Tag Archives: dead

BLIND, DEAF AND DEAD

Bible Study, ,

BLIND, DEAF AND DEAD

“‘Very truly, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to judge because He is the Son of Man.

“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice will come out — those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.'” John 5:25-29 (NIV).

These are either the words of a lunatic or they are the authoritative words of the Son of God.

John introduced Jesus to his readers as the “Word”. In Hebrew thought this meant God manifest in another form. It was John’s purpose to present Jesus as the Son of God so that all who believe in Him might have life through His name. His claims, therefore, had to be more than the wild babblings of a maniac. What He said had to be backed up by what He was and what He did.

Let’s look at the claims He was making in His attempt to convince His opponents that He was their Messiah. Jesus was doing more than setting out to prove that He was right and they were wrong. He was in a struggle for their lives and their destiny which hung on their acceptance or rejection of His words. 

Jesus had already, early in His ministry, begun to do “signs” to point to the truth of who He was claiming to be. Healing the paralysed man at the pool of Bethesda was His latest sign that had provoked this altercation with His religious opposition. They accused Him of breaking the Sabbath and calling God His Father, making Himself equal with God.

His response was shocking to them. Not only was He calling God His Father, but now He was also asserting that He was doing the things only God can do because the Father had given Him the authority to do them, for example, to Him was given the power to raise the dead, the authority to judge and equal honour with the Father. He even went as far as to declare that those who heard His word and believed in the Father would step over into the realm of eternal life.

The dead, both those who have already passed on and those who are alive in the natural realm but dead to the dimension of God, will hear His voice and those who respond to Him will cross over into an eternal life in His kingdom and under His authority because He is the Son of Man. Now that’s a loaded statement!

Jewish people, schooled in the Word of God, would immediately recognise that Jesus was referring to the book of Daniel where, in Daniel’s vision in chapter 7, he saw “one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” Daniel 7:13, 14 (NIV), and Jesus was claiming to be the fulfilment of that prophecy!

It’s no wonder His opponents were incensed by His words. They could not see the truth because they were blinded by their prejudice and their unwillingness to face their own wickedness and open their eyes and hearts to the truth.

They did not understand that Jesus was offering them, His avowed enemies, the opportunity to align themselves with Him and become part of the glorious kingdom He was introducing to His people. They persistently shut their minds to the truth of who He was and forfeited the greatest gift of all — life in union with Jesus in the presence of God in an eternal now and under His benevolent rule.

The same invitation is open to everyone who is willing to see beyond his/her own prejudice to the reality that Jesus is the Son of God and that His offer of eternal life is genuine because He is the truth and He spoke the truth.

Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Have you submitted to His rule in your life?

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.

DEAD AND STINKING!

Bible Study, ,

DEAD AND STINKING!

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit which is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were all by nature objects of wrath (Eph. 2: 1-3).

Have you ever smelt the stench of rotting flesh? It is not pleasant, to say the least. If dead flesh smells bad, what do you suppose a dead spirit smells like to the Father? From God’s point of view, we were dead in our sinful nature and lifestyle – dead to Him because our sin created a chasm between Him and us and left us lifeless and alone.

What a gloomy picture of the people in the world who have nothing to do with God and are therefore nothing more than empty shells with no real life in them! Paul vividly describes all of us in our state of alienation from God – selfish, ungodly, and living only to gratify every craving and desire with no thought for the way our lives and behaviour affect others.

The world of entertainment and what it dishes up, including the filth that Hollywood spews out and everything that flows from the mass media – scandal, violence, illicit sex, crime and every form of unsavoury behaviour – is the diet we feed on, and then we wonder why the world is so bad. Sin is like a snowball. The more sin we feed on, the more sin we practice.

Paul makes no excuse for anyone. Whoever we are, if we are not in “Christ”, we are all in the same boat. It’s just the degree that varies. Even the most respectable of people are separated from by God by their sin.

Unfortunately for us, unlike the belief system of some religions, God does not weigh our sin and our good deeds in the balance. We were infected with a sin nature from our conception, which we inherited from Adam and which makes us dead to God before we took our first breath. No one has to teach a child to sin. It is as spontaneous as breathing. Even if we teach him to live a moral and upright life, the nature within him pulls him towards sin. No one can see the sins of the spirit – greed, selfishness, lust, jealousy, resentment, bitterness – and the list goes on, but they are there in all of us.

Paul calls us all “objects of wrath”. How can we be under the wrath of God? How fair is that when we were born in sin? Unfortunately, we had no choice in the matter because we are all descendants of Adam. As representative man, he chose to defy God’s instruction and brought condemnation on the whole human race. But not only that. Every time we do what is natural to us, we confirm our own status under God’s wrath. God must punish sin because it is a violation of His holiness.

