Saul

We can learn a lot of valuable lessons by going to the Old Testament.  Saul is a good example of this point, although not a good example of how to do God's will completely.  In this post, we will examine two passages that show that God is a particular God. 

First, let's notice who Saul is.  He was chosen by God to be the first, the very first, king of the nation of Israel.  Actually, there was a king in Israel before: God Himself.  And God allowed the people to have a king, but He was not in favor of it.  So God picked Saul, a tall and beautiful man to be the king. 
Saul made a great and powerful start as king; we read of this in 1 Samuel 11 and 12.  But as we get to chapter 13, we see that Saul disobeys God.  He gets impatient and decides to offer a burnt offering to God that he knows is wrong.  he knew this was the job of a prophet and priest , but he didn't wait for Samuel to come and make the offering.  God through Samuel pronounced judgment on Saul. 

In chapter 15 of 1 Samuel, Saul is clearly charged with utterly destroying the Amalekites.  The Amalekites had been a problem for Israel in the time of the Exodus from Egypt.  God wanted them punished.  but Saul made the decision to save back the king and the best of the spoil for purposes of sacrifice later to God.  But Samuel the prophet comes down hard on Saul saying, "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams."  The point is being made to Saul that, yes, he made a sacrifice to God; but he didn't do exactly what God had asked.  Consequently, God rejected Saul as king and would proceed to replace him with David.

The main lesson in all of this is that God wants obedience.  He wants us to do what He says regardless of what we might think is best.  This message is taught all through the Bible.   Thanks for reading.  I hope your week is a great one!

Weekly Worship

It is common practice in the "Christian" world today to worship God weekly.  In this posting we will look at this practice and examine why this is so, and why it matters.

We see in the Old Testament that God instructed Moses, when giving him the 10 commandments (Exodus 20), that worship should be on the Sabbath.  This was Saturday worship, set aside because God rested on the seventh day when creating the world.  So all through the Old Testament, beginning with the time of Moses, we see the Jewish people doing their worship on Saturday.

This all changes in the New Testament, beginning in the book of Acts; this is after Jesus has left the earth and gone back to heaven.  We read about these early Christians worshiping not on the sabbath, on Saturday, but on Sunday, the first day of the week.  Note Acts 20:7, "Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight."  And in 1 Corinthians 16:1,2, "Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, so you must do also: On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collection when I come."  In each case we see that the typical practice of these early Christians was to meet on Sunday, the first day of the week.

Yes, times have changed; we live in a new age with new ways.  But the Bible is not out of date.  We would do well to follow the pattern given to us by these Christians, and really to follow the pattern given to us by God since it is His Word.  And not only in worship, but we need to follow the NT pattern that God has given in all ways. 

Thanks for reading again.  See you next week. 

The Word

Jesus Christ is the Word of God.  This seems confusing; how can a man be "the Word?"  We may not understand everything about this, but we can know some things because the Bible gives us clues.

John 1 starts this way: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."  He not only is the Word of God; He was with God, was God, in the beginning, at the creation.  Verse 14 tells us, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

We see in Revelation 19:11-16 that His name is the Word of God.  This is a powerful view into heaven.  We see our Savior, the Word of God, with His armies.  They are all in white on white horses.  He is "clothed with a robe dipped in blood."  He gave His all, His life, for us.

The Word of God is called the Son of God, Son of Man, Christ, Savior, Lord and much more.  We need to follow Him...the Word of God.

Thanks for reading again.  Have a great week!

Repentance

Sometimes there is confusion about what repentance really is.  It simply is change.  It isn't just a confession, an admittance of doing wrong; it is about recognizing the wrong done and being committed to making the needed change.  It is a critical part of coming to our Lord, of being acceptable to our Lord.

We see the importance of repentance in lots of New Testament verses.  We read that the Lord is very concerned that we repent in 2Peter 3:9,  "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."  The Lord is on our side.  He wants us to be on His side.

Paul was preaching in Athens as recorded in Acts 17:30 and said, "Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent."  Obviously, this is taken out of context, but the context here is that Paul is addressing the fact that the people there have been worshiping idols and following false Gods.  Now it is time to repent, to change.

And in Acts 2:38, Peter was preaching to the Jews who crucified Jesus.  He told them how wrong they were.  In verse 37, they recognized their wrong and said, "..what shall we do?"  Peter's answer to them was, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."  The first step was to repent, to make that change of heart, to commit to Jesus.....then to follow that with baptism. 

We must all be willing to recognize our wrongs, then make the true commitment to change and conform to the will of our Lord, to repent of our wrongs and to move forward without the baggage of the past dragging us down.  Hebrews 12 tells us, "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (great men and women of the past), let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus..."

Thanks for reading.  Keep the faith. Feel the love.

Cornelius--A Good Man

The book of Acts is truly an interesting book to read as it follows the early Christians in their spreading of the Good News.  We see early in the book that the Gospel is taken first to the Jews in Jerusalem.  It makes sense that God would give the Jews the first opportunity to find salvation through Jesus since they were His relatives, they were the ones who had been God's special people, and they were also the ones who turned on Jesus and demanded His crucifixion.  So we see in Acts chapter 2 that Peter and the rest of the apostles preached the first Gospel sermon there in Jerusalem to the Jews. 

As time goes on, we see the Gospel being taken to Gentiles; this occurs first in chapter 10 with God's direction.  Acts 10 begins this way:  "There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian Regiment, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always."  He is further described in verse 22 as "..a just man, one who fears God and has a good reputation among all the nation of the Jews..."  The first point here is that he was a good, God fearing man in so many ways. 

As the story continues, we see that Cornelius, though a wonderful, God fearing man, needed something else in his life; and, in fact, this is why we see Peter being directed to go to Cornelius and to bring him to another level.  Peter, speaking of Jesus in verse 42, said, "And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead.  To Him all the prophets witness that , through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins."  But as we read on, we see that this belief included being baptized; note verse 47: "Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?  And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord."

The point of this is to show that, just like Cornelius, the world is full of good people who are so kind and helpful , sacrificial, and even God fearing.  But there is a higher level that is required; one must be a true follower of Jesus, a baptized believer just as Cornelius became.

And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that perhaps the main message of this story of Cornelius is to show that the Gospel is for all; not just for Jews or Gentiles or men or women, not for any one group of people.  It is for all....and this message comes through clearly as we read this story.

Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!

Hannah's Prayer

Hannah is a very Godly woman that we read about in 1 Samuel.  She had a good husband, Elkanah, who always was more than good to her.  But she was very sad because she could not have children.  This is a brief recount of how Hannah dealt with this problem. 

Hannah "..was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish.  Then she made a vow before the priest, Eli, and said that if the Lord would give her a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord and no razor would ever come upon his head.  This does occur; Hannah has a son, Samuel, who would become a strong leader and follower of God.  And he had lots of hair.

Hannah's reaction to this great success from the Lord was to go to Him in prayer.  We read about this in 1 Samuel chapter 2:  "And Hannah prayed and said: 'My heart rejoices in the Lord....no one is holy like the Lord.  For there is none besides You, nor is there any rock like our God.'

'Talk no more so very proudly; let no arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is the God of knowledge; and by Him actions are weighed....The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up.  The Lord makes poor and makes rich;  He brings low and lifts up.  He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory.  For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He has set the world upon them.  He will guard the feet of His saints, but the wicked shall be silent in darkness.' "

Hannah realized that the Lord is everything.  He had blessed her; but then, He blesses all who follow Him.  Hannah knew this and gave all of the praise to God.  We should do the same.  Praise be to God, the Father, and to Jesus Christ His Son!

Thanks for reading again.  Feel the love; spread the love.

Judging Others

Having received a question regarding judging others, I will use the blog this week to discuss some of the Bible passages that teach on this matter.  First, I remind the reader that I do not claim to have all the answers; I just seek the answers from God's Word. 

It must be appropriate to begin this search by going to Matthew 7 and look at the words of Jesus: "Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.  And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?......Hypocrite!"  The teaching of Jesus is very clear here.  We must have the right attitude toward others....and even toward our own selves.  We must recognize our own weaknesses and work on those, giving the remedial priority to ourselves over that of others.

Next we go to the teaching of Paul, as recorded in 1Corinthians 5.  The early part of chapter 5 tells us that the church is to purge out anyone who is openly sinning.  An example is given of a man who is being sexually immoral with his father's wife.  Paul says they are not to tolerate this.  In order to follow this teaching, members of the church must judge this person, must be able to make a reasonable judgment that this open sinning is occurring.  "Purge out the old leaven.." he says in verse 7.  In doing this, the individual Christian still must make it his first priority to work on his own sins and recognize that he is no perfect person either.

Toward the end of chapter 5, rather than church action against open sin, we read teaching to the individual: "I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.  Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.  But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner--not even to eat with such a person.  For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?  Do you not judge those who are inside?  But those who are outside God judges.  Therefore 'put away from yourselves the evil person.' "

As Christians, we must 1) consider first our own sins--not going around judging everyone else, 2) not tolerate open and obvious sin in the church, and 3) not make it our business to judge those outside the church--God will take care of that. 

With all of that said, we must each one take to heart the teachings of Paul in 1Corinthians chapter 6, "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived.  neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you.  But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

And I write this with great trepidation, looking at myself......not at you.  Have a great week!