Tag Archives: enemies

PEACE THROUGH THE BLOOD

Christian Life, ,

All sorts of ideas flood my mind when I think of the word “peace”. In a world full chaos, people everywhere long for peace. Why is there so much strife in the world?

The Bible gives us the only answer that makes sense. People are at war with one another because they do not know God. From the moment that Adam sinned, everyone was born into the world hating and afraid of God.

Paul said that we were God’s enemies (Rom. 5:10). We were born with no knowledge of God. Despite the evidence, some people even refuse to believe that God exists while many just live as though there is no God. Others defy Him by being as wicked as they can and think that He does not see or know what they are doing.

The amazing thing is that God was not put off by people’s attitudes of anger, hatred and enmity or even indifference towards Him. Long before we were born, He took the initiative and did something unthinkable to bring us back to Himself.

God cared so much about our alienation from Him that He gave His Son, Jesus to pay the price of forgiveness to reconcile us to Himself. Just imagine that! He did what we could never do. He paid the debt for us

For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross (Col.1:19-20 – NIV).

 Peace with God is the foundation for peace in the world. Jesus reconciled us to the Father through His blood and He also reconciled us to our brothers and sisters.

For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two (Jew and Gentile) one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility… His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace (Eph. 2:14, 15b – NIV).

There is only one answer to the conflict between people and nations in the world – peace through the blood of Jesus.

Before He left His disciples to go to the cross, He gave them His legacy – His peace.

“I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” John 14:27 – NLT).

How do we get this peace? Paul gives us a prescription for God’s peace that guards our hearts and minds – Phil. 4:6-7.

With His peace in your heart, you’ll be at peace in the world.

A Deafening Silence

Bible Study, , , ,

A DEAFENING SILENCE

While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked, ‘Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.” David himself called Him “Lord.” How then can He be his son?’ The large crowd listened to Him with delight (Mark 12: 35-37).

Dead silence! They had all exhausted their questions to trap Him, and now it was Jesus’ turn. Asking questions played an important role in the rabbi’s teaching method and an excellent way to get people to think for themselves and to reveal their level of thinking by the questions they asked.

The Pharisees’ big contention with Jesus was: “Blasphemy!” He was a man and yet He was claiming to be God. Many of the people dismissed Him because He was only the son of Mary and Joseph; the village carpenter and one of their locals. The people of Nazareth were enraged with Him and drove Him out of town because He dared to put Himself on the level of their great prophets and even to claim that He was the fulfilment of prophecy!

He was a mere man, therefore He could not possibly be the Messiah, they argued, so Jesus fired a question at them, a very puzzling one at that. Their own Scriptures taught that the Messiah would be the son of David. That meant that He had to be human and one born in the ancestral line of David. Yet, at the same time, speaking prophetically, David addressed Him as “Lord”.

David’s psalm (110) begins with the declaration:

The Lord says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The Lord will extend your mighty sceptre from Zion saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” (Psa. 110: 1-2).

Speaking prophetically under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David addressed Messiah as “my Lord” and attributed to Him the functions of deity, and yet the rabbis recognised Him to be the son of David. There could be only one answer and that was the very thing the religious leaders rejected – Messiah a human being born of the line of David. But there was just too much prophetic evidence of Messiah’s ancestry to deny it or to set it aside. He would be of the tribe of Judah, a ruler (Gen. 49:10); called a “Branch” of the stump of Jesse (Isa. 11:1); Matthew’s genealogy traced His ancestry back to Abraham through David.

Seventeen times in the New Testament Jesus was addressed as the son of David. Even the common people knew that Messiah would come from the line of David. So why were the religious leaders so blinded that they refused to recognise Him as their Messiah? Why did the Jews down the centuries reject Him as their Messiah since the evidence is so clear? Prejudice! They have believed the lie and failed to weigh up the evidence.

There is something about human beings that makes them hate to be wrong. It’s called pride. People will cling to their right to be right even if they are dead wrong. And even worse, they will defend their error to the death rather than acknowledge that they could be wrong and open themselves to the possibility that someone else is right.

If the Jews had only been honest enough to consider the evidence, they would have been confronted with the truth. Truth is truth and will stand up to scrutiny. Jesus’ appeal was for them to consider the Scriptures. “Your word is truth”, He declared in His prayer before His death (John 17: 17). The question is not, “Who is right?” but “What is right?” It takes humility to be teachable. A person who has a teachable spirit is the one who will eventually arrive at the truth. Their passion to be right put these men in line to be deceived and deceived they were, bringing judgment on themselves because they refused to listen to the truth.

Only those who receive Jesus’ words with humility and obedience will really understand and know the truth.

To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8: 31-32).

If they had a mind to receive it, the answer was quite simple. Messiah was both son of David and Son of God. God in the flesh – Immanuel – God with us. John stated it in a nutshell:

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

There was a deafening silence. They knew the answer but they refused to speak it out.

