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Learning To Be A Son – Chapter Fourteen – A Tale Of Two Sons

Book Reviews, , , ,

LEARNING TO BE A SON

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A TALE OF TWO SONS

Jesus told a story of a father and two sons. By telling parables, Jesus used one of the rabbinic teaching methods with great effect. “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” as it is known, is the third in a chain of three stories about lost things. The purpose of the parables was to alert the Pharisees to their bad attitude towards people whom they perceived as lower than themselves. They criticised Jesus for hobnobbing with “sinners”. Jesus insisted that it was sinners who needed Him more than the “righteous”.

The first two stories illustrated how friends and family rejoice on earth when lost property is found and how angels rejoiced in heaven when a lost sinner came home. Jesus’ third story was much closer to the bone. The father received his lost son with joy when he returned home after wasting his inheritance on worthless friends and riotous living, but the elder brother refused to share in the celebration.

The older brother did not realise that he was just as lost to the father as his younger brother. The younger son left home as a rebel, wasted his money, repented and returned home to beg for a place among the servants. His father received him with joy and reinstated him as a son. The older brother remained at home but served his father as a slave. He did not realise that he was a son and that he was always with his father to share in the father’s bounty.

The difference between the older and younger son was the difference of attitude. They were both sons, even though the younger son renounced his place in the family by his attitude and behaviour until he came to his senses. The older son was just as lost to the father, although he remained at home, because he acted and served like a slave.

Both sons had no fellowship with the father, the one because he ran away and the other because he had did not share the father’s heart.

Jesus did not apply the story as He did with many other parables. He left it open-ended for the Pharisees to reach their own conclusion. It is up to us as well to make up our minds which of the two sons represent us. Some of us are sons lost to the Father because we are in the far country. We live and act like orphans. Others of us are like the elder brother who did everything right but had no fellowship with the Father because he lived like a slave. We fear God’s punishment instead of being secure in the Father’s love.

EPILOGUE

The purpose of our journey through this book is to rediscover who we really are – God’s beloved sons and daughters, restored to the Father and to the family of God because of what Jesus did for us.

God has a purpose for us in His family which we discover through prayer – having fellowship with the Father so that we can get to know Him and so that we can learn what He wants to accomplish for His kingdom through us.

It is because we are His sons and daughters that we have access to Him and to all the resources He makes available to us in Christ and through the Holy Spirit to accomplish His will on earth and to re-establish His rule in the hearts of those who believe in and receive Jesus as Lord.

“Son” is our password to access everything we have in Christ. Outside of our family relationship with the Father we are not eligible for anything that belongs to Him and to His Son.

God is writing His big story and He has invited us to be a part of it if we allow Him to write our story through Him. Now that we have the “password”, let us use it wisely because, through it He has given us access to His World Wide Web.

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 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), 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 ?

 

 

Today Is The Day

Bible Study, , ,

TODAY IS THE DAY

As has just been said, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter His rest if not those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter because of their unbelief. (Heb. 3:15-19)

These are serious words written about people who lived and died long ago, but applicable to us today. Today! We have no other time but today.

God’s people, the children of Israel, must have been excited at the thought that, through Moses they would finally be free of the hated Egyptians and their cruel whips. With what expectation they gathered on that fateful night when the angel of death passed over the land of Egypt and left at least one dead in every household! They were untouched by the simple act of smearing blood on the doorposts of their houses. That was a miracle! It had to be because blood in and of itself could do nothing for them.

Then there was the unforgettable moment when the uncrossable Red Sea gave way and became a pathway through which they could walk on dry land. They saw it! They walked across it, and when they were through, the water collapsed back on itself and swallowed up the Egyptian army because it was not under God’s protection as they were.

So many miracles in the wilderness! Every day a vast cloud covered the camp and sheltered them from the searing desert heat. At night the same cloud glowed with warmth and kept them comfortable in the freezing cold. Every morning they gathered the mysterious manna which was there six days out of seven. On the seventh day the ground was just ground, sandy, rocky and barren – no sign of the manna. It was heavenly bread, packed with all the goodness of all their food put together which nourished them and kept their bodies healthy and strong for their journey.

Where would they find water in a desert where is rained only every ten years? God did it again. He split a huge granite rock and so much water gushed out that it eroded the surrounding rocks and filled the plain below it with enough water to satisfy the needs of millions of people and animals for a whole year. How is that for a miracle!

When fiery snakes bit them because of their complaining against God, a brass snake on a pole was all it took to save them from the venom. In fact, God’s promise was a built-in medical service which guaranteed their preservation from sickness as long as they trusted Him.

They needed no shops or clothing boutiques. Their clothes and shoes miraculously lasted for the duration of their journey. How did that happen? God, again! For forty years God was an all-inclusive supply store of everything they needed. All they needed to do was ask and trust Him; but they didn’t.

They constantly revealed their unbelief and suspicion of Him by their complaining and threats. Worse still, they refused to obey Him. If He told them to do this, they did that! How is that for insult! They insulted God time and again by their in-you-face disobedience. It’s no wonder they provoked God to such an extent that even Moses’s intervention could not save them. One by one they died in the desert and their bodies were left to rot there instead of moving boldly and confidently into their inheritance.

For forty years, forty years! they went around in circles, just a few weeks journey from their destination but never reaching it because they would not listen in spite of all the miracles! How is that for wicked unbelief!

But lest we judge them, what about us? We may not be crossing a real desert somewhere but life is often like a desert – barren and empty. Instead of trusting God and following His instructions, we complain, we murmur, we rebel and we disobey. We are no different from those who perished in the desert. We decide what to do and how to do it and we act like people in the world who don’t have a Father who loves them.

What’s the purpose of having to traverse the barren times in life? It’s about trust! Trust! That means listening, following, obeying, holding on and keeping on because the wilderness will come to an end. There is the abundance of God’s promises for those who are determined to go His way. When do we start? Today!

For those who trust God today, and today, and today, there is a reward, today! Rest! Trust leads to rest, the rest of leaning on the Father for the supply of every need without a murmur and without a qualm. In the desert? Is this really possible? Yes! God is full – full of everything, and He delights to fill those who know they are empty and come to Him to be filled.

All we need to do is to ask, and trust. After all, God is a perfect Father. And it can begin for you today.

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 Time Of Testing

Bible Study, , ,

A TIME OF TESTING

So, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me through the forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ (Heb. 3:7-11).

The period in the wilderness was, for the Israelites, a time of testing, but who was being tested? Both! God was testing His people to see what was in their hearts, and they were testing God’s love and patience by their rebellion and unbelief.

God often deliberately led His people into seeming cul-de-sacs because He wanted to know what was in their hearts. Of course He knew what was in them. He knew them better than they knew themselves. But that was exactly the point. Until they were in a situation where what was in them could come out, it was of no value to them. So what did He do? He tested them,

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Deut. 8:2, 3)

And how did they fare in this test? Their unbelief spilled out in a torrent of abuse and complaint against Moses and against God. Gone was the remembrance of God’s covenant and His promises. Their circumstances blotted out everything except the awareness of what was happening to them right then. They whined; they threatened Moses; they complained against God, and they got it from Him!

How did they test God? They spoke against Him; they failed to understand what He was doing; they negated His promises through their words of unbelief, and they brought His wrath down upon them by their murmuring. Instead of being encouraged by His miraculous intervention time and again, they tried His patience by conveniently forgetting both what He had done for them and what it was really like back in Egypt. They were quite willing to go back there and suffer under a cruel and ruthless Pharaoh rather than trust the God who was doing everything to make their journey as comfortable as possible for them.

Since it was Jesus with whom the writer was comparing Moses and the ‘house’ over which he was a faithful servant, how did He react to His testing in the wilderness? He trusted the Father in those horrific forty days when He had no access to food, water, shelter and protection from the heat of the sun, the cold of the night and the venomous creatures that lived there.

He had to face all this alone without wavering in His confidence in the Father. He made no plans to go it alone. He would not capitulate to the enemy’s insinuations and suggested solutions. He would not break His unity with the Father. He chose to die rather than betray the Father, and because of that He lived.

He taught His disciples to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ Those words were loaded with meaning for Him because He had been there. He knew the strength of Satan’s tests and the pull of His human desires. This is not so much about what the devil can do; this is about what we can do when under pressure from the devil. We are not victims. If we were, God could not hold us responsible for falling into temptation.

There is no such thing as ‘The devil made me do it.’ We alone are responsible for the choices we make. Neither God nor the devil can decide for us. All the devil can do is to plant lies into our minds. What we do with them is our choice. If we, like Jesus, are fortified with God’s word and empowered by His Spirit, we will do as He did, ‘live by every word that comes from the mouth of God’.

Jesus, our high priest, is qualified to intercede for us because He was faithful over God’s house as an obedient and trusting Son. When our faith in God is put to the test through hardship and suffering, we have both His example and His Spirit to see us through if we are willing to trust Him instead of, like His ‘house’ over which Moses was a servant, revealing rebellion and unbelief by our bitter murmuring.

When God tests us, let us not test Him. His tests always have a miracle and a blessing in store if we trust Him and live in the gratitude of His presence and His provision. If we endure with faith and patience, we shall inherit the promises (Heb. 6: 12).

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.

 

Wiped Away or Wiped Out…?

Christian Life, , ,

WIPED AWAY OR WIPED OUT…?

“Now it’s time to change your ways. Turn to face God so He can wipe away your sins, pour out showers of blessing to refresh you and send you the Messiah He prepared for you, namely Jesus. For the time being He must remain out of sight in heaven until everything is restored in order again just the way God, through the preaching of His holy prophets of old, said it would be. Moses, for instance, said, ‘Your God will raise up for you a prophet just like me from your family. Listen to every word He speaks to you, Every last living soul who refuses to listen to that prophet will be wiped out from the people.'” Acts 3:19-23 (The Message).