But, because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raise us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 4-7).

Out it comes in a rush! It’s almost as though Paul enjoyed painting as gloomy a picture as he could about our sinful state so that he could pour out in lavish language, the magnitude of what God has done for us in His Son. How sad that many so-called preachers of the gospel miss it altogether. They present Jesus as the cure for all ills. They preach a message and issue an invitation that makes it sound as though we do God a favour by “accepting Jesus as our personal Saviour”.

God was not obliged to do anything for us. His wrath falls on us because we are responsible for everything we have said and done.  We can blame whoever we like but, in the end, whatever we do and however we live is our choice. We decide how we will respond to whatever life dishes up for us.

God stepped in with a masterful plan to rescue us from our plight, and it had nothing to do with us. In fact, He didn’t even do it because He felt sorry for us. He did it to put His glory on display. It was His opportunity to reveal His true nature to the devil and his minions who are at war with God. He sent His own Son as a substitute for man, to take the rap for what we have done in rebellion against Him, so that we can go free. No more debt. No more guilt. No more barrier between Him and us.

He made it possible for us to have life, to forgive our sin, change our hearts and embrace us as His beloved sons and daughters. Who in their right mind would not respond in love to someone who did that for us?

It’s all about Him from beginning to end. God does not beg us to accept His offer. He graciously extends it to us, in fact, He commands us to repent and believe the gospel… but the response is ours. We can come home to Him and live under His authority and in His family, or we can remain in our dead and stinking state. He will not choose for us.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – NEVER TOO LATE

Bible Study, ,

NEVER TOO LATE

21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat. Mark 5:21-43

And what of Jairus, the synagogue ruler? What a jumble of emotions must have surged through him in one day! His was such an urgent mission and yet Jesus was in no hurry. Jesus was willing to be interrupted to meet a woman’s chronic need. Impatience, frustration, indignation, annoyance, anguish, anxiety, fears; all these emotions together created a knot in Jairus’ stomach. He was terrified of hearing the news that his little girl was gone. When it came, he must have felt anger, despair, hopelessness, blaming the wretched woman for the delay that cost the child’s life.

Once again Jesus was gentle, reassuring, calm, unfazed by the crisis, applying His yoke of compassion and hope in a desperate situation. Always in control, He moved purposefully towards Jairus’ home, knowing exactly what He would do. He wore the talith, the symbol of the presence of God; the same talith that the sick woman had touched and received her healing.

It was always Jesus in the centre of the need and source of the supply. And today it is no different. It is the same Jesus and the same Holy Spirit who is the source of all the grace and mercy we cry for in our need.

Jairus learned that day that Jesus is never too late. He always has time for everyone. He gives His personal attention to everyone who calls out to Him. He is the talith – God’s name, God’s nature, God’s word, God’s power and God’s presence, and we are honoured to “wear” Him. We are clothed with Christ and enveloped in everything that He is. No situation is out of the reach of His power and goodness.

Did Jairus learn his lesson well? Did he ever forget what Jesus did that day? Scripture does not record the outcome of his encounter with Jesus but, like the restored woman, perhaps he finally came to realise who this miracle worker really was. Every time he looked at his child, growing up to womanhood instead of decaying in a grave, because of Jesus, he believed, he rejoiced and he worshipped with gratitude and love.

These events are the culmination of a story that began twelve years before, bringing together two unconnected people in a drama that was designed to reveal the glory of God’s Messiah.

Righteousness And Good Works

Bible Study, , , ,

RIGHTEOUSNESS AND GOOD WORKS

What the Bible teaches is always in balance. Without the righteousness of Jesus which covers and replaces our unrighteousness, we have no standing before God. As our substitute, Jesus died for us as though He were unrighteous, and gave us His righteousness as a gift of mercy. This is the only way to find acceptance with God.

God made Him, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor. 5: 21)

But there is another side to it. James put it this way:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2: 14-17)

We may revel in the righteousness which God has given to us as a free gift of His grace and which makes us acceptable to Him but, without responding in gratitude by doing the right thing for others, it means nothing.

The heart of the kingdom then, as far as daily living is concerned, is showing mercy to someone in need whenever and wherever we can because God has shown mercy to us. This is the way God rules in His world.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be is summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no harm to his neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law. (Rom. 13: 8-10)

God’s kingdom comes whenever and wherever we show mercy to others. It is possible for us to be merciful now because our selfish, greedy selves have been put to death by the death of Jesus. We have been raised with Him to a new life of gratitude and obedience to Him for His mercy and unselfish love for others, shown by our compassion towards them. If not, our faith is empty, useless and invalid – bottom line.

