Tag Archives: Lord

THE BOOK OF ACTS – WHAT NOW?

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CHAPTER 1

WHAT NOW?

“Dear Theophilus, in the first volume of this book I wrote on everything that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day He said goodbye to the apostles, the ones He had chosen through the Holy Spirit, and was taken up to heaven. After His death He presented Himself alive in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, He talked to them about things concerning the kingdom of God.” Acts 1:1-3 (NIV).

It is fitting that we continue the story of Jesus as Luke did to his friend, Theophilus. We are indebted to him for his meticulous record. Without it we would never know the sequel to the Jesus-story and how the first disciples took on the Roman Empire and, through the promised Holy Spirit, so securely planted the message of the truth about Jesus that it infiltrated the known world of their day and still continues to change lives through their writings.

Luke made sure that Theophilus understood that Jesus spent forty days with His disciples after the resurrection, tying up all the loose ends so that they would know exactly what to preach and teach after He left them. His theme was the kingdom of God.  There was no doubt that He was alive and that He would continue to be fully involved with them as they carried out His instructions and lived out His life in a hostile environment.

Unlike so much of current preaching and teaching which ignores the bigger picture and makes the gospel all about us, He put His life and death into the perspective of God’s realm and rule in the lives of people. It was not about them. It was about Him, His purpose for coming and their on-going mission to proclaim Him to the world.

He would have warned them that their task was a dangerous one. Like Him they would have to face the hostility of the Jewish leaders who had put Him to death as well as the Caesars whose claims demanded the worship and allegiance that was due Him alone.

These arrogant Roman emperors, in particular Caesar Augustus, “believed that he was god incarnate on earth, the prince of peace who had come to restore all of creation…His priests offered sacrifices and incense to rid people of their guilt. One of his popular slogans was “There is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved than that of Caesar.” Another phrase they used was “Caesar is Lord.” Throughout the Roman Empire, the Caesars called on people to worship them as the divine saviours of humankind…” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan 2005, page 162)

The implications are obvious. Into this world came the “Jesus movement” in a remote corner of the empire that was giving them no end of trouble. These people claimed that their leader was a rabbi, that He had announced the arrival of the kingdom of God, that He had been executed by the Roman authorities for treason, and that His followers claimed that He was alive. Now they were claiming that He, not Caesar, is Lord!

Their opposition would be ruthless ad relentless but the message had to go out. The apostles had to know it, be convinced of it, believe it and proclaim it no matter what the consequences. This was the final mission of Jesus before He returned to the Father. For forty days He instructed them until He was sure that they were ready to take on the world!

 

A Deafening Silence

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A DEAFENING SILENCE

While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked, ‘Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.” David himself called Him “Lord.” How then can He be his son?’ The large crowd listened to Him with delight (Mark 12: 35-37).

Dead silence! They had all exhausted their questions to trap Him, and now it was Jesus’ turn. Asking questions played an important role in the rabbi’s teaching method and an excellent way to get people to think for themselves and to reveal their level of thinking by the questions they asked.

The Pharisees’ big contention with Jesus was: “Blasphemy!” He was a man and yet He was claiming to be God. Many of the people dismissed Him because He was only the son of Mary and Joseph; the village carpenter and one of their locals. The people of Nazareth were enraged with Him and drove Him out of town because He dared to put Himself on the level of their great prophets and even to claim that He was the fulfilment of prophecy!

He was a mere man, therefore He could not possibly be the Messiah, they argued, so Jesus fired a question at them, a very puzzling one at that. Their own Scriptures taught that the Messiah would be the son of David. That meant that He had to be human and one born in the ancestral line of David. Yet, at the same time, speaking prophetically, David addressed Him as “Lord”.

David’s psalm (110) begins with the declaration:

The Lord says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The Lord will extend your mighty sceptre from Zion saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” (Psa. 110: 1-2).

Speaking prophetically under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David addressed Messiah as “my Lord” and attributed to Him the functions of deity, and yet the rabbis recognised Him to be the son of David. There could be only one answer and that was the very thing the religious leaders rejected – Messiah a human being born of the line of David. But there was just too much prophetic evidence of Messiah’s ancestry to deny it or to set it aside. He would be of the tribe of Judah, a ruler (Gen. 49:10); called a “Branch” of the stump of Jesse (Isa. 11:1); Matthew’s genealogy traced His ancestry back to Abraham through David.

