Tag Archives: He learned obedience

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM Continued

Christian Life, ,

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM Continued

7. THE KEY OF SUFFERING AND HARDSHIP

Discipline in the kingdom – staying on the path.

This key may be uncomfortable for us to accept as a vital part of our experience of living in God’s kingdom. However, without the willingness to accept, embrace, and rejoice in our suffering, there are lessons we may never learn about fully participating in the glory of life in God’s kingdom. These are lessons we can only learn through submission and obedience. Jesus is our model and mentor.

“While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.”

Hebrews 5:7-8 NLT

What we learn through hardship and suffering relate to our character as God’s children and brothers and sisters of Jesus who is God’s firstborn in His family.

A. Suffering teaches us many lessons; patience, trust, hope in God’s promises, and an eager anticipation for the glory of our future.

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT

B. Hardships and suffering transform our character.

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

James 1:2-4 NLT

C. Hardship is God’s mark of sonship and God’s way of training us to be true sons.

“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.”

Hebrews 12:7-8 NIV

D. Suffering changes our attitude to sin.

“So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin.”

1 Peter 4:1 NLT

E. Hardships and suffering change our focus and lead to holiness.

“For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.”

Hebrews 12:10 NLT

F. God’s disciple through suffering enables us to live righteously.

” 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 12:11 NIV

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. Acts 14:22

8. THE KEY OF PRAYER

Communication with the Father

Although we may not recognise prayer as an important key to God’s resources in the kingdom, we cut ourselves off from all that God has provided for us when we don’t pray.

There is a process in prayer that, first of all, embraces all the great truths of our faith. This process opens the door to fellowship with the Father.

A. Without the cross, we are separated from God and barred from approaching Him.

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place.”

Hebrews 10:19-20 NLT

B. Without Jesus, we have no mediator between us and God to represent us and plead our cause with the Father.

“My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.”

1 John 2:1 NLT

C. Without the Holy Spirit, we have no one to interpret our groans and help us to pray according to the Father’s will.

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”

Romans 8:26-27 NLT

D. Together with the key of faith, prayer cultivates our intimacy with the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is not about changing our circumstances or getting what we want. Prayer is about growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Prayer is about learning and leaning on God’s promises that enable us to participate in the divine nature.

“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvellous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.”

2 Peter 1:3-4 NLT

E. Prayer connects us to God’s promises. Through His promises, God has provided everything for human life on this planet and spiritual life in His kingdom.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

2 Peter 1:3-4 NIV

F. Prayer leads us to worship, the highest form of prayer. We approach the Father, we call on His name, we engage Him for ourselves and others, but all our efforts must lead us to gaze on Him, to contemplate His greatness and goodness since, through these, we receive grace to be transformed into the image of Jesus.

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM – CONTINUED

Christian Life, ,

7. THE KEY OF SUFFERING AND HARDSHIP

Discipline in the kingdom – staying on the path

This key may be uncomfortable for us to accept as a vital part of our experience of living in God’s kingdom. However, without the willingness to accept, embrace, and rejoice in our suffering, there are lessons we may never learn about fully participating in the glory of life in God’s kingdom. These are lessons we can only learn through submission and obedience. Jesus is our model and mentor.

“While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.”

Hebrews 5:7-8 NLT

What we learn through hardship and suffering relate to our character as God’s children and brothers and sisters of Jesus who is God’s firstborn in His family.

A. Suffering teaches us many lessons; patience, trust, hope in God’s promises, and an eager anticipation for the glory of our future.

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT

B. Hardships and suffering transform our character.

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

James 1:2-4 NLT

C. Hardship is God’s mark of sonship and God’s way of training us to be true sons.

“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.”

Hebrews 12:7-8 NIV

D. Suffering changes our attitude to sin.

“So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin.”

1 Peter 4:1 NLT

E. Hardships and suffering change our focus and lead to holiness.

“For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.”

