God.

In His great love, God opened the Trinity to the human race to become one with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to share the love and intimacy they enjoy with God and with one another, just as there is perfect unity and perfect harmony within the triune God.

Jesus’s prayer on the eve of His crucifixion reflects God’s highest intention for the human race. 

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one even as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17: 20-23).

3. They were not given the mandate to rule over the earth.

God created the human race to be managers of His earth. They were not to control one another but to rule over the natural world and to manage it under Him and for Him. Although the first human pair fell for Satan’s deception and changed allegiance, God did not withdraw His intention for them to rule. Whatever we have done with God’s creation, He holds us accountable for the way we have managed the earth and used His resources.

His intention has not yet been fulfilled. Humankind has squandered God’s resources through our greed and desecrated His world but there is a promise or restoration and renewal yet to be fulfilled.

Watch this space!

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 LOVING FAMILY

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A LOVING FAMILY

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. (Heb. 2: 1-4)

Perhaps even more treacherous to the faith and faithfulness of the believer than outright temptation, is the tendency to drift. One of Satan’s most effective ploys is to suggest that it is important for us to ‘serve’ the Lord. O yes, he comes to us as an angel of light. ‘God will be pleased with you if you are busy ‘serving’ Jesus,’ he sneers. Unfortunately, we don’t hear the sneer in his voice.

What is the message we heard? Believe in Jesus and receive Him as your personal Saviour so that you can go to heaven when you die? Really? Is that the reason Jesus came? This is not the message of my Bible. Jesus called me to follow Him, to learn from Him and to imitate Him. For what purpose? So that I might have fellowship with the Father as His daughter, redeemed and reconciled to Him through the blood of His Son.

Being a son or daughter of God was His original intention, ruined by Adam’s disobedience, and restored through Jesus the Christ. God wanted a family of humans who would resemble Him and be one with Him so that, through them, He would govern His creation. Living in harmony with Him, with one another and with the world would be a witness to the fallen angels that He is a loving Father, and not a cruel tyrant who evicted them from heaven for their rebellion.

How does a family maintain its loving fellowship? Surely it is by obeying the Father and keeping in touch with Him and with one another! The Father’s greatest pleasure is to see His family being a family. The greatest heartache for any parent is to lose touch with his children and for them to lose touch with one another. Busyness causes them to drift apart and it happens slowly and subtly.

God is a perfect Father. His family is His greatest joy and delight. He gave His people His ‘Torah’, His instructions for living in harmony with Him and with one another so that they could show the world what the true God was really like. The Jews missed it. They were more interested in the pagan gods around them who pandered to their fleshly lusts and selfish ways.

God sent His Son to be the model of a true son who would live every moment in a loving and intimate relationship with Him so that He could know and do the Father’s will. Jesus called twelve men to follow Him. He both taught and showed them how to be sons of God and how to live under the authority of the heavenly Father. The disciples discovered that His way really worked. When the Holy Spirit came on them as He had come on Jesus, they received the power to imitate their Master.

The apostles went everywhere, living and passing on the good news that Jesus was God’s Son and that He had come to set them free from the shackles of sin so they could return to the Father and to Father’s house. They taught those who received the message what Jesus had taught them. The way to maintain their fellowship with Him and with the Father through Him was to ‘remain in Him’ (John 15: 5).

Of course, maintaining their union with Jesus would take discipline and perseverance. The other alternative was to drift and lose their closeness to Him. The problem with drifting is that their natural bent was towards selfish and self-centred living, following and satisfying their sinful desires. If they did that, they would drift back into the ways of death. Sin leads to death. If they did not maintain their life in Jesus, they would surely die.

This salvation was no human invention. The Old Covenant, given to God’s people from Mount Sinai was accompanied by awesome signs which terrified them, Violation of that covenant was serious enough to bring judgment – and it was mediated by angels and ratified by animal blood. What of the New Covenant, sealed by the blood of God’s perfect Son? Who will escape and how will they escape if they drifted away from obeying that covenant?

Obviously, there is no answer. No one will escape. God is inescapable! Why should anyone escape? God cannot treat anyone leniently who ignores or despises the blood He Son shed to bring us back to Him. The answer? Don’t drift! Walk with Jesus one day at a time, remaining in Him and in His word.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and me in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15: 5, 6)

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.

APPOINTED TO BE THE SON

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APPOINTED TO BE THE SON

He also said, ‘In the beginning, Lord, you laid the and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish but you remain; they will wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.’

To which of the angels did God ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’?

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Heb. 1: 10-14)

God spoke, yes! He spoke through the prophets and through His Son, but there is also no doubt that He spoke to the Son. Why was it so important that He speak to His Son? What did He say? The writer used seven quotes from the Psalms to authenticate God’s Son and to set Him apart as superior to the angelic beings.

1. He is superior to angels in His status as a son. He shares the nature and essence of the Father. He is an exact replica of the Father, revealing the Father to the human race in human form. He is also the Father’s heir – the right of a son to receive everything that belongs to the father. As God’s Son, it is His role to ‘continue the house’ through His own life and through those who would believe in Him (verse 5a).

