Promise Kept

God always keeps His promises.  We read in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness...."  He doesn't make promises lightly, but what He makes, He keeps.

The most important promise in the Bible, the most important promise ever made, is given in Genesis 12.  God was speaking to Abram (Abraham) and made several promises.  But the significant promise was a statement that would change people for all time: "And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."  In the New Testament the point is clarified so that we do not need to be questioning the meaning, Galatians 3 being one place.  God was promising Abraham that he would have a descendant who would be a blessing to the whole world, namely Jesus Christ.  When we read Galatians 3 and Romans 7 we see the whole plan of God tied together.  It shows that God's plan was made many hundreds of years before to bring Jesus to the earth to die for the sins of man.  A beautiful story.

The Jews had been told all through the OT that a great king was coming, a kingdom that would last forever.  They knew to expect a messiah.  But when one came, they couldn't believe.  It is interesting to read about one man (Luke 2) who was waiting for the king to be born; Simeon.  Jesus was brought by His parents to the temple in Jerusalem in accordance with Jewish custom of the Law.  Simeon had been directed by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.  He took the baby Jesus up in his arms and blessed God and said:  "Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel."  Simeon understood the promise from Genesis 12 and was waiting anxiously for the king.

The NT testament makes clear in many places that Jesus came to save souls, souls of all people.  Galatians 3:28 says "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.:

God always keeps His promises.  He promised a savior and He delivered.  He promised to makes us heirs if only we follow Him.  He always delivers.

Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!

Life

I gave this short talk at a church service this past Weds. and thought you might enjoy hearing it.  Life is a heavy subject.  We all think about the significance of life, the purpose, the result, all about life.  We all see people who suffer, who mourn, who worry; perhaps we are often those people.  I think about people who are born in pain, who live all of their lives in pain and suffering, about people who are in a wheel chair all of their lives.  It reminds me of an occurrence years ago when I visited a small church in Sopchoppy, Fl.  You would have to know that this was one small church.  There was a woman there who had been in a wheel chair from the earliest of childhood due to childhood arthritis.  I was asked to move her after services from her wheelchair to the front seat of the car.  I said "sure" and was honored.  At the appropriate time, I placed the wheelchair close to the car seat, realized that this was one heavy woman with no use of arms or legs...dead weight, so to speak.  I grabbed her, a bit embarrassed, and gave it my all, virtually lunging from the chair to the seat.  We barely made it onto the edge of the car seat.  She said, "Come again."  I grabbed her again and gave it a mighty heave to shift her further onto the seat.  She barely moved.  She said, "Come again."  I grabbed her and heaved!  She said, "Come again."  I grabbed her and heaved!!  She said......."No.  I mean Come Again to Church!!!"  Needless to say, I was most embarrassed.........

Realizing that life has its ups and downs, but a whole lot of downs, we look to the Bible for answers.  When we read the writing of King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, we see the final opinion of a great king who had everything, every amount of wealth, comfort, women, play, you name it.  He said that all was vanity, worthless, in this life.  None of these things make life great.  He said, "He who loves silver, will not be satisfied with silver."

So what is the answer?  The answer is Jesus Christ.  Jesus said in John 11, when talking with his good friend Martha at the time that Lazarus had died, "I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in  Me, though he dies, he shall live.  Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die." Wow; who could resist an offer like that?  Then He said, "Do you believe this?"

And that is the question to each one of us.  "Do you believe this?"  The offer of life eternal is too good to pass up; we only have to follow Jesus to never die.  Whatever pain and suffering and sorrow must be endured here, we have the great offer of life forever with Him.  Let's do it!

Thanks for reading.  Feel the love.

The Business of the Church

I am sure that my first responsibility is to take care of my soul, to deal with my own frailties, my own faults, my own......And it is not my job to judge others...in the sense of determining who is saved and who isn't.  I happily leave that to the Lord.  But beyond all that, the NT does talk of the church, how the church is structured, who gets church support, how money is raised; much is said about the church and the church's business.

In today's world, we see churches getting into all manner of business that has nothing to do with spiritual matters.  I received word today that the Mormon church is buying 350,000 acres of forest land in North Florida.  I didn't seek out this information and didn't really want to know.  But what business is that of the church?  This is just one example of many that could be cited about other denominations and their work.  It isn't biblical.

The only example of churches raising money is given in the NT regarding the collection weekly of money to meet the specific needs of the church and the individual Christians in need.  I Corinthians 16 says, "Now about the collection for God's people; Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.  On the first day of every week, let each one of you set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."

If we just do things the way the NT churches did them, we do much better.  The church is to be funded by individual collections, not by running big business.  It was always that way in the Old Testament with all funds being raised through individual giving; and it is that way in the NT as well.

Perhaps we don't like hearing that there is a pattern to follow, but it still is the truth.  If we don't follow the pattern of the Bible, we drift, we divide, we denominate, and we start to not look like the original church at all.

Now I will go back to worrying about me, my soul, my weaknesses.........

Thanks for reading.  I hope your week is great!

Seeking God

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in Hebrews 11:6, "..without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to god must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."  The emphasis here might be on the subject of faith, but I would assume that anyone reading this does believe that God exists.  The subject here then is to consider the importance of "diligently seeking Him."  There are many passages that talk about this subject so we will look at a few.

Deuteronomy 4:29, "But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find Him, if you search after Him with all your heart and with all your soul."

Proverbs 8:17, "I love those who love Me, and those who seek Me diligently find me."

And Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened."

This is only a small sampling of the many verses that talk of the importance of seeking God.  Realizing that this is what God wants from us, we should seek Him in all ways, in all aspects of our lives.  Likely a great place to start is in reading and knowing the Bible, His special message to us.  We need to take it at face value, to treasure it in our heart, to let it guide our actions and our speech.  We can seek Him in prayer, and in worship...and meditation....and love.

Wow, that all sounded impossible.  The Lord knew it would not be easy.  It wasn't easy for Him in this life, and it won't be easy for us either.  But the challenge is clear...and powerful.  Let us diligently seek Him.

Thanks for reading again.  Have a great week.

YOU BEFORE ME

The New Testament is full of references to the point that we are to put others ahead of ourselves.  We will look at this principle a little closer in this blog entry.

John the Baptist gave us a good example of this attitude when he realized that Jesus had to be put ahead of himself.  He was asked if he was the Christ, or Elijah, or the Prophet.  His answer in John 1 was "I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know.  It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose."

There is a very powerful passage in Romans 12 that reads like this: "For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.  For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another......Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another...."

In Philippians 2, "Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord,  of one mind.  Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.  Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others."

We see the servant attitude throughout the teaching of the NT; Jesus taught us this many times, but certainly with the washing of His apostle's feet.  The Christian must live this attitude to be a true follower of Jesus.

Thank you for reading again.  May God bless you.

Vision Into Heaven

The Bible is amazing in many ways.  I couldn't name all the ways, wouldn't even try.  Certainly it is amazing in that it is the only book ever written that gives all the answers to life: where we came from and where we are going....and why; and who created it all, and sustains it all.  But for sure, the Bible is the only Book ever written that gives a glimpse into heaven.

If we want to see what heaven is really like, the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation does that.  And there are a number of places in the book of Revelation where we could look; but I love the 4th and 5th chapters, and we will center our focus there in this blog.  Remember that the book must be read in an apocalyptic way.  It was not intended to be literal.  There are physical descriptions throughout that are trying to give us some idea of what spiritual looks like.  But heaven is not a physical place.

Chapter 4 centers on God Himself.  There are 4 living creatures around the throne, saying without ever stopping: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."  Then "twenty four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and worship Him who lives for ever and ever.  They lay their crowns before the throne and say: "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being."  In this chapter it is all about God; and we see worship going on continually.

Chapter 5 talks about Jesus.  He is described as a "Lamb, looking as if it had been slain..."  And 4 living creatures and 24 elders "sang a new song: 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because You were slain, and with your blood You purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.  You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.' "

"Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand.  They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders.  In a loud voice they sang: ' Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!' "

And when we read all of this, realizing that we are looking right into heaven, looking right into this glorious scene, we must say "Wow!"  No other book gives us this kind of look into heaven, gives us the hope of salvation, a future life with our God.  Wow!

Take the time to read all of chapters 4 and 5 and you will again be amazed.  Thanks for reading.

The Church is the Bride of Christ

There is a great deal in the New Testament about individual commitment, individual responsibility for our actions.  But there is a lot also said about the collective, the church.  The term "church" in the Bible simply means a collective, a group, a congregation.  But in Bible terms it refers to God's group.  For sure, it is not the physical building, but rather the people, the followers of Jesus; and as followers, we are described as His children.

There are many places where the church is described as the bride of Christ.  We see this in Revelation 19 and 21.  There is symbolism given for Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the Bride.  And there is great love between the two.

Ephesians 5:25-27 says:  "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless."  The verses following this show the great love that Jesus had for the church, giving up His life for it.  This is powerful symbolism showing the comparison of a groom to his bride like Jesus to the church.

C.S. Lewis, a leading Christian writer in the 20th century, wrote these words in his "Membership" (The weight of Glory): "No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'  It was one of the Wesleys, I think, who said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion.  We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together.  Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents.  The church is the Bride of Christ.  We are members of one another."

Thus we see the importance of the collective.  Yes, we will be saved by the grace of God and by the actions of our individual selves.  But we must realize the importance of our part in the collective, the church.  After all, Jesus gave His life for it.

Enough for today.  Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!