Tag Archives: save

JESUS SAID – 4

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John 12:47-48 NLT
[47] “I will not judge those who hear me but don’t obey me, for I have come to save the world and not to judge it. [48] But all who reject me and my message will be judged on the day of judgment by the truth I have spoken.”

We have, somehow, developed the idea, that, on Judgment Day, when all people stand before God to give an account of their lives, God will interrogate them thoroughly, digging through all their words and actions to uncover attitudes and motives. This sounds like a very long process, given the vast number of all who ever lived and will still live. Imagine the terror of having to wait your turn!

What does the Bible say about Judgment Day?

First, Jesus said that we will be judged by His words…

John 12:48 NIV
[48] “There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”

He also said that we would be judged by our words!

Matthew 12:36-37 NIV
[36] But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. [37] For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

As I was pondering this statement, several Scriptures came to mind.

First, everyone will judged by the standard of God’s Word, Jesus Himself.

Revelation 19:13, 16 NIV
[13] “He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God…
[16] On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.”

Second, what about our words? Jesus asked His disciples one question that everyone must answer…

Matthew 16:15 NIV
[15] “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Every human will have to give an answer by which he/she will be judged.

John 3:18 NIV
[18] “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Paul said,

Romans 10:9 NIV
[9] “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

This is the only response God requires of us to be saved from the ravages of our sin.

However…this confession is only the first step. Some words spoken can be empty, that is “idle” or “careless”. To authenticate this confession, there must be a lifetime of confirmation.

Luke 6:46 NIV
[46] “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

Matthew 7:21-23 NIV
[21] “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. [22] 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 in your name perform many miracles?’ [23] Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

To stand before the Judge, then, and to be declared, “Not guilty!” requires only two steps…

Faith in Jesus as Lord,
Obedience to His word.

Long before we ever face the Lord on judgment day, the Apostle John assures us…

1 John 3:19 NIV
[19] “This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence:”

1 John 3:23 NIV
[23] “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

The New Covenant has condensed all of the 613 laws and requirements of the Old Covenant into two simple commands.

The evidence that our confession of Jesus as Lord is true, lies in the way we have obeyed His teachings and confirmed our union with Him.

John 14:18-21 NIV
[18] I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. [19] Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. [20] On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. [21] Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

Jesus speaks of an intimate union with Him that demonstrates the truth of His declaration,

John 15:5 NIV
[5] “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING.”

Judgment Day, then, is not about how good or bad we have been. For the unbeliever, his sinful life will expose his unbelief in Jesus as Lord. For the believer, his union with Jesus as close as a branch in the vine, will be on display by the fruit of that union…God’s love at work through him.

Let’s look at it this way. Simultaneously, every person appears before the Lord. What does He see? Light and darkness…that’s all. Those who have embraced Jesus as Lord and lived by His Word will be alight with His light. Conversely, those who rejected His word and loved by their own standards will be in darkness.

1 John 1:5-7 NIV
[5] “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. [6] If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. [7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

And so, Paul encourages us,

Ephesians 5:8-10, 12-13 NIV
[8] For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light [9] (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) [10] and find out what pleases the Lord.
[12] “It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. [13] But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

Joyfully or reluctantly,

Philippians 2:10-11 NIV
[10] “… At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11] and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

…those who are proved true disciples according to His Word and our words, or those who are judged and condemned by the Word.

Do Not Mess With God

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DO NOT MESS WITH GOD

Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear. In wrath you strode through the earth and in anger you threshed the nations. You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot. With his own spear you pierced his head when his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who were hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters (Hab. 3: 11-15).

Of whom was the prophet speaking here?

In graphic, vivid, poetic language and with emotional ecstasy he described God’s victory over the Pharaoh and the land of Egypt. God swept through the land with plague after plague, stripping away everything in which the godless Egyptians put their confidence. Using the powers of the natural world, He destroyed their agriculture, their livestock, their infrastructure and finally their firstborn because Pharaoh refused to honour Him and obey His instruction.

God, invisible though He is, is not to be trifled with. He is unstoppable in His wrath against those who defy Him and destroy His people but he is also unstoppable in His mercy towards those who fear Him. This is the amazing thing about our God. When the Bible describes Him as “for” those who fear Him it means that He bends all His energies and provides all His resources to support those who honour Him and uphold His cause.

When puny man takes God on, he gets more than he bargained for. Pharaoh tried it and lost. By the time God was finished with him, his land was in tatters, his people in disarray and his once mighty army lifeless corpses floating in the Red Sea. God defended His people as fiercely as a mother bear her cubs by destroying those who came against them.

Sennacherib, ruler of Assyria, the cruellest and most violent nation on earth, tried to swallow up little Israel in the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah and came off worst. He challenged God and God took him on, leaving his 186,000-strong army lying dead in their encampment outside Jerusalem. He himself perished at the hands of his own sons while he worshipped his idol god.

Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon, thought he was God and demanded worship or else  . . . Three young Hebrew men refused to bow down to his image and paid for their disobedience by being thrown into a seven-times-heated oven. Instead of burning, though, their ropes burned and they walked freely in the fire in the company of their God. Nebuchadnezzar had to admit defeat and call them out because they were indestructible in the presence of God.

Goliath, giant warrior champion of the Philistines, tried it too and lost his head in the effort. Stripling teenager David, not even a seasoned soldier but a keeper of sheep, accepted his challenge and, unarmed except for a sling and a stone, sank a pebble into the forehead of the challenger, leaving him face down in the dirt and as dead as a doornail.

Make no mistake, when God is for His people, He is for us. No matter how badly things go for us when the world takes us on, we shall come up trumps in the end. We have the many stories in the God’s history book and the many promises of God that evil will never overcome God or His people.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8: 31).

God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fie with His powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ  (2 Thess. 1: 6-8).

Reminiscing led Habakkuk to go on to an expression of confidence that has echoed down the ages. 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

Why Does God Sit On His Hands?

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WHY DOES GOD SIT ON HIS HANDS?

The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received.

‘How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted (Hab. 1: 1-4).

I have chosen this short prophetic book from the Old Testament for our next meditation because it is as relevant for us today as today’s newspaper. In my country I could be reflecting on information from any of our national newspapers.

This short message was not directed at the prophet’s people or the nations round about him. This was his personal encounter with God. From his perspective, things looked pretty bad. In spite of the fact that his people were God’s people, wherever he looked he saw violence and injustice. They were in a covenant relationship with God. They were supposed to obey Him and follow His ways so that they could be a witness to the ungodly people around them that their God was the true God and that He was holy.

But they were no different from the heathen. Why? Because they had abandoned the God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and replaced Him with the vile idol gods of their neighbours. Wherever Habakkuk looked, he saw the effects of their idolatry. His own people were just as evil as the heathen and he could not understand why God allowed them to carry on living wicked lives. Why did He not step in and do something?

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? How often I hear the same complaint, not only from God’s people but also from those who don’t even acknowledge Him. “If God is a God of love, why did He allow this, that or the other to happen?” For His own people, the goings on around them is a cause for doubt and fear. For the unbeliever, it’s an excuse to reject His authority and ignore their accountability to Him.

First of all, this way of thinking comes from a misunderstanding of who God is and how He works. People, and even His own people, think that God is some kind of puppeteer who has people on a string and makes them move the way He wants them to move. They forget that God honours the gift He gave humankind when He made the first man – free will – and He never overrides their freedom to choose, not matter what they do.

Secondly, they forget that man chose to overthrow God’s authority over hm. Adam was deceived. He listened to the devil’s insinuation that God was unloving and unfair. The result is the mess the world is in right now. What goes on in the world is not God’s fault – it’s ours. Human wickedness created the chaos without God’s help because we chose to make our own rules, and now the world is ensnared in its own evil ways.

Thirdly, God must follow His own rules. He is perfectly just. He cannot simply step in and arbitrarily change the way people behave. He is not indifferent to their suffering. In fact He has reassured His people again and again that He is always with them. He suffers with them. He grieves over what people do to each other. This is not what He intended the world to be like.

But He can only work through people’s choices.  Does this mean that God is powerless to intervene in an apparently hopeless situation? Is He subject to human beings? What kind of a God is He? How can we have confidence in Him when it seems that man is in charge? What’s the use of praying when God does not hear us or when He sits on His hands and does nothing?

Don’t you love Habakkuk’s honesty? God did! He did not swat him out of existence for questioning Him. He is like that. We are allowed to question Him as long as it not in defiance or disrespect. God always responds to us when we come to Him in humility – remembering that He is God and we are not. Whatever we may think, and however wrong we may be, there is no excuse for losing our holy fear of God or speaking to Him disrespectfully.

Habakkuk was genuinely looking for answers. So was another of God’s righteous people, Job, but God did not answer Job in the way He answered Habbakuk. Job accused God of being unjust and God did not take his accusation lightly. In Habakkuk’s situation, he was puzzled because of God’s seeming indifference to the situation and His inactivity in spite of the prophet’s urgent pleas for help. God wanted him to understand the bigger picture because, as a prophet, he had a job to do – be a spokesman for God to the people. He had to interpret current events in the light of God’s character and ways.

God responded to Habbakuk’s questions with a surprising and disturbing answer – which we shall discuss 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

 

A Perfect Son

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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 His 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.

His 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.

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.

 

We Choose Our Destiny

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WE CHOOSE OUR DESTINY 

“‘If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.

“‘There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn him at the last day. For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that His command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.'” John 12:47-50 NIV.

Could Jesus say any more clearly how intimately He related to the Father? His claim to oneness with the Father was spelled out and lived out in everything He said and did.

As human beings and according to the way we humans think, we have the mistaken idea that God will be our accuser when we stand before Him at the end of time. And yet the Bible teaches us that it is the devil, not God who is the accuser. We need to get rid of the notion that God will demand, ‘Why did you do this?’ or ‘Why did you do that?’ Enshrined in His gift of free will is the very judgment our choices will bring by the consequences of our choices.

There is a tendency in us to blame God when the choices we make bring the consequences we don’t like. Is there any logic in the outburst of the young girl, ‘Why did God allow this to happen?’ when her promiscuous behaviour produces either an unwanted pregnancy or worse? Did God tell her to sleep around? Did He force her to go to bed with every man she dates?

And when she decides to get rid of “the products of conception” and then faces the shame, guilt and condemnation of a conscience she cannot silence, is it God’s fault that she feels so bad? Did He tell her to get an abortion? Did He hide the truth from her until the deed was done and then beat her with the consequences?

The difference between God’s way and the devil’s modus operandi is this: God speaks the truth and does not hide the unpleasant consequences of our disobedience. He makes His requirements clear and warns us what will happen if we choose the path of self-will. He offers His grace but we must first make the choice to obey Him.

Satan, on the other hand, makes disobedience appealing. He lures us with self-gratification; he insists that it’s okay to satisfy our fleshly appetites now; he lies about the consequences; he waits until we have transgressed the boundaries and then beats us with condemnation. ‘You stupid fool! Look what you’ve done. You are a wicked person. You don’t deserve to live.’

Those who believe in Jesus can live life one of two ways. It all depends on whether or not we have embraced the truth of God’s word. We can be propelled into the future by our past, ashamed, apologetic, never knowing whether we have done enough to satisfy God’s requirements, acting like a slave who is bound to his master by rules and never able to accept God’s embrace and His affirmation, ‘My son; my daughter.’

On the other hand, we can be drawn into our future by God’s promises — believing the truth of His word and living up to who He says we are. He has cancelled our debt, and the written law with its demands and requirements. He knew we could never keep His law perfectly. He paid our unpayable debt, past, present and future and received us back into His family as greatly blessed, deeply loved and highly favoured sons and daughters.

He gave us the Spirit of sonship. We are no longer slaves but sons. We have all the privileges of sons. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation! No guilt! No shame! No barriers! Every promise we believe and embrace draws us nearer to who we really are.

God has made us responsible for our own judgment. When we stand before Him, what will our lives reveal? Obedience to His word and eternal life or rejection of what He said and an eternity of consequences we brought on ourselves because we thought we knew better?

It’s up to us to decide.