That’s a bit rough, isn’t it? Does God really mean that everyone who does not listen to Jesus will be wiped out, as in — removed, destroyed? What happened to the “God is love” thing?

Yes He does.

The tragic truth is that most people do not understand the nature of God’s love. They think that His love is a “do anything you like, spit in my face, ignore who I am, wipe your feet on me and I’ll take no notice” kind of love. Yes, He loves us even if we have treated Him like that but that attitude does not make for a good Father/son relationship.

Jesus told a compelling story about a son who treated his dad just like that. He was an “I don’t need you; I can make it on my own; I want to be free; I’m sick of you and your stuffy holiness” son. He demanded his inheritance, tantamount to saying, “I wish you were dead,” and set off to live out his ‘freedom’ far away from dad and home.

His plan worked for a while until his funds ran out and his so-called friends ran away. Then reality hit. He had no home, no money and no one to turn to for help. He faced the stark reality that a man has to work to eat. Hunger drove him to do the unthinkable — a Jewish boy looking after pigs! Just imagine that! He was so “free” that he could sit and watch pigs all day.

What option did he have but to eat humble pie and go back home? Suddenly the thought of home and dad and all those things he had so despised, were no longer repulsive but appealing. It’s funny how hunger and poverty bring a person back to sanity! He wasn’t sure about his father’s attitude to his homecoming. He had better offer himself as a servant just to get a square meal every day.

The story, among other things, illustrates the heart of the father — his son was always his son, regardless of his failures; but it does not tell us about the cost of reconciliation. God set a price on rebellion from the beginning. Rebellion is expensive. Forgiveness comes at a price.

This whole episode that Peter was talking about, God coming to earth Himself, living a human life for thirty three years, being put to death for being the Son of God with no guilt of His own, was about paying the price He demanded for mankind’s rebellion. We could not pay the price for everyone else’s sin, only our own, and that means being wiped out of God’s family for ever.

There’s only one way back into the family — by having our wicked past wiped away. Jesus did that by taking the rap for us. Now we can do what the rebellious boy did, go back home to Dad because there is nothing in the way any more. The Father took His anger at sin out on His own Son so that He can welcome us home with open arms.

So…it’s time to change your ways! The old way does not work and only leads to the pigsty. Daddy’s waiting to welcome you home.

When the Holy Spirit Came

Christian Life, , ,

WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT CAME

“There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then, when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongue being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, ‘Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?'” Acts 2:5-8 (The Message).

The Bible is a unique book! Written by more than forty people of all walks of life over a period of 2000 years, it is a whole and tells one story. Approximately 2000 years before this event on the day of Pentecost, the entire human race spoke one language and lived together in one area. From one couple, Adam and Eve, they had multiplied and become many tribal groups.

They had become so wicked that God destroyed them with a universal flood, saving only Noah and his family and pairs of animals and birds of every species to repopulate the earth. His instruction was that they multiply and fill the earth.

There were three major tribes, descendants of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Instead of spreading out across the globe as God intended, they decided to establish a rival religion in defiance of God. They built a ziggurat at a place later dubbed Babel, which meant confusion.

God knew that they would do anything to defy Him if they stuck together. The only way He could force them apart was to confuse their languages. They separated into their tribal and language groups when they could no longer understand one another. From that moment they moved farther and farther apart until they inadvertently had done what God wanted them to do, to fill the earth.

In their rebellion and sin against God, in whose image He had made man to be one with Him and with one another, they lived in conflict and war from that time onwards. It was the coming of Jesus, who brought reconciliation to God and man through His death and resurrection that made unity possible. What happened on the day of Pentecost was the beginning of the reversal of Babel.

Jerusalem was full of pilgrims from every part of the Roman Empire which was the civilised world of their day. Passover and Pentecost were the great draw cards and Jerusalem the hub of their religious festivals. There must have been a babble of dialects, in spite of Greek being the “lingua franca” of the time.

Into this scenario came the unifying power and presence of the Spirit of God who had left man at the beginning when Adam and Eve decided to go it alone. In a mysterious and miraculous way the disciples, who had been together worshipping Jesus, were speaking in all the dialects represented in Jerusalem.

The people were astonished and even more so because most of the disciples were from an outskirt province –Galilee — and spoke with a distinctive accent which gave them away. They were despised by the Judean Jews because they were far more liberal than their Judean counterparts and influenced by their non-Jewish neighbours.

The unthinkable had happened. They were able to understand the speech of these Galilean peasants who had never learned their languages. How did that happen? The answer is God! He did it as a sign to the Jews but, even more than that, He reversed what had happened at Babel. The time had come to reconnect alienated people to one another because the reason for their alienation had been removed.

Jesus prayed for the unity of all believers which would be a powerful witness to His coming from God. Now it was happening. Babel was being overturned because Pentecost had happened and is still happening every time another person embraces Jesus as Lord.