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.

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Once . . . But Now

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ONCE . . . BUT NOW

Once you were alienated from God and enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (Colossians 1: 21-23.

If Paul had not brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Colossians, he certainly intended that they get it loud and clear through this letter! He wanted to be sure that they had it straight, that there would be no doubt in their minds about who Jesus is and on what grounds they could be assured of their salvation.

The Gnostics had tried to lure them away with their airy-fairy ideas about emanations, demiurges and special knowledge only accessible to a select few. Paul’s message was good news for everyone without exception, even the inanimate world and the world of creatures, because Jesus came to set everything right by sacrificing Himself for all of Creation.

Like the entire universe which was thrown off course by Adam’s disobedience, the Colossians were at enmity with God until they heard and believed the good news. Jesus’s message, which became Paul’s message when it was entrusted to him, was a message of reconciliation and hope; not hope as in ‘I hope it will happen,’ but hope as in ‘I know it will happen because God has said so, but not yet.’

What is the hope of the gospel? Holy, without blemish and free from accusation! But how can it possibly be that we, fallen and mortal beings, can ever hope to be perfect, like Jesus? Everything that Jesus is has been given to us as a free gift – His nature, His sinless perfection, His righteousness and His holiness are all ours now, and that’s how the Father sees us. Paul used a little two-word phrase to describe our standing before God – ‘in Christ’. Until we understand the significance of these two words, we will always be insecure, based on our unstable behaviour.

God does not judge us by our behaviour but by our standing – which Paul described as a ‘standing in grace’ (Romans 5: 2). We would never dream of rejecting our two-year-old child because of his immature behaviour. He is our son; he has a standing in the family which he can never lose. It is our responsibility as parents to bring him up to be a mature adult. With love and patience we teach him, correct him and discipline him towards the goal of who he is – our son.

And so it is with God and us. We are His sons and daughters. We have a standing in His family which has been secured by the death of His Son. Since He is God, He already sees the end result, perfect and complete in Christ, and He guides us towards the goal to become what we already are, replicas of Jesus, through discipline and training (Romans 8: 28-29).

There is a question which believers often ask and to which Paul gives a clue here, something to consider seriously. ‘Can I lose my salvation?’ He does not give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. The issues go much deeper than that. However, he does use the little conditional word ‘if’. He does not envisage believers skating as close to the edge as they can. Why would we want to do that?

We cannot be in Christ and in the world at the same time. If we are ‘in Christ’ it means that we have chosen to enter through the narrow gate and to make the day-by-day, moment-by-moment choices which keep us going in the right direction (Matthew 7: 13-14). Wrong choices will take us off course and lead us to the wrong destination.

he solution to going the wrong way is to ‘continue in the faith, established and firm, and not move away from the hope held out in the gospel.’ Jesus called us to follow Him. As long as we keep following, we will not be in danger of getting lost, but if we lag behind or wander off course, who knows where we will land.

Apostle John puts it even more clearly.

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).

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.

 

Only Two Models

Bible Study, , , ,

ONLY TWO MODELS

“For, as I have often told you before, and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Philippians 3:18-21.

Paul urged his beloved Philippian believers to follow his example because he modelled his life after the pattern and example of his rabbi, Jesus. If they, in turn, followed him, they would be safe from the ravages of the world’s example which was selfish, self-indulgent and destructive. He even called them “enemies of the cross of Christ”.

I wonder whether those who call themselves “Christian”, even those who no more than tip their hats to God on a Sunday or at Christmas and Easter but live like the world, realise that they are His enemies. Whenever we stray into the dominion of the flesh, which is not the way He calls us to live, we become His enemies because self, under our old master, rules the appetites of our old nature.

The other model we have to follow is that of our rabbi, Jesus. Paul assured his readers that they had dual citizenship. They had no option but to be citizens of this world because they lived in it and were obliged to obey the laws of their country as far as they were able.

But they were also citizens of the kingdom of heaven. They were already resident in the realm of God’s rule, body, soul and spirit if they willingly submitted to His Spirit in them. The unseen presence of God called them away from fleshly indulgence to a life of obedience to Him and unselfish service to one another.

Those who live in God’s kingdom have not yet seen their king, but they await His coming with eager anticipation, His return heralds their final liberation from the old nature and will fulfill their hope of a resurrection body perfected like His body, never to suffer pain or sickness, and never to die again.

His return promises, not only the final transformation of His own but also the restoration of all things – the universe and all nature corrupted by the fall. This is as much part of our hope as our own salvation completed and perfected on that day. If we allow our imagination to take us into the future, what will it be like? Although we have no experience of living in a perfect body in a perfect world, at least we can think about ourselves and the animal world living in harmony and the natural world without bugs and weeds!