2. He is connected to the Father by the intimate father/son relationship. As a son, Jesus is submitted and obedient to the Father. As His Father, God is the one who has strength and authority and supports and upholds His Son and delegates His authority to the Son (verse 5b).

3. As God’s Son, He is the object of the angels’ obeisance. They bow to Him as superior to them in both essence and function. At His birth, they announced His arrival on earth, and called all mankind to worship Him. (Verse 6)

4. Angels have an inferior role and position in God’s unseen realm. They are spirit beings who serve God around the throne and across the universe (verse 7).

5. By contrast, the Son rules on the throne of God’s kingdom with justice and righteousness which are the hallmarks of His reign. God’s nature, among many other attributes, is joy, The Son manifested that joy in His human nature by being the most joyful person who ever lived. He was ‘anointed with the oil of joy,’ the Jewish way of expressing the exuberance of His joyful nature (verse 8, 9)

6. The Son is eternal. Unlike the universe which He created and which is running down like a clock and will soon be spent and discarded, He is ‘olam – to the horizon’ which never ends. The universe is temporal – it will come to an end, but not the Son (verse 10-12).

7. Jesus is at the Father’s right hand – symbolic of the seat of power and authority. To no angel did the Father ever give the mandate to rule, as He did to the Son. Angels have no greater role than to serve (verses 13, 14).

As the Son of Man, Jesus came to serve, but He came to serve as the Son. In His service, He enhanced and furthered the work of the Father. As a twelve-year-old boy, He declared that He was to be about the Father and, at the end of His earthly life, He affirmed that He had completed what the Father had sent Him to do (John. 17: 4).

In spite of the evidence of Scripture, there are those who deny and reject the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. It is this fact upon which the whole of Christianity rests. If Jesus is not the Son of God, everything He said and did falls flat. The entire superstructure of our faith stands or falls on this. Is He indeed, the Son of God?

There can be no greater authority than God the Father Himself. It is He who spoke the words of affirmation and authority, both in the testimony of Scripture and from His own mouth at the moment of Jesus’ baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration. What did He say?

As soon as Jesus was baptised, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.’ (Matt. 3:16, 17)

After six days Jesus took with Him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There He was transfigured before them. . . While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!’ (Matt. 17: 1, 2, 5)

From the mouth of the highest authority, Jesus is indeed the Son.

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.

SUPERIOR TO ANGELS

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SUPERIOR TO ANGELS

For to which angels did God ever say: ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father’? Or again, ‘I will be His Father, and He will be my Son’? And again, when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship Him.’ In speaking of angels He says, ‘He makes His angels spirits and His servants flames of fire.’ But about the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. (Heb. 1: 5-9)

What is this writer saying? All these quotations from the Psalms, which his Hebrew readers would know very well because they would recite and sing the Psalms regularly as part of their worship, we pointing to one person – Jesus, the Messiah. Why was he so bent on proving the Son’s superiority to angels?

Although there is no evidence that the Jews ever worshipped angels, during the Intertestamental period, i.e. the 400 years between the last book of the Old Testament and Matthew, it seems that they did invoke angels,

Who were the angels and what part did they play in God’s scheme of things?

Although the angels are mentioned throughout Scripture, ‘every reference is incidental to some other topic. They are not treated in themselves. God’s revelation never aims at informing us regarding the nature of angels. When they are mentioned, it is always in order to inform us further about God, what He does and how He does it. Since details about angels are not significant for that purpose, they tend to be omitted.’ (https://bible.org/article-god%E2%80%99s-ministering-spirits)

What we do learn, however, is that angels are created beings, they are spirit beings, and they are mere creatures. There are holy angels who do God’s bidding and there are fallen angels who are allied to the devil, the chief of the fallen angels, and who will perish with him when Jesus comes as Judge.

Why did this writer then, take pains to explain to his readers that Jesus is superior to angels?

The purpose of the author, in stringing seven quotes from the Old Testament together, was to overwhelm his readers with the evidence that Jesus is superior to the angels by virtue of His relationship to the Father. He is the Son of God as opposed to angels who are only servants, ministering spirits who do His bidding.

Jesus is God’s chosen Son, in the Davidic line, with authority to rule in righteousness over the kingdom of God. He is also the object of angelic worship which makes Him superior to angels. His reign is eternal over this world and the entire universe.

His readers must take heed, therefore, that they recognise Jesus for who He is. From the prophetic utterances of God through the prophets and the confirmation of prophecy through the revelation of Jesus in history, there can be no doubt that He is the Son of God and therefore has a supreme position in God’s scheme of things.

What are the implications for us?

1. Since Jesus occupies the place of supremacy over all creation, He must, of necessity occupy a supreme place in our lives as well. He takes precedence over every person and every circumstance that touches our lives.

2. Jesus has all authority and holds all power in the universe. We must submit, therefore, to His authority in all things and trust Him to order our circumstances to fulfil His will in our lives, both good and bad.

3. He alone is to be worshipped, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the triune God. He has been given the name above all names and the place of highest authority by the Father. We are to honour and live for Him and through Him alone.

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.