Tag Archives: glory

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 world. 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 Privileged People

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A PRIVILEGED PEOPLE

“I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit – I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.” Romans 9:1-5.

What an illustrious pedigree the Jewish people have! Is it any wonder that they are so hated by the rest of the world! The devil has made sure that God and anyone or anything that has to do with Him is thoroughly vilified.

Since the call of Abraham, the Jews have been the most blessed and privileged people on earth. From the first family, they have been surrounded by God’s protection and provision. Abraham was called from his idolatrous environment in Ur to a journey of raw faith in a God who was unseen but real to him. He heard Him speak and learned to follow His instructions with amazing results.

Who else, at the age of one hundred years, when his wife was old and barren, became a father because God said he would? Who else was so blessed that he became so rich and famous in a foreign land that he was respected wherever he went, although he was a nomad?

Abraham’s descendants became so numerous in Egypt that they were a threat to the Pharaoh of a new dynasty who disregarded Joseph’s contribution to his nation? Who else was delivered from slavery in such a dramatic way that it became their signature? God, Israel and deliverance were tied together as their unforgettable identity. “I am the God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Who else received a constitution for their nation, written on stone by His own finger, that has never been surpassed? God’s covenant with His people, if faithfully obeyed, would have elevated them above all other nations in their care for one another and for the foreigners who found shelter among them. It bound them to God in an indestructible union in which He pledged to live among them and be their God. What a God to worship! To belong to Him was the safest relationship in the entire universe.

What other nation had the glorious presence of their God in a visible representation within the very building in which they worshipped Him? Other nations had gods of wood and stone but they were as dead as the material that represented them. Only the God of Israel was among them, symbolised by the unearthly light that radiated His glory from the mercy seat between the golden cherubim above the Ark of the Covenant.

No other temple on earth was as beautiful or lavishly adorned as the temple that Solomon built as a place of worship for his God. It was David’s dream to honour the God he adored with the best he could give – a dream carried out by his son – as a permanent and visible reminder of the glory of their God who was among them.

What other God wanted a family of sons and daughters who would live in harmony with Him and with each other in an eternal bond of love? What other God came in person to His people to tell them and show them how much He loved them – so much, in fact, that He paid the debt of their sin by giving His own life for them?

Is it any wonder that Paul grieved for his people, so much so that, if possible, he would have forfeited his own place in the family of God for them, if only they would believe? But Paul knew, just as it had taken a mind-blowing encounter with the living Christ to convince him of the truth, so his people needed the power of the gospel through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, to bring them to faith in their Messiah.

It had happened in Jerusalem fifty days after the resurrection, when the Holy Spirit fell on the believers and the church was born, Jewish to the core. But, once again, the stubborn hearts of his people turned them from the Messiah and drove many of them into becoming bullying persecutors.

And Paul grieved for their loss.

Acknowledgement

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

 

A Glorious Expectation

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A GLORIOUS EXPECTATION 

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Romans 8:18-22.

Imagine yourself the parent of a child in a school play. Your little one is in the caste for which they have practised and she has talked about for many months. There is great excitement as the day arrives. Parents and friends have assembled from all over the town to watch the performance. The curtain is about to go up. Everyone waits with baited breath for the first glimpse of the children who are dressed in their finery. The props are in place. The music strikes up and slowly the curtain opens, revealing the splendour of the children!

Now imagine the caste being, not the children in a school play, but all the sons and daughters of God throughout time waiting for the curtain to be raised to display them in their final perfection as mirror images of Jesus, their elder brother. The audience is made up of all creation, including the fallen angels who have made every attempt to frustrate God’s preparation of His children for this big moment.

Creation waits with eager expectation because it knows that, in that moment when God’s children are revealed, it will be released from its captivity to death and decay, and it will join God’s children in putting God’s glory in display forever and ever. There will be no more carnivores, killing and devouring fellow creatures. Those that once ate meat will eat grass. There will be no more decay; no vultures will be hunting for carrion; no death of any kind will happen anywhere.

All that went wrong when Adam sinned will be reversed. God will make everything new. He will prove to rebel principalities once and for all, that He was right and they were wrong. Every son and daughter of God will be perfected in righteousness by his or her choice, freely loving and obeying God as their heavenly Father because He forgave all their sin through the death of His Son.

They believed the truth of what He had said and what He had done, and have become sons of God and co-heirs with Jesus. Finally, against all odds, God will have His family of beloved children, and He will be able to put them on display, perfected forever, for the whole universe to see. In that moment, those who have rebelled against Him and refused to believe His Word, will be banished from Him forever.

All the suffering that we are subjected to as part of this fallen world will be nothing compared with the glory that will be revealed on that day. God’s children face, not only the adversities that are part of an imperfect world, but also the hostility of those who are God’s enemies. Instead of evading suffering by joining the world in its sinful rebellion against God, we who remain loyal to Him and walk in His ways, are guaranteed a place in His forever family, and we have the promise of eternal life.

Look around you. Whatever frustrates you now, the destruction of our environment, the exploitation of our resources, the wanton decimation of our beautiful animals for human greed, will be over and those who participate in the mindless devastation, will be removed – forever.

We have a glorious future ahead. Be a part of it!

Acknowledgement

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

 

Love So Amazing!

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LOVE SO AMAZING! 

“‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

“‘Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you and they know that you have sent me.