Hebrews 12:10 NLT

F. God’s disciple through suffering enables us to live righteously.

” 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 12:11 NIV

8. THE KEY OF PRAYER

Communication with the Father

Although we may not recognise prayer as an important key to God’s resources in the kingdom, we cut ourselves off from all that God has provided for us when we don’t pray.

There is a process in prayer that, first of all, embraces all the great truths of our faith. This process opens the door to fellowship with the Father.

A. Without the cross, we are separated from God and barred from approaching Him.

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place.”

Hebrews 10:19-20 NLT

B. Without Jesus, we have no mediator between us and God to represent us and plead our cause with the Father.

“My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.”

1 John 2:1 NLT

C. Without the Holy Spirit, we have no one to interpret our groans and help us to pray according to the Father’s will.

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”

Romans 8:26-27 NLT

D. Together with the key of faith, prayer cultivates our intimacy with the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is not about changing our circumstances or getting what we want. Prayer is about growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Prayer is about learning and leaning on God’s promises that enable us to participate in the divine nature.

“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvellous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.”

2 Peter 1:3-4 NLT

E. Prayer connects us to God’s promises. Through His promises, God has provided everything for human life on this planet and spiritual life in His kingdom.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

2 Peter 1:3-4 NIV

F. Prayer leads us to worship, the highest form of prayer. We approach the Father, we call on His name, we engage Him for ourselves and others but all our efforts must lead us to gaze on Him, to contemplate His greatness and goodness since, through these, we receive grace to be transformed into the image of Jesus.

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

A PERFECT SON

Bible Study, ,

 A PERFECT SON

During the days of Jesus’s life of earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him, and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Heb. 5: 7-10)

What a holy moment! The writer allows us a glimpse into the anguish of the son of God. Isaiah called Him ‘a man of sorrows and familiar with grief’ and yet He was also described as a man of joy, anointed with the oil of joy above His companions. Jesus experienced the intensity of sorrow more than any other person because, firstly, He felt the pain of His people who were cut off from the Father and, secondly, He felt the power of temptation that threatened to cut Him off from the Father.

What is this writer implying? That Jesus was threatened with death but He escaped it because God heard His prayers? But that did not happen. We know that He was crucified, so that cannot be what the writer meant. In what way was Jesus saved from death? The threat of death hung over Him from the moment of His birth. He was ‘the last Adam’, born of a human mother, but born with the nature of Adam before the fall. Unlike us who are born with nature of fallen man, He was able to sin but also able not to sin.

Jesus’ entire human life was a test of His submission and obedience to the Father. Where Adam failed, He dared not fail. To qualify as a perfect high priest and sacrifice, He had to be the perfect Son. If He were to be an acceptable sacrifice, He has to be without sin so that, like the Levitical high priest on the Day of Atonement, He had to emerge from the Holy of Holies alive as a sign that His sacrifice was accepted.

Jesus knew the intensity of sin’s power to lure Him away from perfect trust in the Father and perfect obedience to the Father’s will. His entire life was a test of obedience, the battle in Gethsemane being the zenith of that struggle against sin. In spite of the spectre of the horrible experience that lay before Him, and the bloody sweat that poured from His pores like the precious oil pressed from the olives, He submitted to the Father’s will.

Jesus was God’s Son. He was God. He was the exact replica of God in human form. He has all the power, all the knowledge, and all the attributes of God but He chose to live as a man, never once employing His divine power as God during His earthly life. His power came from the Holy Spirit, God’s equipment who came upon Him at His baptism. He lived in perfect union with the Father, entrusting Himself to Him for every need and every situation.

This was the only way in which He could qualify to be the Saviour of humankind. He knew what it was to be weak and to have to trust His Father instead of acting as God. He had many great battles with the enemy. We know nothing of His childhood when, as a young, vulnerable and impressionable boy, He had to call the devil’s bluff and trust His Abba. We have just one example of this warfare when He was tempted to act as God and to act independently of His Father in the wilderness. He passed with flying colours.

