Tag Archives: hope

The God Of The Bible

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THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each one should please his neighbours for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please Himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’ For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” Romans 15:1-4.

The Old Testament, apart from being the root of our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is a rich source of examples of how God revealed Himself to His people and interacted with them. It was His purpose to show them who He was and what He required of them. As we read the stories of the ancients, we gain insights into His character and how we can relate to Him as they did, sinful beings though we are.

Imagine, for a moment, that the Scriptures began at Matthew 1. Who was Matthew and who were the people he wrote about? Where can we find information about them? What about their religion and culture? Who was this Jesus who featured so big in his stories? What about Matthew’s many quotes from a source he seemed to regard as authoritative? How did the Jews get there in the first place?  Why were they being oppressed by a power called Rome? And on and on…

So many questions remain unanswered without the first half of the book. Yet many believers start reading at the beginning of the New Testament, ignoring the fact that it makes no sense without the Old, and then wondering why they don’t understand it, or why their own interpretations don’t make sense or, even worse, lead them astray.

God gave us a story book for a very good reason. We love to read stories, not only because they capture our interest, but also because we learn things from the mistakes and achievements of their characters. We are inspired by the example of great people; we gain insights and wisdom through their struggles; we celebrate and desire to imitate their victories and we love to journey with them in their world, because it is a real world, not a world of make-believe.

How many of us would be enthralled by a book of instructions or a book of deep theology? Those kind of books gather dust in the library and are only written and read by the boffins, while biographies, autobiographies and novels circulate regularly among the readers.

Paul encouraged the people in the church at Rome, many of whom were Gentiles, to study the writings we now call the Old Testament. From it they would learn and gain understanding of the God and the people with whom they had become identified. They would be inspired and encouraged by the stories of people who were sustained, supported and led by the God who loved them and had patience them even when they disobeyed Him again and again.

Unlike the gods whom they once worshipped, the God of the Bible is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, a generous God who met their needs, fought their battles and kept on giving in spite of His people’s unfaithfulness.

Their stories would be repeated in the lives of the readers as they gained knowledge and confidence in the God who is revealed in the sacred writings. Unlike the stories of the gods which were the ramblings of someone’s overactive imagination, the stories in the Bible are true and verifiable through history and archaeology. As we read, they provide us with encouragement and hope, because the same God who loved and cared about people in its stories, loves and cares about us.

The Bible is a never-ending story. God is still writing it through the lives of His people down the centuries. Your story and mine are being carefully recorded and will be read when the books are opened at the end of time. There is another book being written as well – called the Lamb’s Book of Life. It contains the names of everyone who through faith in God’s Messiah and lives that are the fruit of their faith, have crossed over from death to life.

Everyone’s name is recorded in that book and only erased if he or she fails to be trusting the Saviour  and living in righteousness when they pass forever from this life to the next.

“Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life will be thrown into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15.

How sad if you neglect to read the book and obey what it teaches! Your name will be erased and will not be there when the books are opened.

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.

 

A River Of Consequences

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A RIVER OF CONSEQUENCES

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:1-5.

It had happened. We have been justified. It is a cut-and-dried fact!

But justification releases a river of consequences. The first one is peace with God. The war is over. God and man have been reconciled. God and we have “smoked the peace pipe” and there is no longer any reason for Him to be at odds with us. The solid ground of peace with God is that the reason for the war has been removed. Where once the broken law was the issue, it no longer exists. Jesus has satisfied God’s holy standards by living a perfect life and then doing away with the law as a standard of judgment.

Jesus has become God’s standard of judgment and, because we are now “in Him” through faith in Him, we wear His righteousness as a covering for our sin. Justification, and the peace with God which follows, is our legal standing before Him. We can approach Him without fear, look Him in the face and receive His smile of approval because there is nothing left to condemn or separate us from Him.

Through Jesus, we have been given access into God’s grace – all His resources of love, strength and enabling that we need to live our lives in and for Him. We have a standing in grace – we are surrounded with His favour as David experienced:

“Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous; you surround them with favour as with a shield.” Psalm 5:12.

Another consequence flows from justification – the hope of the glory of God. What does this mean? When Adam sinned, the whole human race was plunged into darkness – selfish and self-centred living that brought chaos and conflict into the world because everyone was looking out for number one. Jesus died in our place, not only to deal with our sin but with our sinfulness as well. That means that, through the power of the Holy Spirit we are being and will be restored to God’s original intention, to be replicas of Him in our nature and behaviour.

But how does that happen? Strangely enough, the very hardships we experience, which we so often use to accuse God of not loving us, or of punishing us for something we have done wrong (which cannot be because God has already punished Jesus for all sin, ours and everyone else’s), are God’s way of knocking off the rough edges so that we begin to understand and share in the hardships of others instead of being self-absorbed and self-centred.

“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as His children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? …They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness, No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:7; 9-11.

Three more consequences flow from our training to reflect God’s glory: perseverance, character, hope. Have you ever noticed how God’s children who have suffered much have been mellowed by it and are full of hope for their future in the life to come? Paul says, “Revel in it! There are indescribably great things up ahead.”

These consequences go full circle – they begin with God’s great love for us and they work in us until God’s love is poured through us to touch the lives of others who, in turn, follow the same pattern, over and over again and on and on. Justified; peace; grace; perseverance; character; hope; love. And it all flows out of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

Acknowledgement

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

 

The Picture On The Box

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THE PICTURE ON THE BOX

“Against hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.

“Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised. That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:18-22.

Faith, hope, love – three words that are often linked together in the Bible. Paul has already defined faith – “calling into being things that are not.” Love is not clearly defined in Scripture, but could be something like this – “meeting the needs of others at our own expense.” But hope?

According to Paul, faith and hope are closely linked together. It is because of our hope that we believe what God has promised. Biblical “hope” is very different from worldly hope which expresses both desire and uncertainty; desire because it is what we want to happen, but uncertainty because we have no solid ground for hoping that it will happen.

Biblical hope, on the other hand is based on what God has promised – sort of like the picture on the box. If you enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles, you’ll understand what I mean. You buy the puzzle because you like the picture. Then you find a suitable place to build it, spread out the pieces and begin to put them together. From time to time you study the picture to make sure that you are following it correctly because you want the end result will look exactly like the picture on the box.

That is the idea of hope. God has made a promise; you keep that promise in mind as you begin to pray, trust God and thank Him for the fulfilment of His Word. Hope is the picture in your imagination of what God has said He will do. Then you watch as God begins to put the pieces together to build the “puzzle”. At first it doesn’t look anything like the completed picture, but faith keeps seeing the picture and trusting God for the outcome.

Hope does not focus on the impossibility of present circumstances. Abraham was fully aware of his and Sarah’s age and the unassailable reality that it was impossible, humanly speaking, for them to have a child. Fact is fact! Sarah was long past menopause, No amount of wishing or willing could change that! Even though people lived much longer in their day, they were both past the age of childbearing. That was it!

Abraham could have given up hope on that fact alone. Instead he set his mind on what God had said rather than what was. That is hope.

From a hymn of Charles Wesley (1707-1789) came these words:

“Faith, mighty faith the promise sees,                                                                                                And looks to that alone;                                                                                                                      Laughs at impossibilities,                                                                                                                    And cries, “It shall be done.”

Hope sees, not circumstances but the ability and reliability of the one who has promised. If a human being had made the same promise to Abraham as God had made, he would have laughed at him. Of course that person had no power to follow through on his promise. But God? The crux of the matter?

“…being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised.”

Why was Abraham “fully persuaded”? Because his faith had grown through believing and obeying God in the process of time. How does faith grow? By following the Lord one step at a time and watching Him work in response to our obedience. Faith grows when it is anchored to our hope as we keep the picture of the puzzle firmly in our imagination.

Acknowledgement

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

 

A Hostage For Hope

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A HOSTAGE FOR HOPE

“Three days later Paul called the Jewish leaders together for a meeting at his house and said, ‘The Jews in Jerusalem arrested me on a trumped-up charge, and I was taken into custody by the Romans. I assure you that I did absolutely nothing against Jewish laws or Jewish customs. After the Romans investigated the charges and found there was nothing to them, they wanted to set me free but the Jews objected so fiercely that I was forced to appeal to Caesar. I did this not to accuse them of any wrongdoing or to get people in trouble with Rome. We’ve had enough trouble through the years that way. I did it for Israel. I asked you to come and listen to me today to make it clear that I’m on Israel’s side, not against her. I’m a hostage here for hope, not doom.'” Acts 28:17-20 (The Message).

Paul was finally in Rome. What would be his first step on this tightrope he was walking across an uncharted chasm? He was not out to curry favour or to get the Jews on his side. He was above that sort of thing.

It was always his earnest desire to set before them Jesus as the fulfilment of their Scriptures and the Messiah they were expecting. But from town to town, city to city across Europe and Asia he had been rejected because of one thing — the cross. No self-respecting Jew was prepared to accept a crucified Messiah. Not all the proof in the world would convince them that the man Jesus, the humble Galilean, was the Son of God and the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament.

It was Paul’s hope that here in Rome he would be able to communicate this truth to the Jewish leaders by his own mouth before they were contaminated by misinformation from their fellow countrymen. Their eternal destiny was at stake. He wanted to share with them the unadulterated truth that Jesus of Nazareth was sent from God, not to get rid of the Romans and make them rulers of the world, but to get rid of sin and make them kings and priests of God.

Because he was already a dead man as far as his own life was concerned, he did not see his imprisonment as a hopeless situation but as a stepping stone to bringing hope to as many people in Rome as he could influence. It did not matter to him where he was or who was in the company. His circumstances were always an explosion of potential and opportunity.

In his letters Paul tried hard to make his readers understand what had happened to them when they bowed the knee to Jesus. Everything changed. This was not a new religion they were espousing but a new domain they had entered. Their allegiance to their old masters, self, sin and the world, had been broken and they had entered a new realm, the realm of God’s rule. They were under the dominion of a new Master, Jesus. He had rescued them from a life of selfishness and self-destruction and set their feet on a new path — loving service fired by a passionate love for Jesus.

They were dead to all their old slave-drivers and alive to their new Master, motivated by His selfless sacrifice for them, and this message was not confined to the Jews but was for the whole world, regardless of their contempt for the Gentiles. They were no better in their hypocritical attitude, as Paul pointed out in his letter to the Romans. Since Jew and Gentile were both guilty before God, Paul’s message was equally applicable to the whole world and he was going to deliver that message, come what may.

It was Paul’s hope that, on the threshold of his sojourn in Rome, whatever the outcome, he would be able to win as many of his countrymen to Jesus as he could before the crazy crackpot Caesar, Nero, decided on his fate. Dying was not his problem. He was ready for that. It was the interlude before his death that occupied his attention and he would do everything he could to win his brothers before he left.

Eternity was a long time to enjoy the fruit of his sacrifice!

Dead Accurate!

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DEAD ACCURATE!

“Agrippa spoke directly to Paul: ‘Go ahead — tell us about yourself.’

“Paul took the stand and told his story: ‘I can’t think of anyone, King Agrippa, before whom I’d rather be answering all these Jewish accusations than you, knowing how well you are acquainted with Jewish ways and all our family quarrels.

“‘From the time of my youth, my life has been lived among my own people in Jerusalem. Practically every Jew in town who watched me grow up — and if they were willing to stick their necks out they would tell you in person — knows that I Iived as a strict Pharisee, the most demanding branch of our religion. It’s because I believed it and took it seriously, committed myself heart and soul to what God promised my ancestors — the identical hope, mind you, that that the twelve tribes have lived for night and day all these centuries — it’s because I held on to this tested and tried hope that I’m being called on the carpet by the Jews. They should be the one’s standing trial here, not me! For the life of me I can’t see why it’s a criminal offense to believe that God raises the dead.'” Acts 26:1-10 (The Message).

Paul was smart! Here was a golden opportunity to tell his story to the king himself and he grabbed it with both hands. Many years before it had been prophesied that he would testify before kings. Did he recall those words at this moment when he stood in the dock before Agrippa? Did he recognised that this was not so much about defending himself against Jewish religious bigotry as it was about bearing witness to Jesus before an auspicious audience?

How attentively Agrippa, and Festus, must have listened to Paul’s story, hoping for a loophole or a slip of the tongue that they could latch onto for a legitimate case against him as the reason for sending him to Rome.

This moment had eternal significance for all who were present in the Great Hall that day. Before Paul stood before them, many of them were ignorant of the truth about Jesus, but once his story had been told, everyone, including the governor and the king, was faced with a choice. This is the real issue regarding the “good news”. Truth always demands a response. Every time Paul opened his mouth to inform his hearers about Jesus, they stood in the dock because even if they ignored the truth, it was a decision and made them guilty and culpable.

Jesus put it this way: “‘As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.'” John 12:47-48 (NIV).

Every lie about Jesus spoken by men in defines of their rejection of Him will collapse like a house of cards. God has spoken! He has appointed Jesus to be the sovereign and supreme ruler over all His creation. Through His obedience, Jesus earned the right to be exalted to the highest place and given a name that is above every name, “Lord”; — the name Satan so desperately covets and deceives people into believing that it belongs to him!

All the exalted claims that humans may make in the name of religion will be exposed at the judgment seat of Christ, and only the truth will remain, for truth alone can never be destroyed because it the very essence of the living God. All the lofty claims in the name of a god, whatever that god or gods be called, will vanish like vapour in the brilliant light and searing heat of Jesus, the King of kings.

Little did these men with such lofty opinions of themselves, know that that was the moment of their trial. In Paul’s testimony he was echoing the words of Moses: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV).