Tag Archives: searched

YOU KNOW ME!

Devotion, ,

“O Lord, you have searched me

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

You perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you know it completely, O Lord.

Psalm 139:1-4

COMMENT

Not only are you the unique creation of God’s handbut also the object of His personal and intimate knowledge.  This can be quite a scary thought if you are thinking, saying or doing what you know is displeasing to Him.  But it’s also comforting to know that God knows you so completely that you don’t need to hide anything from Him.  He knows where you are, He knows your thoughts and He knows your ways.  That means that He knows how you are going to react and what you are going to do before you do it.  Wow!  That’s amazing!  Imagine someone knowing you that well and loving you for who you are anyway.

PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING

Praise the Lord today for His intimate knowledge of you. How does that make you feel?  Don’t you feel loved and special?  Thank Him for being so close to you that everything about you is open to Him.

Highly Privileged People

Bible Study, , ,

HIGHLY PRIVILEGED PEOPLE

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed them that they were not serving themselves when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things (1 Peter 1:10-12).

In these three long and complicated sentences, what exactly was Peter getting at? We have to look at these thoughts in the context of what he had already written.

His readers were a rejected and abused people. Some of them were Jews who had embraced Jesus as their Messiah and others had come to faith in Christ from worshipping idols and practicing wicked things in the name of their religion. Instead of being recognised as upright citizens, they were despised and rejected by both Jews and Gentiles because they no longer fitted in. They would not acknowledge Caesar as Lord and they refused to take part in idolatrous worship and the practices of their pagan neighbours.

It was natural that they should feel like outcasts. One can sense, from Peter’s encouragement, that they were in danger of forgetting who they really were. It was his intention to show them who they were in God’s eyes regardless of what the people in the world thought of them and how they treated them. He had to put their circumstances into perspective so that they would not lose heart and go back to their old ways.

Far from their suffering being the evidence of God’s neglect, it was proof that they were genuine children of God. Rejected by the world? They were chosen, holy and beloved of God? Suffering for their faith? God was purifying their confidence in Him. They had reason to rejoice because, far from being the off-scourings of the earth, they were a privileged and blessed people.

They were so blessed, in fact, that they experienced what prophets and angels could not! God’s prophets of old were the most privileged of all His people. They were called and anointed with His Spirit to stand between God and His people. They stood in the presence of God to hear His word in order to speak it to His people. They had access to God’s counsel in ways which kings and people and even the priests did not. They not only understood what God was doing in the lives of His people in their current circumstances – they also had insights into future events.

It was from those who lived in intimate fellowship with God that we can draw an accurate picture of the Messiah long before He arrived on the earth. When we compare Jesus with the predictions the prophets made about Him centuries before, we come up with a perfect match. How else can we be sure that the man who claimed to be the Son of God and sent from God was who He said He was?

But there was one thing the prophets could not do – experience what they predicted because it was for a future time. They could only see it from afar. They would experience the benefits of His death because He was ‘the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ but they would never experience the temporal blessings which are part of the package of salvation.  However much they longed to be a part of what they had written, it was not to be.

Only those to whom Peter was writing and all those who follow in their footsteps of faith are privileged to be participants in the blessings Jesus, the Messiah brought when He came to earth.

Why is it important that believers go through the kind of things of which Peter wrote? Why does God not snatch us out of here the moment we believe? Firstly, of course, He needs witnesses to live and speak of His grace to a broken world. But secondly, and this is the part we don’t like, He takes time to sanctify and purify our hearts from the corruption of the world.

While we are here on earth in the midst of the world’s brokenness and wickedness, we are serving our apprenticeship for the life to come. God is grooming us for our role as co-rulers with Christ on His restored and perfected earth. He is teaching us to reign in life now so that we can reign with Him then. He cannot use untrained and untested rookies for so great a responsibility! How we function now will determine where we function then.

Far from being underdogs, Peter had to ensure that his readers understood who they were, why they were suffering and what their privileges were so that they would persevere, not with gritted teeth but with joyful purpose because, in God they were going somewhere – into the eternal realm of unimaginable blessing.

So are we if we hang in there!

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.

 

Everyone, Everywhere

Bible Study, , ,

EVERYONE EVERYWHERE

 “When the sun went down, everyone who had anyone sick with some ailment or other brought them to Him. One by one He placed His hands on them and healed them. Demons left in droves, screaming, ‘Son of God! You’re the Son of God!’ But He shut them up, refusing to let them speak because they knew too much, knew Him to be the Messiah.” Luke 4:40-41 (The Message).

After the initial excitement of this new prophet who said and did out-of-this-world things, they all settled into a routine. They dutifully waited until after sunset, when the Sabbath was over, before they brought their ailing friends and relatives to Him for a touch and a word.

Don’t you love the “one by one” bit? He didn’t run a mass healing campaign. ‘Everyone who is sick, come to the front. Now pray a healing prayer.’ He touched them, one by one. I can imagine that, in those few moments, when He placed His hand on a fevered brow, a diseased limb, or an aching belly, the word that He spoke was a tender expression of love, of kindness and reassurance. God was there and He was showing His people just how big His heart of compassion was for them.

Deep into the night they came, patiently waiting their turn for the Master’s touch, with a bubble of expectant excitement inside. They knew that tonight, when they put their heads down to sleep, they would be free of aches and pains and fever, and they would wake to a brand new day.

“He left the next day for open country. But the crowds went looking for Him and, when they found Him, clung to Him so He couldn’t go on. He told them, ‘don’t you realise that there are yet other villages where I have to tell the Message of God’s kingdom, that this is the work God sent me to do?’ Meanwhile He continued preaching in the meeting places of Galilee.” Luke 4:42-44 (The Message).

A strange way to respond to a successful healing campaign, wasn’t it? At the height of success and popularity, He goes missing! Leaves town! Escapes into the country! Was Jesus suffering from “burn out”? Already? His ministry had only just started and He couldn’t take the pace?

Far from it! He knew that His commission was far bigger than a local Capernaum success campaign. He had a message to deliver and work to do that extended over the entire nation, not just to a little pocket of people in Capernaum. Excited and happy as they were, He had to leave them and move on because others needed His message and His ministry.

So what was He actually doing? If He was not running a healing campaign, what was His purpose? Did He come to tell them that, if they accepted Him as Lord and Saviour, they would go to heaven when they died? Was that the sole purpose for His coming? The way the gospel is presented from many pulpits today, that might be what we think He came to do – to die on the cross so that we can go to heaven! Really!

Jesus was always about God’s kingdom. For too long the Liar and Usurper had held sway over the people and they were living with the result — emotional pain, physical distress, social and political upheaval. That was not God’s way. Jesus came to show and tell the real story about God’s rule. Get back under His rule, follow His way and things will be very different.

There was one major obstacle to becoming a part of His restoration plan — sin — the big barrier between God and man. But Jesus came to deal with that as well so that there would be nothing to stop people from returning to the Father and coming back under His rule — right in the heart of enemy territory.

But everyone needed to know, not just Nazareth — and they didn’t want to know — and Capernaum — and they couldn’t get enough. Everyone, everywhere, so they could choose.

You, too.