‘”I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.'” John 7:24-26 NIV.

This beautiful, intimate communication between the Son and His Father breathes the atmosphere of tender love. After a physical and geographical separation from Him of thirty three years, Jesus’ taste of living as a human being in time and space, He was on the brink of experiencing the worst that a human being could ever suffer. It was the necessary gateway to His return to His beloved Father to take His place once again with the Father in the eternal realm.

A new position awaited Him if He completed His mission — to reveal the greatest measure of the Father’s love for His fallen world by being obedient to death, even death on a cross. He would be exalted to the highest place and given the highest name in all the universe. He would be elevated to king, ruling over everything, and head of the church, His body, the composite woman who was destined to be His bride when the universe was restored to its original perfection.

Jesus had spent three years imparting to this group of men whom the Father had given Him, the nature of the Father and the enormity of His love for His human race by teaching and showing them what the Father is like and wooing them back to intimacy with Himself so that they would understand how much the Father loved them and desired their love in return.

He had done what He could and finished the task, sowing the seeds of the words God had given Him into His disciples in the confidence that, when He had returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit would continue the work of nurturing in them the knowledge of the truth.

It was time to go. In one last expression of desire, He poured out His soul to His Abba. So precious had these men become to Him that He wanted them to be as close as they could ever be to Him, with Him, by His side so that they could gaze on His glory, the glory He shared with the Father before the beginning of time.

Yes, they had been with Him on earth, listening, watching and marvelling at a human being so different from all other humans that it took every effort of His to teach them that He was truly the Son of God. But this was only preparation for what was yet to come, something so otherworldly that the Apostle Paul could only declare, “No eye has seen, no ear had heard…” No imagination could stretch to embrace so glorious a being whom they were yet to see.

So deep was His love for them that He wanted to share it all, not only His place in eternity with the Father but the environment of love so pure and so all-embracing that He would give them not only His love and the love of the Father but His very position of power and authority in His universe — His throne. To be “in Him” is to be in everything He is and share in everything He owns.

Who can fathom the mystery of being “in Christ”? Through His Spirit we are in such intimate union with Him that our spirits have been fused to His Spirit, inseparably joined to Him so that we have become one. This does not mean that we have become gods! Nowhere in God’s word does He even suggest such nonsense. No, He has restored us to the place of oneness with Him that He created in His first human pair.

It was God’s intention that Jesus, through His death on the cross, would reconcile all things to Himself — “For God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.” Colossians1:19, 20 NIV restoring perfect harmony in the universe, the environment He prepared as a home for His children.

Religion Or Righteousness?

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RELIGION OR RIGHTEOUSNESS?

“Whoever speaks on his own does so to gain personal glory, but He who seeks the glory of the one who sent Him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about Him.

“‘Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?’

“‘You are demon-possessed,’ the crowd answered.’who is trying to kill you?’ Jesus said to them, ‘I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy in the Sabbath. Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you so angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.'” John 7:18-24 (NIV).

Jesus had them! He saw right into their hearts and put His finger on the real issue. These people had their own agenda for “keeping” the law of Moses. In other words, the law of Moses was their excuse for following a religion that was to their own advantage.

Let’s look at it carefully. The first thing He exposed was their motive. It was definitely not to do God’s will. Had that been their intention, they would have recognized Him as God’s Son and representative and His teaching as the truth from God. What was their motive, then? They enjoyed the limelight and the accolades they received from their admiring followers. They loved being put on a pedestal to be honoured for their “holy” lives!

They were not interested in the real reason why God gave them His teaching — to replicate Him on earth so that the surrounding nations would have a picture of their God.  They hated Jesus for exposing the falseness of their claims to be followers of Moses. If they were true followers of Moses, they would not have hatred and murder in their hearts.

They vehemently denied His accusation that they were out to kill Him, even accusing Him of being demon-possessed. They resorted to character-assassination to cover up their own evil intentions.

Jesus went right to the core of their wicked hearts. They circumcised a baby boy on the Sabbath because it was what the law required and they did no count it as “work”. However, when Jesus rescued a paralysed man from the misery of his imprisonment and gave him back his life, they pounced on Him for breaking the Sabbath. What was the difference?

They saw circumcision as a requirement of the law but they ignored the equally important requirement of showing mercy to those in need. Circumcision was not as powerful a revelation of God’s character or as demanding of themselves as was kindness to a fellow human being. It was the goodness of God revealed by Jesus through His compassion for people that they could not stomach.

There are two things that offend people — goodness and wickedness. Goodness offends evil people and wickedness offends good people! Behind the rage that was stirred in the hearts of these Jewish religious leaders was the real reason why they were so offended by Jesus’ action; He was good and they hated Him for it and they were self-deceived.

Self-deception is the worst form of deception because people believe their own lies and live according to what they believe. The Jews  believed that it was more important not to do what they classified as “work” on the Sabbath, which took on ridiculous and petty proportions, than to show mercy to someone in need. This was a complete reversal of the law and the heart of God.

Herein lies the difference between religion and the kingdom of God. Religion focuses on performance even to the point of killing others if they do not comply. Jesus showed us that the kingdom of God is about living in unity with God in loving and caring for all of creation, including all people, even our enemies. True righteousness is doing the right thing to everyone in need regardless of colour or culture.

Jesus did! And so should we!