How did He overcome? Through His constant fellowship with the Father in prayer. He stayed in touch with the Father so that He would know and do His will. He listened to the voice of the Spirit. He drew strength from the Holy Spirit. He learned obedience from what He suffered. He learned the meaning of obedience by being obedient through every test. He felt the strength of Satan’s pressure on Him but He resisted and overcame every time. He could challenge His accusers with the words, ‘Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?’  What a challenge! What a testimony!

Yes, Jesus was amply qualified to be both our king and our high priest. His perfect submission and obedience to the Father set Him apart as the perfect Son and gave Him the right to be the source of eternal salvation for everyone who believes. He is now and forever the eternal high priest in the order of Melchizedek, the power of an endless life.

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.

Prayer And Obedience

Christian Life, , ,

PRAYER AND OBEDIENCE

This leads to our fourth important attitude towards God as we engage with Him in prayer – obedience. God rates obedience above everything else because obedience encompasses all the other right attitudes we need to have towards Him. Obedience is the ultimate evidence of our holy fear of the Lord. Again Jesus is our model.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. (Heb. 5: 7-9)

I think this is the one we struggle with the most. Why? Is it because we connect obedience with understanding? Before we act in response to God’s instructions, we demand to know why. We will trust God and do what He requires of us if we know that it makes sense and will turn out right in the end.

Abraham was known as the friend of God. He did not respond to God’s command like that. What God asked him to do made no sense to him at all but he obeyed anyway. “Go and burn you son on an altar to me!” How crazy was that, especially when the son he was to sacrifice was the one who was born to an elderly and barren couple after twenty-five years of waiting! “God, do you know what you are asking? Do you know what you are doing?”

Obedience is the mark of one who truly fears God. Abraham obeyed and went without hesitation, willing to obey God to the last drop of Isaac’s blood because he knew what it meant to fear God, a holy fear because he knew God and he trusted Him because he knew that God knew what He was doing and why.

God told Jesus to give Himself over to the religious leaders to torture and crucify. Really? “God, this is your Messiah, your Son. Do you know what you are asking of Him? Do you know what you are doing? This surely has no good in it for Him. What is the point of having Him killed? A dead Son will be of no use to you.” That’s how we humans reason. God is not under any obligation to explain. The reasons may only become clear later on when we have done what He asked us to do.

There is one man in the Bible who was given the honour of the title “A man after my own heart.” Imagine that! In spite of the many theories preachers put forward about the reason for this honour, the Bible gives us God’s take on it.

He testified concerning him: ‘I have found David, son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’ (Acts 13: 22b)

Was David a perfect man? Far from it! He messed up on more than one occasion, but at those times when “he enquired of the Lord,” as he so often did when he needed help from God, he did what God told him to do and he prevailed. He became the greatest of all the kings of Israel and the model of a godly king for both the southern and northern kingdoms.

In spite of his failures, David adored God. He longed after Him. He gazed on His beauty in the creation around him and in the tabernacle where he went to worship. God filled David’s horizon; He was his rock; his shelter, his source and his everything. He sang about Him; he worshipped Him; he danced before Him; he celebrated Him; he even complained and mourned over Him when God seemed far away and non-responsive to him, but he never gave up on Him or put Him out of His mind for any longer than a moment.

“A man after my own heart!” That surely fitted David as the one Old Covenant, ordinary, sinful human being who was “stuck” on God, and God loved it! With his limited vision and experience before the cross event, David was just like Jesus. He could not get enough of God.

How much more should we, who have the mercy of God right in our faces, and every opportunity with the Holy Spirit within us, to become like our rabbi, be stuck on God. What greater privilege is there than to do His will and to see Him kingdom come, to deliver people from bondage to sin and to give them brand new lives under His rule?

What if we really feared the Lord because we knew Him and trusted Him? Would we be, like the great men of the Bible, be willing to obey Him promptly and without question because we were sure that He would ask nothing of us that were not for our good or His glory?

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.

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

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