Paul encourages us as he encouraged the Philippians two thousand years ago, to anticipate and live in that realm now. It’s worth the discipline and the wait. If we live in and for our selfish appetites and desires now, we disqualify ourselves from enjoying the eternal bliss of a life beyond our imagination. Is it worth it? We can’t have both.

Like Jesus, Paul viewed all the events of his life, good and bad, from God’s perspective and adjusted his thoughts, his attitude and his responses towards trust and obedience. Circumstances that seemed disastrous at the time turned out for the good when he trusted God instead of resisting and rebelling. Even his imprisonment, uncomfortable as it was, turned out for good, and he was able to rejoice, first in the outcome and then in anticipation of the outcome because Jesus was in the driving seat,

Paul experienced this so often that he could say with confidence that Jesus would put everything right when He returned and took up the reins of government here on earth. We can only be part of that righteous rule if we submit to Him now and live in this world as citizens of His kingdom. We have to make the choice now. Which model are we to follow? Following the world’s model takes no effort at all. Just keep going as we are. To follow Jesus means learning to say no to our selfish desires and yes to His Spirit in us.

We are free to choose our way in life but we are not free to choose the consequences. Follow Jesus and the outcome is eternal life. Follow the flesh and the result is unthinkable

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 Table-land Of Plenty

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A TABLE-LAND OF PLENTY

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Psalm 23:5.

What lies beyond the dark valley and why do the sheep have to go through it? Why can’t they stay in the green pastures and beside the quiet waters? After all, isn’t that all they need?

I am not familiar with the care of sheep, especially those in the Middle East, but I am told that the best, sweetest and most nourishing grazing for sheep is on top of the mesa, the table-land where the rain falls and the grass grows lush and thick.

The good shepherd knows his sheep and he knows his grazing. He wants the best for his sheep, even if it costs him time and effort to find it and to prepare it for them. He goes ahead of his flock, finds the mesa where the sweetest grass grows and prepares it for his sheep. He clears it of poisonous and obnoxious weeds and drives off the wild beasts that may endanger his animals. Then he returns to the flock.

When the time is right, after checking the mesa a second time, he leads the flock through the valley that takes the safest route to the table-land. The sheep may not find the way easy but they follow the shepherd because they trust him and they know his voice. After safely negotiating the treacherous path through the dark valley, they finally reach the table which is laden with the good things a sheep needs to flourish.

In perfect safety they graze, confident that, even though they are surrounded by “enemies”, the shepherd is there to guard and protect them. They can graze in peace because no harm will come to them.

In the warm sunshine, flies breed and multiply. They bother the sheep, some even laying their eggs in the soft mucosa of the sheep’s nostrils. The shepherd pours olive oil on the heads of his sheep to keep the flies away. He does more than just rub a little oil on their noses. He douses their heads so that there is no chance for the flies to alight on the sheep. The oil soothes their itchy skin and they can continue to graze in comfort.

David was well aware of the time and effort it took to care for the sheep. It was a much bigger job than just leading them out and lazing around in the sun watching them while they grazed. A shepherd faced dangers from wild animals. He had to stand between them and the flock, drive them off, rescue the lambs which a lion or bear might take, if he could, and stay alert for an ambush.

He had to know the plants which were harmful to the sheep. He had to find the best pastures and the quiet streams. He had to know the terrain and keep the sheep away from dangerous ravines and precipices. He had to lead them along safe paths. He had to find the easiest and safest route to the table-land. He had to prepare the “table” before he led them there to graze, clearing the pasture of unsafe plants and driving away the wild beasts.

Looking back over his life, David realised that God had been all that, and more, to him. It was heartening for him to know that even the darkest valleys he had gone through were the way to the table-land. There was a rich reward for trusting the shepherd and staying close to him.

Did he think about the years of running from Saul, living in caves, eating off the land like a wild animal and having to stay alert, day and night, in case of an ambush? His shepherd was there, always beside him, leading him safely through until he reached the table and was able to partake of the rich fare the shepherd had provided. He found strength, grace and mercy at the table.

His shepherd took care of the big things, the “enemies” that threatened his life, and the little things, the “flies” that troubled him. He had the anointing of the oil of the Spirit who enabled him to rule his people wisely with a kindly and merciful attitude. He was not a ruthless tyrant like some of his descendants. He was a living example of a godly king. He was passionate about God; he set up twenty-four hour worship and made extravagant preparations for the building of the temple. O yes! David was wholeheartedly for God. This was the grace on his life because of the “oil” that kept the “flies” away.

David’s shepherd is our shepherd. On the other side of every dark valley is a table-land which the shepherd has specifically prepared for each one of us. There is a bounty of God’s goodness waiting for us when we have gone through the valley. This is the reward for trusting and following Him when we cannot see the way.

“And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28.

Acknowledgement

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.