Tag Archives: eternal

HABAKKUK’S SECOND DILEMMA-3

Bible Study, ,

Habakkuk 1:12-15 NLT
[12] “O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal— surely you do not plan to wipe us out? O Lord, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins. [13] But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil. Will you wink at their treachery? Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they? [14] Are we only fish to be caught and killed? Are we only sea creatures that have no leader? [15] Must we be strung up on their hooks and caught in their nets while they rejoice and celebrate?”

Poor Habakkuk! He just couldn’t keep up with God. First, he had to process God’s incomprehensible plan to raise up and permit a godless nation to overrun his people. Now he has to come to terms with a contradiction in the very nature of God. If God is holy, how can He use ungodly idolators to fulfill His purposes?

Since God patiently responded to Habakkuk’s questions, it seems that He didn’t consider Habakkuk’s questions arrogant or impertinent. He had something important to teach His distressed prophet about the wisdom of His ways. He responded to Habakkuk’s honesty by taking him step by step through His actions to a place of understanding and personal faith.

Let’s consider Habakkuk’s second question. How can a holy God use ungodly instruments for His purposes? God’s answer, which we will see in our next meditation, opens up a new perspective on God’s sovereignty.

For the moment, we must consider God’s relationship with evil. Evil people with their evil deeds impact our lives every day. Some of us live with them; we work with them; we bump into them in the course of our day; they are around us everywhere. They govern our nation and are bent on inflicting their ungodly decisions on all the people. Where is God in all this?

The story of Job will help us gain a true perspective of God’s use of evil. First, God never tolerates the evil in people. He has no part in it. He is holy, utterly separated from evil people’s thoughts, actions and behaviour. God never tempts us to do wrong.

James 1:13-15 NLT
[13] “And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. [14] Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. [15] These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.”

Our sinful behaviour comes out of our sinful nature…our desires, our choices, our actions but…

Evil has inescapable consequences and evil people will reap them…and the consequences we suffer are not God’s fault.

However, God uses what evil people do, either to us or by us, to corall us into thinking and learning differently about sin. In His wisdom, God works, IN ALL THINGS, for our good.

What an astonishing revelation! How riveting to realise that not even our sin, heinous as it might be, is wasted in our lives. We learn more from what we have done wrong than what we have done right. God weaves our sinful behaviour and its consequences into the tapestry of our lives, the dark threads forming a contrast and revealing the magnitude of His mercy and grace.

Can you see the difference between God causing sin and God using sin in the lives of people? Since He is holy…utterly separate from sin, and demands holiness on us if we are ever to approach Him and be acceptable to Him, He took action to ensure that unholy humans would be transformed by His grace from sinners to saints.

No, Habakkuk, God’s action by raising up and using the ruthless Babylonian army was never a denial of His stance against sin but rather the evidence of His sovereign mercy. Without His drastic intervention to turn His people from their idolatrous ways, the Jews would have perished in their sin. He was preparing them for the moment when He Himself would break into history in the form of a tiny human baby to deal with sin though never part of it.

God’s reassurances regarding the mystery of His ways would lead Habakkuk, step by step, into a new perspective and a new way of handling life’s seemingly insoluble dilemmas.

To be continued…

ONE THING!

Christian life, ,

We all have wishes and desires and wants and dreams, don’t we …and they cover a variety of aspirations, from money and wealth to health and happiness and everything in between? What would you ask for if God promised to give you anything you want? Would He give you what you desire or would He say, “No!” because it would not be good for you?

David also had a desire, so strong that he called it ONE THING. He didn’t only ask for it; he sought it with all his heart.

ONE THING I ask of the Lord., this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple (Psa. 27: 4).

What! Spend your whole life just thinking about God! What benefit is there in that when there’s so much going on around you?

David was the king of Israel but he was also a man after God’s own heart. God loved him dearly – in fact, his name means “beloved.” He had everything his heart could desire. He had wives and children, fame, success, wealth and power. Yet, of all the things he could have desired, he most wanted to be in God’s presence to gaze at Him!

“Well,” you might say, “if I had been David, I would have asked for…”, something tangible to make my life a little easier or more comfortable.

For David, one thing was more important to him than anything else – to be in the presence of the Lord.

Two other Bible characters had one thing on their minds. Mary, Martha’s sister, sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to Him. When Martha complained that Mary wasn’t pulling her weight in the kitchen, Jesus gently reminded her that it was Mary’s choice to be with Him and no one could take that ONE THING from her (Luke 10:42).

The apostle Paul also had ONE THING on his mind.

But ONE THING I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13b-14).

The difference between these desires and ours is often the difference between what is eternal and what is transient. These three people set their hearts on the eternal. Another guy in Scripture chose his money over Jesus. He has kept all the commandments, yet he lacked ONE THING – fellowship with Jesus. That makes up for everything else. When you have Jesus, you have everything.

 

 

Appointed To Be The Son

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APPOINTED TO BE THE SON

He also said, ‘In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, 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 His 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 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 He had come 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)

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.