Seventeen times in the New Testament Jesus was addressed as the son of David. Even the common people knew that Messiah would come from the line of David. So why were the religious leaders so blinded that they refused to recognise Him as their Messiah? Why did the Jews down the centuries reject Him as their Messiah since the evidence is so clear? Prejudice! They have believed the lie and failed to weigh up the evidence.

There is something about human beings that makes them hate to be wrong. It’s called pride. People will cling to their right to be right even if they are dead wrong. And even worse, they will defend their error to the death rather than acknowledge that they could be wrong and open themselves to the possibility that someone else is right.

If the Jews had only been honest enough to consider the evidence, they would have been confronted with the truth. Truth is truth and will stand up to scrutiny. Jesus’ appeal was for them to consider the Scriptures. “Your word is truth”, He declared in His prayer before His death (John 17: 17). The question is not, “Who is right?” but “What is right?” It takes humility to be teachable. A person who has a teachable spirit is the one who will eventually arrive at the truth. Their passion to be right put these men in line to be deceived and deceived they were, bringing judgment on themselves because they refused to listen to the truth.

Only those who receive Jesus’ words with humility and obedience will really understand and know the truth.

To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8: 31-32).

If they had a mind to receive it, the answer was quite simple. Messiah was both son of David and Son of God. God in the flesh – Immanuel – God with us. John stated it in a nutshell:

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

There was a deafening silence. They knew the answer but they refused to speak it out.

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.

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

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

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dilemma Deepens

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THE DILEMMA DEEPENS

Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, you will never die. You, Lord, have appointed them to execute judgment; you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish. Your eyes are too holy to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? (Hab. 1: 12-13).

So, Habakkuk, you got your answer. God is going to sort out the mess in your country by sending the Babylonians against your people. They won’t stand a chance against the Babylonian army. They will be slaughtered or enslaved, and then where will their precious idols be that they so loved to worship? Where will the rulers be who loved to lord it over and oppress the people? What about the apostate priests and false prophets who lead the people astray?

Habakkuk was appalled! “God, is it possible that you who are eternal and indestructible because you have nothing to do with evil, will do a thing like this? How can you raise up a godless nation to correct your own people? How can you use these people against your covenant nation?” The Israelites, in spite of Habakkuk’s complaint against them, looked like saints compared with the Babylonians. If he thought his people were bad, what about these vicious killers?

If the prophet’s first dilemma was puzzling to him, God’s answer was even more difficult to understand. Instead of giving him something to hold on to, God had deepened his confusion. From his perspective, what God said He was doing was not solving the problem at all. He was only making it worse. Many of his people were already suffering cruelty and injustice at the hands of their rulers. Now the Babylonians were coming to wipe them out. What sort of a solution was that?

Let’s put their situation into a modern-day context. Who are God’s people? Two categories: Firstly, God’s ancient people, Israel, are still His covenant people. In spite of their rejection of His Messiah, God has never disowned or abandoned them. And in spite of the teaching of some that God has finished with His people, that is not what the Bible says. So why have they suffered so badly since the time of Jesus?

Secondly, the church belongs to God. It is the body of Jesus of which He is the head. He loves His church and is passionate about her because she is His betrothed bride and His representative on earth until He comes. He has entrusted His Spirit to His church to lead her into all truth and to empower her to represent Him and do His works on earth. It is imperative that the church remain pure so that He can reveal Himself to the unbelieving world through her. Why is the church in many parts of the world suffering at the hands of cruel and ruthless killers?

When His people veer off course, God does not force them back to His way. He has to corral them by hedging up their way so that they return to His word and follow His leading because He is the only way to eternal life. Every other path leads to destruction.

So what does He do? He allows and orchestrates circumstances that are painful and difficult enough to draw us back to Him. Isn’t it true that people often treat God like a celestial 911? They can do without Him until crises come and emergencies arise. Then they begin to shout and scream for His help. Is that the kind of father He wants to be to us?