Jesus had something to say to people who claimed to know Him by their so-called “spiritual gifts” but, like the Pharisees, used them for the wrong reasons,

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt. 7: 21-23)

The kingdom of God is much more than a doctrine to be understood. It is a life to be lived and a reality to be experienced. Of what value is it if we can navigate our way through the intricacies of the kingdom with clarity and accuracy in our understanding but still live as though we are citizens of this world?

Like our rabbi who blazed the trail, the kingdom of God only comes to life among us when we practise its values in the midst of this world’s darkness.  Jesus showed us what God’s kingdom will look like when it is finally ushered in in its fullness. There will be no sickness or sorrow, no demons or dying. All sin will be put away forever and God’s family will live in union with Him and with one another in perfect harmony.

Until then, we experience the kingdom only in part. Ours is the task of being heralds of the kingdom and bearers of the good news, demonstrating what the kingdom is like by reflecting the disposition of our Master and by replicating His love and compassion towards all people, and showing that the kingdom is real and is coming in its fullness when Jesus returns.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Do you like this post? Then buy your own copy of my book, Learning to be a Disciple, which is also available from www.amazon.com or www.takealot.com in South Africa. You can also order a copy directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com

Watch this space!

My latest book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, will also soon be available.

 

Dead And Stinking!

Bible Study, , ,

DEAD AND STINKING!

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit which is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were all by nature objects of wrath (Eph. 2: 1-3).

Have you ever smelt the stench of rotting flesh? It is not pleasant, to say the least. If dead flesh smells bad, what do you suppose a dead spirit smells like to the Father? From God’s point of view, we were dead in our sinful nature and lifestyle – dead to Him because our sin created a chasm between Him and us and left us lifeless and alone.

What a gloomy picture of the people in the world who have nothing to do with God and are therefore nothing more than empty shells with no real life in them! Paul vividly describes all of us in our state of alienation from God – selfish, ungodly, and living only to gratify every craving and desire with no thought for the way our lives and behaviour affect others.

The world of entertainment and what it dishes up, including the filth that Hollywood spews out and everything that flows from the mass media – scandal, violence, illicit sex, crime and every form of unsavoury behaviour – is the diet we feed on, and then we wonder why the world is so bad. Sin is like a snowball. The more sin we feed on, the more sine we practice.

Paul makes not excuse for anyone. Whoever we are, if we are not in “Christ”, we are all in the same boat. It’s just the degree that varies. Even the most respectable of people are separated from by God by their sin.

Unfortunately for us, unlike the belief system of some religions, God does not weigh our sin and our good deeds in the balance. We were infected with a sin nature from our conception, which we inherited from Adam and which makes us dead to God before we took our first breath. No one has to teach a child to sin. It is as spontaneous as breathing. Even if we teach him to live a moral and upright life, the nature within him pulls him towards sin. No one can see the sins of the spirit – greed, selfishness, lust, jealousy, resentment, bitterness – and the list goes on, but they are there in all of us.

Paul calls us all “objects of wrath”. How can we be under the wrath of God? How fair is that when we were born in sin? Unfortunately, we had no choice in the matter because we are all descendants of Adam. As the representative man, he chose to defy God’s instruction and brought condemnation on the whole human race. But not only that. Every time we do what is natural to us, we confirm our own status under God’s wrath. God must punish sin because it is a violation of His holiness.

But, because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 4-7).

Out it comes in a rush! It’s almost as though Paul enjoyed painting as gloomy a picture as He could about our sinful state so that he could pour out in lavish language, the magnitude of what God has done for us in His Son. How sad that many so-called preachers of the gospel miss it altogether. They present Jesus as the cure for all ills. They preach a message and issue an invitation that makes it sound as though we do God a favour by “accepting Jesus as our personal Saviour”.

God was not obliged to do anything for us. His wrath falls on us because we are responsible for everything we have said and done.  We can blame whoever we like but, in the end, whatever we do and however we live is our choice. We decide how we will respond to whatever life dishes up for us.

God stepped in with a masterful plan to rescue us from our plight, and it had nothing to do with us. In fact, He didn’t even do it because He felt sorry for us. He did it to put His glory on display. It was His opportunity to reveal His true nature to the devil and his minions who are at war with God. He sent His own Son as a substitute for man, to take the rap for what we have done in rebellion against Him so that we can go free. No more debt. No more guilt. No more barrier between Him and us.

He made it possible for us to have life, to forgive our sin, change our hearts and embrace us a His beloved sons and daughters. Who in their right mind would not respond in love to someone who did that for us?

It’s all about Him from beginning to end. God does not beg us to accept His offer. He graciously extends it to us, but the response is ours. We can come home to Him and live under His authority and in His family, or we can remain in our dead and stinking state. He will not choose for us.

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

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?