Tag Archives: weak

THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

May 22, 2021Bible Studyneighbours, strong, weakLuella Campbell

THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each one should please his neighbours for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please Himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’ For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” Romans 15:1-4.

The Old Testament, apart from being the root of our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is a rich source of examples of how God revealed Himself to His people and interacted with them. It was His purpose to show them who He was and what He required of them. As we read the stories of the ancients, we gain insights into His character and how we can relate to Him as they did, sinful beings though we are.

Imagine, for a moment, that the Scriptures began at Matthew 1. Who was Matthew and who were the people he wrote about? Where can we find information about them? What about their religion and culture? Who was this Jesus who featured so big in his stories? What about Matthew’s many quotes from a source he seemed to regard as authoritative? How did the Jews get there in the first place? Why were they being oppressed by a power called Rome? And on and on…

So many questions remain unanswered without the first half of the book. Yet many believers start reading at the beginning of the New Testament, ignoring the fact that it makes no sense without the Old, and then wondering why they don’t understand it, or why their own interpretations don’t make sense or, even worse, lead them astray.

God gave us a story book for a very good reason. We love to read stories, not only because they capture our interest, but also because we learn things from the mistakes and achievements of their characters. We are inspired by the example of great people; we gain insights and wisdom through their struggles; we celebrate and desire to imitate their victories and we love to journey with them in their world, because it is a real world, not a world of make-believe.

How many of us would be enthralled by a book of instructions or a book of deep theology? Those kind of books gather dust in the library and are only written and read by the boffins, while biographies, autobiographies and novels circulate regularly among the readers.

Paul encouraged the people in the church at Rome, many of whom were Gentiles, to study the writings we now call the Old Testament. From it they would learn and gain understanding of the God and the people with whom they had become identified. They would be inspired and encouraged by the stories of people who were sustained, supported and led by the God who loved them and had patience with them even when they disobeyed Him again and again.

Unlike the gods whom they once worshipped, the God of the Bible is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, a generous God who met their needs, fought their battles and kept on giving in spite of His people’s unfaithfulness.

Their stories would be repeated in the lives of the readers as they gained knowledge and confidence in the God who is revealed in the sacred writings. Unlike the stories of the gods which were the ramblings of someone’s overactive imagination, the stories in the Bible are true and verifiable through history and archaeology. As we read, they provide us with encouragement and hope, because the same God who loved and cared about people in its stories, loves and cares about us.

The Bible is a never-ending story. God is still writing it through the lives of His people down the centuries. Your story and mine are being carefully recorded and will be read when the books are opened at the end of time. There is another book being written as well – called the Lamb’s Book of Life. It contains the names of everyone who through faith in God’s Messiah and lives that are the fruit of their faith, have crossed over from death to life.

Everyone’s name is recorded in that book and only erased if he or she fails to be trusting the Saviour when they pass forever from this life to the next.

“Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life will be thrown into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15.

How sad if you neglect to read the book and obey what it teaches! Your name will be erased and will not be there when the books are opened.

Acknowledgement

Asleep On The Battlefield

September 2, 2015Bible Studyflesh, Spirit, temptation, weak, willingLuella Campbell

ASLEEP ON THE BATTLEFIELD

Then He returned to His disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Simon,’ He said to Peter, ‘are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Once more He went away and prayed the same thing.

When He came back, He again found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to Him. Returning the third time, He said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!’ (Mark 14: 37-42).

Agitated! You can feel it in His words and actions. Agonising prayer! Backwards and forwards to the sleeping disciples! Rebuke and warning! All the signs of someone who was restless and agitated, anticipating something and desperately wanting His disciples to be in it with Him.

And the disciples? They were oblivious to the impending tragedy that was about to overtake their Master and them with Him. Despite His rebukes and His warnings, they slept on. Not even the sound of His agonised cries in the silence of the garden could disturb their sleep. They were finished, exhausted beyond caring. O, they had felt His mood alright. They were aware that something was up, but somehow they just could not rouse themselves to be a part of it. They were beyond weary.

Peter was the one who got the rebuke. He was always out front, leading both by example and by his big mouth. He should have taken the lead in setting up a watch so that Jesus could engage His Father in prayer knowing that His disciples were guardingHis back. He didn’t want Judas sneaking up on them and taking them all prisoner. It was His fight this time, and He had to do it alone.

There is a plaintive note in Jesus’ words to Peter. ‘Couldn’t you keep watch for me for just one hour?’ But Peter didn’t understand what he was to watch for. Had Jesus explained to them that Judas was about to break in on their company and arrest Him? Perhaps He wanted them to alert Him when they caught the first glimpse of the arresting mob in the garden – not that they came quietly, it seems.

Jesus had no intention of escaping into the darkness. He could have, but He didn’t. He could have slipped away long before the mob arrived. He knew what Judas was up to. He knew they would find Him there. Unlike any other villain who was always on the run, Jesus anticipated His arrest and steeled Himself for the moment. That’s what His prayer was all about.

Was He going to cringe and fight, or was He going to submit to the injustice and cruelty He knew was coming, in obedience to His Father? This was the moment for which all of the angelic hosts had waited; the moment towards which all of human history had pointed. He had to decide. Would He go through with it as a true son, or would He flinch and fail? His own destiny and the destiny of the human race hung on the next few hours. And the disciples slept!

All the lessons of His earthly life as a human being and the Son of God, a role He had never played until the moment when He burst in on human history, prepared Him for this moment. Unlike His disciples and as weary as He must have been as well, He could not sleep. He understood how vital it was to be fortified with the awareness of His Father’s presence and approval. Just as He was prepared for the conflict in the wilderness, so now He must be ready for the greatest conflict of all. Would He submit like a son or would He resist like a rebel?

And the disciples? They were asleep and so unprepared! Instead of catching the spirit of their Master and praying for strength to trust the Father in their time of testing, they were asleep on the battlefield. They were not even aware that there was an impending battle, for them as well as for their Master. They drowsed away the moments when they should have been praying.

How often we are also caught unawares because we are unprepared for our moment! The tests are sprung on us unawares. God gives us opportunity, time after time, to trust Him in the ups and downs of life. Then there comes the storm, the one big, violent upheaval in our lives for which the many small tests should have prepared us. Have we learned our lessons well?

Jesus said, ‘Be alert! Keep watch!’ For what? For the unguarded moments when Satan slips in to trip us up. Don’t ever sleep on the battlefield. The enemy never sleeps!

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith . . . (1 Peter 5: 8-9a)

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A Better Covenant

March 12, 2015Bible Studybetter hope, former, regulation, useless, weakLuella Campbell

A BETTER COVENANT

The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. And it was not without an oath! Others became priests without any oath, but He became a priest with an oath when God said to Him: ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind: You are a priest forever.’ Because of this oath, Jesus became the guarantor of a better covenant (Heb. 7: 18-22).

Why was the old covenant weak and useless? It had no power to effect what it required. There was nothing wrong with what God asked them to do. In fact, the law was a reflection of God’s character. He not only asked, He required that they obey His teachings because there was no other way to live that would satisfy His holiness. The problem did not lie in the measure or standard God set for His people but in their inability to carry it out.

Then there was a second problem – the priests who represented the people to God were just as unable to measure up to God’s standard as the people were. They were as sinful, rebellious and corrupt as the people they represented. God’s requirements were just and righteous. What He demanded of them was exactly according to who He was, but the whole system fell flat because of the corruption of the people’s hearts. They had no desire or power to do what God required.

God’s intention was never to accept them on the basis of their perfect obedience to the law because they couldn’t do it. The priesthood was His special gift of grace to show them His solution for their sinfulness. He provided blood sacrifices to atone for their sin, and a priesthood which would mediate for them so that God would accept their sacrifices.

All this was just a picture of what He had already done for them. Before He even put breath into the first human being, He had already provided His sacrifice – Jesus, the perfect lamb sacrificed before the creation of the world. He was the only acceptable solution to the problem of man’s sin. Every time an animal was killed and its blood sprinkled on the altar, the offerer was supposed to be trusting in God for the forgiveness of his sins because God’s lamb was the real sacrifice of which the animal was a picture.

So deeply was the nature of man corrupted that the people used their sacrifices as an excuse for sinning since they thought that, no matter what they did or how wicked they were, they could always offer sacrifices for their forgiveness. They thought that it did not matter how much they sinned. They could always offer a sacrifice and be forgiven.

Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning (Hos. 8: 11).

If the system was intended to provide a solution for the corruption of the people’s hearts, it was doomed to failure from the beginning. It could tell them what to do but it could never enable them to obey. It could only show up the depth of their sinfulness and bring the judgment of God down on them, priests and people alike.

God’s solution was already written into His book before man ever fell from his state of perfection. He had prepared another priesthood – not taken from among the people by reason of their ancestry, but one whom He sent from heaven to be a man, to uphold and live by His standards to perfection and then to die in their place as a sacrifice for sin. This priest would be raised to life again by reason of His sinlessness and become forever the high priest His people needed.

Why was Jesus, in the order of Melchizedek, the perfect replacement for the Aaronic priesthood?

Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office but, because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens (Heb. 7: 23-26).

He is the high priest we need, and He is always in the presence of the Father to represent us before Him. Not only does He present His blood as the perfect sacrifice but He also provides the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts. We are no longer rebels but beloved sons and daughters, at home and at peace with the Father.

Guard Your Own Heart

September 6, 2014Bible Studycontempt, eat, faith, judge, weakLuella Campbell

GUARD YOUR OWN HEART

“Accept one another whose faith is weak without quarrelling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows him to eat anything but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge another man’s servant? To their own master servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Romans 14:1-4.

Is this really a problem today? Who cares what another believer eats or wears or even drives or lives in?

In the Apostle Paul’s day, it was an issue for both Jew and Gentile believers – Jews because their conscience was shaped by the dietary laws of their religion and culture, and Gentiles because they bought their meat from the market after it had been offered to idols.

There were two matters of conscience that had to be dealt with: What effect did the food they ate have on their spirits, and did meat offered to idols in a pagan temple have any power to influence them? But, for Paul there was another and more subtle problem – that of judging.

From God’s perspective, judging was more serious than what a person ate. Remember what Jesus said about food? Since it goes into the stomach and passes out of the body, it does not have any power over a person’s heart. It is from the heart, not from what one eats, that wickedness in all its forms originates, and what one eats cannot change the heart, for good or evil. On the other hand, judging another person is a subtle form of idolatry because the one who judges sets himself above the other person.

What about eating meat that had been offered to idols? Does that meat not have the power to influence the eater for evil? Was there not some sort of demonic transfer that took place when the meat was offered to the idol? It all depends on what a person believes.

Never forget that the devil is a liar and that the only language he speaks is the language of lies. His most powerful weapon is deception. He holds people captive to fear only if they believe that he still has power over them. Jesus exposed and utterly defeated him at the cross but he tries to hold people captive by suggesting that he has power over them.

It is up to every believer to decide who his master is? How tragic that many Christians still fear the devil although they say that they trust in Jesus. In the everyday, practical issues of life, we have to ask the question, “Did the cross work?” According to Jesus, when He cried out, “It is finished!” on the cross, He completed everything necessary to reverse what Adam did in the Garden of Eden. He made a public spectacle of the devil, unmasked and defeated him and took away his power to deceive and destroy.

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Colossians 2:13-15.

What kind of food we eat and where we got it from should never be an issue because it has no power to influence our hearts except the power we give it when we act out of fear and not faith. However, when we judge someone who has no problem with what he eats because our faith is weak, we usurp the role of master and set ourselves up as the standard of judgment.

“Let it go,” said Paul. “He has a Master who will take care of him. It’s not your problem.” When we try to control someone else, we subtly expose our own insecurity. When we judge another, we expose our own guilt. Our mouths are the mirror of our hearts. By focussing on someone else’s supposed weakness or guilt, we deflect attention from ourselves in case we are exposed.

What is the solution? Rest in Jesus and take care of your own conscience. Trust God. You are not responsible for your brother’s conscience.

Acknowledgement

Who Do You Think You Are?

April 5, 2013Christian Lifebrash words prophetic, Peter, self-confident, weakLuella Campbell

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

“Peter said, ‘Master, I’m ready for anything with you. I’d go to jail for you. I’d die for you!’

“Jesus said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Peter, but before the rooster crows you will have three times denied that you know me.'” Luke 22:33-34 (The Message).

We like to pick Peter out for being cocksure of himself but I don’t think we are any different. There was no problem with his sincerity. He loved the Master and would willingly have given his life for him — in his mind — but, in the real situation, at the mercy of ruthless Roman soldiers, it was a little different.

Peter did not know what it was like to be in that kind of situation. Perhaps even more important was the fact that dying for Jesus then would be pointless. He would be dying for a friend but not as a witness to the truth to which he was testifying. His opportunity would come later when he would give his life for what he believed and preached, that Jesus is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead and is the author of eternal salvation for all who believe in Him.

Peter had a whole lot of living to do and learning the truth about Jesus and the resurrection because that became the pivot of his life and message, and the reason for his obedience and courage, even to the point of dying the same cruel death as his Master.

Peter did not even know that his brash words were prophetic. He did indeed go to jail and to death for Jesus but it was because of his choice to follow Him and not because he was the victim of Jewish leaders’ prejudice. Peter learned his lesson well. He had to go through his own ‘Gethsemane’, humiliating and painful as it was, to be equipped to be an apostle of the good news.

Our own failures and weaknesses seem so drastic and final that we think that they disqualify us from being Jesus’ disciples, and we run from Him in guilt and shame. God has a very different view of our failures. These are the very experiences that equip us to be witnesses for Him.

To what are we really witnessing? Not to our strengths! If we never failed, we would not need the grace which God freely gives to us because of Jesus. This is the marvel and miracle of the gospel. Jesus came to earth because of who we are. There is nothing in us to commend us to God. God’s verdict: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV).

At best we are foul. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Isaiah 64:6 (NIV).

Jesus did everything necessary to recue us from our pitiful condition. He paid our debt, washed us clean and presented us to God as His own beloved sons and daughters and gives us the grace to live for Him in His strength, not ours.

We are fools if we think we can do it by ourselves. Peter learned that and so must we if we are to be witnesses of how big He is, and not of how big we are. It only takes our considered decision to follow Him to bring God’s grace into action that energises us to do what we have chosen to do. The choice is ours; the strength is His and we do it together.

We have a union with the Holy Spirit who lives in us so close that, whenever we decide to obey, His power activates our choice and we do it through Him. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me, the life I live in the body, live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 (NIV).

Is that not a better option than being self-confident and falling into a deep, dark hole of guilt and shame because I thought I could do it by myself?

Ebenezer Family Church

HE IS RISEN!