When we look at the global church today, in many ways it is no better than God’s people were in Habakkuk’s day. Power struggles go on in the individual congregations; money and wealth preoccupy the teaching of many; the church is continually being fragmented because people cannot get on with each other or they are divided by their pet doctrines; church leaders fall into sin and live no better lives than the people in the world; many of the churches are no more than business enterprises or social clubs.

What is God going to do about it? He is raising up the “Babylonians.” What kind of an answer is that? Suffering divides the men from the boys. It either turns people into apostates or sons. People either turn against God when they suffer or they learn obedience as Jesus did.

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 (Heb. 5: 8).

God is smart. He knows that suffering forces us to choose what we value most and hold on to it. More of that tomorrow . . .

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.

 

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

 

Available on www.amazon.com or www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format, or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

 

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

The Great Divide

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THE GREAT DIVIDE

“Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above very name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:9-11.

This is Paul’s song – the greatest declaration ever made and the greatest song ever written.

Before the beginning of time, Lucifer set out to usurp God’s position in heaven and take over the ownership and control of the earth. He lied to the first pair by posing as the ultimate authority. They listened to him, did what he said, and plunged the entire universe into moral darkness and chaos. He, Satan, the deceiver, has gone on hoodwinking people ever since.

God had already laid His plan to prove the devil wrong before the earth was born, and to bring him to judgment so that He could restore His creation to its original perfection without the interference of His arch enemy, the Liar. His plan was Jesus, sent to earth as fully human, to live under the authority of the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit as the lowest of the low, a servant; nothing.

Instead of acting and reacting like fallen human beings, hating and retaliating like the master they served, Jesus absorbed all of humanity’s hatred of God by serving, loving and forgiving God’s enemies. He showed the powers of darkness and the race of rebellious human beings that love is more powerful than fear. Why fear? Because the human race is driven to hate God because they are afraid of Him. They know that He has the power to destroy them.

God put Jesus at the mercy of His enemies to do with Him what they chose. When they had finished with Him, He was mangled, bled out, humiliated and dead. Then they sealed His broken body in a cave and left Him to rot. Death was Satan’s final weapon against Him and he thought he had won!

But it did not end there. On the third day, Jesus broke death’s hold; with a burst of divine power He came back to life and walked out of the tomb through an enormous boulder sealed with a Roman seal. What Satan thought would put paid to Jesus’ claim to be Lord was the seal of his doom. Jesus’ death and resurrection was the final proof that He was God, not the devil, and He was Lord, not the usurper.

“Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Hebrews 2:14, 15.

What a moment! Now the Father had every right to declare who was Lord -Jesus! He earned and owned the title as His right. The Father put Him where He belonged, in the place of supreme authority, and gave Him the name that was His alone – Yahweh! Kurios! Lord! Supreme Commander of the nations and of the universe!

“…The end will come, when He hands the kingdom over to God the Father, after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” 1 Corinthians 15:24-26.

Daniel saw this event in a prophetic vision centuries before it happened.

“In my vision I looked and there before me was 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 worshipped 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.

This glorious declaration also holds a warning. It is not only for those who believe in Jesus. Paul declared that it is for “every knee”. This includes every knee. Even the devil and his minions, and every person who sides with him, will be forced to bow on that day, obviously not in worship but in defeat to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, not the devil, is Lord.

While we are still in this life, we have a decision to make. Who is Lord? If we choose to side with the devil and believe his lie, when we eventually bow to Jesus we will seal our eternal fate, and it will be our choice, not God’s that decides where we go. If we are convinced that It is Jesus who spoke the truth, our destiny with be with Him forever.

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.

 

Glimpses Of The Great God: Day Five

Devotion, , ,

DAY FIVE

In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple.

Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings:

With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.

And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

the whole earth is full of His glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips;

your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Isaiah 6:1 – 7

 

Isaiah was exposed, in his vision, to the awesome holiness of God.  In the light of God’s purity, he became painfully aware of his own impurity. What is God’s holiness?  The best understanding I have is that God’s holiness is the guarantee that He will always be who He is, in nature and in action.  He is totally separated from sin and impurity. He can never change or think or act differently from who He has revealed Himself to be.  He is absolutely consistent with Himself. His holiness is not something to fear but rather it is our security and our hope because He has promised to make us holy because He is holy.