 

Faithful And Fair

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FAITHFUL AND FAIR

“God “will repay each person according to what he has done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honour and peace for everyone who does good; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favouritism.” Romans 2:6-11.

Isn’t it amazing? God is so fair that He allows us to choose the outcome of our lives! But, unlike the devil, He tells us all the options and doesn’t hide the small print. He lays it all out for us and then allows us to make an informed choice.

So why do so many people ignore His warnings, reject His offer of a new start on the right way, and end up where they didn’t want to go? There are some very powerful forces at work to keep us from believing God and being the beneficiaries of His mercy and grace.

The first is the same deception that led the first pair to defy God. Satan suggested that God is unreliable and unfair. He sowed doubt into their minds about His integrity. According to the devil, God either did not say what He meant or He did not mean what He said. In spite of all the warnings in Scripture, many people still refuse to believe that God means what He says. In their foolishness they brush Him aside with the age-old argument, “It won’t happen to me.”

Long ago God said through Asaph, the psalmist, “You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you…When you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactly like you.” Psalm 50:17; 21. People are still like that today. They think that, because nothing bad has happened to them, God either does not see or does not care about what they are doing. But they have forgotten that there is a day of reckoning coming.

The second force at work to keep us from God’s grace is the evil nature within us. Not only do we not believe Him; we don’t want to believe Him because we enjoy our sin too much. Satan does not have to do much deceiving and much persuading because we are willing allies to his deception. It suits us to believe him because we have no inclination towards God and His ways.

“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear their deeds will be exposed.” John 3:19, 20.

But, in contrast to the dark side, there is a bright side. Paul said that there is a reward coming for those who persevere in doing good. Perseverance is the key. In the same way as punishment doesn’t come immediately, so rewards are being kept for the day when Jesus returns. It would be easy to lose heart and give up if we were not convinced that God is faithful and fair. We can count on the fact that He means exactly what He says.

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:58.

This is what the Bible calls “the fear of the Lord”. To fear God is to revere and honour Him, and to act on what He has said because He is utterly faithful; firm and immovable on what He has spoken. We can depend on His reliability because He can never contradict Himself.

It costs discipline and stickablilty to keep on doing the right thing, like the salmon swimming against the current to get to their spawning ground. Like them, we have a reward coming at the end of the journey and it is worth the trouble to keep the end in view. Those who live for the moment have their reward – the momentary “pleasure” which will turn around and bite them in the end. Those who live for the end result, glory, honour and peace, will have to wait for it, but the outcome will be forever.

Acknowledgement

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

 

 

 

 

A Job Well Done

Christian Life, , ,

A JOB WELL DONE

“Paul and Barnabas handpicked leaders in each church. After praying — their prayers intensified by fasting — they presented these new leaders to the Master to whom they had entrusted their lives. Working their way back through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia and preached in Perga. Finally, they made it to Attalia and caught a ship back to Antioch, where it had all started — launched by God’s grace and now safely home by God’s grace. A good piece of work.

“On arrival they got the church together and reported on their trip, telling in detail how God had used them to throw the door of faith wide open so people of all nations could come streaming in. Then they settled down for a long, leisurely visit with the disciples.” Acts 14:23-28 (The Message).

“Life is lived forward and understood backwards,” Many months before, two rookie missionaries set out from Antioch. They had no mission board behind them, no regularly monthly stipend paid into their bank accounts, no cell phones or email to keep them in contact with home base, just them and the Holy Spirit in them.

Now they were back home, back in the safety and comfort of their circle of brothers and sisters, reporting on both harrowing and joyful experiences which were all in a day’s work for two courageous pioneers. What did they tell them back home? What were their greatest moments on their journey through unknown territory, both geographically and spiritually?

It seems. not a word about their suffering! Did they have enough to eat? How did they get from town to town? Where did they sleep? Who did their laundry? Who cared for them when they got sick? No. They returned to their home church to report on the work God had accomplished through them. They joyfully shared their story of a wide open door for Gentiles to enter God’s kingdom through faith in Jesus.

King George VI once quoted these words in his New Year message: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a lamp that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ He said to me, ‘Put your hand in the hand of God. That will be to you better than a light and safer than a known way.'”

Paul and Barnabas surely found those words to be profoundly true. A long look backwards revealed the hand of a faithful God on them in spite of suffering and hardship. Fogotten were the weary days, the cold nights, the steep and stony roads, the growling stomachs and the taunts and cruel words of unbelievers. It was the memory of the God who sustained them and carried them through, the God who openend hearts and gathered peopleinto His kingdom, that filled them with joy.

We may not be facing the trials and troubles that Paul and Barnabas had to embrace to do their Master’s will. By comparison, our lives may seem cushy but, nevertheless, each one of us has his or her testing to endure. The same God who sustained them is with us on our journey, but our experience of him depends on our perspective as it did their. They did not dwell on the hardships. Those were part of the package to toughen them up to reach their goal.

After all he want through, this was Paul’s perspective: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen it temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV).