The whore of Babylon
will at
one time have
control
over these kings
(Revelation 17:18),
but at some point
The kings will
TURN on her and destroy her
(Revelation 17:16).
So, can the mystery
of the
Whore of Babylon
be solved?
Yes
.
The whore of Babylon is an evil
world system,
controlled by the Antichrist,
during the
last days before
Jesus’ return.
The
whore of Babylon
also has
religious connotations –
spiritual adultery
with the beast bein
the focus of
an ungodly, end-times
religious system.
Jesus spoke of a coming
“abomination of desolation”
in the Olivet Discourse as He referenced a future event
mentioned in Daniel 9:27. In Matthew 24:15–16,
Jesus says,
“So when you see the
abomination of desolation,
spoken of by the prophet Daniel,
standing
in
The holy place . . .
then those in Judea must
flee to the mountains”
Fleeing to theMountains,
Lots
wife looked back and
turned into a
Pillar of Salt
An abomination
is
“something that
causes
disgust or hatred”;
and desolation is “
a state of complete
emptiness or destruction.”
Jesus warned that
something (or someone)
that
people detested would
Stand in
The temple
someday
When that horror occurred,
residents of Judea
should seek cover without delay.
Other translations speak of “the abomination that causes desolation” (NIV), “the sacrilegious object that causes desecration” (NLT), and “that ‘Horrible Thing’” (CEV). The Amplified Bible adds the note that the abomination of desolation is “the appalling sacrilege that astonishes and makes desolate.”
Jesus referenced Daniel in His words in the Olivet Discourse. The prophet Daniel mentioned the abomination of desolation in three places:
“He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering. And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator” (Daniel 9:27, CSB).
“Forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation” (Daniel 11:31, NKJV).
“From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days” (Daniel 12:11, NASB).
The wording
in the above translations indicates that
the abomination of desolation is an object; in some other translations,
the abomination appears to be a person:
“On the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate”
(Daniel 9:27, ESV).
Regardless of whether the abomination of desolation is a
person or a thing,
Daniel predicted the following:
1. A future ruler will make a treaty with the
people of Israel
2. The terms of this treaty will be for a “week”—which we
take to be a period of seven years.
3. Midway through this time, the ruler will gather
his troops and put an end to the
sacrifices and offerings in the temple.
4. At that time the ruler will desecrate the temple,
setting up some type of sacrilegious object.
5. The desecration of the temple will continue until the judgment of
God is finally meted out on the ruler and his followers, 1,290 days
(3½ years and 1 month) later.
Fornication
is a term used in the Bible for
any
sexual misconduct
or
impure sexual activity
that occurs outside of
the bounds of
a marriage covenant.
Fornication
is also applied symbolically in the Bible to
The sins
of
idolatry and apostasy,
or the
abandoning of God
The word fornication
comes from
the
Greek term porneia
from which we get our English word
pornography
and is often linked with
adultery
in the Bible.
It is a general term for
Sexual Immorality
Fornication includes
Adultry,
which is the act
of a
married person engaging
in
sexual intercourse with someone
other
than his or her Spouse
But
fornication
also
involves engaging
in any KIND of
sexual relations before marriage
or between two people who
are
not married
For instance, in the King James Version of 1 Corinthians 5:1,
fornication is used twice to describe
a sexual sin that was being tolerated
by the church:
a man was sleeping with his father’s wife.
In a list of
horrendous sins
in Romans 1:29, the apostle Paul
includes
fornication, referring
To all KINDS
of
sexual immorality
Jesus mentions fornication in a list of
corrupting sins
that come
from within
a
person’s heart:
“For from the heart
come evil thoughts,
murder, adultery,
all
sexual immorality
[fornication],
theft, lying, and
slander”
(Matthew 15:19, NLT; see also Mark 7:21).
The sin of fornication violates the
seventh commandment (Exodus 20:14),
which was intended to safeguard
the integrity of the family and the marriage union.
God designed sex for marriage, and marriage to
be a holy, prized, and honored institution.
The Bible calls husbands and wives to keep themselves exclusively for one another or face God’s judgment:
“Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers”
(Hebrews 13:4, CSB).
Condemnation
of sexual immorality is unanimous in Scripture.
Those who
persistently indulge
in
fornication
will
Not inherit
The kingdom of heaven
(1 Corinthians 6:9).
Abstaining from fornication
was one of
four conditions required
of
The Gentiles
to be
accepted into the early church
by the
Jerusalem conference:
“Abstain from meats offered to idols,
and from blood,
and from things strangled,
and from fornication:
from which if ye keep yourselves,
ye shall do well”
(Acts 15:29, KJV).
The Bible instructs believers to
run from every kind of
sexual sin,
including fornication:
“Let there be no sexual immorality,
impurity,
or
greed among you.
Such sins
have no place among
God’s people”
God’s people”
(Ephesians 5:3, NLT; see also 1 Corinthians 7:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:3).
According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:18, sexual sin is unique in that it is a sin against one’s own body. This idea is linked to the teaching established in the previous verses—that believers are members of the body of Christ(verses 12–17). An immoral sexual union violates the believer’s mystical “one flesh” union with Jesus Christ (verse 15). We don’t have the right to use our bodies any way we wish because we belong to the Lord. Fornication runs contrary to our new nature and identity as members of Jesus Christ’s body. Paul goes on to explain that a Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, a holy place that belongs to Jesus Christ (verse 19). We have been redeemed by God for good and righteous works and not for sin (Ephesians 2:10).
In both the Old and New Testaments, Scripture uses fornication in a figurative sense to describe the corruption of God’s people with the sin of idolatry and unfaithfulness. Both Israel and the church are depicted as the Lord’s wife, or the Bride of Christ. When God’s people engage in idolatry and unfaithfulness, He calls this sin “fornication” (Jeremiah 2:20–36; Ezekiel 16:15–43; Revelation 2:14, 20–22; 17:1–18; 18:2–9).
Daniel’s prophecies
about the abomination of desolation
seemed to have at least a partial fulfillment in 167 BC when a Greek ruler by the name of Antiochus IV desecrated the temple in Jerusalem. Antiochus called himself “Epiphanies” (“illustrious one” or “god manifest”). He set up an altar to Zeus over the altar of burnt offering, and he sacrificed a pig on the altar.
Antiochus went even further in his atrocities,
slaughtering a great number of the Jews and
selling others into slavery.
And he issued decrees forbidding circumcision and requiring
Jews to sacrifice to
pagan gods and eat pig meat.
What Antiochus did certainly qualifies as an abomination, but it was not a complete fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. Antiochus Epiphanies did not enter a covenant with Israel for seven years, for example. And in Matthew 24 Jesus, speaking some 200 years after Antiochus’s evil actions, spoke of
Daniel’s prophecy as having a still future
fulfillment.
The question then becomes, when, after Jesus’ day, was the
abomination of desolation prophecy fulfilled?
Or are we still waiting for a fulfillment?
Jesus’ warning in Matthew 24:15 concerned events
leading up to
the
destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
The abomination of desolation
probably occurred during the
Roman occupation of
Jerusalem
when the Roman army
brought their
heathen images
and standards
into
The temple courts
Jesus was referring to the
Antichrist who,
in the end times, will establish a covenant with Israel
for seven years and then
break it
by doing something similar to what
Antiochus Epiphanies
did
In the temple
The sacrilegious object Jesus called
the abomination of desolation
could be the
“image of the beast”
that the
Antichrist’s
right-hand man,
the
false prophet,
will order to be
set up
and
worshiped
(Revelation 13:14).
Of course, for Matthew 24:15 to be yet future,
the temple in Jerusalem
will have to
be rebuilt before the tribulation begins.
Those who are alive
during the tribulation should be watchful and recognize
that the breaking of the covenant with Israel
and the abomination of desolation will herald the beginning of
the worst 3½ years in history (see Matthew 24:21).
“Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be
able to escape all that is about to happen,
and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man”
(Luke 21:36).
In the apostle John’s first letter,
John discusses a number of characters.
Of course, he talks about God and about believers—especially referring to them as brethren, little children, children, young men, and fathers.
But John also makes repeated mention
of
The evil one
or
The wicked one
(1 John 5:19)
John explains that the young men he was writing to
have overcome the wicked one
(1 John 2:13–14)
John observes that Cain was “of the evil one”
or the wicked one
(1 John 3:12)
John encourages his readers by explaining that
those who are
born of God
are not
touched by the wicked one
(1 John 5:18),
and he reminds them that
this world is “in” the wicked one;
that is, the world is in the power of
the wicked one or under his control
(1 John 5:19)
Still, with all these cautions, John doesn’t directly identify the wicked one
in his first letter.
He writes as if his readers are
already familiar with the identity of
this wicked one.
In John’s Gospel,
John recorded
a prayer of Jesus in
which
He asks the Father to protect
His disciples
from the Evil one,
The
wicked one
(John 17:15).
Matthew also recorded Jesus as explaining that
The wicked one
snatches away
The
Word of the kingdom
(Matthew 13:19)
and that those who
choke the growth
choke the growth
of the
sons of the kingdom
are the
sons of the wicked one
(Matthew 13:38)
Paul adds that the
wicked one
attacks believers with flaming arrows
(Ephesians 6:16),
that the Lord will strengthen and protect His believers
from the wicked one (2 Thessalonians 3:3),
and that the flaming arrows of the wicked one
can be extinguished by the shield of faith
(Ephesians 6:16)
While it may be curious that in these contexts the wicked one
is not directly named, As neither is Lots wife,
it seems clear
that this is indeed
Satan.
Note Paul’s description of
believers
being rescued from
The
domain of darkness
and
transferred
The the kingdom of
Christ
Mother of Harlets, The Whore of Babylon6/21/2023
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Mother
of Harlets,
The
Whore of Babylon
Revelation 17:1-2 tells us
“Then one of the seven angels
who had the
seven bowls
came
and talked with me, saying to me,
‘Come, I will show you
The judgment
of
The great harlot
who sits on many waters,
with whom
The kings
of the
earth committed
fornication,
and the inhabitants of the earth
were made drunk with the
wine of her
fornication.’”
Revelation 17:5 goes on to say,
“And on her forehead a name was written:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE
MOTHER
OF
HARLOTS
AND OF
THE ABOMINATIONS
OF
THE EARTH.”
Who is this
“whore of Babylon”
and what is “mystery Babylon”?
Revelation 17:3 gives this description:
“
Then the angel
carried me
away in the
Spirit into a desert.
There I saw a woman
sitting on a
scarlet beast that was covered
with
blasphemous names
and had
seven heads and ten horns.”
The beast
mentioned in this verse is the
same beast as in
Revelation chapter 13:1,
”“And I saw a beast coming out
of
The SEA
He had ten horns and seven heads,
with
Ten Crowns on his horns,
and on each
head a
blasphemous name.”
The beast in Revelation
chapter 13
is understood to refer to
The
Antichrist,
The
Man of lawlessness
(2 Thessalonians 2:3-4; Daniel 9:27).
So, the
Whore
of
Babylon,
Is the end-times
Antichrist
The fact that the whore of Babylon is referred to as a mystery means that we cannot be completely certain as to her identity until the revelation of Christ and the wrath of god are fully revealed
Jesus Christ will return
at
his second coming
to
unveil and reveal
the
final judgement
of sin
and
righteousness
The passage does give us some clues, however. Revelation 17:9 explains,
“This calls for a mind with wisdom.
The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.”
Many commentators link this passage with the
Roman Catholic Church
because in ancient times,
The city of
Rome
was known as “the city on seven hills”
because there are seven prominent hills that surround the city.
However, verse 10 goes on to
explain that the seven hills
represent 7 kings or kingdoms,
five
of which have fallen,
one that is
and one that is to come
(woman at the well)
Therefore, the
Whore of. Babylon
cannot refer exclusively to Rome.
Revelation 17:15 tells us, “Then the angel said to me, ‘
The waters you saw,
where
The Prostitute Sits
are peoples,
multitudes, nations and languages.’”
The Whore
of
Babylon
will have great worldwide influence over people and nations.
Verses 10-14 describe a
series of eight and then ten kings who
affiliate with
The Beast.
The whore of Babylon
will at
one time have
control
over these kings
(Revelation 17:18),
but at some point
The kings will
TURN on her and destroy her
(Revelation 17:16).
So, can the mystery
of the
Whore of Babylon
be solved?
Yes
.
The whore of Babylon is an evil
world system,
controlled by the Antichrist,
during the
last days before
Jesus’ return.
The
whore of Babylon
also has
religious connotations –
spiritual adultery
with the beast bein
the focus of
an ungodly, end-times
religious system.
Jesus spoke of a coming
“abomination of desolation”
in the Olivet Discourse as He referenced a future event
mentioned in Daniel 9:27. In Matthew 24:15–16,
Jesus says,
“So when you see the
abomination of desolation,
spoken of by the prophet Daniel,
standing
in
The holy place . . .
then those in Judea must
flee to the mountains”
Fleeing to theMountains,
Lots
wife looked back and
turned into a
Pillar of Salt
An abomination
is
“something that
causes
disgust or hatred”;
and desolation is “
a state of complete
emptiness or destruction.”
Jesus warned that
something (or someone)
that
people detested would
Stand in
The temple
someday
When that horror occurred,
residents of Judea
should seek cover without delay.
Other translations speak of “the abomination that causes desolation” (NIV), “the sacrilegious object that causes desecration” (NLT), and “that ‘Horrible Thing’” (CEV). The Amplified Bible adds the note that the abomination of desolation is “the appalling sacrilege that astonishes and makes desolate.”
Jesus referenced Daniel in His words in the Olivet Discourse. The prophet Daniel mentioned the abomination of desolation in three places:
“He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering. And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator” (Daniel 9:27, CSB).
“Forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation” (Daniel 11:31, NKJV).
“From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days” (Daniel 12:11, NASB).
The wording
in the above translations indicates that
the abomination of desolation is an object; in some other translations,
the abomination appears to be a person:
“On the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate”
(Daniel 9:27, ESV).
Regardless of whether the abomination of desolation is a
person or a thing,
Daniel predicted the following:
1. A future ruler will make a treaty with the
people of Israel
2. The terms of this treaty will be for a “week”—which we
take to be a period of seven years.
3. Midway through this time, the ruler will gather
his troops and put an end to the
sacrifices and offerings in the temple.
4. At that time the ruler will desecrate the temple,
setting up some type of sacrilegious object.
5. The desecration of the temple will continue until the judgment of
God is finally meted out on the ruler and his followers, 1,290 days
(3½ years and 1 month) later.
Fornication
is a term used in the Bible for
any
sexual misconduct
or
impure sexual activity
that occurs outside of
the bounds of
a marriage covenant.
Fornication
is also applied symbolically in the Bible to
The sins
of
idolatry and apostasy,
or the
abandoning of God
The word fornication
comes from
the
Greek term porneia
from which we get our English word
pornography
and is often linked with
adultery
in the Bible.
It is a general term for
Sexual Immorality
Fornication includes
Adultry,
which is the act
of a
married person engaging
in
sexual intercourse with someone
other
than his or her Spouse
But
fornication
also
involves engaging
in any KIND of
sexual relations before marriage
or between two people who
are
not married
For instance, in the King James Version of 1 Corinthians 5:1,
fornication is used twice to describe
a sexual sin that was being tolerated
by the church:
a man was sleeping with his father’s wife.
In a list of
horrendous sins
in Romans 1:29, the apostle Paul
includes
fornication, referring
To all KINDS
of
sexual immorality
Jesus mentions fornication in a list of
corrupting sins
that come
from within
a
person’s heart:
“For from the heart
come evil thoughts,
murder, adultery,
all
sexual immorality
[fornication],
theft, lying, and
slander”
(Matthew 15:19, NLT; see also Mark 7:21).
The sin of fornication violates the
seventh commandment (Exodus 20:14),
which was intended to safeguard
the integrity of the family and the marriage union.
God designed sex for marriage, and marriage to
be a holy, prized, and honored institution.
The Bible calls husbands and wives to keep themselves exclusively for one another or face God’s judgment:
“Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers”
(Hebrews 13:4, CSB).
Condemnation
of sexual immorality is unanimous in Scripture.
Those who
persistently indulge
in
fornication
will
Not inherit
The kingdom of heaven
(1 Corinthians 6:9).
Abstaining from fornication
was one of
four conditions required
of
The Gentiles
to be
accepted into the early church
by the
Jerusalem conference:
“Abstain from meats offered to idols,
and from blood,
and from things strangled,
and from fornication:
from which if ye keep yourselves,
ye shall do well”
(Acts 15:29, KJV).
The Bible instructs believers to
run from every kind of
sexual sin,
including fornication:
“Let there be no sexual immorality,
impurity,
or
greed among you.
Such sins
have no place among
God’s people”
(Ephesians 5:3, NLT; see also 1 Corinthians 7:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:3).
According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:18, sexual sin is unique in that it is a sin against one’s own body. This idea is linked to the teaching established in the previous verses—that believers are members of the body of Christ(verses 12–17). An immoral sexual union violates the believer’s mystical “one flesh” union with Jesus Christ (verse 15). We don’t have the right to use our bodies any way we wish because we belong to the Lord. Fornication runs contrary to our new nature and identity as members of Jesus Christ’s body. Paul goes on to explain that a Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, a holy place that belongs to Jesus Christ (verse 19). We have been redeemed by God for good and righteous works and not for sin (Ephesians 2:10).
In both the Old and New Testaments, Scripture uses fornication in a figurative sense to describe the corruption of God’s people with the sin of idolatry and unfaithfulness. Both Israel and the church are depicted as the Lord’s wife, or the Bride of Christ. When God’s people engage in idolatry and unfaithfulness, He calls this sin “fornication” (Jeremiah 2:20–36; Ezekiel 16:15–43; Revelation 2:14, 20–22; 17:1–18; 18:2–9).
Daniel’s prophecies
about the abomination of desolation
seemed to have at least a partial fulfillment in 167 BC when a Greek ruler by the name of Antiochus IV desecrated the temple in Jerusalem. Antiochus called himself “Epiphanies” (“illustrious one” or “god manifest”). He set up an altar to Zeus over the altar of burnt offering, and he sacrificed a pig on the altar.
Antiochus went even further in his atrocities,
slaughtering a great number of the Jews and
selling others into slavery.
And he issued decrees forbidding circumcision and requiring
Jews to sacrifice to
pagan gods and eat pig meat.
What Antiochus did certainly qualifies as an abomination, but it was not a complete fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. Antiochus Epiphanies did not enter a covenant with Israel for seven years, for example. And in Matthew 24 Jesus, speaking some 200 years after Antiochus’s evil actions, spoke of
Daniel’s prophecy as having a still future
fulfillment.
The question then becomes, when, after Jesus’ day, was the
abomination of desolation prophecy fulfilled?
Or are we still waiting for a fulfillment?
Jesus’ warning in Matthew 24:15 concerned events
leading up to
the
destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
The abomination of desolation
probably occurred during the
Roman occupation of
Jerusalem
when the Roman army
brought their
heathen images
and standards
into
The temple courts
Jesus was referring to the
Antichrist who,
in the end times, will establish a covenant with Israel
for seven years and then
break it
by doing something similar to what
Antiochus Epiphanies
did
In the temple
The sacrilegious object Jesus called
the abomination of desolation
could be the
“image of the beast”
that the
Antichrist’s
right-hand man,
the
false prophet,
will order to be
set up
and
worshiped
(Revelation 13:14).
Of course, for Matthew 24:15 to be yet future,
the temple in Jerusalem
will have to
be rebuilt before the tribulation begins.
Those who are alive
during the tribulation should be watchful and recognize
that the breaking of the covenant with Israel
and the abomination of desolation will herald the beginning of
the worst 3½ years in history (see Matthew 24:21).
“Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be
able to escape all that is about to happen,
and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man”
(Luke 21:36).
In the apostle John’s first letter,
John discusses a number of characters.
Of course, he talks about God and about believers—especially referring to them as brethren, little children, children, young men, and fathers.
But John also makes repeated mention
of
The evil one
or
The wicked one
(1 John 5:19)
John explains that the young men he was writing to
have overcome the wicked one
(1 John 2:13–14)
John observes that Cain was “of the evil one”
or the wicked one
(1 John 3:12)
John encourages his readers by explaining that
those who are
born of God
are not
touched by the wicked one
(1 John 5:18),
and he reminds them that
this world is “in” the wicked one;
that is, the world is in the power of
the wicked one or under his control
(1 John 5:19)
Still, with all these cautions, John doesn’t directly identify the wicked one
in his first letter.
He writes as if his readers are
already familiar with the identity of
this wicked one.
In John’s Gospel,
John recorded
a prayer of Jesus in
which
He asks the Father to protect
His disciples
from the Evil one,
The
wicked one
(John 17:15).
Matthew also recorded Jesus as explaining that
The wicked one
snatches away
The
Word of the kingdom
(Matthew 13:19)
and that those who
choke the growth
of the
sons of the kingdom
are the
sons of the wicked one
(Matthew 13:38)
Paul adds that the
wicked one
attacks believers with flaming arrows
(Ephesians 6:16),
that the Lord will strengthen and protect His believers
from the wicked one (2 Thessalonians 3:3),
and that the flaming arrows of the wicked one
can be extinguished by the shield of faith
(Ephesians 6:16)
While it may be curious that in these contexts the wicked one
is not directly named, As neither is Lots wife,
it seems clear
that this is indeed
Satan.
Note Paul’s description of
believers
being rescued from
The
domain of darkness
and
transferred
The the kingdom of
Christ
(Colossians 1:13).
Because of that transfer, believers should be focused
not on the things of earth
but on the things above where Christ is
(Colossians 3:1–4).
This world
is still part of the domain of
darkness,
and it is governed by a prince
(Ephesians 2:2)
who is an enemy of believers.
In Paul’s defense of the gospel before King Agrippa,
he recounted his conversion,
saying that Jesus had sent Paul to Jews and Gentiles
“to open their eyes
so that they may turn from darkness to light
and from the dominion of
Satan to God”
(Acts 26:18).
Further, in Revelation 12:11
John again records that “the brethren” overcame
the accuser—specifically identified as Satan
(Revelation 12:9).
This corresponds with 1 John 2:13–14, which says
that believers have overcome
the wicked one.
The one believing in Jesus overcomes the world (1 John 5:4–5),
because Jesus has overcome (Revelation 5:5).
Based on these contrasts of
light and darkness
and God’s kingdom and Satan’s dominion;
and based on
Jesus’ overcoming and His believers’ overcoming of Satan,
it is evident that
the wicked one is another title for
Satan.
A sin that does not lead to death
(and a sin that does lead to death)
is alluded to in 1 John 5:16–17:
“If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.”
John wrote his gospel so that people would believe in Jesus and have life in His name (John 20:30–31). He wrote his first epistle, in part, so that those who believe in Jesus would know that they have eternal life (1 John 5:13). John wants believers to have confidence in their position in Christ and mentions in that context that there are a couple types of sin. One type of sin does not lead to death, and another does.
We find an example of a sin that leads to death in Acts 5. There, Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3), and they die as a result. Paul mentions another example of a sin that leads to death in 1 Corinthians 11:30. Some who were abusing the Lord’s Supper had become sick and had even died. These are the only two clear instances in the New Testament of believers who committed sins unto death. John mentions a sin unto death in his first epistle, but he does not offer any specifics regarding what the sin is. He is speaking of categories of sin, not pointing out specific sins.
The context is John’s teaching on prayer. John explains that we can have confidence that, in anything we ask of God according to His will, He hears us (1 John 5:14). To ask something according to His will is to ask for something that God has communicated to us that He desires. When we ask for something that He wants, then we are asking for something that we should be asking Him for. John goes further, explaining that, when God hears these kinds of requests, we have what we have asked for (1 John 5:15). Believers are to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and, as Jesus said in John 14:12–14, the Father is glorified in the Son when His disciples pray in His name. To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray according to His will or pray as if Jesus Himself were asking the Father. But we discover in 1 John 5 there are different types of sin, and that impacts what we should and should not be asking for. The church must recognize the seriousness of sin, avoid continuing in sin, and pray as God has designed.
It is important to note the qualifier that John (and Jesus) places on prayer. God does not promise to do whatever we ask without condition. He affirms that He will grant what is asked according to His will, in the name of Jesus. Jesus was not referring to a magic formula or mantra or suggesting we should add the phrase in Jesus’ name to our prayers in order to ensure they are granted. We should be asking God for what He has revealed He wants for us. But there are some things that John explains we ought not to ask for. He provides an example: if a brother commits a sin not unto (or does not lead to) death, then the one observing the sin should ask for God’s mercy for the offender so that death does not result (1 John 5:16). On the other hand, there is a sin that does lead to death, and John does not suggest one should pray on behalf of the one committing that type of sin (1 John 5:16). John distinguishes between these two kinds of sin even as he acknowledges that all sin is unrighteousness (1 John 5:17).
The distinction John makes between the sin that does not lead to death
and the sin that does
lead to death
illustrates that there are some requests
not in accordance with God’s will and, thus,
some requests the believer should not expect to be granted.
This principle is simple and straightforward. If we’re praying for things outside of God’s will, then we should not expect an answer.
The challenge for interpreters is that nowhere in the context does John detail what sins he is talking about. He speaks of those sins as broad categories. If he had specific sins in mind, no doubt his original readers would understand to what he referred. Because of the ambiguity, it is probably best to simply acknowledge the principle being taught about prayer rather than try to identify what John doesn’t provide in the context—the specific nature of the sin that does not lead to death and the sin that does.
Satan is a spiritual being who led a
heavenly revolt against God
and was subsequently cast down into the earth (Luke 10:18).
His personal name, “Satan,” means “adversary.” This name indicates Satan’s basic nature: he is the enemy of God, of all God does, and of all God loves.
He is also called “the devil” in the New Testament. The word “devil” means “false accuser” or “slanderer.” Satan plays this role in Job 1–2 when he attacks Job’s character.
In Matthew 12:24, the Jews refer to Satan as “Beelzebul,” an epithet derived from “Baal-Zebub” (“lord of the fly”), a false god of the Philistines in Ekron (2 Kings 1:2-3, 6).
Other titles of Satan include the tempter (1 Thessalonians 3:5), the wicked one (Matthew 13:19, 38), the accuserof the brethren (Revelation 12:10), and—three titles that point to Satan’s authority in this world—the ruler of this world (John 12:31), the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4), and the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). Second Corinthians 11:14 says that Satan transforms himself into “an angel of light,” a description that highlights his capacity and inclination to deceive.
There are a couple of passages which refer to the judgment of earthly kings but may very well also refer to Satan. The first is Isaiah 14:12-15. This is addressed to the king of Babylon (verse 4), but the description also seems to fit that of a more powerful being. The name “Lucifer,” which means “morning star,” is used here to describe someone who sought to overthrow God’s very throne.
The second passage is Ezekiel 28:11-19, addressed to the king of Tyre. As in the “Lucifer” passage, this prophecy contains wording that seems to go beyond the description of a mere mortal. The king of Tyre is said to be “anointed as a guardian cherub,” but he was laid low by pride and “expelled” by God Himself.
In addition to providing names and titles of Satan, the Bible uses various metaphors to reveal the character of the enemy. Jesus, in the parable of the four soils, likens Satan to the birds that snatch the seed off the hardened ground (Matthew 13:4, 19). In another parable, Satan appears as the sower of weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13:25, 28). Satan is analogous to a wolf in John 10:12 and a roaring lion in 1 Peter 5:8. In Revelation 12:9, Satan is the “great dragon . . . that serpent of old”—obviously, a reference to the serpent who deceived Eve (Genesis 3:1).
The book of Job tells us,
at least in Job’s time,
Satan still had access to heaven and to the
throne of God.
“One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, ’Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the LORD, ‘From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it’” (Job 1:6-7). Apparently at that time, Satan was still moving freely between heaven and earth, speaking to God directly and answering for his activities. Whether God has discontinued this access is a matter of debate. Some say Satan’s access to heaven was ended at the death of Christ. Others believe Satan’s access to heaven will be ended at the end-times war in heaven (Revelation 12:7–12).
Why did Satan fall from heaven? Satan fell because of pride. He desired to be God, not to be a servant of God. Notice the many “I will...” statements in Isaiah 14:12-15. Ezekiel 28:12-15 describes Satan as an exceedingly beautiful angel. Satan was likely the highest of all angels, the anointed cherub, the most beautiful of all of God’s creations, but he was not content in his position. Instead, Satan desired to be God, to essentially “kick God off His throne” and take over the rule of the universe. Satan wanted to be God, and interestingly enough, that desire is what Satan tempted Adam and Eve with in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1-5).
How did Satan fall from heaven? Actually, a fall is not an accurate description. It would be far more accurate to say God cast Satan out of heaven (Isaiah 14:15; Ezekiel 28:16-17). Satan did not fall from heaven; rather, Satan was pushed.
Ezekiel 28:13
of the KJV and NKJV seems to hint that Satan was involved with music in Heaven. The NKJV says, “The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created,” although the exact meaning of this difficult Hebrew text is uncertain. There may have been such instruments in heaven, but there is no evidence outside this verse to verify it. Revelation 5:8 and 15:2 refer to harps, but not to timbrels or pipes.
The two Scripture passages that describe Satan
before he fell are Ezekiel 28:12-19 and Isaiah 14:12-15. Satan was the “anointed cherub” (Ezekiel 28:14). He was adorned with every precious jewel imaginable (Ezekiel 28:13). He was “the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” (Ezekiel 28:12b). Likely he was the highest of all angels. He was persuasive enough to convince one-third of the angels to join him in his rebellion (Revelation 12:4). Even after his fall from heaven, not even Michael the archangel dared to stand up to him without the Lord’s help (Jude 9). Satan fell because of pride. He did not like being “second best.” He wanted to be God: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain’” (Isaiah 14:13).
Was Satan the head musician? This cannot be answered definitively. Scripture does not say enough about what his duties were in heaven. Considering the fact that the angels constantly worship God (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8), it is possible that Satan led that worship. One thing is sure: for Satan to rebel despite having such an exalted position and close relationship with God, the devil is surely due his eternal destiny (Revelation 20:10).
Jesus alerts us to
“watch out for false prophets”
in Matthew 7:15. He compares these false prophets to wolves in sheep’s clothing. Jesus also tells us how to identify these false prophets: we will recognize them by their fruit (Matthew 7:20).
Throughout the Bible, people are warned about false prophets (Ezekiel 13, Matthew 24:23–27, 2 Peter 3:3). False prophets claim to speak for God, but they speak falsehood. To gain a hearing, they come to people “in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). No matter how innocent and harmless these teachers appear on the outside, they have the nature of wolves—they are intent on destroying faith, causing spiritual carnage in the church, and enriching themselves. They “secretly introduce destructive heresies,” “bring the way of truth into disrepute,” and “exploit you with fabricated stories” (2 Peter 2:1–3).
The false teachers don “sheep’s clothing” so they can mingle with the sheep without arousing suspicion. They usually are not up front about what they believe; rather, they mix in some truth with their falsehood and carefully choose their words to sound orthodox. In reality, they “follow their own ungodly desires” (Jude 1:17–18), and “they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed” (2 Peter 3:14).
By contrast, a true prophet teaches God’s Word fully (Deuteronomy 18:20). Wolves in sheep’s clothing twist God’s Word to deceive or influence the audience for their own purposes. Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), and his ministers masquerade as servants of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:15).
The best way to guard against wolves in sheep’s clothing is to heed the warnings of Scripture and know the truth. A believer who “correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) and carefully studies the Bible will be able to identify false prophets. Christians must judge all teaching against what Scripture says. Believers will also be able to identify false prophets by their fruit—their words, actions, and lifestyles. Jesus said, “A tree is recognized by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33; cf. Matthew 7:20). Peter described false teachers as having “depraved conduct” and who “carouse” as “slaves of depravity” (2 Peter 2:2, 13, 19). If a teacher in the church does not live according to God’s Word, he is one of those wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Here are three specific questions to identify false prophets, or wolves in sheep’s clothing:
1) What does the teacher say about Jesus? In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” The Jews understood Jesus’ statement as a claim to be God and wanted to stone him (John 10:33). Anyone who denies Jesus as Lord (1 John 4:1–3) is a false prophet.
2) Does the teacher preach the biblical gospel? Anyone who teaches an incomplete or unbiblical gospel is to be eternally condemned (Galatians 1:9). Any gospel apart from what the Bible tells us (1 Corinthians 15:1–4) is not the true good news.
3) Does this teacher exhibit godly character qualities? Jesus said to beware of teachers whose moral behavior does not match what the Bible says. He says we will know wolves in sheep’s clothing by their fruits (Matthew 7:15–20)
It doesn’t matter how large a church a preacher has, how many books he has sold, or how many people applaud him. If he “teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness,” then he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing (1 Timothy 6:3).
In Jesus
’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5—7),
the Lord presents a word picture of two gates, one wide and one narrow. Jesus explains to His listeners that to see and participate in His coming kingdom a person must have true, inner righteousness and not simply an external adherence to a code of laws. The scribes and Pharisees were teaching a kind of works-based salvation, asserting that obedience to the law was how people could be right in the sight of God. Jesus counters that directly, saying poignantly that, unless a person’s righteousness surpassed that of the scribes and Pharisees, that person would not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20).
In Matthew 7:13–14 Jesus describes two gates: the wide gate—taken by many—that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13); and the narrow gate—taken by few—that leads to life (Matthew 7:14). One gate is wide to accommodate the many who enter the way leading to destruction, while the other is narrow to represent the relatively few who seek life and find it. Jesus exhorts His listeners to enter through the narrow gate rather than attempting to enter through the broad gate.
The broad gate was the way advocated by those who were teaching falsehood (including the scribes and Pharisees). The broad gate was the appearance of righteousness but not actual righteousness. The scribes and Pharisees (and other false teachers and prophets) were teaching that a person could enter the kingdom of heaven simply based on either a relation to Abraham and Moses or by following the Law of Moses. Instead, Jesus advocated the narrow gate—this was the way to enter the kingdom. This narrow gate was the path of true righteousness. This kind of righteousness would cause people to see and glorify God rather than glorify the person doing the work (Matthew 5:16).
While the scribes and Pharisees taught it was enough to follow the Law—avoiding the act of murder, for example—Jesus taught that one’s inner attitude toward one’s brother was representative of true character, not just the external actions (Matthew 5:21–26). The standard was to “be perfect, for your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The wide gate that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13) was the path of being good enough by one’s own works. But Jesus explains that the standard is perfection—and no one could achieve that on their own. They needed to be humble in spirit (Matthew 5:3) and recognize that they needed someone to help them to be righteous—they needed a Savior.
The broad gate, the wide gate that leads to destruction, presented that it was enough to love those who love us. But the narrow gate was expressed in loving those who persecute and hate us (Matthew 5:44–47). The broad, wide gate that leads to destruction is self-dependence and represented by common ethics. The narrow gate that leads to life is represented by extraordinary acts of goodness that are not rooted in normal human nature. The standard for righteousness (perfection) is beyond us, and we simply do not have that righteousness and cannot manufacture that kind of righteousness by our own works. Instead, we must rely on Jesus to be that righteousness on our behalf.
Paul helps us understand when he recounts how Jesus took on our sin and gave us His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21) so that we could be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Paul adds that it is not by works that we are saved, but rather by God’s grace through the vehicle of belief in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8–9). If the broad gate that leads to destruction instead led to life, then we would be able to boast that our works got us into heaven. We would get the glory rather than God. But by making the gate that leads to life narrow, God demonstrates His love and His grace, and He is worthy of our trust and our praise.
The phrase spirit of the antichrist
is found in 1 John 4:2–3:
“This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God:
Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
It’s vital to understand the context of John’s statements. A predominant worldview when he wrote this letter suggested that diverse spirits were at work in the world. Many false teachings, mystery religions, spiritual experiences, and variations of Christianity were emerging at the time. The spiritual atmosphere was not unlike the one present in our world today. People entertained countless views regarding truth.
John presented a definitive solution for wading through this variety of beliefs and teachings. He instructed his readers to pay attention and test the spirits: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
But how do we test the spirits? How can we discern which teachers are imparting truth? How do we recognize the spirit of the antichrist?
These “spirits” John spoke of were not merely disembodied, supernatural beings. John taught that a prophet or teacher was the actual mouthpiece for a spirit. Spiritual doctrines are promulgated through human spokespersons. Teachers of truth are filled with the Spirit of God and thus are agents who speak for God. Teachers of falsehood are spreading the “doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4:1, NASB).
So, the first test relates to theology or doctrine: “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2). We can ask, does the content of the person’s teaching acknowledge that Jesus Christ—fully God and fully human—has come in the flesh? If the answer is yes, then we know the Spirit of God inspires that person. If not, his entire teaching ought to be rejected. This particular test was especially apropos in John’s day, as the heresy of Gnosticism was becoming prevalent; Gnosticism taught that Jesus only appeared to have a human body but was not actually a flesh-and-blood person.
Next, John says, “But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist” (1 John 4:3). Anyone who does not acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Bible presents Him is inspired by the spirit of the antichrist.
The word antichrist means “against Christ.” People who say that Jesus is not from God are controlled by the spirit of the antichrist. Satan opposes Christ, and he desires to deceive people into a false view of who Jesus is. The spirit of the antichrist teaches against Christ. To twist the truth about Jesus Christ is to pervert the gospel. Satan works to spread lies about Christ and keep people in the dark: “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 John 1:7).
The spirit of the antichrist is the birds that eat the seeds along the path in Jesus’ parable (Mark 4:4, 15). It is “the god of this age” who blinds the minds of unbelievers, keeping them from seeing “the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). It is “the father of lies” (John 8:44). The spirit of the antichrist is “the great dragon . . . who leads the whole world astray” (Revelation 12:9).
The Bible teaches that the world will eventually produce a world ruler, called “the beast” in Revelation, who will wield great power and demand worship of himself. He will have “a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies” (Revelation 13:5) and is empowered by Satan (Revelation 13:2). He is called “the man of lawlessness . . . the man doomed to destruction” in 2 Thessalonians 2:3. This final Antichrist will be the culmination of the evil workings of Satan throughout the centuries. The Antichrist of the end times will embody all the deception and perversion of truth that the spirit of the antichrist has always promoted. Today, “the secret power of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thessalonians 2:7). The same spirit that will empower the Antichrist of the last days is currently operating in the world to bring confusion and deception to the issue of Jesus Christ’s person and work. “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world” (1 John 4:3).
Even given the pervasive influence of the spirit of the antichrist, there is no need to fear. As John reminds us, the Spirit of truth indwells all believers and provides protection from the spirit of the antichrist: “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
We have some practical ways to distinguish the false spirit of the antichrist from the true Spirit of God: “[False prophets] are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood” (1 John 4:5–6). Those who are influenced by the spirit of the antichrist are of the world. They have the same values as the world; therefore, the world listens to them. Those who acknowledge Christ have His Spirit of truth, and they embrace the apostles’ message. The gospel the apostles preached is never popular in the world, but it is that very gospel that holds the power to save, through God’s Spirit of truth (Romans 1:16).
The believer’s job is to test the spirits carefully (1 John 4:1). We must be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16, ESV). We should not automatically embrace the message of any preacher or teacher simply because of his or her reputation or credentials; rather, we must listen cautiously to their Christology. What they say about Jesus is of utmost importance.
The Bible talks of
“the ungodly”
as those who are separated from God.
Ungodliness is the condition of being polluted with sin. To be ungodly is to act in a way that is contrary to the nature of God, to actively oppose God in disobedience, or to have an irreverent disregard for God. The Bible often speaks of “the flesh” in reference to things that emanate from our sinful natures. The acts of the flesh and the desires of the world fall under the category of ungodliness.
Second Peter 3:7 says that the ungodly will face judgment. Revelation 20:14–15 says, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Ultimately, those who reject God—the ungodly—will be separated from Him forever.
Jude refers to false teachers as ungodly. His description contains these characteristics of ungodliness: they pervert the grace of God into a license for immorality, and they deny Jesus Christ as the only Sovereign and Lord (Jude 1:4). Later, Jude mentions the “ungodly acts” of the wicked and “defiant words” that the ungodly speak against God (verse 15). The ungodly are also characterized as “grumblers and faultfinders” who selfishly follow “their own evil desires,” boast and flatter (verse 16). The ungodly scoff at the truth of God and attempt to divide churches (verses 18–19).
Amazingly, Jesus sacrificed Himself for the ungodly. Romans 5:6 and 8 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5), clothing them with the righteousness of Christ and enabling them to “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way” (Colossians 1:10).
Our sanctification is progressive. That is, even though we are saved and justified in Christ, we sometimes still act in ungodly ways. We are still in the process of being transformed into His image (Romans 8:29–30; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 1:6). We are declared righteous before God but are still being made holy in practical terms. In short, we still sin. Scripture says we should confess our sin and trust God’s forgiveness (1 John 1:8–9). Nothing can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ (Romans 8:31–39). We are no longer numbered among the ungodly, even though we still fight our fleshly urges and sometimes act in ungodly ways.
Generally speaking, the ungodly are those who do not know God through Jesus Christ. They have rejected God’s Son and remain in their sins. Those who are in Christ have their sins forgiven and are becoming more godly. Believers naturally seek to remove all ungodliness from their lives (1 John 3:9).
The words impiety and impious
appear in the Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible in many of the New Testament Epistles. Other translations render the word for “impiety” as “ungodliness” or “wickedness.” To be pious is to have reverence for God and be devoted to spiritual things, so the opposite of that—to be impious—is to be irreverent or faithless concerning the things of God. When the Bible speaks of ungodliness or wickedness, it is referring to impiety.
Left to himself, man is naturally impious due to his sin nature. From the moment of the fall in the Garden of Eden, mankind has continued to descend into wickedness. Soon after Eden, Cain showed impiety by bringing an unacceptable offering to the Lord and demanding that it be accepted (Genesis 4:5). A few generations later, Lamech showed impiety by killing a man and boasting about it (Genesis 4:23). By Noah’s day, impiety was so extensive that “every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). This is the nature of impiety. Unchecked, it continues to increase until it permeates a society.
Every time that God told the Israelites to keep the Sabbath holy (e.g., Exodus 20:8), He was warning them against impiety. God required piety concerning His name, too: “Do not profane my holy name, for I must be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites” (Leviticus 22:32). Psalm 45:7 says that God hates impiety because He loves righteousness. God’s nature is one of perfect holiness; therefore, He cannot abide sin or impious behavior. David describes God’s hatred of sin this way: “You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; no evil dwells with You” (Psalm 5:4).
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18). The Greek word translated “ungodliness” in this verse literally means “impiety,” and it includes all crimes men commit against God and against one another. Impiety is bound up in the violation of all the commands of God, summarized in the greatest commandments, to love God and others (Matthew 22:37–40). As we are all sinners, we are all guilty before God of impiety and deserve His wrath.
Fortunately for impious mankind, God is not just the God of justice and wrath; He is also the God of love and grace. God so loved the world that He provided the means to escape His wrath. Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God, died on the cross to pay the penalty for our impiety. Jesus suffered the wrath of the Father, even though He was perfect and had committed no sin. Christ the pious died for the impious (Romans 5:6), demonstrating God’s love and inviting us to enjoy God’s presence throughout eternity, with no fear of wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Those who accept this sacrifice by faith are declared righteous because God exchanges our sin for the righteousness (piety) of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Saved by grace, we are enabled to deny impiety and to “live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11–12). The lives of those who have escaped God’s wrath through faith in Christ are to be characterized by true piety—reverence and devotion to God. Believers should reject all impiety and anything that is against God’s nature. Christians have the Spirit of God living within them, and His power enables us to live in a godly manner (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
The Bible uses words such as iniquity, transgression, and trespass to indicate levels of disobedience to God. They are all categorized as “sin.” Micah 2:1 says, “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it.”
The Hebrew word used most often for “iniquity” means “guilt worthy of punishment.” Iniquity is sin at its worst. Iniquity is premeditated, continuing, and escalating. When we flirt with sin, we fall for the lie that we can control it. But like a cute baby monkey can grow to be a wild, out-of-control primate, sin that seems small and harmless at first can take control before we know it. When we give ourselves over to a sinful lifestyle, we are committing iniquity. Sin has become our god rather than the Lord (Romans 6:14).
When we realize we have sinned, we have a choice. We can see it for the evil it is and repent. When we do, we find the forgiveness and cleansing of God (Jeremiah 33:8; 1 John 1:9). Or we can harden our hearts and go deeper into that sin until it defines us. Partial lists of iniquities are given in Galatians 5:19–21 and in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. These are sins that become so consuming that a person can be identified by that lifestyle. The psalmists distinguish between sin and iniquity when they ask God to forgive both (Psalm 32:5; 38:18; 51:2; 85:2).
If we continue to choose sin, our hearts harden toward God. One sin leads to another, and iniquity begins to define our lives, as it did when David sinned with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:3–4). His initial sin of lust resulted in a hardening of his heart, and his sin deepened. He committed adultery, then had Bathsheba’s husband killed (verses 14–15). Iniquity had taken over David’s life. It was only when confronted by the prophet Nathan that he repented with great sorrow. His heartfelt cry for forgiveness is detailed in Psalm 51. Verse 2 says, “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” David is a picture of someone who clearly understood the progression of iniquity and who experienced the mercy and forgiveness of God (Psalm 103:1–5).
The second half of Romans 1 outlines the progression of sin (verses 10–32). The end result for those with such hardened hearts is that God turns them over to a “reprobate mind” (verse 28, KJV), and they no longer have the desire or ability to repent. Reprobate means “thoroughly depraved, given over to evil until the conscience is seared.” The Scripture is clear that God forgives even iniquity (Micah 7:18), but if we persist in it, we will reap the wages of sin, which is eternal separation from God (Romans 6:23).
The word sin
and its cognates are used 786 times in
the New International Version of the Bible.
Sin means “to miss the mark.” It can refer to doing something against God or against a person (Exodus 10:16), doing the opposite of what is right (Galatians 5:17), doing something that will have negative results (Proverbs 24:33–34), and failing to do something you know is right (James 4:17). In the Old Testament, God even instituted sacrifices for unintentional sins (Numbers 15:27). Sin is the general term for anything that “falls short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
Sin leads to a downward progression that, without the restoring power of the Holy Spirit, we all tend toward. The sin nature is present in every human being born since the Fall of Adam (Genesis 3:6–7; Romans 5:12). If left unchecked, continual sin leads to a “reprobate mind,” spoken of in Romans 1:28. Our sin nature causes us to gravitate naturally toward selfishness, envy, and pride, even when we are trying to do good. The apostle Paul alluded to his propensity to sin when he wrote, “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18).
The sin nature leads to trespassing. A trespasser is someone who crosses a line or climbs a fence that he should not cross or climb. A trespass may be intentional or unintentional. Trespass can also mean “to fall away after being close beside.” Peter trespassed when he denied Jesus (Luke 22:34, 56–62). We all “cross the line” in thought, word, or attitude many times a day and should be quick to forgive others who do the same (Matthew 6:15).
Transgression refers to presumptuous sin. To transgress is to choose to intentionally disobey; transgression is willful trespassing. Samson intentionally broke his Nazirite vow by touching a dead lion (Numbers 6:1–5; Judges 14:8–9) and allowing his hair to be cut (Judges 16:17); in doing so he was committing a transgression. David was referring to this kind of sin when he wrote, “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered” (Psalm 32:1). When we knowingly run a stop sign, tell a lie, or blatantly disregard an authority, we are transgressing.
Iniquity is more deeply rooted. Iniquity refers to a premeditated choice; to commit iniquity is to continue without repentance. David’s sin with Bathsheba that led to the killing of her husband, Uriah, was iniquity (2 Samuel 11:3–4; 2 Samuel 12:9). Micah 2:1 says, “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it.” In David’s psalm of repentance, he cries out to God, saying, “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin” (Psalm 51:2).
God forgives iniquity, as He does any type of sin when we repent (Jeremiah 33:8; Hebrews 8:12). However, iniquity left unchecked leads to a state of willful sin with no fear of God. The build-up of unrepentant sin is sometimes pictured as a “cup of iniquity” being filled to the brim (Revelation 17:4; Genesis 15:16). This often applies to nations who have forsaken God completely. Continued iniquity leads to unnatural affections, which leads to a reprobate mind. Romans 1:28–32 outlines this digression in vivid detail. The sons of Eli are biblical examples of reprobates whom God judged for their iniquities (1 Samuel 3:13–14). Rather than repent, Eli’s sons continued in their abominations until repentance was no longer possible.
The biblical writers used different words to refer to sin in its many forms. However, regardless of how depraved a human heart may become, Jesus’ death on the cross was sufficient to cover all sin (John 1:29; Romans 5:18). Psalm 32:5, quoted at the beginning of this article, ends with these words: “And you forgave the guilt of my sin.” The only sin that God cannot forgive is the final rejection of the Holy Spirit’s drawing to repentance—the ultimate fruit of a reprobate mind (Matthew 12:32; Luke 12:10).
The statement
“you will know them by their fruit”
(Matthew 7:16)
is part of Jesus’ teaching about recognizing true followers and avoiding false prophets. Beginning with verse 15, we read this context: “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15–20).
The seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is a gold mine of teaching from the popular verse 1 to the well-known parable about the wise man building his house upon the rock (verses 24–27). In verses 21–23, Jesus makes a chilling announcement to many who assumed they belonged to Him. He warned them that on Judgment Day they will hear Him say, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” Just before that warning, Jesus had indicted those who pretended to follow Him but whose lives indicated something else. He told His followers that the “fruit” of their lives proved what was inside their hearts (cf. Mark 7:20–23).
When Jesus says, “You will know them by their fruit,” what does “fruit” mean? Jesus gave the illustration of grape vines and fig trees. When we see grape vines, we expect them to contain grapes in season. We also expect fig trees to produce figs. A produce farmer who notices one of his fruit trees not bearing any fruit will cut it down. It is useless. Likewise, we would not come to a field of thistles and expect to harvest fruit. Thistles and thorn bushes can never produce fruit because of their nature. It is impossible. They have no capacity to produce anything but thorns (Matthew 12:33).
In our lives, every word and every action is fruit from our hearts. Sinners sin because that’s what is in their hearts. Thieves steal, rapists attack, and adulterers cheat because those sins are the fruit being produced from an evil heart. Bad hearts produce bad fruit. When Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruit” concerning false teachers, He was giving us a guide for identifying them. False prophets, speakers of lies, will have actions that correspond to their errant message. Just as their message is anti-God, so will be their works. They will stray from the path of righteousness.
When we repent of our sin and receive Jesus as Lord of our lives (John 1:12; Acts 2:38), He changes our hearts (2 Corinthians 5:17). Now the fruit that is produced is good fruit. Galatians 5:22 lists some of the fruit produced by a heart in tune with God. Our attitudes, actions, words, and perspectives change as we walk in fellowship with the Holy Spirit (1 John 1:6–7). When our hearts change, our fruit changes.
Many false prophets have come and gone, and many of them lived in blatant sin while preaching their message. Jim Jones openly engaged in adultery, drug use, and profanity. David Koresh had child “wives” as young as 11. False teachers might display the “fruit” of sexual immorality, greed, materialism, gluttony, and other sins while justifying their behavior and lifting themselves up as something holy. Unfortunately, many people through the years have been duped into following such characters and joining them in justifying the sin. If only they had heeded Jesus’ warning that “you will know them by their fruit.” No matter how good or convincing someone sounds, if he is bearing bad fruit, his message should be avoided.
Godly teachers will display good “fruit” such as making disciples (Matthew 28:19), using their gifts to benefit others (Romans 12:4–8), leading lost people to Jesus (James 5:20), loving their fellow believers (1 John 3:14), and seeking humble ways to do good everywhere (Jeremiah 29:7). All of these things are indications of a good heart.
Often, people profess faith in Jesus as Savior, but it is a mere profession with no real faith. Some religious groups encourage baptism, confirmation, or other religious rites that are supposed to ensure one’s future in heaven. But as time goes on, the fruit being produced in such a life looks nothing like what is clearly prescribed in the Bible (1 Peter 1:16). Some attend church services but spend the rest of their time living entirely for themselves. Some may rise to prominence, even teaching or preaching, writing books, or dominating the media, but the fruit of their lives belies their words (Matthew 24:24). Greed, deception, immorality, pride, or dishonesty defines them, making them false prophets by Jesus’ standards (2 Peter 2:1–3).
While we can never know anyone else’s heart, we can make wise assessments about other people by observing the regular fruit of their lives. All of us stumble from time to time, and we may go through seasons of bearing little fruit (1 John 1:8). But 1 John 3:4–10 makes it clear that those who know God will not continue a lifestyle of bearing bad fruit. We have been transformed, and the fruit of our lives is evidence of that transformation. Apple trees don’t produce bananas, and strawberry plants don’t produce figs. This fact of nature is also true in the spiritual realm. We can identify those whose hearts have been redeemed by the fruit we see in their lives.
Pride is celebrated in our world.
People proudly flaunt their accomplishments, possessions, or qualities they deem admirable in expectation of praise. Yet, selfish pride is a hindrance to salvation and to a fruitful relationship with God and others. James warns us about this self-focused pride when he writes, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6, NLT).
In warning against pride and promoting humility, James quotes the Septuagint translation of Proverbs 3:34. Of course, James is not referring to “pride” as in the satisfaction of a job well done (Galatians 6:4) or to the kind of pride one expresses over the accomplishment of loved ones (2 Corinthians 7:4). He is referring to the kind of pride that stems from self-righteousness or conceit.
God opposes the proud because pride is sinful and a hindrance to seeking Him. Those who insist on elevating themselves and refusing to trust God as sovereign, good, and trustworthy will find their way opposed by God. Psalm 10:4 explains that the proud are so consumed with themselves that they make no room for God. The ESV words it like this: “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’” The supremacy of God and the fact that we can do nothing to inherit eternal life apart from Christ is a stumbling block for prideful people. God will oppose those attempting to be the god of their own lives. Pride refuses to bend the knee to God or repent of sin, and that keeps many people from salvation.
In contrast to God’s opposition to the proud is God’s grace to the humble. Those who humble themselves find God’s favor: “Though the LORD is great, he cares for the humble” (Psalm 138:6, NLT). God shows His favor to those with a right view—a humble view—of themselves, and He promises them restoration: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15; cf. James 4:10). Note that humility in this passage is related to contrition, or repentance.
Pride can also hinder our relationship with God and others even after we are saved. In his letter, James addresses an issue among the believers, namely, their quarrels and strife with one another. The source of the issue was selfish pride. Pride negatively affects our relationships because it inflates our view of self and deflates our view of God and others. In the midst of addressing this issue, James quotes Proverbs 3:34: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (ESV).
Exalting ourselves pushes God out of His rightful place in our lives, and He will humble us “because the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). As we humble ourselves, He “gives grace generously” (James 4:6, NLT). God gives us grace that is sufficient to meet every need we have and every sin we face, if we are humble enough to receive it. As we decide whether we will elevate ourselves or turn to God, we must remember that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. God calls us to repent of self-righteousness, selfish demands, and proud exaltation and instead “submit [ourselves], then, to God” (James 4:7).
In a world that champions pride, Jesus commands believers to be different. Each believer is called to “look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4, ESV). As we humble ourselves, we will experience God’s grace and the rewards He promises: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). Since God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, may we live humble lives in the fear of the Lord (Micah 6:8).
The reins of God
on Satan’s activities are illustrated by Satan’s request to God for permission to afflict Job (Job 1:7-12). Satan is permitted to afflict God’s people (Luke 13:16; 1 Thessalonians 2:18; Hebrews 2:14), but he is never permitted to win an ultimate victory over them (John 14:30-31; 16:33). A part of Satan’s continuing ambition to replace God is his passionate yearning to have others worship him (Matthew 4:8-9; Revelation 13:4, 12). Satan is "the wicked one" (Matthew 13:19, 38), while God is "the Holy One" (Isaiah 1:4).
Satan’s nature is malicious. His efforts in opposing God, His people, and His truth are tireless (Job 1:7; 2:2; Matthew 13:28). He is always opposed to man’s best interests (1 Chronicles 21:1; Zechariah 3:1-2). Through his role in introducing sin into the human family (Genesis 3), Satan has gained the power of death—a power which Christ has broken through His crucifixion and resurrection (Hebrews 2:14-15). Satan tempted Christ directly, trying to lead Him into compromise by promising Him worldly authority and power (Luke 4:5-8).
Despite Satan’s self-delusion that he can defeat God, Satan is destined to fail. His final defeat is predicted in John 12:31, Revelation 12:9, and 20:10. The death of Christ on the cross is the basis for Satan’s final defeat (Hebrews 2:14-15; 1 Peter 3:18, 22). That event was the grand climax to a sinless life during which Jesus triumphed over the enemy repeatedly (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). Satan probably rejoiced in the death of Christ, believing it to be a victory for him, but like all his victories, that one, too, was short-lived. When Jesus rose from the grave, Satan was once again defeated. The final victory will come when Jesus returns and Satan is cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:1-15).
The death and resurrection of Christ provide the believer strength for victory over sin. We have assurance that "the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16:20). But such personal victory depends on God’s grace and power in our lives and our will to offer resistance to Satan’s temptations (Ephesians 4:25-27; James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8-9). To help Christians win this battle against Satan, God has provided the power of Christ’s blood (Revelation 12:11), the continuing prayer of Christ in heaven for believers (Hebrews 7:25), the leading of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16), and various weapons for spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:10–18).
Nero, the fifth emperor of Rome,
who ruled from AD 54 until AD 68, is a common target in attempts to identify the Antichrist or the beast of Revelation. Identifying Nero as the Antichrist is common among those who take the preterist position of biblical prophecy. There are at least two reasons some label Nero as the Antichrist.
First, Nero was a brutal and tyrannical persecutor of Christians. Nero blamed Christians for a fire that broke out in Rome, a fire for which he was perhaps responsible. He then used the fire as a pretext for an intense persecution of those who held to the Christian faith in and around Rome. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote, “Covered with the skins of beasts, [Christians] were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as nightly illumination when daylight had expired” (The Annals, trans. by Brodribb, W. J., 15.44). Christian tradition is that the apostles Peter and Paul were both executed at the order of Nero. So, without a doubt, Nero was anti-Christian and exhibited some of the hatred of God that the Antichrist will possess.
Second, some identify Nero as the Antichrist because of Revelation 13:18, which says, “This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.” In attempts to decipher the number 666, some turn to gematria, a type of numerology in which letters are assigned a numerical value. Taking a Hebrew transliteration of the name and title Nero Caesar, assigning a particular numerical value to each letter, and adding the values, one ends up with 666. Others take more creative routes through Aramaic or Greek gematria and similarly arrive at 666, using various combinations of Nero’s names and titles. While the mathematics can be fascinating, the book of Revelation does not specifically say how 666 identifies the Antichrist. To use a complicated methodology to arrive at 666 does not seem trustworthy.
There are also at least three reasons to reject the idea that Nero was the Antichrist. First, the Bible describes the Antichrist being defeated at the second coming of Jesus Christ (Revelation 19:11–21). Nero died by suicide.
Second, while some date the writing of Revelation to the reign of Nero, the majority of Christian scholars and virtually all of early Christian literature place the writing of Revelation during the reign of Domitian, approximately 30 years after Nero’s death. Identifying Nero as the Antichrist requires denying how the book of Revelation says the reign of the Antichrist will end and necessitates a date of authorship that most Bible scholars and early Christian literature reject.
Third, the book of Revelation puts the defeat of the Antichrist near the end of the prophetic calendar. In the book of Revelation, the Antichrist is defeated at the second coming of Jesus Christ and cast into the lake of fire shortly before the establishment of the millennial reign of Christ (Revelation 19:11—20:6). The only way to make Nero fit as the Antichrist is to allegorize the second coming and the millennium and to remove any semblance of chronology from much of the book of Revelation. That is not the proper way to understand the book of Revelation.
God’s all-sufficient, amazing grace
is the central theme of Psalm 116. Again and again, the Lord helps us in our weakness and saves us when we are powerless to help ourselves (Isaiah 40:29–31; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Philippians 4:13). Recognizing his enormous debt of gratitude, the psalmist asks, “What can I offer the Lord for all he has done for me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and praise the Lord’s name for saving me. I will keep my promises to the Lord in the presence of all his people” (Psalm 116:12–14, NLT).
What was this cup of salvation the psalmist lifted in praise to the Lord? Most likely, it was a symbolic reference to the drink offering prescribed in Leviticus 23:13. At the yearly Feast of Firstfruits, the Israelites were to submit a drink offering of “a quarter of a hin of wine” (about one quart) to God in gratefulness for His salvation and continued provision in the Promised Land. The liquid offering was poured out on the altar, accompanied by other contributions from products of the land. These offerings were given as reminders that the rich fruits of the harvest were all from God and depended on His favor.
Drink offerings were frequently presented in the Bible to thank God for His salvation. After the Lord appeared to Jacob at Bethel and changed his name to Israel, Jacob set up a stone pillar to mark where God had met with him and spoken to him. Then “he poured out a drink offering on it” (Genesis 35:14).
At the ordination of the priests, a drink offering was presented (Exodus 29:38–41). As a test of obedience, God gave additional rules for offerings in Numbers 15, including burnt offerings accompanied by a drink offering (verses 5, 7, 10).
In the New Testament, the apostle Paul compared his sacrificial ministry to an act of worship: “But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you” (Philippians 2:17). In the face of death, he told Timothy, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near” (2 Timothy 4:6).
The “cup of salvation” is also suggestive of God’s good gifts to humans, which David extolled: “You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings” (Psalm 23:5, NLT).
The psalmist’s “cup of salvation” is the counterpart to the “cup of wrath,” representing God’s judgment of sin and His wrath reserved for the wicked to drink (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:22; Jeremiah 25:15–16; Ezekiel 23:31–34). This cup of wrath is associated with Jesus Christ’s extreme suffering and death on the cross (Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:42). The Lord’s mention of it in Gethsemane anticipated the excruciating moment when Jesus would cry, “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus was about to drink the cup of God’s wrath for us so that we might be spared and saved.
In lifting the cup of salvation, the psalmist offered praise to God for the blessing of His salvation. In the manner of a salute, he raised the cup high and partook of it amid praise and thanksgiving for God’s tremendous and abundantly gracious deliverance. This illustration is an excellent image for believers to contemplate when offering our thanks to God.
In Revelation 18 John
records a vision of a mighty angel
descending from heaven
to announce the fall
of Babylon the Great.
This evil world system, associated with the Antichrist of the end times, is pictured as a prostitute committing fornication with the kings of the earth (Revelation 17:1–2). The “whore of Babylon” or “mystery Babylon” makes war against the true saints of God (verse 6) and is best interpreted as an ungodly, end-times religious system.
The command to “come out of her” in Revelation 18:4 is a warning to God’s people to escape the judgment that is to come upon Babylon the Great. The false religious system had her time of influence, when “the kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries” (verse 3). But she is the subject of God’s wrath, and she will be judged: “Her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes” (verse 5). She will suffer a quick demise: “In one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire” (verse 8), and “the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again” (verse 21).
God calls His people during the tribulation to disassociate from Babylon the Great. They must “come out of her” (Revelation 18:4). Have nothing to do with the false religion of the Antichrist. Separate from that system and its sinfulness; have no fellowship with her. Do not commit spiritual adultery. To “come out of her” is to withdraw from her activities, to refuse her luxuries, and to condemn her sinful plans.
To “come out of her” is to follow the path of liberty and safety. The voice from heaven that commands the separation from Babylon also gives the reason for the command: “‘Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). To share in the sin is to share in the guilt. God wants His people to maintain their purity and to be free from judgment.
The command to “come out of her” in Revelation 18:4 finds a counterpart in history. In the end times, God’s people are told to separate from spiritual Babylon, but in the Old Testament, they were to separate from physicalBabylon. Israel had been held captive in Babylon for seventy years, and when it was time to return home to Jerusalem, God told them to flee: “Flee from Babylon! Run for your lives! Do not be destroyed because of her sins. It is time for the LORD's vengeance; he will repay her what she deserves. . . . She cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to our own land, for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the heavens. . . . Come out of her, my people! Run for your lives! Run from the fierce anger of the LORD” (Jeremiah 51:6, 9, 45; cf. Isaiah 52:11 and Jeremiah 50:8).
In times of judgment, God separates His people from those being judged. Abraham pointed out this truth in his conversation with the Lord before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you!” (Genesis 18:25). When God judged the Egyptians with the plagues, He made a distinction between His people and those being judged (Exodus 8:22–23; 9:4–6, 26; 10:23; 11:7).
In a foreshadowing of the New Testament command to “come out of her,” Moses commanded the Israelites to separate themselves from the family of Korah. Just before God’s judgment of the rebels, Moses “warned the assembly, ‘Move back from the tents of these wicked men! Do not touch anything belonging to them, or you will be swept away because of all their sins.’ So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram” (Numbers 16:26–27). Immediately following, the earth opened up and swallowed Korah and the other rebelsalive (verses 31–33).
Christians today are told, in essence, to “come out of her”; that is, to separate themselves from the wickedness of the world: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. . . . Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you’” (2 Corinthians 6:14–17).
During the tribulation, when the people of the world see the destruction of Babylon the Great, they will mourn the loss of their source of riches and pleasure (Revelation 18:9, 15, 19). But those who have come out of her and who had been persecuted by her will celebrate:
“Rejoice over her, you heavens!
Rejoice, you people of God!
Rejoice, apostles and prophets!
For God has judged her
with the judgment she imposed on you” (verse 20).
Wrath is defined
as “the emotional response to perceived wrong and injustice,” often translated as “anger,” “indignation,” “vexation,” or “irritation.” Both humans and God express wrath. But there is vast difference between the wrath of God and the wrath of man. God’s wrath is holy and always justified; man’s is never holy and rarely justified.
In the Old Testament, the wrath of God is a divine response to human sin and disobedience. Idolatry was most often the occasion for divine wrath. Psalm 78:56-66describes Israel’s idolatry. The wrath of God is consistently directed towards those who do not follow His will (Deuteronomy 1:26-46; Joshua 7:1; Psalm 2:1-6). The Old Testament prophets often wrote of a day in the future, the "day of wrath" (Zephaniah 1:14-15). God’s wrath against sin and disobedience is perfectly justified because His plan for mankind is holy and perfect, just as God Himself is holy and perfect. God provided a way to gain divine favor—repentance—which turns God’s wrath away from the sinner. To reject that perfect plan is to reject God’s love, mercy, grace and favor and incur His righteous wrath.
The New Testament also supports the concept of God as a God of wrath who judges sin. The story of the rich man and Lazarus speaks of the judgment of God and serious consequences for the unrepentant sinner (Luke 16:19–31). John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” The one who believes in the Son will not suffer God’s wrath for his sin, because the Son took God’s wrath upon Himself when He died in our place on the cross (Romans 5:6–11). Those who do not believe in the Son, who do not receive Him as Savior, will be judged on the day of wrath (Romans 2:5–6).
Conversely, human wrath is warned against in Romans 12:19, Ephesians 4:26, and Colossians 3:8-10. God alone is able to avenge because His vengeance is perfect and holy, whereas man’s wrath is sinful, opening him up to demonic influence. For the Christian, anger and wrath are inconsistent with our new nature, which is the nature of Christ Himself (2 Corinthians 5:17). To realize freedom from the domination of wrath, the believer needs the Holy Spirit to sanctify and cleanse his heart of feelings of wrath and anger. Romans 8 shows victory over sin in the life of one who is living in the Spirit (Romans 8:5-8). Philippians 4:4-7 tells us that the mind controlled by the Spirit is filled with peace.
The wrath of God is a fearsome and terrifying thing. Only those who have been covered by the blood of Christ, shed for us on the cross, can be assured that God’s wrath will never fall on them. “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!” (Romans 5:9).
According to Jesus,
the unpardonable or unforgivable sin is unique. It is the one iniquity that will never be forgiven (“never” is the meaning of “either in this age or in the age to come” in Matthew 12:32). The unforgivable sin is blasphemy (“defiant irreverence”) of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Spirit’s work in the world through Christ. In other words, the particular case of blasphemy seen in Matthew 12 and Mark 3 is unique. The guilty party, a group of Pharisees, had witnessed irrefutable evidence that Jesus was working miracles in the power of the Holy Spirit, yet they claimed that He was possessed by the prince of demons, Beelzebul (Matthew 12:24; Mark 3:30).
The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day committed the unpardonable sin by accusing Jesus Christ (in person, on earth) of being demon-possessed. They had no excuse for such an action. They were not speaking out of ignorance or misunderstanding. The Pharisees knew that Jesus was the Messiah sent by God to save Israel. They knew the prophecies were being fulfilled. They saw Jesus’ wonderful works, and they heard His clear presentation of truth. Yet they deliberately chose to deny the truth and slander the Holy Spirit. Standing before the Light of the World, bathed in His glory, they defiantly closed their eyes and became willfully blind. Jesus pronounced that sin to be unforgivable.
The statement
“I am the door,”
found in John 10:7, is the third of seven “I am” declarations of Jesus recorded only in John’s Gospel. These “I am” proclamations point to His unique, divine identity and purpose. In this “I am” statement, Jesus colorfully points out for us the exclusive nature of salvation by saying that He is “the door,” not “a door.” Furthermore, Jesus is not only our Shepherd who leads us into the “sheepfold,” but He is the only door by which we may enter and be saved (John 10:9). Jesus is the only means we have of receiving eternal life (John 3:16). There is no other way.
To get a clear picture of Jesus’ meaning in this statement, it is helpful to understand a little of that ancient culture, especially of sheep and shepherding. Of all domesticated animals, sheep are the most helpless. Sheep will spend their entire day grazing, wandering from place to place, never looking up. As a result, they often become lost. But sheep have no “homing instinct” as other animals do. They are totally incapable of finding their way to their sheepfold even when it is in plain sight. By nature, sheep are followers. If the lead sheep steps off a cliff, the others will follow.
Additionally, sheep are easily susceptible to injuries and are utterly helpless against predators. If a wolf enters the pen, they won’t defend themselves. They won’t try to run away or spread out. Instead they huddle together and are easily slaughtered. If sheep fall into moving water, they will drown. However, sheep do fear moving water and will not drink from any stream or lake unless the water is perfectly still. This is why David in the 23rd Psalm tells us of the shepherd who “makes [us] to lie down in green pastures, he leads [us] beside the still waters . . . though [we] walk through the valley . . . [we] will fear no evil. For You [the Shepherd] are with [us].”
Sheep are totally dependent upon the shepherd who tends them with care and compassion. Shepherds were the providers, guides, protectors and constant companions of sheep. So close was the bond between shepherd and sheep that to this day Middle Eastern shepherds can divide flocks that have mingled at a well or during the night simply by calling their sheep, who know and follow their shepherd’s voice. Shepherds were inseparable from their flocks. The shepherd would lead the sheep to safe places to graze and make them lie down for several hours in a shady place. Then, as night fell, the shepherd would lead the sheep to the protection of a sheepfold.
There were two kinds of sheepfolds or pens. One kind was a public sheepfold found in the cities and villages. It would be large enough to hold several flocks of sheep. This sheep pen would be in the care of a porter or doorkeeper, whose duty it was to guard the door to the sheep pen during the night and to admit the shepherds in the morning. The shepherds would call their sheep, each of which knew its own shepherd’s voice, and would lead them out to pasture.
The second kind of sheep pen was in the countryside, where the shepherds would keep their flocks in good weather. This type of sheep pen was nothing more than a rough circle of rocks piled into a wall with a small open space to enter. Through it the shepherd would drive the sheep at nightfall. Since there was no gate to close—just an opening—the shepherd would keep the sheep in and wild animals out by lying across the opening. He would sleep there, in this case literally becoming the door to the sheep.
In this context, Jesus is telling us that He is not only the shepherd of the sheep, but also the door of the sheep. In doing so, He is vividly contrasting Himself with that of the religious leaders of His time whom He describes as “thieves and robbers” (John 10:8). When Jesus says, “I am the door,” He is reiterating the fact that only through Him is salvation possible. This is far removed from the ecumenical teachings popular in today’s liberal religious circles. Jesus makes it clear that any religious leader who offers salvation other than the teachings of Christ is a “thief” and a “robber.”
One who believes the gospel (Hebrews 11:6) and repents of sin (Luke 13:3) is assured of being in “the fold” and of having entered by “the door.” As followers of Christ, Jesus is both our Shepherd and the Door to the sheepfold who provides for all our needs. Knowing that the world is full of predators whose sole intent is to destroy us (1 Peter 5:8), we are always under His protection. More importantly, we are fully confident that “when the Chief Shepherd appears, [we] will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away” (1 Peter 5:4).
0 CommentsIdolatry Support and Prayer Groups Now available through His Divine Podcast, to help you grow in Journey of salvation and coming to know Jesus Christ6/18/2023
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What Do You
See?
Do YOU SEE the hurting people around YOU?
What do YOU
FEEL
Do you STOP to help those
Who ARE HURTING, or do YOU STEP OVER
Them?
DO YOU RESPOND to their PLEAS?
DO YOU
Open your Eyes to the people AROUND YOU?
Because,
Self exaltation and Pride is never
More VISIBLE
than
Drowning in over a YEAR
of
Grueling, daily, SLOW, Family SUFFERING,
PAIN STAKING
TRAFFIC
I LABOR FULL TIME
FULFILL
GODS WILL
Putting GOD FIRST before MY FAMILY as
Commanded and
SUFFER
The consequences of this PAIN,
all while
BEING FORCED for MONTHS and MONTHS
To LIE about
GODS TRUTH
As I SUFFER through unbearable amounts
of
Religious Persecution
STEMMED from
Complete WILLFUL IGNORANCE
and have
NO Answers to every question for MY FAMILY
as to
Why I AM investing my FULL TIME into This
Instead of FAMIlY and INCOME, for OVER a YEAR
Because
THIS KIND, JESUS LOVING
“Christian church”
Selfishly
Won’t acknowledge that
They ARE
Not only Involved, but FULLY Responsible
and
Entirely Initiated
This Journey of Witnessing Christ,
as THEY continue to
go on
Meeting ALL of THEIR OWN
Self Identified
Church Needs,
(For a grueling 70 MORE weeks of sermons BUILT off MY MINISTERING)
AND Each of these
GIVE HONOR to the HOLY Kingdom Queen
PROMOTING their OWN
Public Image and Reputation
While Consistently and Ruthlessly Degrading
MINE
As she ABUSES
Her
”Position” of “Leadership Authority”
to
WRONGLY
Control
Situations and People
in order to
Keep her Humanly, Self Prescribed Position
of
What is Gods Authority
and
Elevate Herself
Over
Gods Righteous Position
and OVER
LIVING Human Being’s
Opportunity to Experience and HEAR
The Gospel
Which is Not for the Goodwill of others, but for her own
self gratification and faulty idea of what is
TRUTH
When control isn’t in her Favor, And life doesn’t Go HER WAY,
She Retaliates
With Irrelevant, Humiliating, Underserved, Punishment
In ORDER to SUSTAIN
Her Crafted Public Image
In attempts to
coerce people into submitting to them
out of Fear of
Being
Publicly Shamed
This is WHY NO ONE will
COMMUNICATE
TRUTH,
They LIVE in FEAR of BEING
Unjustly Subjected
To blackmail and public extortion
DUE to The Abuse
of
Ungodly, Self Exalting, Prideful
AntiChristian
(In its clearest and most precise biblical definition, ANTICHRIST)
Leadership Power
who
HURT anyone that THEY BELIEVE
STAND
in
THE WAY
Of this WORLDLY Perspective
of
“Right Behavior
and
God Ordained Authority”
of which has ZERO to do with
Gods TRUE Word,
Chosen Plan
or Clearly
Revealed WILL
Cleverly masqueraded under
The Name of Jesus
and
Heretical Illustration
of the
Gospel All While
I’AM
WHOLLY
Discipling, Shepherding and Supporting
Gods Revealed Will and Mission
through my
OWN SACRIFICED
God Ordained
Resources, ability, and Time
That I AM
FULLY qualified, FULLY knowledgeable for,
with a
FULLY Developed,
Living Relationship
with the
ONLY ONE WAY
ONLY ONE TRUTH
and
ONLY LIFE
In
CHRIST
I have FULLY Carried ALL theWEIGHT
I get
NO compensation, NO acknowledgment,
NO RESPECT,
While degradingly GIVEN exceeding
amounts of
“Parenting,” “Moral,” “Christian Family” “Marriage”
and “Biblical Advice”
To SECURE a Strong Biblical Foundation
I AM suffocating in CARRYING the
ENTIRE JOB,
Get criticized about everything NON BIBLICAL such as
House Cleaning, Cooking Meal Plans,
and the Sinful effects of
Eating pizza and Microwaved French Fries
While YOU PREACH about
Taking care of
“widows and orphans”
She will use up ANY people, resources or
SERMON TIME to
Uphold HER Public “Reputation,”
Likewise USING the SAME MEASURE to
Falsely Slander mine
Willful Ignorance is RECKLESSLY
being a
A Pillar of Salt,
POURING
SALT into Bleeding Wounds,
Not ONCE humbling herself to Self Examination, learning,
Growing further in knowledge or
Most Critically for the Well-being of others,
Bearing Fruits of Repentance,
But KICKING Back EACH and EVERY TIME
She DESPISES the
TRUTH
of the
Word of God
If I weren’t SLAVING for GODS WILL,
FULL TIME For YOU people to
OPEN your EYES to The TRUTH of GODS WORD
Then I would be in a more ideal position in
prioritizing the Care of MY FAMILY,
THE WAY
YOU do YOURS
By Bringing in INCOME to PAY for
My child's PainsStakingly
COSTLY DYSLEXIA SCHOOLING
So that HE can
LEARN to READ
While YOU SPEND Ridiculous amounts of
Gods finances And Gods Ordained Resources on
Flights, outfits, fancy things, food catering, private investigators,
And Appeasing the Queen to keep a
Squeaky
Clean Carved Image
Alive
You KNOW
what comes with learning how to read?
Reading the Bible!
What comes with that?
Knowing God!
My Parents, who should be retired, step in daily to
help with my children, because
I’m bringing in NO income for Slaving in
YOUR Redemption AND Education and DIRECTION
My KIDS Miss out, while you GLORIFY your
Kids ministries and supporting special needs to
transport to all of your
“no sinners allowed”
Van conventions
My husband 100% financially supports us
while I slave for YOU ALL and the self righteous
IDOLS receive FULL
HONOR for Spreading a heretical
FALSE Gospel,
which is clearly harmful in
Gods Eyes,
YET, Wont Correctly APPLY the
WORD of GOD
And desires for a future generation to continue
THIS WAY
While WE get LIES and humiliation
All While
Gods Given Resources and Finances
are of course
FIRST designated to Publicly Honor
the
“Honored “Biblical Pastors” Chosen Ministry,”
where Leadership
“Honor is Due”
Whatever that means.. as if Human Beings are
Gods and dictators of plantations
(All while not qualified to minister Gods Word)
To designate all Funds
(While Taxing whatever Feels Right for Air Flights and everything else unrelated to Gods Will)
to the Ministry of “Future Leaders” who are
Not Taught
Biblical Doctrine and Shutting the Door in Peoples Faces,
In order to Go Into the World
“Preaching”
The
“Gospel of Jesus Christ”
through
a secular financial system that doesn’t
Teach Sound Biblical
Doctrine
And Preaching People
to
“Remove this internet”
which is their
TRUE access
to
LIFE GIVING WORD of GOD
Simply because she exalts herself
over
TRUE, biblical correction and guidance,
regardless of
how many kind warnings
and
Gracious forgiving there have been
over
months and months
of
discipleship
HOW will the LOST
World
EVER KNOW CHRIST?
Believe it
or not,
Without even lifting their eyes to even
consider if they are
wrong,
And are too self righteous to humble themselves
In repentance,
As they insist they “deserve” our “honor”
whatever the H that is…. for a ‘
human being,’
regardless of who they trample, or of what
Gods Truth says
People will degrade you, slander you,
exploit
your privacy,
gossip about you, judge you, persecute you,
dehumanize you and without any
further consideration,
Ignore your cries, reject you, cut you off
and discard you to the waste-side
They will elevate themselves above
both
The law of god and human legal system
Not hold themselves accountable and
IGNORE
Every call and email
They will LIE to your parents, sweep it under the rug
There will be NO apology, truth, or acknowledgement
They will NOT confront their mistakes
They will Step OVER everyone to Preach the law
of HOW
To “Grow” in “Godly Character” And become a Godly
Leader World Changer
by
Climbing up the ladder
of their Man Made
Kingdom Institution in order to
Declare
the
Saving Gospel
In the
“Name of Jesus”
First,
I will of course need to get
clean and baptized
Before I can enter the presence
of the
Holy Queen
Perhaps THEY WILL exploit your personal
phone data
without permission,
and
share and exploit personal information
that occurred in the
PRIVACY of your own home, gossip about you,
PREACH
about everyone else’s sins and
NOT acknowledge HER own
You will visit, call and email several times and
Simply, politely Ask to speak to the lead pastor,
but will be
Dismissed several times,
more than you can count.
What kind of Jesus Preaching Church
won’t allow you to
Email or Speak with the Pastors?
Your parents will call and speak with
Emily several times she will lie to them
She will tell my father that they don’t even know me
or what I’m talking about
And that I am misinterpreting scripture and it’s
not inline with their church mission or values
I will come and ask to speak with Emily and ask her
very respectfully to speak with the lead pastor
and she will very
degradingly and disrespectfully
respond with
“HE has an obligation to SERVE
HIS
WIFE FIRST
(degrading look at me)
THEN his family, THEN his church!”
and
there was NO Way I would
be able
To “speak” with the Church Pastor
Wait, so No
Simple Email, or conversation? Just an Email?
SHE has been PUT in a “POSITION of LEADERSHIP”
How dare I ASK that!
How dare I insert my inquiry into HER important,
distinguished, designated, Christian leadership Role.
She had earlier in a “biblical Study Group”
informed me I didn’t have
“the holy spirit”
and very likely couldn’t serve
on a missions trip two years ago because
The Honored Queen
was very particular about having the
Holy Spirit
Because if you
“don’t have the HOLY SPIRIT, The SPIRIT “can’t MOVE”
Emily’s Words Verbatim
In TRUTH, your Flesh is against My Spirt,
however your Christian leadership position dismisses me
from serving because “You are not against me”
Yes you Are. You are fighting the Truth.
Then Emily
”Prayed over” me…praying
that the spirit would “move”… so KIND!!
And when I did get baptized at this church,
This same good ol’ Christian Leader Emily, a
“personal Servant of the Queen’ (apparently)
Moved ME into a different line so that
I was No longer in the “lead pastors line”
that I chose to stand in, and yet again, could not meet him
Later Christian Leader Emily informed me,
I could No longer “Serve” on their “Church's Creative TEAM”
And was Removed from
their Chat groups and Church Directory
And that there were
“other churches” I could go to;
All while
I was Bizarrely, unwillingly bombarded and blindsided
Three to ONE with “Church leaders”
and given No Explanation to WHY I couldn’t SERVE and
NONE
of my Questions were Answered, but were
“Soon eager to Pray for the power of Jesus to heal me”
And
Enlighten ME with “scripture passages”
that are
painstakingly Misunderstood
consequently,
After they continually LIED To MY FAMILY,
I was forced to go to
A professional to get a full medical evaluation
(Which of course I’m sane and wasted time and money on this)
Because clearly I’m lying,
As Emily and the CHURCH are Clearly
Kind,
righteous, honest, fair, respectful,
GODLY people who
Represent
Jesus for the community
So, I agree with this pastor,
People are miserable,
like the
lady in the Tahoe,
And I’m not sure what
HELL
“Someone” Put Her Through,
Not just for Me
But all loved ones in my Life,
We lost our dog and
My children lost many opportunities
While you Recline and Ridicule
everything that
YOU
Illegally, ruthlessly,
SPY on,
share innocent strangers
personal and extremely private
information
with your own family members simply
to ruthlessly lever your own advantage at
the pure expense
of degrading and humiliating others
Thats what YOU do,
you are a
Dictating, oppressive
SPY
And abuse that position
by
controlling your husband
to
Oppose his clear and obvious
TRUE Will
But
“WE are DIFFERENT.”
We Care
So don’t let anyone tell you that you are “
“damaged goods”
you are not
“damaged goods”
and perhaps one day, you will take that
“FIRST step to GROW” Alongside
“Godly” people,
Be all that you were created to be, because
“Its never too late”
to
“Reach your Full potential”…
And then… “maybe”
My “Owner”
Will “let me”.“Touch”
YOU”
Time Will Tell
But it Sure sounds like you’ve
got the
Fruits of Kindness;
Kindness
Is nothing but harmful when
it is
ROOTED
in
LIES,
YOU “SHOULD” KNOW This,
being a
PILLAR
of
Godly Principles
Loving Kindness corrects people, and you’ve
perpetually
dismissed and rejected over a year
of
KIND, SELFLESS
Correction
A False form of Kindness is merely a FACADEm
A Wolf disguised as a
A well groomed Sheep that recklessly follows
Its Manner Courses
A BLIND GUIDE that can’t see, hear, or discern
The blatant Voice of God
which is precisely the KIND of leader
that
Infects any GRAIN of Integrity
by
Spreading Further Harm,
Precisely as a
Plague or Disease…
So… Is it TIME
For you to get an evaluation?
I Will Drive
Do you need a Prayer Support Group?
I will intercede
Some Water? A Cleansing?
I can COME UP with a SERMON for that
Perhaps ill illegally spy on you,
then judge you,
then persecute you,
And when you plead for help,
and your dad calls,
I will lie to him
because my Public Image is
More Important than you,
and,
The world needs Jesus, you
KNOW…. Sound
Like a GOOD ole, SOUTHern KIND of Fun, TIME?
After
Laboring DOWN LOW,
I can Confidently say,
The View is Much More
PEACEFUL UP NORTH
But
FIRST, before Ascending
to the
Gospel PEACE TRAIN,
Do you need an
official,
Public Honor Declaration
To properly minister
Gods Resources?
To Bring people to know
The Saving Light of Christ our Savior?
This
HOLY ARK
isn’t the
Confederate South
Slave Trade
Plantation Industry
Unfortunately, because
you are
STILL UNCLEAN,
you missed
THE
HOLY
MArk
of the
Covenant
COME, Get Baptized,
into
SALVATION
Where you can take your
FIRST STEPS
Into your
JOURNEY,
REACH UP and GROW
toward
SANCTIFICATION
and
Perhaps, one day,
SHOOT for the STARS
in
HOLINESS
Have You Repented?
When Paul told the Philippian jailer
what he must do to be saved,
he was referring to the jailer’s eternal destiny
(Acts 16:30-31).
Jesus equated being
saved with
entering
the
kingdom of God
(Matthew 19:24-25)
What are we saved from?
In the True
doctrine of salvation, we are
saved
from “wrath,” that is,
from
God’s judgment of sin
(Romans 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:9).
Our sin has
separated us from God,
and the
consequence of sin is
Death
(Romans 6:23).
Biblical salvation refers to our
deliverance
from the
consequence of sin
and therefore involves
The
Removal of sin
We are saved from
both
The power and
penalty of SIN
Who does the saving?
Only God can
remove sin and deliver us from sin’s penalty
(2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:5)
How does God save?
through
Knowing Jesus Christ
(John 3:17).
Jesus’ death
on
The cross and subsequent
resurrection that
achieved
our salvation through
Faith Alone,
Condemnation Breeds Death
(Romans 5:10; Ephesians 1:7).
Scripture is
clear
That salvation
is the
gracious, undeserved
gift of God
(Ephesians 2:5, 8)
and is only
available through
faith in Jesus Christ
(Acts 4:12).
How do we receive salvation?
We are saved by faith.
First, we must HEAR
The Gospel
the
good news
of
Jesus’ death
and
resurrection
(Ephesians 1:13).
Then, we must
believe—fully
trust the Lord Jesus
(Romans 1:16).
This involves
repentance,
a
changing of mind
about sin
and
Christ
(Acts 3:19),
and calling on the name of the Lord
(Romans 10:9-10, 13).
salvation
is
the deliverance, by the
grace of God,
from
eternal punishment
for sin
that is granted to those who
accept by faith
God’s conditions of repentance
and
Faith in the Lord Jesus
Salvation
is available in
Jesus alone
(John 14:6; Acts 4:12)
and is dependent on
God alone
for
provision and assurance.
In 1 Corinthians 10:31,
Paul instructs the Corinthian believers,
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do,
do all
to the glory of God
In this verse, Paul is speaking to believers in the
Greek city of Corinth under the Roman Empire.
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul addresses the topic of
how the Corinthian Christians were to relate to idolatry
around them in a polytheistic Greco-Roman society.
In all they did, even eat and drink, they were to glorify God.
In the time of Paul, much of the
meat sold in Corinthian markets had been
ritually sacrificed to idols.
Temples were hubs
of social and economic activity
as well as worship,
so eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols could be
seen as partaking in idolatry.
In 1 Corinthians 10:14, Paul says,
Therefore, my beloved, flee from
idolatry
Paul then compares taking part
In an idolatrous feast
to taking part
In the
Lord’s Table
eating meat from idols
“connects”
one to the idols,
and
partaking in the bread
and
wine of communion
connects
the believer with
Christ
The Corinthian believers were to take care to
separate themselves from
the
sinful aspects of their culture:
You cannot drink
the
cup of the LORD
AND the
cup of demons too;
you cannot have
a part in both
The Lord’s Table
and
the table of demons
(1 Corinthians 10:21).
Paul acknowledges that
Idols
are
Not Real Gods
(1 Corinthians 10:19–20).
Therefore, it is acceptable to
eat anything sold in the meat market
without raising questions of conscience
(verse 25; cf. 1 Timothy 4:4–5)
In 1 Corinthians 10:23–30,
Paul builds an argument to his conclusion in verse 31.
Christians may
Eat the Meat
Sacrificed
To idols without qualms,
Knowing that
Idols are False
and that
All good things come from
God;
however, they also need to consider whether
doing so will
affect
the conscience and
Faith of Others:
“No one should seek their own good, but the good of others”
(verse 24).
Some Christians may feel tempted
to conform
To the patterns of the world through
eating the meat
or might
feel they are still
participating in idolatry,
and their conscience
Is Damaged
Because of this, Paul advises discernment and deference.
As believers eat and DRINK they
Must Do
All
To the Glory of God;
that is, they must eat and drink
in a way
that will not cause problems
for
other believers
This leads to Paul’s concluding statement,
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do,
do all to the
Glory of God
Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to
The church of God,
just as I try
to please
everyone in everything I do,
not seeking my own advantage,
but
that of many,
that they may be saved
(1 Corinthians 10:31–33)
More succinctly, in 1 Corinthians 8:13, Paul explains,
“Therefore, if
food makes my brother stumble,
I will never eat meat,
lest I make my brother stumble.”
So, when Paul talks about eating and drinking
to the
glory of God
In Matthew 21:44, Jesus says,
He who falls on this
stone
will be broken to pieces,
but he on whom it falls
will be crushed
The key to understanding this statement lies in the context
of the verse and the
larger conversation Jesus was having.
Jesus was teaching in the
temple courts
when the chief priests and elders
approached Him and demanded
to know the
source
of
His authority
In response, Jesus asked them about
John the Baptist--
was he a prophet of God or not?
The religious leaders,
fearing the people’s response,
refused to reveal their
true opinion on the matter
In turn,
Jesus
refused to reveal
the
source of
His authority
(Matthew 21:23-27).
In doing so,
Jesus made it clear
that the
Jewish leaders themselves
had
NO AUTHORITY
to
Judge Him
Jesus then related
two parables
concerning vineyards
In the first, Jesus told of two sons who were
told by their father to go work in the vineyard.
The first son initially refused
but later changed his mind and went to work.
The second son
promised to work,
but he never
went to the vineyard
Jesus applied
this to the religious leaders of Israel,
who were like the second son--
they expressed agreement with
the Father but,
in the final analysis, were disobedient.
The sinners who responded to John the Baptist’s
message were like the
first son
they seemed unlikely candidates for heaven,
but they repented
and thus
will enter the kingdom
(verses 28-32)
In the second parable, Jesus tells of a
landowner who,
at harvest time, sent some servants
to his vineyard to collect the fruit.
However, the farmers who were
tending the vineyard were a
wicked lot,
and when the servants arrived,
the farmers beat some of them and killed others.
Finally,
the landowner
sent his own son
to
collect the fruit,
expecting that the
farmers
would show him
RESPECT
But the farmers treated the son worst of all, throwing him out of the vineyard and killing him (Matthew 21:33-39).
Jesus then asks a question: "When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" (Matthew 21:40). The chief priests and elders respond, "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end" (Matthew 21:41). Jesus then presses His point home with a quotation from Psalm 118: "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes" (Matthew 21:42). After a warning that the religious leaders will not inherit the kingdom (Matthew 21:43), we come to the statement in question, which is the culmination of a series of dire pronouncements aimed at the chief priests and elders.
Jesus begins with a question about John the Baptist in Matthew 21:25, but by the end of the conversation, Jesus is plainly speaking of Himself, referring to a "father" sending his "son" who was killed (Matthew 21:37). He then immediately quotes a Messianic prophecy (Matthew 21:42), in effect claiming to be the long-awaited Messiah. The progression is logical: a rejection of John leads one naturally to a rejection of Christ, to whom John pointed
(John 1:29, 3:30).
The stone which "the builders rejected" in verse 42 is Jesus. Although rejected, He nevertheless becomes the "chief cornerstone" (NKJV). See also Acts 4:11; Ephesians 2:20; and 1 Peter 2:6-8. The builders’ rejection of the stone is a reference to Christ’s crucifixion. The Lord’s choice of the stone to be the cornerstone is a reference to Christ’s resurrection. God chose His Son, despised and rejected by the world, to be the foundation of His church (1 Corinthians 3:11). "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation" (Isaiah 28:16).
Now, there are consequences for coming into contact with a stone. If you trip over the edge of a rock and fall on it, you may break some bones. If a large enough rock falls on top of you, you may be killed. Jesus uses these truths to deliver a warning to the Jewish leaders.
The stone in verse 44 is also Jesus. In saying that those who fall on this stone "will be broken to pieces," Jesus is warning against opposing Him. Defying Jesus is like beating one’s head against a solid rock—a foolish action. In saying that those upon whom the stone falls "will be crushed," Jesus is warning against ignoring Him or trivializing Him. Apathy towards Jesus is like standing in the way of a falling rock—another foolish action. "I am here to do God’s work," Jesus essentially says. "The foundation for the church will be laid. It is unwise to oppose Me because God’s work is not inconsequential."
Rejection of the Savior
is
fatal
Unfortunately, many do reject Him.
”He will be a
stone
that causes men
to
stumble and a rock
that
makes them fall"
(Isaiah 8:14).
To persistently
reject
The Savior
is to
court
judgment so severe
that the only thing
left
will be dust
The prophet Daniel gives a similar picture of the Messiah, likening Him to a rock "cut out, but not by human hands," which smashes into the nations of the world and completely obliterates them
(Daniel 2:31-45).
Matthew 21:44 is a call to faith, an appeal to open one’s eyes and see that Jesus is indeed the Son of God sent into the world. The verse is also a strict warning against rejecting Jesus Christ. He is the sure Rock of salvation for those who believe, but an immovable stumbling stone for those who do not.
In the New Testament, the glory of God is revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus came as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of [God’s] people Israel” (Luke 2:32). The miracles that Jesus did were “signs through which he revealed his glory” (John 2:11). In Christ, the glory of God is meekly veiled, approachable, and knowable. He promises to return some day “on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory”
(Matthew 24:30).
Isaiah 43:7 says that
God saved Israel for
His glory
in the redeemed will
be seen
the distillation
of
God’s grace and power and
faithfulness
The natural world also exhibits God’s glory,
revealed to all men, no matter their race, heritage, or location.
As Psalm 19:1–4 says,
“The heavens declare
The glory of God;
the
skies proclaim
the
work of his hands
Day after day they
pour forth speech;
night after night they
reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use
no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their
voice goes out into all the earth,
their words
to the ends of the world.”
Psalm 73:24 calls heaven
itself
glory
Sometimes Christians speak of death as being
“received unto glory,”
a phrase borrowed from this psalm. When the Christian dies,
he or she will be taken into
God’s presence
and
surrounded by
God’s glory and majesty
In that place,
His glory will be seen clearly:
“For now we see
only a
reflection as in a mirror;
then we
shall see face to face”
(1 Corinthians 13:12).
In the future
New Jerusalem,
the
glory of God will be manifest:
“The city does not need the sun or the moon
to shine on it,
for the
glory of God gives it
light,
and the
Lamb is its lamp”
(Revelation 21:23)
God will not
give His glory to another
(Isaiah 42:8; cf. Exodus 34:14).
Yet this is the
very thing that people
try to steal
Scripture indicts all
idolaters:
“Although they claimed to be wise,
they became
fools and exchanged the
glory
of the immortal
God
for images made to
look like
a mortal human being
and
birds and animals and
reptiles”
(Romans 1:22–23).
Only God is eternal, and
His perfect
and eternal attributes
of holiness,
majesty, goodness,
love, etc., are
not to be exchanged
for
the imperfections
and corruption
of
anything in this world.
The Bible teaches the
importance and appropriateness
of
churches providing financial support
to Christian ministers who
admirably serve their congregations
. In 1 Timothy 5:18, the apostle Paul cites two passages to
back up his claim that
church bodies
must
honor and care
for
hard-working pastors
to prevent
them from becoming
overworked and underpaid
that will LEAD to
Famine and drought!
The first is “
Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain”
(NIV).
The second is “The laborer is worthy of his hire”
(ASV 1901).
In the first instance, Paul cites Deuteronomy 25:4.
He reasons that, if God in His law expressed concern for
hard-working animals
to be fed and cared for,
church members ought to show
PROPER
consideration
for their
pastors, teachers,
and
spiritual leaders,
supplying
them with a decent wage.
It’s good to feed the
COW;
Its Better to Feed Your
Pastor
Paul’s second reference, “
The laborer is worthy of his hire”
“The laborer deserves his wages”
is most likely a recitation of
Christ’s words:
“For the
laborer
deserves his wages”
(Luke 10:7, ESV).
Jesus said this to His disciples when
He sent them ahead of
Him as “laborers into his harvest”
(Luke 10:2, ESV),
encouraging them to
accept
hospitality and food from
people who would
receive them
(Luke 10:7–8)
Significantly, 1 Timothy 5:18 calls the
Gospel of Luke
“Scripture.”
In 1 Timothy 5:17, Paul explains further:
“The elders who direct the affairs
of the church well are
worthy of double honor,
especially those whose
work is preaching and teaching.”
A study of the term double honor
reveals that it refers
to both respect and remuneration.
The phrase emphasizes generosity.
Paul expects the
church to
provide reasonable pay
for
a job well done, and
failure
to do so indicates a
shortage of respect and honor
for
one’s spiritual leaders.
In the Old Testament,
The priests and Levites
who ministered in worship
were
supported by
the
community of believers
so that they
“could devote themselves
to
the Law of the LORD”
(2 Chronicles 31:4; cf. 1 Corinthians 9:13).
Thus, it stands to reason in
The New Testament
church
that those who
devote their lives
to the
work of the gospel
should likewise be
supported
by
the congregations
THEY SERVE
To the church in Galatia, Paul wrote,
“Those who are
taught
The
Word of God
should provide for their
teachers,
sharing all
good things with them”
(Galatians 6:6, NLT).
He informed the believers in Corinth,
“In the same way,
The Lord
ordered that those who
preach
The
Good News
should be supported
by
Those who benefit from it”
(1 Corinthians 9:14, NLT)
It’s true that Paul earned his own living,
supporting his ministry work through
tentmaking
(Acts 18:3; 1 Corinthians 9:3–18; 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:8).
But Paul explained in detail that his case was
an exception for a particular purpose
(1 Corinthians 9:4–27).
It’s interesting to note that neither of Paul’s scriptural parallels
is particularly complimentary.
He first compares Christian ministers
to oxen, beasts of burden.
Second, he likens them to farmhands.
Paul’s illustrations are
appropriately chosen,
not to demean but to stress that
The gospel ministry
is
hard work
Those who serve well
deserve
to be
honored, appreciated,
and
paid a fair wage
Just as it is right
for farmers
to
feed their livestock
and employers
to
pay laborers
worthy of their hire,
it is
proper and essential
for the
local church to provide adequate
financial support
to its dedicated
Christian ministers.
To glorify God
is to
honor Him with praise
or worship
God is glorious; that is,
He is great and magnificent--
He is exceptionally
grand in His nature and deeds.
“Full of splendor and majesty
is his work
” (Psalm 111:3, ESV).
When we glorify Him, we acknowledge
His greatness and splendor and
laud Him for it.
When we “give Him glory,”
as all
the world is told to do
in Revelation 14:7,
we direct our praise,
adoration, thanksgiving, and worship
to Him
who alone is worthy.
Scripture makes our
responsibility
to glorify God evident from
cover to cover.
First Chronicles 16:17–36 presents a
model for
giving glory to God
As Asaph is installed
as the chief minister
before the ark of God,
David
instructs him in the method of worship:
• give praise to the Lord
(verse 8)
• proclaim the greatness of God’s name
(verse 8)
• tell the whole world what God has done
(verses 8–9, 24)
• sing to the Lord
(verses 9, 23)
• glory, or exult, in His name
(verse 10)
• rejoice in Him
(verse 10)
• seek out the Lord and trust in His power (verse 11) • remember all the Lord’s mighty deeds (verse 12) • ascribe glory and strength to Him because it is His due (verses 28–29). To ascribe is to think of as belonging, as a quality or characteristic; thus, we regard the Lord as possessing glory and strength.
• bring an offering to God (verse 29). In Asaph’s time, the offerings were in accordance with the Law of Moses;
today,
we are “to offer [our] bodies
as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God--
this is [our]
true and proper worship”
(Romans 12:1)
• worship the Lord
(verse 29)
• give thanks to God for His goodness and love
(verse 34)
• cry out to God for deliverance
(verse 35)
El Elyon, the Most High God,
is the possessor of all
true majesty and resplendence.
Glory is His
by virtue of His nature,
and He rightfully
refuses to share it with others:
“I am the Lord; that is my name!
I will
not yield my glory
to another or my praise
to idols”
(Isaiah 42:8)
By virtue of who God is, we have an obligation to glorify God at all times
(1 Corinthians 10:31).
Those who refuse to
glorify God
face severe judgment,
as witnessed by the example
of Herod usurping
God’s glory in
Acts 12:21–23.
We can, of course, glorify God with
our words of praise and thanksgiving.
We can also glorify God
through our works of service for Him. Jesus said, “
Let your light shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your Father in heaven”
(Matthew 5:16)
Bearing fruit for the
kingdom of God
also
brings glory to Him
(John 15:8).
Even in our manner of death,
we can glorify God
(see John 21:19).
To glorify God
is to extol His attributes, praise His works,
trust His name, and
obey His Word.
He is holy, faithful, merciful, gracious, loving,
majestic, sovereign, powerful, and omniscient--
and that’s just for starters.
His works are wonderful, wise, marvelous, and fearfully complex.
His Word is “perfect . . . trustworthy . . . right . . .
radiant . . . pure . . . firm . . . precious”
(Psalm 19:7–10).
His salvation
is astonishing, timely, and near.
No matter how loudly or widely
we proclaim the glory of God,
He is worthy of more.
In the refrain of her 1875 hymn,
“To God Be the Glory,”
exhorts us to do what is right
by extolling the Lord for
all His work:
“O come to the Father through
Jesus the Son
and give him
the glory,
great things he has done!”
"The Word"
(Logos) in John 1
is
referring to Jesus
Jesus is the total Message
everything that God
wants to communicate to man.
The first chapter of John
gives us a glimpse
inside the Father/Son relationship
before Jesus
came to earth in human form.
He preexisted with the Father
He was involved
in the
creation of everything
and He is the
"light of all mankind"
The Word (Jesus)
is the
full embodiment
of
all that is God
(Colossians 1:19; 2:9; John 14:9).
But God the Father is Spirit. He is invisible to the human eye. The message of love and redemption that God spoke through the prophets had gone unheeded for centuries (Ezekiel 22:26; Matthew 23:37). People found it easy to disregard the message of an invisible God and continued in their sin and rebellion.
So the Message became flesh,
took on human form,
and came to dwell among us
Matthew 1:23; Romans 8:3; Philippians 2:5–11
The Greeks used the word logos to refer to
one’s “mind,” “reason,” or “wisdom.”
John used this Greek concept to communicate the fact that Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, is the self-expression of God to the world. In the Old Testament, the word of God brought the universe into existence (Psalm 33:6) and saved the needy (Psalm 107:20). In chapter 1 of his Gospel, John is appealing to both Jew and Gentile to receive the eternal Christ.
Jesus told a parable in Luke 20:9–16 to explain why the Word had to become flesh. “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
“Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
In this parable, Jesus was reminding the Jewish leaders that they had rejected the prophets and were now rejecting the Son. The Logos, the Word of God, was now going to be offered to everyone, not just the Jews (John 10:16; Galatians 2:28; Colossians 3:11). Because the Word became flesh, we have a high priest who is able to empathize with our weaknesses, one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin (Hebrews 4:15).
At the close of one of the most soul-soothing passages in all the Bible, King David triumphantly announced, “Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever”
(Psalm 23:6).
Being in God’s presence meant everything to David. Since he shared such a close relationship with the Lord, David could picture himself as a permanent resident in God’s house, basking in His constant goodness, love, and care every day. And because death held the promise of eternal life in God’s heavenly kingdom, David looked forward to the intimate and never-ending fellowship of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.
The word dwell in Psalm 23:6 means “to inhabit or live.” The house of the Lord is a term often referring to the tabernacle, the temple, or the place of worship (as in Psalm 122:1).
But here in Psalm 23:6
the phrase speaks explicitly
of “a dwelling house, palace, or
local residence of a deity.”
The presence of God is the believer’s true home (Psalm 42:1–4; 84:1–4). “Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts! We are filled with the good things of your house,” declared David in Psalm 65:4. And again in Psalm 27:4, we read of David’s passionate and singular pursuit: “One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). To dwell in the house of the Lord forever was David’s deepest longing. Scripture says he was a man after God’s own heart
(Acts 13:22; 1 Samuel 13:14).
Like David, the apostle Paul was sure that nothing in this life, not even death itself, could separate him from the loving presence of God: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”
(Romans 8:38–39).
To dwell in the house of the Lord forever also suggests living with an attitude of heart that expresses constant praise and worship. In Psalm 34:1, David exclaimed, “I will praise the LORD at all times. I will constantly speak his praises” (NLT).
Another psalmist declared,
“What joy for those who
can live in your house,
always singing your praises”
(Psalm 84:4, NLT).
According to Psalm 84:10, one day spent worshiping in God’s house is better than a thousand anywhere else. The verse continues: “I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked” (NLT). “Praise the LORD!” says another psalm. “Let all that I am praise the LORD. I will praise the LORD as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath” (Psalm 146:1–2, NLT).
The good things that God provides for us in this life are merely a foretaste of what awaits us in heaven (1 Corinthians 2:9; Isaiah 64:4). A glorious future day is coming when all the redeemed of the Lord will gather around the Lord’s table in His eternal house (Isaiah 25:6–9; Matthew 22:1–14; Luke 13:29–30; Revelation 19:9; 21:2–4). In heaven, as we dwell in the house of the Lord forever, we will enjoy full, uninterrupted communion with God (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Psalm 22 is a prophetic psalm of David presenting Jesus Christ as the Savior who laid down His life. The psalm begins by portraying the rejection and abandonment Christ suffered on the cross (Psalm 22:1–2; cf. Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Yet, immediately, the suffering Messiah makes a strong declaration of trust in God: “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:3, KJV).
As the bearer of humanity’s sins, Christ was destined to experience untold pain and anguish (Isaiah 53:4–6, 10; 2 Corinthians 5:21). In the seemingly endless silence in which God does not answer—perhaps the worst moment of torment Christ would ever know—the Son reminds Himself of God’s sovereign position: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:3, ESV). The word enthroned here describes the circumstance of sitting, remaining, or dwelling somewhere. (The phrasing God inhabits the praise of His people comes from the King James Version of Psalm 22:3.)
When the Messiah declared, “God inhabits the praise of His people” in Psalm 22:3, He expressed His absolute trust in God. No matter what was happening at that moment or how alone He felt, the Messiah knew that God was present and in control, ruling over His hour of greatest need (see 1 Peter 2:23). God the Father had not abandoned Him. God was working out His sovereign plan, and the Messiah would soon be delivered (see Psalm 22:4–5).
Many examples of God’s enthronement exist in Scripture. The psalmist urged, “Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion! Tell among the peoples his deeds!” (Psalm 9:11, ESV; see also Psalm 29:10; 102:12). “Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high” (Psalm 113:5). When Isaiah saw the Lord “high and exalted, seated on a throne” over all creation in heaven and earth “and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1–6), the prophet was utterly undone by God’s presence.
The idea behind God inhabiting the praise of His people could be that God’s throne—His dwelling place—was the tabernacle, the place where praise was continually offered to Him. In Psalm 22, the Messiah in His suffering remembers the place and people of praise. He is not among those congregants, but He expresses with confidence that their praises are appropriate. Even in the extremity of His distress, the Messiah trusts that God is holy and worthy of praise.
Heaven is a place where God is surrounded by praise, and it is described in the Bible as God’s temple (Psalm 11:4; Habakkuk 2:20). Yet the ultimate dwelling place for God is with His people: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3; see also Revelation 21:22). Jesus Christ revealed that He is the Lord’s temple (John 2:19–21), and God’s presence now inhabits His body—the church (1 Corinthians 3:16–17).
Scripture repeatedly affirms that individual believers are “the temple of the living God” and “temples of the Holy Spirit” where God’s presence dwells (1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16). The whole church “is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord . . . built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit,” explains the apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:21–22. The church fits together like “living stones” being built into “a spiritual house” that offers “spiritual sacrifices” of praise to God
(1 Peter 2:5).
The writer of Hebrews counsels, “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name” (Hebrews 13:15). The apostle Peter explains, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).
God still inhabits
the
praises of His people
No matter what our circumstances, we know that God is holy and does all things right. We can worship the Lord even in our distress.
Second Peter 3:18 tells us to “grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.” To grow in grace is to mature as a Christian. We are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9), and we mature and are sanctified by grace alone. We know that grace is a blessing that we don’t deserve. It is God’s grace that justifies us, sanctifies us, and eventually glorifies us in heaven. The sanctification process, becoming more like Christ, is synonymous with growing in grace.
We grow in grace by reading God’s Word and letting it “dwell in us richly” (Colossians 3:16) and by praying. Those actions by themselves don’t mature us, but God uses these spiritual disciplines to help us grow. Therefore, maturing in our Christian life is not about what we do, but about what God does in us, by His grace. Understanding and applying God’s grace in our lives is important. We are not to impair it by being proud, because God says that He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Grace is that attribute of God that enables us to break free of our sinful nature and follow Him. It gives us strength and protects us. Without God’s grace, His favor, we would be hopelessly lost in this world. The more grace we have and ask God for, the more mature as Christians we will be.
To grow in grace does not mean gaining more grace from God. God’s grace never increases; it is infinite, it cannot be more, and according to the nature of God, it could never be less. He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him should be saved (John 3:16). How much more grace could there possibly be than that? But to grow in grace is to grow in our understanding of what Jesus did and to grow in our appreciation of the grace we have been given. The more we learn about Jesus, the more we will appreciate all He has done, and the more we appreciate His love and sacrifice for us, the more we will perceive the never-ending grace of God.
Peter also confirms that we need to grow in our knowledge of Jesus and to have that intimate relationship with Him because the more we know of Him, the more of Him will be seen in our lives. Paul said in Colossians 3:1–4: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
The Scriptures contain all the knowledge we will ever need to learn of God, His Son, and His Spirit, at least in this life. God`s desire for those He has saved is their sanctification and transformation. He wants us to become more holy like Himself. He wants to transform us into the image of His Son. The way to do this is by meditating on the Scriptures and applying their principles to our lives as we yield to the conviction and power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Then we will prove 2 Corinthians 3:18: “We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.”
Ephesians 5:22–25 speaks of the relationship between husband and wife and includes the teaching of Jesus as head of the church:
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
In this passage, wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ, and husbands are to sacrificially love their wives in the way Christ was willing to die for the church. In this context, Jesus is called the “head of the church, his body.” He is also called its Savior.
What does it mean to be the head of the church? Both Colossians 1 and Ephesians 5 emphasize the leadership of Christ and His power. In Colossians, Christ is head because He holds all things together. In Ephesians, Christ is head because He is Savior.
The implications of this teaching are profound. First, church leaders are to surrender ultimate leadership to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One who leads and determines the teachings and practices of the church. Church members are to follow Christ first and earthly leaders second, as those leaders emulate Christ (see 1 Corinthians 11:1 and 1 Peter 5:3–4).
Second, the love Jesus has for the church is expressed in His desire that we also love the church. The church is not a building or organization but a group of people who know and worship Jesus. Christians are taught, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24–25). Regular connection with other believers honors the Lord, encourages us personally as believers, and allows us to encourage and serve others.
While every church will have its own local leaders, the ultimate leader of any church is the Lord Jesus. He said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18, emphasis added); it belongs to Him. He is the head of the body and the only One with the power to adequately lead and love the church.
The phrase “the Body of Christ” is a common New Testament metaphor for the Church (all those who are truly saved). The Church is called “one body in Christ” in Romans 12:5, “one body” in 1 Corinthians 10:17, “the body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 12:27 and Ephesians 4:12, and “the body” in Hebrews 13:3. The Church is clearly equated with “the body” of Christ in Ephesians 5:23 and Colossians 1:24.
When Christ entered our world, He took on a physical body “prepared” for Him (Hebrews 10:5; Philippians 2:7). Through His physical body, Jesus demonstrated the love of God clearly, tangibly, and boldly—especially through His sacrificial death on the cross (Romans 5:8). After His bodily ascension, Christ continues His work in the world through those He has redeemed—the Church now demonstrates the love of God clearly, tangibly, and boldly. In this way, the Church functions as “the Body of Christ.”
The Church may be called the Body of Christ because of these facts:
1) Members of the Body of Christ are joined to Christ in salvation (Ephesians 4:15-16).
2) Members of the Body of Christ follow Christ as their Head (Ephesians 1:22-23).
3) Members of the Body of Christ are the physical representation of Christ in this world. The Church is the organism through which Christ manifests His life to the world today.
4) Members of the Body of Christ are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9).
5) Members of the Body of Christ possess a diversity of gifts suited to particular functions (1 Corinthians 12:4-31). “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ” (verse 12).
6) Members of the Body of Christ share a common bond with all other Christians, regardless of background, race, or ministry. “There should be no division in the body, but . . . its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:25).
7) Members of the Body of Christ are secure in their salvation (John 10:28-30). For a Christian to lose his salvation, God would have to perform an “amputation” on the Body of Christ!
8) Members of the Body of Christ partake of Christ’s death and resurrection (Colossians 2:12).
9) Members of the Body of Christ share Christ’s inheritance (Romans 8:17).
10) Members of the Body of Christ receive the gift of Christ’s righteousness (Romans 5:17).
In the wilderness of Judea, John the Baptist began his ministry of preparing Israel to receive her Messiah, Jesus Christ. Enormous crowds went to hear John (Matthew 3:5) as he traveled through the region “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3). Many people received John’s message, confessed their sins, and were baptized (Matthew 3:6; Mark 1:5). These baptisms stirred up such a commotion that the Pharisees and Sadducees went out to investigate. Aware of their insincerity of heart, John said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:7–8).
John spoke severely, challenging these religious leaders’ spiritual pride and hypocrisy head-on. They needed to know that God’s judgment for sin was coming. Baptism is an outward symbol of true heart change. John’s baptism was a “baptism of repentance.” Repentance is the act of changing one’s mind that results in a change of actions. Sincere repentance involves turning away from sin both in thought and action. When the crowds came to John for baptism, they were showing their repentance and identifying with a new life. The Phariseesand Sadducees were detached observers at John’s baptism. They claimed to have repented of their sins—sins they eagerly pointed out in others—yet they lived as sinners, all the while denying their own guilt.
The religious leaders of John’s day had refused to submit themselves to God. They thought they were good enough by way of association with Abraham through their Jewish heritage (see Matthew 3:9; John 8:39). But their religious rituals and spiritual “pedigree” were not enough to please God. The only way for sinners to enter a relationship with God is through genuine repentance and faith. These religious leaders should have been setting an example and taking the lead. Instead, they lived in self-righteous, hypocritical denial of their spiritual condition.
John the Baptist warned, “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). The tree represents Israel. If Israel did not repent, it would be cut down and destroyed (see Luke 13:6–10). Only those who genuinely repented and began to produce good fruit would be prepared for the coming of Jesus Christ.
Luke’s gospel gives further insight into what it means to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. John told the people, “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones’” (Luke 3:8, NLT). John’s baptism of repentance was meant to be the start of a brand new, continuous life of producing fruit in keeping with righteousness. Our family tree won’t earn us a place in heaven or give us an automatic claim to God’s promises. John told the Sadducees and Pharisees who took pride in their lineage to take a more humble view: just as God had made Adam from the dust of the ground, God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones of the wilderness.
At John’s preaching, the people began to ask, “What should we do?” (Luke 3:10). In other words, “What is the fruit in keeping with repentance?” “John answered, ‘Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same’” (Luke 3:11). He told the tax collectors in the crowd, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to” (verse 13). He told the soldiers, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay” (verse 14). Such actions were the “fruit” of repentance in that they showed the genuineness of the change of heart.
When the apostle Paul began his preaching ministry, he, too, spoke of good deeds as proof of genuine repentance: “I preached first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that all must repent of their sins and turn to God—and prove they have changed by the good things they do” (Acts 26:20, NLT).
The believer’s spiritual life and growth are often compared to a fruit-bearing tree in Scripture. Just as fruit production is proof of life and health in a tree, so are good actions the evidence of spiritual life in Jesus Christ and the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling within a person. Jesus said, “A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions” (Matthew 7:17–20, NLT).
Fruit in keeping with repentance represents the good deeds and changed behaviors that naturally flow from a truly repentant and transformed heart. In James 2:14–26, James teaches extensively on the subject, explaining that “faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless” (verse 17, NLT). James concludes, “Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works (verse 26, NLT).
Paul prays for the Philippians to be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:11). He gives examples of good spiritual fruit: “The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23, NLT; see also Ephesians 5:9; Colossians 1:10; James 3:17).
The believer’s ability to produce fruit in keeping with repentance depends wholly on our intimate fellowship with Jesus Christ, who said, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5, NLT). The root will naturally produce fruit. Fruit in keeping with repentance is the evidence (as well as a result) of a changed mind, transformed life, and ongoing communion with Jesus.
The new creation is described in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” The word “therefore” refers us back to verses 14-16 where Paul tells us that all believers have died with Christ and no longer live for themselves. Our lives are no longer worldly; they are now spiritual. Our “death” is that of the old sin nature which was nailed to the cross with Christ. It was buried with Him, and just as He was raised up by the Father, so are we raised up to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). That new person that was raised up is what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 5:17 as the “new creation.”
To understand the new creation, first we must grasp that it is in fact a creation, something created by God. John 1:13 tells us that this new birth was brought about by the will of God. We did not inherit the new nature from our parents or decide to re-create ourselves anew. Neither did God simply clean up our old nature; He created something entirely fresh and unique. The new creation is completely new, brought about from nothing, just as the whole universe was created by God ex nihilo, from nothing. Only the Creator could accomplish such a feat.
Second, “old things have passed away.” The “old” refers to everything that is part of our old nature—natural pride, love of sin, reliance on works, and our former opinions, habits and passions. Most significantly, what we loved has passed away, especially the supreme love of self and with it self-righteousness, self-promotion, and self-justification. The new creature looks outwardly toward Christ instead of inwardly toward self. The old things died, nailed to the cross with our sin nature.
Along with the old passing away, “the new has come!” Old, dead things are replaced with new things, full of life and the glory of God. The newborn soul delights in the things of God and abhors the things of the world and the flesh. Our purposes, feelings, desires, and understandings are fresh and different. We see the world differently. The Bible seems to be a new book, and though we may have read it before, there is a beauty about it which we never saw before, and which we wonder at not having perceived. The whole face of nature seems to us to be changed, and we seem to be in a new world. The heavens and the earth are filled with new wonders, and all things seem now to speak forth the praise of God. There are new feelings toward all people—a new kind of love toward family and friends, a new compassion never before felt for enemies, and a new love for all mankind. The things we once loved, we now detest. The sin we once held onto, we now desire to put away forever. We “put off the old man with his deeds” (Colossians 3:9), and put on the “new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).
What about the Christian who continues to sin? There is a difference between continuing to sin and continuing to live in sin. No one reaches sinless perfection in this life, but the redeemed Christian is being sanctified (made holy) day by day, sinning less and hating it more each time he fails. Yes, we still sin, but unwillingly and less and less frequently as we mature. Our new self hates the sin that still has a hold on us. The difference is that the new creation is no longer a slave to sin, as we formerly were. We are now freed from sin and it no longer has power over us (Romans 6:6-7). Now we are empowered by and for righteousness. We now have the choice to “let sin reign” or to count ourselves “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11-12). Best of all, now we have the power to choose the latter.
The new creation
is a wondrous thing, formed in
the mind of God and
created
by His power and for His glory.
The phrase King of glory is found in a series of verses in Psalm 24:
“Lift up your heads, you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The Lord Almighty--
he is the King of glory”
(Psalm 24:7–10).
The Hebrew word translated “glory” in Psalm 24 is kabod, which means “weight,” but it is used figuratively, as in “his argument carries weight” or “the content of that book is weighty.” Kabad carries a connotation of solemnity and power. Calling God the “King of Glory” means He is the most awesome, most powerful king and should be taken seriously.
Using a type of personification known as apostrophe, the psalmist speaks to the “gates” and the “ancient doors,” calling them to attention and commanding them to “be lifted up” or raised to admit the King of glory. However lofty these ancient doors are, they must be loftier still to admit such an august presence as the Lord Himself.
There is a connection to be made between the King of glory in Psalm 24 and the Shekinah glory in Exodus 33. When God gave Moses instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, He said, “I will appear in the cloud over the atonement cover [mercy seat]” (Leviticus 16:2). The mercy seat was to be seen as God’s glorious “throne” on earth (see 2 Samuel 6:2; Psalm 80:1; 99:1). And it was from the mercy seat that God spoke to Moses: “There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites” (Exodus 25:22).
Psalm 24 pictures the coming of the King of glory in a time of celebration. Given the Hebrew association of the cloud of glory with the Ark of the Covenant, it is quite possible that Psalm 24 was written to commemorate the entrance of the Ark into Jerusalem during David’s time (2 Samuel 6:12–17) or into the temple during Solomon’s time (2 Chronicles 5:7). The King of glory came through the gates of Jerusalem and through the doors of the temple with a great procession as the Ark of the Covenant was brought to its permanent home on Mt. Zion.
Jesus is called “the Lord of glory” in 1 Corinthians 2:8. His entrance into Jerusalem amid the shouts of a jubilant crowd (Matthew 21) could be seen as another fulfillment of Psalm 24. Jesus is the One with “clean hands and a pure heart” who can “ascend the mountain of the Lord” (Psalm 24:3–4). Jesus “will receive blessing from the Lord” (verse 5). Jesus is the “King of glory, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle” (verse 8).
In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes seven statements beginning with the words I am. Each of these “I am” proclamations furthers our understanding of Jesus’ ministry in the world. They also link Jesus to the Old Testament revelation of God.
In the Old Testament, God revealed His name to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14). Thus, in Judaism, “I AM” is unquestionably understood as a name for God. Whenever Jesus made an “I am” statement in which He claimed attributes of deity, He was identifying Himself as God.
Here are the seven metaphorical “I am” statements found in John’s gospel:
“I am the bread of life” (John 6:35, 41, 48, 51). In this chapter, Jesus establishes a pattern that continues through John’s gospel—Jesus makes a statement about who He is, and He backs it up with something He does. In this case, Jesus states that He is the bread of life just after He had fed the 5,000 in the wilderness. At the same time, He contrasts what He can do with what Moses had done for their ancestors: “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die” (verses 49–50).
“I am the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5). This second of Jesus’ “I am” statements in John’s gospel comes right before He heals a man born blind. Jesus not only says He is the light; He proves it. Jesus’ words and actions echo Genesis 1:3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
“I am the door” (John 10:7 and 9, ESV). This “I am” statement stresses that no one can enter the kingdom of heaven by any other means than Christ Himself. Jesus’ words in this passage are couched in the imagery of a sheepfold. He is the one and only way to enter the fold. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber” (verse 1, ESV).
“I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11, 14). With this “I am” statement, Jesus portrays His great love and care. He is the One who willingly protects His flock even to the point of death (verses 11 and 15). When Jesus called Himself the good shepherd, He unmistakably took for Himself one of God’s titles in the Old Testament: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1).
“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Jesus made this “I am” statement immediately before raising Lazarus from the dead. Again, we see that Jesus’ teaching was not just empty talk; when He made a claim, He substantiated it with action. He holds “the keys of death and the grave” (Revelation 1:18, NLT). In raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus showed how He can fulfill Yahweh’s promise to ancient Israel: “[God’s] dead shall live; their bodies shall rise” (Isaiah 26:19, ESV). Apart from Jesus, there is neither resurrection nor eternal life.
“I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). This powerful “I am” statement of Christ’s is packed with meaning. Jesus is not merely one way among many ways to God; He is the only way. Scripture said that “The very essence of [God’s] words is truth” (Psalm 119:160, NLT), and here is Jesus proclaiming that He is the truth—confirming His identity as the Word of God (see John 1:1, 14). And Jesus alone is the source of life; He is the Creator and Sustainer of all life and the Giver of eternal life.
“I am the true vine” (John 15:1, 5). The final metaphorical “I am” statement in the Gospel of John emphasizes the sustaining power of Christ. We are the branches, and He is the vine. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit unless it is joined in vital union with the vine, only those who are joined to Christ and receive their power from Him produce fruit in the Christian life.
There are two more “I am” statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John. These are not metaphors; rather, they are declarations of God’s name, as applied by Jesus to Himself. The first instance comes as Jesus responds to a complaint by the Pharisees. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus says, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). The verbs Jesus uses are in stark contrast with each other: Abraham was, but I am. There is no doubt that the Jews understood Jesus’ claim to be the eternal God incarnate, because they took up stones to kill Him (verse 59).
The second instance of Jesus applying to Himself the name I AM comes in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the mob came to arrest Jesus, He asked them whom they sought. They said, “Jesus of Nazareth,” and Jesus replied, “I am he” (John 18:4–5). Then something strange happened: “When Jesus said, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground” (verse 6). Perhaps explaining the mob’s reaction is the fact that the word he has been provided by our English translators.
Jesus simply said,
“I am.”
Applying God’s covenant name to Himself,
Jesus demonstrated His power over
His foes and showed that
His surrender to them was entirely voluntary
(see John 10:17–18; 19:11).
Luke 4:12
“And Jesus answered him, “It is said,
‘You shall not
put the
Lord your God to the test.'”
This passage describes one of the three temptations of Jesus after the Spirit led Him into the wilderness for forty days and nights of fasting. In this temptation, the devil took Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him in Luke 4:9-11, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and” ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'”
Jesus then responds in Luke 4:12 saying,
“It is said,
‘You shall NOT
put
The Lord your God
to the test.'”
Through this temptation, the devil was trying to force God to fulfil His word as described in scripture by manipulating the situation – in essence, attempting to place a seed of mistrust or questioning God’s word and His faithfulness in the mind of Jesus.
The devil’s statement starts with, “If you are the Son?” then prove it. Will God protect you, as it says in scripture? This was the same cunningness used to deceive Eve in the garden of Eden. Genesis 3:1 says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Jesus responded perfectly by quoting from part of Deuteronomy 6:16 where it says, “You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Likewise, what can we learn from Jesus’ response to the temptation of the devil? Often when people test God, it is due to a “lack” of faith or trust in Him.
Similarly, this was the case with the people of Israel too. They were continually testing God on their journey to the promised land. Some of these instances are when:
- they were trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, they cried out, saying, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have led us out into this wilderness to die? Didn’t we tell you when we were in Egypt to leave us alone so that we could continue serving the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to have died back there than to die here.” (Exodus 14:10-12)
- they complained against Moses at Marah because the water was bitter to drink (Exodus 15:22-24)
- they tested God when He provided them manna to eat but commanded them to collect twice as much before each sabbath due to the sabbath being a day of rest. Yet the people go out and gather the manna, but they find none (Exodus 16:25-30)
- and many more instances throughout their journey to the promised land.
You see, a test rooted in unbelief is unacceptable to God. When you read through scripture, there is one time God invites the Israelites to “test” Him. Malachi 3:10 says, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”
The difference in this testing is where God commands the Israelites to come in faithful obedience and trust in God and bring their full tithe into the storehouse. When they do that in faith and obedience, then they will see His abundance and faithfulness as promised in His word. In contrast, testing God in unbelief and complaining is unacceptable.
God is faithful in keeping His promises, according to scripture. Still, if we try and manipulate and force God to move by purposely putting ourselves in situations and testing God to keep His word, then this is unacceptable testing of God. You see, this is precisely what the devil was trying to achieve while tempting Jesus.
Friends, in our Christian walk, we may go through tough and trying times. Don’t test the Lord your God from a heart of mistrust, doubt or manipulate the situation for your benefit. Instead, through it all, trust God that He is sovereign and in total control of every single situation. Don’t let your situation guide your thoughts and actions toward God, but let it be your unwavering trust in the word of God and Him. Amen!
Faithfully keep His precepts and His word, and pray that He may increase your faith so that you may glorify Him and bring praise to His name. By doing so, you will be pleasing to Christ and an example to many around you.
Let us close by reading Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
The apostle Paul desires for the Ephesian Christians to know Christ better: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19– 21). Furthermore, in 1 Peter 2:6, what Isaiah said centuries before is affirmed in exactly the same words.
Peter says that Jesus, as our cornerstone, is “chosen by God and precious to him” (1 Peter 2:4). The Cornerstone is also reliable, and “the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (verse 6).
Unfortunately, not everyone aligns with the cornerstone. Some accept Christ; some reject Him. Jesus is the “stone the builders rejected” (Mark 12:10; cf. Psalm 118:22). When news of the Messiah’s arrival came to the magi in the East, they determined to bring Him gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But when that same news came to King Herod in Jerusalem, his response was to attempt to kill Him. From the very beginning, Jesus was “a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall” (1 Peter 2:8).
How can people reject
God’s chosen, precious cornerstone?
Simply put,
they want to build something
different from
what God is building.
Just as the people building the tower of Babel
rebelled against God and pursued their own project,
those who reject Christ
disregard God’s plan in favor of their own.
Judgment is promised
to all those who reject Christ:
“Anyone who falls on this
stone
will be broken to pieces;
anyone on whom
it
falls will be crushed”
(Matthew 21:44).
The Word of John 1:1 is plainly identified
as Jesus in John 1:14:
The Word became flesh
and made
his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son,
who came from the Father,
Full of grace and truth.”
The book of Ecclesiastes
uses the phrase chasing after the wind at least seven times. Ecclesiastes 1:14 speaks of chasing the wind as it relates the theme of the whole book: “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Chasing the wind is a metaphor for pursuing futility. The author of Ecclesiastes learned that pursuing meaningless things—things that do not have eternal significance—is only chasing after the wind.
Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes as a personal benediction, sharing what life had taught him. He had begun well. Chosen by God from infancy to be the next king after his father, David (2 Samuel 12:25; 1 Chronicles 28:6; 29:1), Solomon had everything he could need for a lifetime of success. He had power, position, prosperity, and great wisdom: all gifts from the God who loved him (2 Chronicles 1:7–12). Yet, despite those gifts, he began to drift away from God’s commands (1 Kings 11:3–4). He wrote Ecclesiastes at the end of his life as he reflected upon lessons learned.
His first mistake in chasing after the wind was to multiply foreign wives for himself in direct disobedience to God’s orders in Deuteronomy 17:16–17. The custom in other nations of the day was for kings to marry daughters or sisters of foreign kings in order to form alliances with those countries. Rather than trust in the God who had blessed him so abundantly, Solomon followed the world’s custom, believing that he could secure peace with the nations around Israel. He also collected thousands of horses and chariots, importing them from Egypt, also in direct disobedience to God’s law. Solomon learned too late that seeking meaning through abundance was only chasing the wind (Ecclesiastes 2:11).
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon lists the various vain pursuits that are equivalent to chasing after the wind:
• All things done “under the sun,” that is, in a human life lived apart from any consideration of God (1:14)
• Pursuing wisdom and the understanding of madness and folly (1:16–17)
• Rewarding oneself with pleasure (2:10–11)
• Seeking immortality (2:16–17)
• Thinking one can control the outcome of his life (2:26)
• Envious competition with one’s neighbor (4:4)
• Trying to make a lasting name for oneself (4:16)
Solomon’s conclusion was that, apart from seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness (see Matthew 6:33), life has no meaning. The things we pour our lives into on earth won’t last. Our projects, our hard work, our rivalries, alliances, and successes—nothing will last. We can’t hang on to the rewards of this world any more than we can grasp the wind.
Beginning with chapter 5 in Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s tone changes. He shares wise instruction, much as he did in the book of Proverbs (Proverbs 1:1). By the end of the book, he has detailed all the avenues we take in our pursuit of meaning and pleasure and concludes that it is all chasing after the wind. His regal life of opulence, his foolish disobedience, and his subsequent wisdom are summed up in his final words: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14). Any pursuit that does not have as its aim the furtherance of God’s plan is merely chasing after the wind (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Ten plagues and a betrayal
How Moses saved the
Hebrew slaves
The Prophet defied his adopted family to
Free the slaves in Egypt
There is no denying that the tenth plague causing the death of the firstborn of Egypt was severe. But, with 400 years of slavery and countless Israelites murdered by Egyptians, whether as adults or as infants, the Egyptians brought God’s brutal judgment on themselves. God had promised Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3). The Egyptians, in choosing to curse Abraham’s children, brought a curse upon themselves.
The Ten Plagues of Egypt—also known as the Ten Plagues, the Plagues of Egypt, or the Biblical Plagues—are described in Exodus 7—12. The plagues were ten disasters sent upon Egypt by God to convince Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves from the bondage and oppression they had endured in Egypt for 400 years. When God sent Moses to deliver the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt, He promised to show His wonders as confirmation of Moses’ authority (Exodus 3:20). This confirmation was to serve at least two purposes: to show the Israelites that the God of their fathers was alive and worthy of their worship (Exodus 6:6–8; 12:25–27) and to show the Egyptians that their gods were nothing
(Exodus 7:5; 12:12; Numbers 33:4).
The Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for about 400 years and in that time had lost faith in the God of their fathers. They believed He existed and worshiped Him, but they doubted that He could, or would, break the yoke of their bondage. The Egyptians, like many pagan cultures, worshiped a wide variety of nature-gods and attributed to their powers the natural phenomena they saw in the world around them. There was a god of the sun, of the river, of childbirth, of crops, etc. Events like the annual flooding of the Nile, which fertilized their croplands, were evidences of their gods’ powers and good will. When Moses approached Pharaoh, demanding that he let the people go, Pharaoh responded by saying, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2). Thus began the challenge to show whose God was more powerful.
The first plague, turning the Nile to blood, was a judgment against Apis, the god of the Nile, Isis, goddess of the Nile, and Khnum, guardian of the Nile. The Nile was also believed to be the bloodstream of Osiris, who was reborn each year when the river flooded. The river, which formed the basis of daily life and the national economy, was devastated, as millions of fish died in the river and the water was unusable. Pharaoh was told, “By this you will know that I am the LORD” (Exodus 7:17).
The second plague, bringing frogs from the Nile, was a judgment against Heqet, the frog-headed goddess of birth. Frogs were thought to be sacred and not to be killed. God had the frogs invade every part of the homes of the Egyptians, and when the frogs died, their stinking bodies were heaped up in offensive piles all through the land
(Exodus 8:13–14).
The third plague, gnats, was a judgment on Set, the god of the desert. Unlike the previous plagues, the magicians were unable to duplicate this one and declared to Pharaoh,
“This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19).
The fourth plague, flies, was a judgment on Uatchit, the fly god. In this plague, God clearly distinguished between the Israelites and the Egyptians, as no swarms of flies bothered the areas where the Israelites lived
(Exodus 8:21–24).
The fifth plague, the death of livestock, was a judgment on the goddess Hathor and the god Apis, who were both depicted as cattle. As with the previous plague, God protected His people from the plague, while the cattle of the Egyptians died. God was steadily destroying the economy of Egypt, while showing His ability to protect and provide for those who obeyed Him. Pharaoh even sent investigators (Exodus 9:7) to find out if the Israelites were suffering along with the Egyptians, but the
result was a hardening of his heart against the Israelites.
The sixth plague, boils, was a judgment against several gods over health and disease (Sekhmet, Sunu, and Isis).
This time, the magicians
“could not stand before Moses because of the boils.”
Clearly, these religious leaders
were powerless against the God of Israel.
Before God sent the last three plagues, Pharaoh was given a special message from God. These plagues would be more severe than the others, and they were designed to convince Pharaoh and all the people “that there is none like me in all the earth” (Exodus 9:14). Pharaoh was even told that he was placed in his position by God, so that God could show His power and declare His name through all the earth (Exodus 9:16). As an example of His grace, God warned Pharaoh to gather whatever cattle and crops remained from the previous plagues and shelter them from the coming storm. Some of Pharaoh’s servants heeded the warning (Exodus 9:20), while others did not. The seventh plague, hail, attacked Nut, the sky goddess; Osiris, the crop fertility god; and Set, the storm god. This hail was unlike any that had been seen before. It was accompanied by a fire which ran along the ground, and everything left out in the open was devastated by the hail and fire. Again, the children of Israel were miraculously protected, and no hail damaged anything in their lands.
Before God brought the next plague, He told Moses that the Israelites would be able to tell their children of the things they had seen God do in Egypt and how it showed them God’s power. The eighth plague, locusts, again focused on Nut, Osiris, and Set. The later crops, wheat and rye, which had survived the hail, were now devoured by the swarms of locusts. There would be no harvest in Egypt that year.
The ninth plague, darkness, was aimed at the sun god, Re, who was symbolized by Pharaoh himself. For three days, the land of Egypt was smothered with an unearthly darkness,
but the homes of the Israelites
had light
The tenth and last plague, the death of the firstborn males, was a judgment on Isis, the protector of children. In this plague, God was teaching the Israelites a deep spiritual lesson that pointed to Christ. Unlike the other plagues, which the Israelites survived by virtue of their identity as God’s people, this plague required an act of faith by them. God commanded each family to take an unblemished male lamb and kill it. The blood of the lamb was to be smeared on the top and sides of their doorways, and the lamb was to be roasted and eaten that night. Any family that did not follow God’s instructions would suffer in the last plague. God described how He would send the destroyer through the land of Egypt, with orders to slay the firstborn male in every household, whether human or animal. The only protection was the blood of the lamb on the door. When the destroyer saw the blood, he would pass over that house and leave it untouched (Exodus 12:23). This is where the term Passover comes from. Passover is a memorial of that night in ancient Egypt when God delivered His people from bondage. First Corinthians 5:7 teaches that Jesus became our Passover when He died to deliver us from the bondage of sin. While the Israelites found God’s protection in their homes, every other home in the land of Egypt experienced God’s wrath as their loved ones died. This grievous event caused Pharaoh to finally release the Israelites.
By the time the Israelites left Egypt, they had a clear picture of God’s power, God’s protection, and God’s plan for them. For those who were willing to believe, they had convincing evidence that they served the true and living God. Sadly, many still failed to believe, which led to other trials and lessons by God. The result for the Egyptians and the other ancient people of the region was a dread of the God of Israel. Even after the tenth plague, Pharaoh once again hardened his heart and sent his chariots after the Israelites. When God opened a way through the Red Sea for the Israelites, then drowned all of Pharaoh’s armies there, the power of Egypt was crushed, and the fear of God spread through the surrounding nations (Joshua 2:9–11). This was the very purpose that God had declared at the beginning. We can still look back on these events today to confirm our faith in, and our fear of, this true and living God, the Judge of all the earth.
Among many other places, Psalm 145:3 declares,
“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.”
Dozens of verses describe God as “great” and give
as evidence His wondrous works
(e.g., Psalm 86:10; 96:4; 135:5; Job 5:9; 9:10; 1 Chronicles 16:24).
In describing a person, the word great means “preeminent, above the norm, or distinguished.” It also implies superior character or quality, such as saying that Abraham Lincoln was “a great man.”
So, when the Bible describes
God as “great,”
it sets the Lord apart
from human beings we may
consider “great” and
calls attention to
His worthiness to be worshiped and adored
(2 Kings 17:36; Psalm 5:7).
The word great is used in many English versions of the Bible to capture the meaning of
the Greek and Hebrew words
describing God’s
superior
character qualities
First John 3:1 says,
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God!”
(emphasis added).
Romans 9:22 speaks of
God’s “great patience.”
Lamentations 3:22–23 praises the Lord for
His great love and His great faithfulness.
Ephesians 1:19 indicates that
God’s might is unsurpassed—it is an “incomparably great power.”
Titus 2:13 calls
Jesus “our great God and Savior,”
meaning that the Lord is of the
highest rank,
eminent in His authority
Hebrews 10:21 says that Jesus is “a great priest over the house of God,” signifying that Christ surpasses all other priests throughout history in nature, in power, and in ability.
When Jesus cast a demon out
of a boy, the crowd was
“amazed at the greatness of God”
(Luke 9:43).
All through the Bible, we see evidence that God is great, from the creation of the world, to the parting of the Red Sea, to the miracles of Christ, to the final judgment. Our response to God’s greatness is to humbly worship and adore Him:
“Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him
for his surpassing greatness”
(Psalm 150:2).
God is so great that He cannot be compared with
anything or anyone else (Psalm 71:19).
Since He created everything in existence,
He is far superior to those creations.
He is bigger, in the sense that He cannot be
confined by time or space.
He is wiser, using foolish things to confound those
who think themselves wise
(Isaiah 40:13; 1 Corinthians 1:27).
He is infinite, while all created things are finite
(Psalm 90:2)
God, in fact, defines greatness, and all other
uses of the word
are mere echoes of that greatness.
The book of Ecclesiastes
starts out with a startling exclamation:
“‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’
says the Teacher.
‘Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless’”
(Ecclesiastes 1:2).
Other translations have the word vanity or futility in place of meaningless. The point is the same: Solomon in his old age has found everything in this world to be empty and void of meaning. This lament becomes the theme of the whole book.
Saying that everything is meaningless sounds depressing, but we must keep Solomon’s point of view in mind. This is found in Ecclesiastes 1:14: “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” The key phrase is under the sun, which is repeated throughout the book. Solomon is sharing an earth-bound perspective. He is only considering life “under the sun”; that is, a human life lived to the exclusion of any consideration of God. From that godless perspective, everything is indeed “meaningless.”
In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon discusses ten vanities—ten things that are “meaningless” when considered from the limited point of view of “under the sun.” Without God, human wisdom is meaningless (2:14–16); labor (2:18–23); amassing things (2:26); life itself (3:18–22); competition (4:4); selfish overwork (4:7–8); power and authority (4:16); greed (5:10); wealth and accolades (6:1–2); and perfunctory religion (8:10–14).
When Solomon says, “Everything is meaningless,” he did not mean that everything in the world is of zero value. Rather, his point is that all human efforts apart from God’s will are meaningless. Solomon had it all, and he had tried everything, but when he left God out of the equation, nothing satisfied him. There is purpose in life, and it is found in knowing God and keeping His commands. That’s why Solomon ends his book this way:
“Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
“For the Lord is full of
compassion and mercy, long-suffering,
and
very pitiful, and forgiveth sins,
and
In time of affliction.”
Judge not lest you be judged” is a snippet from Christ’s great Sermon on the Mount(Matthew 5:3—7:27). In Matthew 7, Jesus turns to the topic of judging others. Sadly, the passage is one of the most misunderstood and misapplied teachings in Scripture by believers and non-believers alike. In his commentary on Matthew, Stuart Weber gives this excellent summary of the correct meaning of Matthew 7:1: “Do not judge others until you are prepared to be judged by the same standard. And then, when you exercise judgment toward others, do it with humility” (Holman New Testament Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 96).
When Jesus said, “Judge not lest you be judged,” He wasn’t issuing a blanket rule that people are never to judge others. A closer look at the rest of the passage illuminates the real issue Christ wanted to address: “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye” (Matthew 7:1–3, NLT).
Christ’s teaching was primarily directed to believers, but the principle can be applied to anyone. Jesus does expect us to “deal with the speck” in our friend’s eye, particularly our brothers and sisters in Christ. He wants us to discern sin in others so we can help them get rid of it. The purpose of judging someone else’s weakness is to help him or her walk in freedom (1 Corinthians 5:12). But how can we help someone else if we are not free? We must first be willing to look honestly at our own lives and exercise the same judgment toward ourselves. When we do this, we judge from a position of humility.
Jesus’s statement to “judge not lest you be judged” zeroed in on the problems of spiritual hypocrisy and self-centered pride. He compared these offenses to giant logs that blind us to our own faults while we laser in on shortcomings in others.
Humility is a mega theme throughout Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. It is impossible to carry out these kingdom teachings without maintaining authentic humbleness in our attitude toward others. In Matthew 5:7–11, Jesus encouraged His followers to show mercy, cultivate peace, and bless those who persecute them. To enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said that our righteousness had to exceed that of the teachers of the religious law and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20).
These Pharisees and teachers of the law were considered to be the pinnacle of moral integrity at the time. Jesus stopped this misconception right in its tracks. He saw through the outer veneer into the reality of their self-righteousness, spiritual pride, and moral bankruptcy.
Jesus challenged the people not to retaliate when someone wronged them (Matthew 5:39); to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them (verse 44); to model themselves after their heavenly Father’s perfection (verse 48); and to forgive those who sinned against them (Matthew 6:14–15).
A faithful servant of God will see himself as accurately as he sees others. He will recognize his own sinfulness and need for God’s mercy—a need he shares with his brothers and sisters in Christ. He will have no reason to consider himself better than others but will follow Paul’s teaching to the Philippians: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).
When Christ taught, “Judge not lest you be judged,” He countered the human tendency to take spiritual truth and twist it into hypocritical superiority as the Pharisees had done. Our pride makes us criticize and judge others so that we feel better about ourselves. James warned believers, “Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:11–12, NLT)
The apostle Paul cautioned, “You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things. And we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things. Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God’s judgment when you do the same things?” (Romans 2:1–3, NLT, see also Romans 14:4, 10–13).
Jesus requires true followers to apply His teachings first to themselves and then to others. When God reveals His truth to us, whether in Scripture or in some other way, our immediate response must be to say, “How does this apply to me? How do I appropriate this truth in my own life?” In following Jesus’ command to “judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1, NKJV), we avoid drawing conclusions that are superficial, proud, hypocritical, or self-righteous.
Paul, in his prayers “for saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:1, ESV), asks that God “may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (verse 17).
Prior to his prayer for the spirit of wisdom and revelation, Paul reminds the Ephesian believers of the blessings God has bestowed upon them (Ephesians 1:3), their adoption as children through Christ (verse 4), the wisdom and insight they have been given (verse 8), and “the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ” (verse 9). He also reminds them that they have been “marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (verses 13–14). Now he desires for them to be given the spirit of wisdom and revelation.
Since Christians receive the promised Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation (John 14:17), the spirit of wisdom and revelation that Paul prays for cannot refer to the initial gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul’s reference could easily be to an attitude or frame of mind (although the NIV and ESV capitalize Spirit, other translations such as the NASB and BSB translate it as “a spirit,” and the NLT simply has “spiritual wisdom and insight”). If not the Holy Spirit, then what does Paul ask for in his request for “the spirit of wisdom and revelation”? The key is in the phrase that follows, “in the knowledge of him” (ESV), or “so that you may know him better” (NIV).
Paul had commended the Ephesians for their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love toward all the saints (Ephesians 1:15), but now he is asking God to give them a deeper and greater understanding of the mysteries of His character and will, to know Him more thoroughly and intimately. Now that they have the Holy Spirit in their hearts, Paul desires Him to grant them more understanding and greater insight. The “wisdom” is a better understanding of the doctrines of God, and the “revelation” is a clearer picture of the divine character and will. In the NLT, the prayer is that believers would have “spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God.” The AMP translation has Paul asking that God “may grant you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation [that gives you a deep and personal and intimate insight] into the true knowledge of Him.”
God is infinite, and He can never be fully known by finite creatures. We all need wisdom from above. No matter how far we may advance in our understanding of God, there is an unfathomed depth of knowledge that remains to be explored. Scripture is full of admonitions to grow in our knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 2:2; Ephesians 4:15).
Paul outlines some of the mysteries he wants the Ephesians to understand through this spirit of wisdom and revelation. He desires them to grasp “the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance” (Ephesians 1:18). This is the hope of eternal life, which Paul refers to as the “upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14, ESV). We inherit the riches of eternal life through Him who saved us and called us to holiness in Christ before time began (2 Timothy 1:9).
Paul also prays the Spirit will reveal
God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe”
(Ephesians 1:19)--
Power so Great
it raised Jesus from the dead.
It’s a power that we can
only comprehend as we possess
the spirit of
wisdom and revelation
Scripture promises that Christ will return to earth, yet the various passages predicting that event seem to indicate
two separate returns.
Revelation 1:7 describes a return in which
every eye will see Him.
First Thessalonians 4
describes a return in which
not
everyone will see Christ.
As John introduces the
book of Revelation, he alludes to Zechariah 12:10 and
asserts that Jesus Christ
is coming with the clouds and that
“every eye will see Him”
(Revelation 1:7).
Roughly five centuries earlier,
Daniel recorded a similar scene in which he observes
that a Son of Man
will be coming
with the clouds of heaven
(Daniel 7:13)
to begin an
eternal kingdom over the earth
(Daniel 7:14).
Paul describes the Lord
descending from heaven with a
shout, the dead in Christ rising from the dead,
and then those who are in Christ
and still alive being caught up in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air
(1 Thessalonians 4:17).
He said He would go
to prepare a place for His followers,
come again, and receive them
to Himself so that
where He is they would be also
In John 14:2,
Jesus describes His going from earth to heaven (going to prepare a place), then coming from heaven but not all the way to earth (receiving them to Himself), then remaining in heaven (where He is they would be also) for a time. Similarly, Paul describes the event of saints joining Jesus in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17and in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. In the latter passage, Paul describes believers changing and being with Christ in the “twinkling of an eye”—a sudden event that is perhaps so quick as to be visually imperceptible. This does not seem to describe something that every eye will see—something so vivid and broad that everyone on earth will witness at the same time.
In Revelation 19:11–14, John describes
Jesus coming to earth with
armies of saints
and then reigning on earth with them
(Revelation 20:4).
As those saints are already physically with Christ,
the event that brings them together has already happened. The chronology indicates that the event
Jesus and Paul describe involving
the “catching up” of believers to Jesus
will have already happened before the
return of Christ in Revelation 19—also
referred to in Revelation 1:7--
Jesus’ coming in the clouds.
The first of these two events is often referred to as the rapture,
because of the Latin word
for “caught up”
(in 1 Thessalonians 4:17).
The second of these events is typically referenced
simply as Jesus’ second coming,
because it is the second time recorded that
He actually comes to
the earth
At the rapture,
only
believers will see Jesus
At the second coming,
every eye will see Him--
They whole
world will behold Him.
It is this second event to which
John refers in
Revelation 1:7.
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DEAD SEA FINALLY DRIED UP & NOW THIS HAS EMERGED
Things that God
absolutely hates
7
abominations to the Lord
Proverbs 6:16-19, NIV
There are six things the LORD hates,
seven
that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that
shed innocent blood,
a heart that
devises wicked schemes,
feet that are
quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who
pours out lies and a
person who
stirs up
conflict in the community
The Dead Sea
Has finally Dried Up
After centuries of being a natural marvel and a
popular tourist destination.
But what initially appeared to be a geological event is now
becoming a nightmare for the area.
Scientists are perplexed
by what is happening because it is terrifying.
Join us as we reveal the startling
Truth
behind the eerie occurrences
that are now endangering the region's safety
and explore the
potential ramifications for the rest of the world.
The Dead Sea, the salty
lake located at
The Lowest Point on Earth,
is gradually getting smaller under the intense
Middle Eastern Sun
For those who live close to
It’s boundaries,
It is a
Slow-Moving Issue,
But it will be difficult to obtain enough
Water
To keep the Sea Alive
When Jesus said,
“I thirst,”
From The Cross,
He was alluding to a prophecy in
Psalm 22:15:
“My mouth is dried up like a
potsherd, And my
Tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
You lay me in the Dust of Death.”
A Potsherd is a
Broken Piece of ceramic material,
Especially one FOUND on an archaeological Site
The Bible uses symbolism
To Deepen
The Message God has for His people
One such symbol is that of
Potter and Clay
The most detailed example is found in
Jeremiah 18.
God instructed the prophet Jeremiah to go to
A potter’s house
where God would
Illustrate
His relationship with
Israel
Verses 2–6 say,
“So I went down to the
Potter’s House,
and I saw him working at the wheel
But the Pot
He was shaping from the clay was
marred in his hands;
So the
Potter formed it into another pot,
shaping it as seemed best to him
Then
The Word of the Lord came to me.
He said,
‘Can I not do with YOU,
Israel,
as
This Potter Does?’
declares the Lord.
‘Like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are You in my hand,
Israel.’”
Although God allows
Human Beings
Freedom to make Moral Choices,
He demonstrates often that
He is still
sovereign and in control
of
His universe
He does whatever He wills with
His Creation
(Psalm 135:6; 115:3; Daniel 4:35; Isaiah 46:9–11).
We
Need frequent reminders that God Is
Over All
and
Can do as He Pleases
whether
We understand His actions or not
(Romans 9:20–21)
He owes us nothing
yet chooses to
extend to us the utmost
Patience,
kindness, and compassion
(Jeremiah 9:24; Psalm 36:10; 103:4, 17).
The Potter Working With the Clay
Reminds us that God is
At Work
in us
“For His Good Pleasure”
(Philippians 2:13). Isaiah 45:9 says,
“Woe to those who
quarrel with their Maker,
those who are nothing but
potsherds among the potsherds
on
The Ground. Does the CLAY
Say to the
POTTER
What are YOU making??
Does your work say, ‘
The Potter has No Hands?
God has Created
each of us The Way
He wants us:)
(Psalm 139:13–16; Exodus 4:11)
It is our responsibility
to take
what He has given us and use it
His Glory and Pleasure
In doing so, we FIND
our
Ultimate Fulfillment
Rather than live with disappointment and dissatisfaction
with what God has or has not given us,
we can choose to Thank Him in everything
(Ephesians 5:20; Colossians 3:15)
Just as the Clay finds its
Highest Purpose when it
Remains Pliable
IN THE
HANDS of the POTTER,
So our Lives
Fulfill their Highest Purpose
When We Let Our
Potter
Have His way with us
God is Angry
When we Suppress or Ignore
The Truth
Romans 1:16-20,
For I AM not ashamed of
The Gospel
for it is the
Power of God for Salvation
To everyone who Believes,
to the
Jew first and also to The Greek
For in it the
Righteousness of God is Revealed
from
Faith for Faith,
as it is written, “
The Righteous shall Live
By Faith.”
For the
Wrath of God
is
Revealed from Heaven
Against all
Ungodliness and Unrighteousness
of Men, Who by
their
unrighteousness
suppress
The
Truth
For what can be known about God is plain to them,
because
God has shown it to them
For his
invisible attributes, namely,
his
eternal power and divine nature,
have
been clearly perceived,
ever since the creation of the world,
in the things
that have been made.
So they are without excuse.
Mark 3:5,ESV
He looked around at them in anger and,
deeply distressed
at their stubborn hearts, said to the man,
“Stretch out your hand.”
He stretched it out, and
his hand
was
completely restored.
Hebrews 11:6, KJV
But without faith
it is
impossible to please him:
for he that
cometh to God
must believe that he is,
and that
he is a rewarder
of them that
diligently seek him
God is mad when we
don’t
Honor Him,
when we
Dishonor
Him
Romans 1:21, ESV
For although they knew God,
they did not
honor him as God or give thanks to him,
but they became futile in their thinking,
and their
foolish hearts were darkened.
John 2:14-16, ESV
In The Temple
he found those who were
selling oxen and sheep and pigeons,
and the money-changers sitting
there And making a whip of cords,
He DROVE
Them All Out
of
The Temple
with the
sheep and Oxen
And he poured out the
Coins of the money-changers
and
Overturned their Tables
And he told those who sold the pigeon
Take these things away;
do not make
my Father’s house a house of
Trade
John 11:32-35,
Now when Mary
came to where Jesus was
and saw him,
she fell at his feet, saying to him,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
And he said,
“Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
Jesus wept.
Angry God is angry
when we
GIVE HIS GLORY
away to another
Romans 1:22-23,
Claiming to be wise,
they became fools, and exchanged the
Glory of the immortal God
for images
resembling mortal man
and birds and animals and
creeping things
Jeremiah 9:23-24, NKJV Thus says the LORD:
Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him who Glories
Glory in this,
That he
Understands and
Knows Me,
That I AM the LORD,
exercising lovingkindness, judgment,
and righteousness
In the earth.
For in these I delight,”
says the LORD.
God is sad when we don’t repent of sin
Genesis 6:5-6,
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.
And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him to his heart.
Ezekiel 18:23,
Do I have any pleasure at all that the
wicked should die?
says the Lord GOD, and not that
he should turn from his ways and live?
Ezekiel 18:31-32
Cast away from you all the
transgressions
which you have committed,
and get yourselves
anew heart and anew spirit
For why should you die, O house of Israel?
For I have no pleasure
in the death of one who dies, says the Lord GOD.
Therefore TURN and LIVE!
In Summary
Things that make God sad
are things that show that we’re
Not Living
The Way he desires for us to live.
What makes God cry?
Things that make God cry include
our sin, our hurt, and
our
pain and grief
It is always helpful to remember that
God’s commandments for us are for
our own benefit,
God loves us so much and he always
wants what is best for us.
God wants us
To Glorify Him in
all we do…
We can Trust Him :)!
Jeremiah 29:11-13,
For I know the plans I have for you,
declares the Lord,
Plans to prosper you and
Not to harm you,
Plans to give you Hope and a Future
Then you will call on me
and COME
and pray to me, and I will
listen to you
You will Seek Me And Find Me
When you Seek
Me with All Your Heart
The Wrath of God
is a
Precise and controlled response
to the
Belittling of His Holiness
Everyone who perishes under the wrath of God
in eternity will
Not be because God LOST his temper
with them and mistreated them.
There is no shortage of fire
and brimstone
to be
FOUND in the Bible.
It's clear from the opening pages of Genesis
that God gets angry sometimes, and he's
not afraid to show it.
Believers, doubters, and everyone in between have been
debating what it all means for centuries, but one thing is for certain:
when it comes to wrath, no one does it like God.
Jesus Curses a Fig Tree
Jesus had just arrived at Jerusalem amid
great fanfare and great expectations,
but then proceeds to
cleanse the Temple
and curse the barren
fig tree.
Both had significance
as to
The spiritual condition of Israel
With His cleansing of the Temple and
His criticism of the
worship that was going on there
(Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17),
Jesus was
effectively denouncing
Israel’s
worship of God
With the cursing of the fig tree,
He was symbolically
denouncing Israel as a nation
and, in a sense, even
denouncing unfruitful
“Christians”
That is,
People who Profess
to be
Christian
But have No evidence of
A relationship with
Christ
The Presence
of a
Fruitful Fig Tree
was considered to be a
symbol of
Blessing and Prosperity for the
Nation of Israel.
Likewise, the absence or death of a fig tree
would symbolize
judgment and rejection
Symbolically, the fig tree
represented
the spiritual deadness of Israel,
who while very religious
outwardly
with all the sacrifices and ceremonies, were
spiritually barren because of their
sins
By cleansing
The Temple
and
cursing the fig tree, causing it
to wither and die,
Jesus was pronouncing His coming judgment of Israel
and demonstrating
His Power
To Carry it out
It also teaches the
principle that
religious profession and
observance
are not enough
To guarantee
salvation, unless there is the
FRUIT of genuine salvation
evidenced
in the life of the person.
James would later echo this truth when he wrote that
“faith without works is dead”
(James 2:26).
The lesson of the fig tree is that we should bear spiritual fruit
(Galatians 5:22-23),
not just give an appearance
of religiosity.
God judges fruitlessness,
and expects that those who have a relationship
with Him will
“bear much fruit” (John 15:5-8).
Sodom and Gomorrah
According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah
were two cities situated on the Jordan River that God
destroyed in the Book of Genesis.
After God informs Abraham of his plans, Abraham pleads for the city but is unable to find even 10 righteous men worth sparing. God ultimately destroys the cities with “fire and sulfur,” although he does spare Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family as a courtesy to Abraham
.
However, not even all of Lot’s family
escapes God’s wrath.
As they are preparing the flee the city of Sodom,
An angel of God
instructs them
To not look back
as
they ride away.
Lot’s wife can’t resist
though and does--
at which point she is turned
into a
Pillar of Salt
No one can say for sure why salt,
but it’s clearly
not an ideal situation regardless.
Humans are usually the objects of God’s wrath,
but that’s not always the case. For example, in the
Gospels of Matthew and Mark,
Jesus is hungry and finds a fig tree.
When he sees it has
No Fruit to Give
he curses it by saying,
“May no fruit ever come
from you again!”
This narrative remains a bit enigmatic
10 Plagues of Egypt
In the Book of Exodus,
The Israelites are being held as slaves in
Egypt
God instructs Moses
to tell
Pharaoh to, “Let my people go,”
and when
Pharaoh refuses, he unleashes a torrent of
10 plagues on everything
in Egypt-
-land, livestock, plant life, and
even people.
These plagues include
turning the Nile river to blood,
afflicting humans and animals with boils,
and plunging the
land of Egypt into perpetual darkness.
The story reaches its climax when
God sends an angel of death
to kill the
firstborn son
in every
Egyptian household.
Things did not go so well for God in the years between Adam and Noah.
Adam himself disobeyed God,
and that pretty much opened the disobedience floodgates for every human that came after him. In Genesis chapter 6, God goes as far as to say that he regrets creating humankind and devises a plan to wipe them out with a global flood.
From God’s perspective, this works like a charm--he set out to destroy humanity and accomplished his goal. However, even God’s wrath has its limits, and therefore he spares Noah and his family and establishes a covenant with him that he will never destroy the earth by a flood again.
God Curses Cain
In the Book of Genesis, Cain and Abel are the
first two sons of Adam and Eve.
After offering individual sacrifices to God, Cain is enraged to
learn that God prefers his brother Abel’s sacrifice over his own.
Naturally, the correct response is to murder Abel.
When God finds out what Cain has done,
he springs into wrath mode and
levels a curse at Cain. For his misdeeds, he will be forced to
wander the earth for the rest of his life.
On top of that,
he also places a curse on anyone who attempts to murder
Cain--ensuring that the punishment will last
until his old age.
Look UP toward Whom they have Pierced6/12/2023
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0 CommentsIdentifying The Wraths of God in the Bible6/11/2023
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Leviticus 13:45
“The leprous person who has the disease
shall
wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose,
and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out,
“Unclean, unclean”
Mark 3:28–30:
"Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their
sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;
but whoever
blasphemes against
The Holy Spirit
can never have forgiveness, but
is guilty of an
eternal sin—for they had said,
"He has an unclean spirit."
Leviticus 13–14:
Leprosy
Leviticus 13–14 addresses the disease of leprosy
From the descriptions in these chapters, it appears that
leprosy
included several different infectious
skin diseases.
For more information about leprosy, see “leper” and “leprosy”
Leviticus 14
Compare the Cleansing of Leprosy
to the Cleansing of Our Sins
Because leprosy was so visible and involved the
decay or corruption of the body,
it served as an excellent symbol of sinfulness.
Sin corrupts someone spiritually
the way leprosy corrupts someone physically
Leviticus 14 describes what a man must do
to be ceremonially, or religiously, clean
after being healed of leprosy.
We can see parallels between the process of being
cleansed of leprosy
and how we overcome the effects of sin.
(a) cedar wood is known as something that helps preserve
other things from decay and corruption;
(b) the color scarlet is red, reminding us of blood, which is
the symbol of life and the Atonement;
(c) hyssop was used in the Old Testament as a purifying plant; and
(d) blood and water are symbols of birth (see Moses 6:59).
Verse 9. Newborns usually have little or no hair, except for on their heads. What might the message of this verse be?
(see 3 Nephi 11:37)
Verses 10–14. Recall similar symbolism in Exodus 28–29. Verses 15–18.
The olive tree
is an emblem of peace and purity,
and the
olive oil became a symbol of the
Holy Ghost and doing
righteous deeds and acts of service
(see D&C 45:56–57).
How is this part of the process
of
becoming clean from sin?
Ultimately, what makes repentance possible?
Leviticus 14, when an individual
acquired leprosy, he or she was required to
live outside the camp
The same is true of sin.
When we sin, we cut ourselves off from
Full communion
with the
Lord and His Church.
We may not be permitted
to take the sacrament
or
receive a temple recommend
The steps in becoming
ceremonially clean of leprosy
are found in in Leviticus 14
https://living.alot.com/entertainment/30-times-god-unleashed-his-wrath-in-the-bible--17169
Things that God absolutely hates – 7 abominations to the Lord
Proverbs 6:16-19, NIV There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
God is angry when we suppress or ignore
The Truth
Romans 1:16-20,
For I AM not ashamed of
The Gospel
for it is the
Power of God for Salvation
to everyone who believes,
to the
Jew first and also to The Greek
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Mark 3:5,ESV He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.
Hebrews 11:6, KJV But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
God is mad when we don’t honor him, when we dishonor him
Romans 1:21, ESV For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
John 2:14-16, ESV In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”
John 11:32-35, ESV Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept.
Angry God is angry when we give his glory away to another
Romans 1:22-23, ESV Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Jeremiah 9:23-24, NKJV Thus says the LORD: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the LORD.
God is sad when we don’t repent of sin
Genesis 6:5-6, ESV The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
Ezekiel 18:23, NKJV Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? says the Lord GOD, and not that he should turn from his ways and live?
Ezekiel 18:31-32, NKJV
Cast away from you all the
transgressions
which you have committed,
and get yourselves
anew heart and anew spirit
For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, says the Lord GOD. Therefore turn and live!
In Summary
Things that make God sad are things that show that we’re not living the way he desires for us to live. What makes God cry? Things that make God cry include our sin, our hurt, and our pain and grief.
It is always helpful to remember that God’s commandments for us are for our own benefit, God loves us so much and he always wants what is best for us. God wants us to glorify him in all we do… Dear Friends, we can trust him :)!
Jeremiah 29:11-13, NIV For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Amen.
15 Times God
Unleashed
His Wrath in the Bible
God's wrath is not a reckless rage, an uncontrollable anger,
a senseless fury, or an unjust vengeance.
The wrath of God is a precise and controlled response
to the belittling of his holiness.
Everyone who perishes under the wrath of God
in eternity will not be because God lost his temper
with them and mistreated them.
15 Times God Unleashed His Wrath in the Bible
There is no shortage of fire
and brimstone
to be found in the Bible.
It's clear from the opening pages of Genesis that God gets angry sometimes,
and he's not afraid to show it.
Believers, doubters, and everyone in between have been debating what it all means for centuries, but one thing is for certain:
when it comes to wrath, no one does it like God.
Here are 15 examples
from the Bible of times when God unleashed his wrath.
Jesus Curses a Fig Tree
Jesus had just arrived at Jerusalem amid great fanfare and great expectations, but then proceeds to cleanse the Temple and curse the barren fig tree. Both had significance as to the spiritual condition of Israel.
With His cleansing of the Temple and His criticism of the worship that was going on there (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17),
Jesus was effectively denouncing
Israel’s worship of God.
With the cursing of the fig tree, He was symbolically denouncing Israel as a nation and, in a sense, even denouncing
unfruitful “Christians”
(that is, people who profess to be Christian but have no evidence of a relationship with Christ).
The presence of a fruitful fig tree
was considered to be a symbol of blessing and prosperity for the nation of Israel. Likewise, the absence or
death of a fig tree would symbolize
judgment and rejection.
Symbolically, the fig tree represented the spiritual deadness of Israel, who while very religious outwardly with all the sacrifices and ceremonies, were spiritually barren because of their sins. By cleansing the Temple and cursing the fig tree, causing it to wither and die, Jesus was pronouncing His coming judgment of Israel and demonstrating His power to carry it out.
It also teaches the principle that religious profession and observance are not enough to guarantee salvation, unless there is the fruit of genuine salvation evidenced in the life of the person.
James would later echo this truth when he wrote that
“faith without works is dead”
(James 2:26).
The lesson of the fig tree is that we should bear spiritual fruit
(Galatians 5:22-23),
not just give an appearance
of religiosity.
God judges fruitlessness,
and expects that those who have a relationship
with Him will
“bear much fruit” (John 15:5-8).
Sodom and Gomorrah
According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah
were two cities situated on the Jordan River that God
destroyed in the Book of Genesis.
After God informs Abraham of his plans, Abraham pleads for the city but is unable to find even 10 righteous men worth sparing. God ultimately destroys the cities with “fire and sulfur,” although he does spare Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family as a courtesy to Abraham
.
However, not even all of Lot’s family escapes God’s wrath. As they are preparing the flee the city of Sodom, an angel of God instructs them to not look back as they ride away.
Lot’s wife can’t resist
though and does--
at which point she is turned into a
pillar of salt.
No one can say for sure why salt, but it’s clearly not an ideal situation regardless.
Humans are usually the objects of God’s wrath, but that’s not always the case. For example, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark,
Jesus is hungry and finds a fig tree.
When he sees it has no fruit to give, he curses it by saying,
“May no fruit ever come from you again!”
This narrative remains a bit enigmatic to this day, but ultimately
we’re left with a story about a God yelling at a tree.
It’s not the most fantastical display of his wrath,
but it’s definitely the most unusual.
10 Plagues of Egypt
In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites are being held as slaves in Egypt.
God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh to, “Let my people go,”
and when Pharaoh refuses, he unleashes a torrent of
10 plagues on everything in Egypt-
-land, livestock, plant life, and even people.
These plagues include turning the Nile river to blood, afflicting humans and animals with boils, and plunging the land of Egypt into perpetual darkness.
The story reaches its climax when God sends an angel of death
to kill the
firstborn son
in every Egyptian household.
Things did not go so well for God in the years between Adam and Noah. Adam himself disobeyed God, and that pretty much opened the disobedience floodgates for every human that came after him. In Genesis chapter 6, God goes as far as to say that he regrets creating humankind and devises a plan to wipe them out with a global flood.
From God’s perspective, this works like a charm--he set out to destroy humanity and accomplished his goal. However, even God’s wrath has its limits, and therefore he spares Noah and his family and establishes a covenant with him that he will never destroy the earth by a flood again.
God Curses Cain
In the Book of Genesis, Cain and Abel are the
first two sons of Adam and Eve.
After offering individual sacrifices to God, Cain is enraged to
learn that God prefers his brother Abel’s sacrifice over his own.
Naturally, the correct response is to murder Abel.
When God finds out what Cain has done,
he springs into wrath mode and
levels a curse at Cain. For his misdeeds, he will be forced to
wander the earth for the rest of his life.
On top of that,
he also places a curse on anyone who attempts to murder
Cain--ensuring that the punishment will last
until his old age.
The Seven Bowls of God's Wrath
The Book of Revelation often reads like one big bundle of wrath, but there are some spots that are more wrathful than others. Case in point-
-the seven bowls of God’s wrath found in
Revelation 16 which correspond to
horrific plagues released upon the earth.
At this point in the narrative, we’ve already been through
two other sets of plagues,
but the third and final set found in the
seven bowls really take the cake.
They include
poisoning all bodies of water on earth,
darkness over the kingdom of the antichrist,
and a global earthquake--complete with 100-pound hailstones.
In the Book of Revelation, God’s primary antagonists are the
two beasts--a beast from the sea and a
beast from the Earth.
Since the book was written, Christians have been debating on what these two figures represent, but regardless of who they are, things don’t go well for them.
Near the end of the book, the
two beasts attempt a war with God.
When they inevitably lose,
they are thrown into
“the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.”
The Assyrian Captivity
After God gives the Promised Land to the Israelites in the Old Testament, the unified kingdom of Israel splits into two.
In the northern kingdom,
they have a tendency to worship other gods,
which is obviously a problem for God.
So, he enlists the help of the enemies of the Israelites--the Assyrians.
King Tilgath of Assyria conquers the northern kingdom,
causing its people to go into exile.
God had told the Israelites before that he would
take the land from them if they disobeyed,
and he made good on his promise.
Moses & Others Not Allowed to Enter Canaan
Remember all that wandering in the desert the Israelites did?
That wasn’t a lack of GPS--it was God’s wrath. In the
Book of Numbers, 12
Israelite spies are sent to scope out Canaan, the
land God had promised them.
When their report is all doom and gloom,
the Israelites don’t really want to enter.
God isn’t thrilled,
and so he forces them to wander in the desert for
40 years until
that generation of complainers
had died.
Poor Moses, God’s right-hand man,
gets denied entry
for even pettier reasons.
Once when the Israelites were thirsty, God instructs Moses to
speak to a rock, at which point it would give water.
Instead, Moses in his anger strikes the rock. And for that alone,
he never gets the chance to enter the land that God had promised
him and all the Israelites.
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
For the most part, Jesus is deserving of his “meek and mild” descriptor.
But there are few times in the Gospels when he flips that
(among other things)
on its head.
In all four Gospels, there is an account of
Jesus entering the Temple at Jerusalem, where
he proceeds to
flip tables and shout at the
money changers doing business there.
The specifics of his ire
vary from Gospel to Gospel, but it’s clear
that God was not down with
the commerce going down in the Temple.
The Golden Calf
God may have kept Moses out of the Promised Land,
but for most of his life, the two were on the same page--especially
when it came to the disobedience of the Israelites.
The story of the golden calf in Exodus is the
perfect example.
While Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving
the 10 Commandments from God, the rest of the Israelites
were growing restless--to the point where they gave
up on this Yahweh character and
decided to construct a
golden calf
to
worship instead
Moses and God are none too pleased.
God suggests
complete annihilation,
but
Moses has a compromise-
-he ground the calf into powder,
put it in water,
and forced the Israelites to drink it.
David & Bathsheba
When David commits adultery with Bathsheba and then
has her husband killed, it’s clear David is going to be punished.
But really, David himself makes out okay--instead,
God punishes him by hurting those around him.
As punishment for adultery, David and Bathsheba’s
unnamed child dies shortly after it is born.
However, God would go on to punish more of David’s children
for the murder he was responsible for.
Ananias & Sapphira
Ananias and Sapphira can be found in the Book of Acts,
and they prove that
you can’t pull a fast one on God.
In the Book of Acts, the early church pooled
their money and resources in common.
Ananias and Sapphira sell a plot of land
and give most
of the proceeds to the church but keep some for themselves.
When Peter calls the two out, they both drop dead on the spot.
Phineas the Priest
God makes it very clear that the
Israelites are supposed
to worship no one but him,
but they just can’t seem to get
the message.
In Numbers 25, it says that
Moabite women
seduced the Israelites
into
worshiping their gods
God sends a plague that kills 24,000,
and it only
ends when Phineas the priest impales an unlucky couple
who happen to show up at the wrong time.
It’s one of the more gruesome accounts in the Bible.
Elisha and the Bears
In the Book of 2 Kings, Elijah is carried up to Heaven
in a chariot of fire,
at which point Elisha takes over as a prophet of Israel.
As he is walking to Bethel, a group of young people tease him,
telling him to
“go up bald-head!”
How does God resolve the issue? Bears, of course.
Just then, two bears emerge from the forest
and maul 42 of the young people.
Baldness is clearly
a serious issue for God.
“God is love. That is His Nature and His love is not provoked,
“God’s anger is different…
The Bible never tells us that God is wrath.
It tells us that He is slow to anger
(Psalm 103:8).”
What Makes God Angry?
1.) Failure to Revere His Holiness
David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:5-7)
Take this passage one section at a time. First, “all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord.” The mood was great, and everyone was happy! Second, Uzzah commits what the Scripture says was an “error,” and touches the ark of God. And third, God strikes Uzzah down.
You might think, What is God doing? The oxen stumbled! It wasn’t really Uzzah’s fault. I have the same thoughts, and I am certainly not an expert on this passage. But I do know this: God is perfect and all His actions are righteous. He makes no mistakes. He never overreacts.
This passage then communicates, as I see it, that God’s holiness is serious business. Any offense, minor or major, unintentional or intentional, made a person liable to death. Fear the Lord, and honor His Holy Name with the utmost reverence.
And this is exactly why we praise Jesus. We are all liable to death, each one of us has fallen short of the glory of God. But God sent His own Son to provide a refuge for us, and Jesus took on the full wrath of God at the cross for the sake of those who believe in Him.
2.) Idolatry
You have done evil above all who were before you
and have gone and made for yourself
other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger.”
(1 Kings 14:9)
Idolatry is not only against the Ten Commandments,
not only bad for our spiritual development,
not only foolish and hopeless but also something that
makes God angry.
Imagine a Christian, married man tempted toward lust. God convicts Him, and the man knows it is against God’s Word. He senses that he’d keep himself back from fruitfulness in the spirit by engaging in the flesh. And he knows it is all fake, false, and foolish. Yet he continues.
He may wake from his stupor in sin when he confesses to his wife, and she rightfully says, “You have hurt me tremendously. And I am angry with you.” There is grace here!
She could respond with indifference, not caring for the marriage or for the state of his soul. But her anger is an act of grace because it is a catalyst bringing the man back into right living.
God’s anger, which we provoke when we trust in
anything other than His name,
aims to bring us back into right relationship with Him.
It is an act of tremendous grace.
3.) Sin, Injustice, and Crime
Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.” (2 Samuel 12:5)
David had sinned greatly. God described what David did:
You despised the word of the Lord… struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife. (2 Samuel 12:9)
Before God said this to David through Nathan the prophet, God first had Nathan
tell David the story of a rich man who stole a poor man’s only lamb.
I once heard someone say that humans have a
stronger judicial sentiment (ability to see wrong in others)
than moral conscience (ability to see wrong in ourselves).
This seems true here with David.
Though he was living in sin,
he could still see and judge sin clearly in someone else.
David reflected the righteous judgment and anger of the Lord in his response to the story.
He was provoked to great anger by the sin, the crime,
the injustice
committed by the rich man.
Don’t provoke your Lord
to anger by sin, injustice, and crime.
Honor the Lord
by hating sin, injustice, and crime—and
trust Him
to be the perfect Judge the world desperately needs
Offer Your Anger to the Lord Jesus says,
For with the judgment you pronounce
you will be judged
(Matthew 7:2).
Is there a better passage to demonstrate this truth than 2 Samuel 12:5?
The man that was the rightful target of David’s righteous anger was himself!
This is why Jesus Christ is the
Judge
Because only He can measure up
to the measure by which He judges
Jesus suffered severely throughout His trials, torture, and crucifixion (Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19). His suffering was physical: Isaiah 52:14 declares, “There were many who were appalled at Him—His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness.” His suffering was emotional: “All the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56). His suffering was spiritual: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus had the weight of the sins of the entire world on Him (1 John 2:2). It was sin that caused Jesus to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus’ brutal physical suffering was augmented by His having to bear the guilt of our sins and die to pay our penalty (Romans 5:8).
Isaiah predicted Jesus’ suffering: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:3, 5). This passage specifies the reason for Jesus’ suffering: “for our transgressions,” for our healing, and to bring us peace.
Jesus told His disciples that His suffering was certain: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Luke 9:22; cf. 17:25). Note the word must—He must suffer, and He must be killed. The suffering of Christ was God’s plan for the salvation of the world.
Psalm 22:14–18 details some of the suffering of the Messiah: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” In order for this and other prophecies to be fulfilled, Jesus had to suffer.
Why did Jesus have to suffer so badly? The principle of the innocent dying for the guilty was established in the garden of Eden: Adam and Eve received garments of animal skin to cover their shame (Genesis 3:21)—thus, blood was shed in Eden. Later, this principle was set in the Mosaic Law: “It is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Leviticus 17:11; cf. Hebrews 9:22). Jesus had to suffer because suffering is part of sacrifice, and Jesus was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus’ physical torture was part of the payment required for our sins. We are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19).
Jesus’ suffering on the cross showed the devastating nature of sin, the wrath of God, the cruelty of humanity, and the hatred of Satan. At Calvary, mankind was allowed to do his worst to the Son of Man as He became the Redeemer of mankind. Satan may have thought he had won a great victory, but it was through the cross that the Son of God triumphed over Satan, sin, and death. “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31; cf. Colossians 2:15).
Jesus suffered and died in order to secure salvation for all who would believe. The night of His arrest, as Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, He committed His all to the task: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The cup of suffering was not taken from Christ; He drank it all for us. There was no other way for us to be saved.
pot·sherd
noun
- a broken piece of ceramic material, especially one found on an archaeological site.
0 CommentsYour Will be Done6/16/2023
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The first
recorded occurrence of a
drink offering was that given by
Jacob in Genesis 35:14,
right after God
changed his name
to
Israel
Drink offerings
were also included
with burnt and grain offerings
in
God-ordained sacrifices,
including the morning and evening sacrifices of Exodus 29:40.
One-quarter hin, about one quart, of wine was
poured out into
the altar fire for each lamb
sacrificed
(Numbers 15:4-5)
A ram sacrifice required one third of a gin
(Numbers 15:6),
and a bull required one half
(Numbers 15:10)
It has been speculated that the offering of an
animal, grain, oil, and wine--
the smoke making
a “soothing aroma to the LORD”--
is a metaphor for providing food for God, an important
cultural requirement in the Middle East.
What we do know is that the
pouring out of a drink offering
is a metaphor for
the
blood Jesus spilled on the cross.
Jesus spoke to this directly in Luke 22:20 when
He instituted the New Covenant.
He picked up a cup of wine and said,
“This cup which is poured
out for you
is the new covenant in My blood.”
Jesus’ sacrifice
fulfilled the need of a drink offering,
His blood literally pouring
out when the soldier
pierced His side with a spear
(John 19:34)
Paul took the metaphor further, twice using the
image
of a drink offering to describe
his own service.
In Philippians 2:17,
he challenged the church in Philippi
to live a life
worthy
of his dedication to them.
In 2 Timothy 4:6,
he sensed the end of his ministry,
again comparing his efforts
to wine poured out
of a
vessel onto an altar.
There is only one group of people who
are explicitly
told in
the Bible to never drink wine/alcohol,
and that is the
Nazirites
(Numbers 6:1–4).
Jesus was NOT
a
Nazirite;
He was a “Nazarene,”
a native of
The
Town of Nazareth
(Luke 18:37).
Jesus never
took
The Nazirite vow
Christ’s first miracle of turning water into wine at
the wedding at Cana
almost certainly involved a fermented beverage.
According to Jewish wedding tradition,
fermented wine
was
always
served at weddings;
if Jesus had provided only grape juice,
the master of the feast would have complained.
Instead, he said the wine was better
than
what was previously served;
It was apparently
a “fine” wine
(John 2:10–11)
The Greek word for “drunk” in John 2:10 is methuo,
which means “to be drunken” or intoxicated.
It is the same word used in Acts 2:15
where Peter is defending
the apostles
against accusations of drunkenness.
The testimony
of the master of the feast is that
The wine Christ
Produced was able to intoxicate.
Of course, just because Jesus turned water into wine
doesn’t prove that
He drank the wine at the wedding, but it
would have been normal
for Him to do so.
What it does prove is that
Jesus doesn’t condemn drinking wine any more
than He condemns eating bread.
Sinful people abuse
what is
not
inherently sinful.
Bread and wine are not sinful,
but
“gluttony and drunkenness”
are like being
“drunk in Power”
(Proverbs 23:2; Ephesians 5:18).
In Luke 7:33–34, Jesus said,
“For John the Baptist has come
eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say,
‘He has a demon.’
The Son of Man
has come eating and drinking,
and you say,
‘Look at him!
A glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of
tax collectors and sinners!’”
(emphasis added).
In verse 33
Jesus is making a contrast
between
John the Baptist’s “drinking no wine” and
His own practice. Jesus goes on to
say the
religious leaders accused Him
(falsely)
of being a drunkard.
Jesus was never a drunkard,
any more
than He was a
glutton.
He lived a completely sinless life (1 Peter 2:22);
however, Luke 7 strongly suggests that
Jesus did indeed
partake of alcoholic wine.
The Passover celebration would also have
commonly included fermented wine.
The Scriptures use the term
“fruit of the vine”
(Matthew 26:27–29; Mark 14:23–25; Luke 22:17–18).
Of course,
Christ participated in
drinking
from the Passover
cup
(Mark 14:23)
During the approximately six hours
Jesus Christ hung on the cross,
our Lord spoke
seven final statements.
One of those statements is recorded in John 19:28: “
Later, knowing that everything had now
been finished, and so that Scripture
would be fulfilled,
Jesus said, ‘
I am thirsty.’”
The apostle John links Jesus’ statement
“I thirst”
to the fulfillment of Scripture.
There were, in fact, at least twenty Old Testament
prophecies fulfilled during
the twenty-four hours surrounding
the Lord’s death.
By highlighting how Old Testament Scriptures were
fulfilled throughout Jesus’ crucifixion,
John showed that
everything was happening according to
God’s plan.
When Jesus said, “I thirst,” from the cross,
He was alluding to a prophecy
in Psalm 22:15:
“My mouth
is dried up
like
A potsherd,
and my tongue
sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me
in the
Dust of Death.”
The apostle John
had cited this same psalm earlier
regarding the
dividing of Jesus’
garments
among the Roman soldiers
(John 19:23).
In response to Jesus’ request for something to drink,
the soldiers offer Him wine vinegar:
“A jar of wine vinegar was there,
so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge
on a stalk of the hyssop plant,
and lifted it to Jesus’ lips” (John 19:29).
Wine vinegar was the
cheapest and easiest
wine for soldiers to acquire.
It was probably diluted with water.
Earlier, Jesus refused a drink of vinegar, gall,
and myrrh offered to Him
to
relieve His suffering
(Matthew 27:34and Mark 15:23).
After that, the soldiers mockingly offered
Him wine vinegar
but did not allow Him to drink
(Luke 23:36).
But here, several hours later, Jesus states, “I am thirsty,”
thus asking for a drink. This time, the soldiers give Him some.
This action was a fulfillment of Psalm 69:21:
“They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”
Immediately after receiving the drink,
Jesus says, “It is finished,”
and then bows His head and gave up His spirit (John 19:30).
There is another, very practical reason Jesus says,
“I thirst,” from the cross.
The Lord asks for a drink so that
He might clearly and powerfully declare His final statement,
“It is finished.”
Hanging on the cross,
Jesus suffered bitter agony and darkness
while covered
in our guilt, sin, and shame.
When the act
of purchasing our redemption was complete,
nothing more was needed.
Everything Jesus had come to do
on earth was now
finished.
The Scriptures were fulfilled.
Christ’s work was done, the battle was over, the victory was won.
All that God had purposed
and all the prophets had foretold was complete,
and Jesus surrendered
Himself to death.
From the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we learn that,
as Jesus died,
He cried out with a loud voice
(Matthew 27:50; see also Mark 15:37).
Luke reports, “Jesus called out with a loud voice,
‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’
When he had said this, he breathed his last”
(Luke 23:46).
Jesus said, “I thirst,”
from the cross because He wanted
His lips and throat moistened to utter
one final victorious shout before He died.
The death of Jesus Christ
finished His work of
redemption, atonement, and reconciliation.
Through Christ’s substitutionary and sacrificial death on the cross,
the Lamb of God paid our debt and took away our sin.
Our ransom complete, Jesus, with a resounding voice,
wanted all people to hear these words--
words that still ring strong today: “It is finished!”
The gospels
contain an account of the time the disciples and
Jesus spent in the Garden of Gethsemane,
just before Jesus was arrested.
In the garden
Jesus prayed to his Father three times,
saying,
“My Father, if it is possible,
may this cup be taken from me.
Yet not as I will, but as you will”--
“Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39).
A little later, Jesus prays,
“My Father,
if it is not possible
for this cup to be taken away
unless I drink it,
may your will be done”
(Matthew 26:42).
These prayers
reveal Jesus’ mindset
just before the crucifixion
and His total submission to
the will of God.
The “cup”
to which Jesus refers is the
suffering
He was about to endure.
It’s as if Jesus were being
handed a cup full of bitterness
with the expectation that He drink all of it.
Jesus had used the same metaphor in Matthew 20:22
when prophesying of the future suffering of James and John.
When Jesus petitions the Father,
“Let this cup pass from me,”
He expresses the natural human desire to
avoid pain and suffering.
Jesus is fully God, but He is also fully human. His human nature,
though perfect, still struggled with the need
to accept the torture and shame that awaited Him;
His flesh recoiled from the cross. In the same context,
Jesus says to
His disciples, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mathew 26:41).
In praying
“Let this cup pass from me,”
Jesus was battling
the flesh and its desire for
self-preservation and comfort.
The struggle was intense:
Jesus was
“overwhelmed with sorrow
to
the point of death”
(Matthew 26:38),
and Luke the physician observed that Jesus was sweating blood—a
sign of extreme anguish (Luke 22:44).
If anything shows that Jesus was indeed fully man, this prayer is it.
Jesus knew of what was to come
(see Mark 8:31).
The agony He faced was going to be
more than physical;
it would be spiritual and emotional, as well.
Jesus knew that God’s will
was to crush Him,
to allow Him to be “pierced for our transgressions”
and wounded for our healing
(Isaiah 53:5–10).
Jesus loves mankind,
but His humanity dreaded the pain and sorrow He faced,
and it drove Him to ask His Father, “
Let this cup pass from me.”
Jesus’ prayer to “let this cup pass from me”
contains two important qualifications.
First, He prays, “If it is possible.” If there was any
other way to redeem mankind, Jesus asks
to take that other way.
The events following His prayer show that
there was no other way;
Jesus Christ is the only possible sacrifice to redeem the world
(John 1:29; Acts 4:12; Hebrews 10:14; Revelation 5:9).
Second, Jesus prays,
“Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Jesus was committed to the will of God, body, mind, and soul.
The prayer of the righteous is always dependent on the will of God
(see Matthew 6:10).
In Gethsemane,
Jesus
conquered the flesh
and kept it
in
subjection to the spirit.
He did this through earnest prayer and intense,
willful submission to God’s plan.
It is good to know that, when we face trials, Jesus knows
what it’s like to want God’s will and yet not to want it;
to act out of love
yet dread the hurt that often results;
to desire righteousness and obedience,
even when the flesh is screaming out against it.
This conflict is not sinful; it is human.
Our Savior was
“fully human in every way,
in order
that he might become
a merciful and faithful
high priest in service to God”
(Hebrews 2:17).
He had come
to seek and to save
the lost
(Luke 19:10), and
He accomplished His mission,
even though it
meant drinking the
cup
of
suffering
to the
bitter end
0 CommentsLook UP toward Whom they have Pierced6/15/2023
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Zechariah 12:10 reads
“And I will pour out
on the
house of David
and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem
a
spirit of grace and supplication.
They will look on me, the one they
have pierced,
and they will mourn for him as one
mourns for an only child,
and grieve bitterly for him as one
grieves for a firstborn son.”
This prediction, that Israel will see someone
whom they “pierced,” is amazing because it is
God Himself speaking
the Lord is the One who is “pierced.”
This appears to fit later descriptions
of
Jesus Christ’s suffering.
Indeed, the New Testament
specifies that this prophecy is
truly
Messianic
This verse indicates a future time when the Jewish people
will plead for the mercy of God.
This will happen when they see “the one they have pierced.”
Zechariah’s verse is mentioned in
John 19:36-37 when Jesus, hanging on the cross, was
pierced with a spear:
“These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: . . . ‘
They will look on the one they have pierced.’”
Revelation 1:7 adds,
“Look, he is coming with the clouds,
and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him;
and all the “peoples of the earth” will mourn because of him”
—definitely an allusion to Zechariah 12:10.
Isaiah 53:5 also predicts that
the Messiah would be pierced:
“But he was
pierced
for our transgressions.”
In addition to the idea of a “pierced” God is the
concept of the “only child.”
Zechariah’s mention of
a “firstborn son” bears an
unmistakable connection to
Jesus as God’s Son
The Hebrew word bekor was translated in the Septuagint
as prototokos, the same
term used for Jesus in Colossians 1:15:
“He is the
image of the invisible God,
the firstborn [prototokos]
of all creation.”
And, of course, there is John 3:16, which includes a reference to
Jesus as God’s
“one and only Son.”
Jesus has been “pierced,” but there will still be a future time
when all of Jerusalem will see Him and
mourn their ill treatment of Him.
At that time, they will cry out to God for mercy, and
He will answer them by saving them from their enemies:
“On that day the LORD will shield those who live in Jerusalem. . . .
I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem”
(Zechariah 12:8-9).
These events will occur
at the
end of the tribulation period at
Christ’s second coming.
In summary, Zechariah 12:10
predicts the piercing of the Son of God,
the Messiah,
fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus Christ
when He died
on the cross and was
pierced by a spear in His side
(John 19:36–37).
The complete fulfillment of this verse
awaits the last days
when the Jewish people
will plead for mercy from
the
One they have pierced.
0 CommentsOx Goad Tool6/14/2023
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An
ox goad is a wooden tool,
approximately eight feet long, fitted with an
iron spike or point at one end, which was used to
spurn-oxen
as they pulled a plow or cart
It often had an iron scraper at the non-pointed end to
clear clods of earth from the plowshare
when it became weighed down.
The ox goad
is mentioned only once by that name in the Bible,
in Judges 3:31. Shamgar, one of those who judged Israel,
killed 600 hundred Philistines using only an
ox goad for a weapon
Shamgar’s use of an ox goad
shows how
low the men of Judah
had been brought at that time
by their
oppressors.
Later, Israel was disarmed to the extent that
“not a shield or spear was seen among
forty thousand
in Israel”
(Judges 5:8).
Ecclesiastes 12:11 refers to a goad,
which is synonymous with an ox goad:
“The words of the wise are like goads,
and like nails firmly fixed
are the collected sayings; they are
given by
One Shepherd.”
In this verse, a comparison
is made between
The Word of God,
its
doctrines,
and its effects upon the heart of man and an
ox goad
that pricks, drives, and directs sinners like
oxen.
The Shepherd
uses
The Word
to prick our consciences,
drive us to repentance, and direct
us to
Christ for salvation
When an ox
was poked with a goad,
its response was sometimes to kick
out at it in resistance. Naturally,
kicking back at the
goad was futile,
not to mention painful.
Jesus used this as an analogy
when He
confronted Saul
on the
Damascus Road (Acts 26:14).
Jesus asked Saul why he was
persecuting Him
and reminded him that,
just as
an ox that kicks against the
pricking of the goad
can hurt itself,
Saul’s continued resistance
To the gospel
would only result in danger to himself.
Saul wisely submitted
to the
goad and yielded himself
to Christ.
The story of Uzzah and the
Ark of the Covenant
is found in 2 Samuel 6:1-7 and 1 Chronicles 13:9-12.
As the ark was being transported, the
oxen pulling the cart stumbled,
and a man named Uzzah took hold of the ark. God’s anger
burned against Uzzah
and He struck him down and
he died.
Uzzah’s punishment does appear to be extreme
for what we might consider to be a good deed.
However, there are the
reasons why
God took such severe action.
First,
God had given
Moses and Aaron specific instructions
about the Tent of Meeting
and the
movement of
the
Ark of the Covenant.
"After Aaron and his sons have
finished covering the
holy furnishings and all the
holy articles,
and when the camp is ready to move,
the Kohathites
are to come to do the carrying.
But they
must not touch
the
holy things
or
they will die.
The Kohathites are to carry those things that are in
the Tent of Meeting” (Numbers 4:15).
No matter how innocently it was done,
touching the ark was in
direct violation of God’s law and was to
result in death.
This was a means of preserving
the sense
of God’s holiness
and the fear
of drawing near to Him
without appropriate
preparation.
Notice how David took men with him to collect the ark,
rather than allowing the Levites to bring it to him.
That was a great mistake,
since it ought never to have been
put upon a cart, old or new.
It was to be borne upon men’s shoulders, and carried by Levites only,
and those of the family of Kohath (Exodus 25:12-14; Numbers 7:9),
using the poles prescribed.
Failing to
follow God’s precise instructions would
be seen as
(a) not revering
God’s words when He spoke them through
those such as
Moses, whom He had appointed;
(b) having an independent attitude that might
border on rebellion, i.e.,
seeing and acting on things from a worldly,
rather than a
spiritual, perspective; or
(c) disobedience.
Second, the ark had stayed for a period of time at Abinadab’s house
(2 Samuel 6:3), where his sons, Uzzah and Ahio,
may well have become accustomed to its presence.
There’s an old saying,
“familiarity breeds contempt,” that could apply in this case.
Uzzah, having been
around The ark
in his own home, could very likely forget the
holiness that it represented.
There are times when we, too, fail to recognize
the
holiness of God,
becoming too familiar with Him
with an irreverent attitude.
Third,
the account tells us
the
oxen stumbled
The cart didn’t fall and neither
did the Ark,
just as the boat carrying Jesus and the disciples
rocked fiercely in the storm,
though it wasn’t necessarily in danger of sinking
(Matthew 8:24-27).
And yet, just as with the disciples
who failed to put their
faith
in their Master,
Uzzah, for a moment, felt it was his responsibility
to save the integrity of God,
and that our
almighty God
somehow needed Uzzah’s assistance.
He presumed that, without his intervention,
God’s presence
would be dealt a blow.
As Job asks,
“Can you fathom the mysteries of God?
” (Job 11:7). “
His greatness no one can fathom” (Psalm 145:3).
“His understanding no one can fathom”
(Isaiah 40:28).
Moses lost his right to enter the
promised land
because
he felt his intervention was needed when he
struck the rock,
instead of
speaking to it
as God had commanded
(Numbers 20:7-12).
We need to listen carefully to what
God has to say to us,
and in obedience strive to do
all He commands.
Yes, God is loving and merciful,
but He is also holy
and He defends His holiness with His power,
and affronts to His holiness
sometimes bring about His holy wrath.
“It is a dreadful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God”
(Hebrews 10:31).
Something of
God’s presence in the Ark of the Covenant
seems to be lost in the church today.
In the time of Moses,
the people knew the awesomeness of
God’s absolute
holiness
They had
witnessed great miracles
when
The Ark
was with them.
They respected that
God’s ways
and
thoughts are much higher than ours
(Isaiah 55:8-9).
In truth,
the more we try to
bring God
down
to our worldly way of
thinking or reasoning,
the further
away He will seem to us.
Those who
would draw near to God
and have Him draw
near to them
are
those who approach Him in
reverence
and holy fear.
Uzzah forgot that lesson, and
the consequences were
tragic.
The Bible teaches
the importance and appropriateness
of churches
providing financial support
to Christian ministers who
admirably serve their congregations.
In 1 Timothy 5:18, the apostle Paul cites
two passages to back up his claim that
church bodies
must
honor and care
for
hard-working pastors
to
prevent them from
becoming
overworked
and
underpaid!
The first is “
Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain”
The second is “
The laborer is worthy of his hire”
In the first instance, Paul cites Deuteronomy 25:4.
He reasons
that, if
God in His law expressed concern
for
hard-working animals
to be
fed and cared for,
church members ought to
show
proper consideration
for their
pastors, teachers,
and
spiritual leaders,
supplying
them with a decent wage.
It’s
good to feed the cow;
Its better to FEED
Your Pastor
Paul’s second reference, “
The laborer is worthy of his hire”
or
“The laborer
deserves his wages” is most likely
a
recitation of Christ’s words: For the
laborer
deserves his wages”
(Luke 10:7, ESV)
. Jesus said this to His disciples when
He sent them ahead of Him
as “laborers into his harvest”
(Luke 10:2, ESV),
encouraging them to
accept hospitality and food
from people who
would receive them
(Luke 10:7–8). Significantly, 1 Timothy 5:18
calls the
Gospel
of
Luke “
Scripture.”
In 1 Timothy 5:17, Paul explains further: “
The elders who
direct the affairs of the church well
are worthy of double
honor,
especially those whose work
is
preaching and teaching.”
A study of the term double honor
reveals that it refers to
both
respect and remuneration.
The phrase emphasizes generosity.
Paul expects the church
to provide
reasonable pay for a job well done,
and
failure to do so indicates a
shortage
of
respect and honor
for
one’s
spiritual leaders
In the Old Testament,
the priests and Levites
who
ministered in worship were
supported by the
community of believers so that they “
could
devote themselves
to the
Law of the LORD”
(2 Chronicles 31:4; cf. 1 Corinthians 9:13).
Thus, it stands to reason in the New Testament church
that those who
devote their lives to the
work of the gospel
should likewise
be supported by
the
congregations they serve.
To the church in Galatia, Paul wrote, “
Those who are
taught
the
word of God
should
provide for their teachers,
sharing all good things
with them”
(Galatians 6:6, NLT).
He informed the believers in Corinth,
“In the same way,
the
Lord ordered that
those who preach the
Good News
should be supported
by
those who benefit from it”
(1 Corinthians 9:14, NLT).
It’s true that Paul earned his own living,
supporting his ministry work through tentmaking
Acts 18:3; 1 Corinthians 9:3–18; 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:8).
But Paul explained in detail
that his case
was an exception for a
particular purpose
(1 Corinthians 9:4–27).
It’s interesting to note that neither of
Paul’s scriptural parallels is particularly
complimentary.
He first compares Christian ministers to
oxen, beasts of burden.
Second, he likens them to farmhands.
Paul’s illustrations are
appropriately chosen,
not to demean
but to stress that
The gospel ministry
is
hard work
Those who serve well
deserve
to be honored, appreciated,
and
paid a fair wage.
Just as it is right for
farmers to feed
their livestock
and
employers to pay
laborers worthy
of their hire,
it is proper and essential
for the local church to
provide adequate financial support
to its
dedicated
Christian ministers
The apostle Paul says, “
Don’t come to The Table
unless you
examine yourself.
You don’t want to
partake in an unworthy way
and bring upon
yourself the chastening of God.”
This is a very serious occasion in the life of the church.
And while it is a time of celebration and
remembrance
of
The death of Christ,
it is also
a time of confrontation
as we look at the
reality of sin
Here we remember the cross,
but here we remember
the cross
where Jesus was executed
by
the purpose of God for our
sins
If you’ve been with us in our
study of Luke,
you certainly
are very much aware of
the wonder
and the glory and the holy perfection
of Jesus
as He’s living out His life
in this world.
And you are also increasingly
aware
of the impact that
sin had upon
His life and ministry.
As we saw at the
very outset when
Jesus was born,
there was an effort made by Herod
to exterminate all
the babies and thus to kill,
and the
Messiah, Son of God,
Himself.
As He began His ministry, there was from the very outset animosity and hated and it mounts and escalates as the years go by. And now as there are only a few months left in our study of Luke’s gospel, a few months before the cross, there will be a very perceivable increase in the rejection of the Son of God.
We have seen that already. We’ve seen the growing apathy among the people. We’ve seen the enlarging rejection of those who hate the diagnosis that Jesus brought when He cast them all as sinners separated from God, in spite of their religious conduct. We are beginning now to experience the rising hatred of the Jewish leaders, resentment over Jesus’ message, anger over His influence, and the scene will become more ominous and more tragic as the chapters go by in the final months of His life. We will experience His arrest, His mocked trials, His betrayal by Judas, one of His own apostles. We will be there when Peter denies Him. We will be there when the apostles abandon Him at the crucial moment. We will be there at the Last Supper when the apostles’ proud self-interest demonstrates itself again with utter indifference to His coming horror as they argue for the umpteenth time about their own prominence in His kingdom.
The story is accumulating sadness; it’s accumulating pathos and sorrow. And Jesus, when He goes into the garden seems to have reached a pinnacle of sadness. If ever He was a man of sorrows, it was there when He was sweating great drops of blood under the immense pressure of temptation by Satan to avoid the cross. So severe was that satanic assault that the capillaries burst and blood began to pour out of His pours. And we remember as well that while He is suffering like that, He asks His own to come and pray with Him but they can’t keep themselves awake. And so, they fall asleep and He is in this vigil by Himself, going through a struggle which He endured in holy perfection but to which those who were nearest and dearest to Him abandoned Him.
And then we’re going to be there when He feels the worst pain of all, the pain of separation from His Father and cries out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Isaiah was right, He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and the longer He lives the more acquainted He becomes with it and the sadder His life becomes. We feel His loneliness. We feel His loneliness as the people reject Him, the leaders reject Him. We feel the – the loneliness as His own apostles reject Him and that inexplicable, incomprehensible loneliness when the Father forsook Him.
I say all of that just to kind of take you to a point and the point is this. Every bit of His sorrow was related to sin. The sin that was around Him, the sin that He had to bear on the cross. It all was related to sin, their sin, your sin, my sin. Sin brought all His pain, all of it. The sinless one living in the pristine purity of heaven enters this sinful world and feels the power of sin all around Him. And that is why you – you have the story of Christ. That is why He goes to the cross in order in the end to pay the penalty for all the sins of all who would ever believe.
And so, we come to this table and it is a table of remembrance, and we remember the cross and we do with gratitude and joy. It is a table of celebration because we know that by His sacrifice we have been set free from the penalty of sin, the power of sin and someday even the presence of sin. But as we come to this table, we certainly need to direct our thoughts toward sin itself. It was sin that caused all His sorrow, all His suffering, all His pain and even His death. One cannot come to the Lord’s table as God would have you come and not take a look at sin. That’s why Paul says, “Don’t come in an unworthy manner. Examine yourself and deal with your sin.”
I’ve been thinking lately as we’ve been watching the scandal of the Roman Catholic priesthood unfold, which is certainly nothing new. You can go back to the 1600s and the time of Martin Luther and find Popes and priests and others guilty of pedophilia. But I go back to the fact that the – the primary function of a Roman Catholic priest is to take his people to Christ in his death through the Mass.
And while it is a perverted and aberrant remembrance of the cross, infused with all kinds of things that are not true, it is nonetheless in the mind of the priest his responsibility in the Mass to take people back to the cross and to engage them with Christ at His cross. It is inconceivable to me that a priest could do that who was a homosexual or a pedophile or who was engaged in any other kind of iniquity, to come to this table. It’s serious enough without perverting the table and then yourself being perverted as you intend to bring others to it. Those who do that, I would say, are in danger of the hottest hell because this is the most sacred event in the life of the church. To pervert this is the highpoint of mockery.
And then we have been reading about the Anglican church, interested now and already committed to ordaining the bishop who is an open homosexual. And one of the people who were being – who was being interviewed by the media said, “He has as much right to lead his congregation in communion as anybody else.” How you could even come to the table of the Lord, how you could lead other people to the table of the Lord while advocating openly the very iniquities that put Jesus Christ there, and at the same time that you’re celebrating His death you’re celebrating those very sins is inconceivable to me. And may I hasten to add, these are not ministers of Christ. These are ministers of Satan who do this.
This is not the church of Jesus Christ, this is the church of Satan. And such who do this would be the most damned of all apostates. If ever one must calculate the reality of sin, it is when you come to the Lord’s table. I think it would be impossible to imagine the horror of the sins of those who belong to Satan and come to the Lord’s table. Eternity will define the heinousness of that crime. But those of us who are true Christians in the true church must take seriously our own coming to this table.
Would we be content to take our pleasure in the very thing that brought our beloved Savior all His suffering and pain? Will we live to cherish what He died to conquer? If ever, I say to you, if ever in your spiritual experience as a Christian, if ever you have an obligation to deal with your sin, it is when you come to this table. It is right here. Lest we perpetrate a monstrous hypocrisy and turn this into a meaningless ritual and bring down God’s chastening on our own heads. It’s crucial we think about the matter of sin with regard to our own lives.
I’ve been reading a book, very, very interesting historical book on the people who translated the original King James Bible. They started under the authority of James I in England in 1603 and completed it and it was printed in 1611. During those eight years there were 54 men who were assigned the responsibility to produce the King James Bible, as it’s called, the Authorized Version. They were divided down into groups and there were a number of groups, each of which had a leader over it, and about a dozen people in the group who worked on a certain section of the Bible.
One of the most fascinating individuals that probably is unknown to us, as most of them are, was a man named Lancelot Andrews. Lancelot Andrews had the responsibility to oversee one area and it was one of the really shining lights in the – the group of people that did that work. And it is said of Lancelot Andrews, not by his own confession but by all who knew him, it is the universal testimony that Lancelot Andrews spent five hours a day in prayer. He began his day with five hours of prayer and that the only subject of those five hours of prayer was his own sinfulness.
He spent five hours a day before God dealing with his own sinfulness. That is absolutely unimaginable to anybody today. Five minutes would seem to most people more than adequate. Five hours – and I have read his prayers – pouring out the deepest sense of unworthiness before God. And he was the best of men. To get beyond being superficial is difficult in our superficial surfeited culture. But we need to take a good look, an honest look at where sin really functions, and that is on the inside.
Turn to James chapter 1, James chapter 1. We tend to think of sin on the outside, as conduct, what we say, what we do. We tend to think of it even as coming at us from outside of us. But I want you to get this simple understanding, James 1 verse 14, “Each one is tempted when he is carried away,” – that is to say he’s lost control, he’s swept away – “and enticed by his own lust.” The problem is not outside of us, the problem is in us. The world certainly is a beachhead to temptation. Satan certainly an agent that by his machinations in the fallen world induces us to sin. But the real issue is not outside of us, it’s not Satan and it’s not the world, it’s in us, it’s our own lust. And here’s how sin works. Lust “conceives,” – verse 15 – “and it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” Sin is planted in the heart. It grows there before it ever produces visible fruit on the outside.
That’s what he’s saying. If you’re going to deal with sin, it’s not just as simple as running a real fast inventory over whether you’ve committed any major sins in the last few days or the last few weeks, or whether you’ve failed to do a few things you should have done. It’s coming to grips of what’s on the inside. Hebrews 12:1 speaks of sin, this is a great phrase, “The sin that so easily entangles us.” The sin that so easily entangles us. And what the writer of Hebrews is saying is that it’s – it’s like a tumor wrapped around everything inside of us. It’s tangled up in everything. It’s in our fallen nature. Everything about us that is human is tangled with sin.
Let me see if I can’t explain what that really involves.
Sin has, to put it another way, great power in us.
It is not weak, even though we are in Christ.
It is very powerful, it is strong, it is resident.
It influences our thoughts.
It influences our attitudes. It influences our emotion.
It influences our will. It influences our affection.
And there is no human part of us that is
not polluted by it.
Jesus said,
“It’s not what goes into a person
that defiles him, it’s what comes out.”
Galatians 5, Paul says
Its the flesh lusting and warring against
The Spirit
Romans 7 Paul says
it’s this warfare that goes on on the inside,
that which God has created in us loves His law,
but there’s something else in us that fights against it and
makes us do what we don’t
want to do and not do what we ought to do.
Sin is not outside of us,
it is very near, it is very close.
It is so close it couldn’t be any closer.
It is woven into the very fabric of our humanness.
It is not waiting to attack us on the outside.
It is on the inside.
It does not separate itself. Sin is not some category in your life. Sin is not something in there somewhere; it is tangled with everything else.
It is tangled with our thoughts
and our motives
and our desires and our actions.
Everything we think, everything we feel, everything we do is tangled with sin. It should never be underestimated, never.
It steals all that is
right and holy and pure
and good, precious.
It tampers
with joy and peace,
it attacks love, it limits usefulness.
It hinders fruitfulness,
it interrupts prayer, it devastates fellowship.
All our best thoughts and best motives, our best desires,
our best actions
have sin tangled 16:30 with them.
And this might surprise you.
We – we have come to believe in this world that there is evil. I think most people in the United States believe there’s evil in the world. If nothing else, they believe there’s evil in the world coming from Al‑Qaeda and other people like mass murderers and criminals and terrorists and whatever. And some would believe there’s some evil somewhere in the world because of natural disasters and calamities and disease and death. That – that’s sort of the definition of evil in the world is when bad things happen. But – but we are good people so the evil in the world is the bad that happens to good people.
Let me just say something to you as simply as I can say it. We have defined calamity as the worst evil, disaster as the worst evil, catastrophe as the worst evil, illness as the worst evil, some level of human misery as the worst evil, and that is wrong. There is more evil in the least sin than there is in the worst calamity. There’s more evil before God in the least sin that spiritually rebels against Him than the worst physical calamity, the worst natural disaster.
Sin is the worst thing. We can’t buy into the world’s definition that you have a lot of good people running around who are suffering some external evil that hits them when they least expect it from the outside. Calamity is not necessarily evil. It is the result of sin but it may well be the act of a righteous God, right? And He doesn’t do evil. But this we know, sin is always sin. Sin is always sin. There is more evil in the least sin than the worst calamity. What happens to people physically isn’t the issue, it’s what happens to people spiritually.
And I know you can get very exercised about a terrorist attack. Would to God that you could get more exercised about a sin in your own heart which is far worse. You may be affected because you’re inconvenienced by a terrorist attack, you may be affected some way economically, you may be affected in some way physically, but calamity is not nearly as evil as sin. And before we get too exercised about what’s wrong in the world, we start getting exercised about what’s wrong in us. I hear so many Christians all upset about what’s wrong in the world. “What are we going to do about the way the world is going?”
Well, let’s just stop for a minute and ask the question:
what am I going to do about me and the way I’m going?
The only way you’ll ever be able to deal with sin, the only way, is to defeat it on the inside because that’s where it conceives. You have to deal with it on the inside. You have to fight sin at the very point of its first call to disobey. And that’s in the heart. At the very first impulses of evil pleasure, you have to deal with sin in your thought life, you have to be able to say with the apostle Paul, as he did in 2 Corinthians 1:12, “I check my own heart and I will tell you this, my conscience is clear that I have conducted myself in holiness and godly sincerity in the world and before you.”
That’s what you want to be able to say.
My heart is clean.
That’s hard because we become very skilled at hiding sin on the inside. We become so skilled at it that people might not see it at all and that we might think it’s not as bad as it is because it doesn’t ever get exposed. We’re like Adam and Eve, you know, who immediately upon their sin sewed coverings. They – they did what we do, we have this secret life of sin and we cover it. But this is deadly stuff because, eventually, it’s going to show up.
By energizing the inner faculties, by energizing your mind, your emotion, your will, your affection, your memory and your imagination,
sin works directly, not indirectly, on your soul to corrupt it.
And sin is inside laying the tracks for the train of iniquity that’s going to eventually come out of the tunnel. You will not always be able to hide what’s on the inside. “Be sure your sins will” – what? – “will find you out.” Sometimes you hear somebody say, “Well, so-and-so pastor, or so-and-so person in the Lord’s work, or so-and-so Christian fell into adultery.”
May I tell you something? People don’t fall into sin. They plan it.
There’s a
heart-shaping process
that’s been going on a long time before it ever gets to that.
All sin is incubated. To sin in the mind, to excuse yourself for doing that is to cultivate the future course of your life because you can’t keep the lid on it.
Not only that,
to sin in your mind is to desecrate the
holiest
sanctuary of the Spirit.
In the Old Testament God had a
temple for His people.
In the New Testament He has a
people for His temple.
You’re His temple.
This is the holiest sanctuary
that exists
He doesn’t live in a temple made with hands.
You might come to church and you look good, you clean up nice.
And you get your Bible and you sing the hymns and it could
be nothing but worship on the outside and
you are like a Pharisee of whom Jesus said,
“They’re white on the outside
and they are
full of dead men’s bones
on the inside.”
They’re literally whitewashed tombs.
The purest and noblest
worship
should go on in your heart.
Your heart is a solo sanctuary.
It’s a
one-person temple
where you go alone to worship
God and Christ
To worship on the outside only is hypocrisy. And as I said in the prayer earlier, we come from our own personal private worship to the joy of this collective worship which is merely a – an extension and an expansion of what goes on in the heart, not a substitute for it. Luke 16:15says, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men,” – you’re really concerned to look righteous before people – “but God knows your hearts; and that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God”
I remember a number of years ago I was at an event on the east coast and that song that Kory sung had been made popular by a singer. And in this event, he sang that song, “In Christ alone do I glory.” And it’s a tremendous tribute to Christ. And it was – it was highly esteemed among men. It was the – it was the song of that day, of that time. And I sat there and heard it sung magnificently. And afterwards, was told that this person who had sung that was living in an adulterous relationship, had forsaken his wife, and the rest of the saga is one horrific tragedy.
And while people were being moved
by this verbal testimony,
what was highly esteemed among men
was detestable in the sight of God.
That’s because the heart wasn’t
pure
So when you come here to worship, this isn’t – this isn’t your worship time, this is simply the collective expression of a worshiping heart. You don’t want to violate your own sanctuary.
Don’t get comfortable
with
private secret sins
because
God knows your hearts
and
He detests sin in the heart.
So Proverbs 4:23
says, “
Guard your heart,
with all diligence,
for from it
flow the springs of life,”
right?
Everything comes up from
inside.
Nothing damages your conscience more than sins of thought. And nothing is more able to – to attack than sins of thought, anytime, anyplace, anyhow, sins of thought can be cultivated. And the habit is easily established and it colors the soul black and damages character. If you lose the battle inside, you’ll lose the battle on the outside. It’s only a question of time. Sins on the inside not only work to the corruption of your soul, but they work to the silencing of your conscience so that your conscience can no longer function as a guardian because you’ve silenced it so successfully. Proverbs 23 says, “As he thinks within himself, so he is.” Proverbs 27:19 says,
“As in water, face reflects face
so the
heart reflects man.”
And what I’m saying is, if you’re going to come to the Lord’s table and deal with sin, it’s not a five-minute inventory. It’s got to be a good look at your own heart. And while you don’t necessarily have the time, nor is this the place for you to run the whole inventory on your heart, it’s a time for you to confess and repent and forsake the sins of your heart. You can do so in general as you come to the table today.
I want to just illustrate this. Turn back into the Old Testament to Job. I’ll leave the rest of what I was going to say for another time. But back in the book of Job, Job was hit with incalculable trouble. I mean, as much trouble as you could possibly have, he had, and more. All his children were killed. Everything he owned was gone. His health was taken away. He lived in sorrow and terrible physical miseries, scraping oozing boils off himself that broke in pieces of pottery, sitting in a pile of dirt, lost everything and he was the wealthiest of the wealthy, the most blessed. And when his friends came along, they looked at him and they jumped to the conclusion that he must be sinful. He must be sinful because all of this calamity from God must indicate how angry God is with him. They didn’t see any sin in his life that they could identify, so they accused him of the secret sin.
And in chapter 20 verse 12 there’s an interesting way in which its described. Verse 12 and 13 of chapter 20 of Job, listen to how Zophar describes Job’s sin. Verse 12, “Evil is sweet in his mouth, and he hides it under his tongue. He desires it and will not let it go but holds it in his mouth.” This is very vivid language. It’s like getting a really good piece of hard candy that’s really sweet, flavorful and you just roll it around in your mouth. You don’t let anybody see it, like your kids, you know, when they get into the candy and they come in the room and they’re like this. They don’t want you to know it’s there, but they are savoring every little bit of this. That’s Job. He’s got these secret sins. They’re down there. They’re hidden under his tongue and he’s rolling them around in his mouth. He’s enjoying and savoring all these things but he never lets them out so you never know it’s there. He just holds it in his mouth.
Now they understood that. That’s what sinners do, they hide it. They roll it around on their tongue but you never know it’s there. By the way, Zophar was wrong. He was wrong. He understood that as anybody would, but he was wrong. Job 31, after more and more and more speeches that indict him – the whole book is full of them – they keep telling Job how bad he is. But finally he says this in chapter 31. Look, “I’ve made a covenant with my eyes, how then could I gaze at a virgin?” The assumption is, you know, he’s got adultery in his heart, he’s got lust in his heart. And Job says, “No I don’t, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look at the kind of thing that’s going to bring that temptation.” I haven’t done that.
And then in verse 5 he starts a series of questions. “If I’ve walked with falsehood and my foot has hastened after deceit, then let Him weigh me with accurate scales.” I mean, if there’s something in me that isn’t right, let God do whatever He wants to do to me, let Him weight me and judge me. Boy, I mean, you’ve got to be pretty bold to say that, right? “Okay, God, if there’s anything in my heart, anything hidden, anything secret, anything in my imagination, in my memory bank, anything in my mind, my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, my affections that doesn’t please You, then weigh me and let God know my integrity.” He doesn’t hesitate to stand before God and say, “Do a full examination and you’ll know my heart.”
Verse 9 he adds – well, verse 7, “If my step has turned from the way or my heart followed my eyes, if any spot has stuck to my hands,” – verse 9 – “if my heart has been enticed by a woman,” – and verse 13 – “if I’ve despised the claim of a male or female servant,” – verse 16 – “if I’ve kept the poor from their desire,” – verse 19 – “if I’ve seen somebody perish because they had no clothing, if I’ve lifted up my hand against the orphan,” – verse 21 – “if I’ve put my confidence in gold,” – verse 24 – “if I’ve gloated over my wealth,” – verse 25, so it goes.
Verse 33, “Have I covered my transgressions like Adam?” Did I cover myself like he did? “Am I hiding my iniquity in my chest? Because” – verse 34 – “I fear the multitude of people and because I’m frightened by the contempt of families who will see it? And so, am I keeping silent and never going outside because I don’t want anybody to see my sin?” No. Verse 35, he says, “Oh that I had one to hear me.” Who? “Here’s my signature;” – I sign off – “let the Almighty answer me.” I’m sick of you guys. I’m so tired of your assessment, let God hear me.
Something wonderful about that, isn’t there? I commit myself to God. You do the examination. That’s a communion attitude. “I’m coming to Your table. And if there’s anything there, I don’t know if I see anything, if I do I confess it and repent and forsake it. But if You see anything, weigh me because I’m – I’m not – I’m not open to those around me who are assuming something in me that they can never see.” This is real integrity. This is how you deal with the sin in your heart, you expose yourself unhesitatingly to God.
You know, Job not only was that way in his own heart, but he felt that for his children. Go back to chapter 1 verse 5. He had a lot of sons and daughters and – seven of them, seven sons and three daughters. Ten children, a lot of responsibility as a father. And what was he concerned about with his kids? Was he concerned about their overt sin? Well, he was a very righteous man. He “was blameless, upright, fearing God,” – verse 1 – “turning away from evil.” This is a good – this is the best of men. Now what is a godly father concerned about with his children? A blameless, upright, God-fearing, evil-shunning man, as verse 1 of chapter 1 says. What is he concerned about with his children? Well probably – probably they’re not going to be prone to sin in his presence because they know the kind of man he is. So are they going to hide things? And he’s going to be concerned not so much about what they do, because he’s going to send this sort of righteous veil over his whole family that they’re all going to be shrouded in and there’s a certain standard of conduct required.
But what concerns him is not what’s going on on the outside – he knows they’re going to control that – but what’s going on on the inside. Go down to verse 5, this is most interesting. “When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them,” his children. How did he consecrate his children? Set them apart to God? “He’d rise up early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.” For each child! He had a lot of animals and he’s sacrifice an animal for each child. And what was he doing? He says, I’m doing this because “perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God” – where? – “in their hearts.”
Parents, you better look beyond what you see on the outside. You know how good you are at hiding sin and your children come by it naturally. And the end of verse 5 says he did it continually, he did it all the time. Coming before God with an offering for each of his children for the sins that nobody knew they committed except God.
If you’re going to deal with sin, the very sin that brought the sorrow to the heart of Jesus, the very sin that put Him on the cross, the very sin that separated Him from His Father, the very sin for which He died; if you’re going to deal with that, you’re going to have to deal with your heart. You’re going to have to deal with your thought life. And when you come to this table, that’s when you need to deal with it. Don’t mock the table of the Lord. Don’t cherish the very thing which took the life of Jesus, which brought Him so much pain, so much sorrow, so much suffering and separation, even from His own Father for your sake.
Father, as we now come to this table, we have been prepared in mind and heart by Your truth. And we ask that You would make us penitent and desirous to forsake all the desires of the mind, all the sins of memory and imagination, all the sins of emotion and lust and desire, whatever they might be, that You would wash us from all of that so that we partake in a worthy manner, which is another way of saying so that we open ourselves up for Your greatest blessing possible. Perhaps in some cases, blessings we’ve never experienced because we’ve never really dealt with the sin on the inside. Oh Lord, do that cleansing even now. Amen.
0 CommentsPerfecter6/13/2023
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Hebrews 12:2
says that we should be
“fixing our eyes on
Jesus,
the pioneer and perfecter
of faith.
For the joy set before him
he endured
the cross, scorning its shame, and
sat down at the
right hand
of the throne of God.”
In Hebrews 11, the writer goes through a long list
of faithful examples
that the readers of the letter would do well to follow.
He begins chapter 12 with this: “
Therefore,
since we are surrounded
by
such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off
everything that hinders and
the sin that
so easily entangles.
And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
So believers are pictured as being in a race.
They can look at the examples that have gone before them.
The people in Hebrews 11 are
the “cloud of witnesses” mentioned in Hebrews 12:1.
In order to
“run”
effectively, believers need to
get rid of sin
and other entanglements.
People who are serious about running races do not carry extra baggage--
you have never seen an Olympic runner
carrying a suitcase or talking on a cell phone during the race.
Everything that is not absolutely essential is left behind.
And to win the race, the runner must finish.
The athlete must
not give up before finishing.
Perseverance is required.
The author of Hebrews then calls believers to consider the
ultimate example of perseverance—Jesus.
Runners in an athletic competition cannot be distracted by peripheral objects. As runners in the race of life, we must “fix our eyes on Jesus.” As we run, we must be looking at Him in faith. He is more than our example; He is our final destination. We must run toward Him with all our might, in the promise that we will be conformed to His image.
Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is the “pioneer” of our faith. He is the one who blazed the trail. He is the one who made the way into the Holy of Holies so that the rest of us could follow into God’s presence (Hebrews 10:19–20). Jesus is also the “perfecter” of our faith—He is the one who brought it to completion. He did not just start it; He finished it. The verse goes on to explain just how He finished.
First, Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus endured the cross. There in Gethsemane, He determined to carry out the will of the Father (Matthew 26:39). He did this by focusing on the joy that was to come. He knew that He would be resurrected and restored to the place of glory that He had with the Father from the beginning (John 17:5). He looked forward with joy to the people He would save. He willingly gave His life to save His sheep (John 10:10–11).
Second, Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus scorned the shame of the cross. Crucifixion was a gruesome, tortuous death, and it included public humiliation and shame. Jesus was ridiculed as He was hanging on the cross. The sign hung above Him read “King of the Jews,” a cruel irony since it was true, but those who murdered Him did not believe it. Others on the ground mocked Him, saying,
“He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One” (Luke 23:35).
The cruel irony
is that He could only save others
by not saving Himself.
He was truly the
Messiah,
and this prevented Him from coming down off the cross.
He was the Chosen One,
and He had been chosen for the
very purpose of
dying as God’s sacrifice for sin.
It is also an irony that God would deliver Him,
but only after
He endured the cross.
Third, Hebrews 12:2 says that, after
Jesus’ death,
God raised Him from the dead, and
Jesus ascended into heaven where He
now sits at the right hand of God the Father.
This signifies Jesus’ authority (at the right hand) and the fact that His work is finished (He sat down).
This position is contrasted with
the priests at the time
who were standing and offering daily sacrifices
(Hebrews 10:11–13).
The original audience of the book of Hebrews seems to have been Jews who had professed faith in Christ but who were now facing persecution from the unbelieving Jews. They were tempted to turn back, to renounce Christ and to go back to the temple and the sacrificial system. Believers who read the book of Hebrews today are faced with a similar temptation: the world and what we have left behind are always calling to us, wanting us to go back—if not to permanently return, at least to go back for visits as often as possible. But we are running a race. There is no time to backtrack or dillydally. The race we are running is probably more like a military-style obstacle course than a nice and neat Olympic race. There are real dangers along the way, but we must keep moving forward. We have the examples of past saints to follow, but our supreme example is Jesus Himself, the one who blazed the way, finished the race, paid for our sins, and is now seated in the place of highest honor and authority. We look to Him, not only as our example but as our source of strength.
0 CommentsPharaoh order the murder of all Israelite first born males6/13/2023
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- The new king of Egypt makes slaves of the Hebrews and orders their male children to be drowned in the Nile River.
- (1:1-22)
- A Levite woman places her son, Moses, in a basket on the Nile, where he is found by the daughter of Pharaoh and raised in Pharaoh’s house. (2:1-10)
- Moses flees to Midian after killing an Egyptian. (2:11-15)
- Moses marries the priest of Midian’s daughter, Zipporah. They have a son named Gershom. (2:16-22)
- God calls Moses from a burning bush and commissions him to free the Israelites from Egypt. (3:1-4:17)
- Moses and Aaron request permission from Pharaoh for the Israelites to celebrate a festival in the wilderness. Pharaoh refuses and makes life even harder for the Israelites. (5:1-23)
Pharaoh orders the murder of
all Israelite first born male babies
to keep his
slaves under his power
Focal Point
Anew king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
And he said to his people,
“Look, the
Israelite people are much too numerous for us.
Let us deal shrewdly with them,
so that they
may not increase;
otherwise in the event of war, they
may join our enemies
in fighting against
us and rise from the ground.”
So they set taskmasters
over them
to
oppress them
with
forced labor;
and they built
garrison cities for Pharaoh:
Pithom and Raamses.
But the more they were
oppressed,
the more they
increased and spread out,
so that
the [Egyptians] came to dread
the Israelites
. (Exodus 1:8-12)
Exodus 7:3-4 says,
“But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,
and though I multiply
my miraculous signs and wonders
in Egypt,
he will not listen to you.
Then I will lay my hand on Egypt
and with
mighty acts of judgment
I will bring out...
my people the Israelites.”
It seems unjust for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart
and then to punish Pharaoh and Egypt
for what Pharaoh decided when his heart was hardened.
Why
would God harden Pharaoh’s heart
just so He could judge
Egypt more
severely with additional
plagues?
First,
Pharaoh was not an innocent
or godly man.
He was a
brutal dictator overseeing
the terrible abuse
and oppression of the
Israelites,
who likely numbered over 1.5 million people at that time.
The Egyptian pharaohs
had enslaved
the Israelites for 400 years.
A previous pharaoh--
possibly even
the pharaoh in question--
ordered that
male Israelite babies be
killed at birth
(Exodus 1:16).
The pharaoh God
hardened was an evil man,
and the nation he ruled
agreed with,
or at least did not oppose,
his evil actions.
Second, on least a couple occasions,
Pharaoh hardened his own heart
against
letting the Israelites go:
“But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief,
he hardened his heart”
(Exodus 8:15). “
But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart”
(Exodus 8:32).
It seems that God and Pharaoh were
both active in one way
or another in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.
As the plagues continued,
God gave Pharaoh
increasingly severe warnings
of the
final judgment to come.
Pharaoh chose to bring
further judgment on himself
and his
nation
by hardening his own heart
against
God’s commands.
It could be that,
as a result
of
Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness,
God
hardened Pharaoh’s heart
even further,
allowing for the last few plagues
and bringing
God’s
Full Glory into view
(Exodus 9:12; 10:20, 27).
Pharaoh and Egypt had
brought these
judgments on themselves
with 400 years
of
slavery and mass murder
Since the wages of sin
is death
(Romans 6:23),
and
Pharaoh and Egypt
had horribly
sinned
against God,
it would have been just if
God
had completely annihilated Egypt.
Therefore, God’s
hardening Pharaoh’s heart
was not unjust,
and
His bringing additional plagues
against Egypt
was not unjust.
The plagues,
as terrible as they were,
actually
demonstrate God’s mercy
in not
completely destroying
Egypt,
which would have been a
perfectly just penalty.
Romans 9:17-18 declares, “
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh:
‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display
my power in you and
that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’
Therefore God has mercy
on whom
He wants to have mercy,
and
He hardens
whom
He wants to harden.”
From a human perspective,
it seems wrong for God to harden a person
and then punish
the person He has hardened.
Biblically speaking, however, we have
all sinned against
God
(Romans 3:23),
and the just penalty
for
that sin is death
(Romans 6:23).
Therefore, God’s hardening and punishing a
person is not unjust;
it is actually merciful
in comparison to
what
the person deserves.
In Exodus 11:5–6, God declared through Moses,
“Every firstborn son in Egypt will die,
from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne,
to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill,
and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.
There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.” This dire prophecy was fulfilled in Exodus 12:29–30, “At midnight the Lordstruck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.”
This plague on the firstborn sons of Egypt
was the tenth
and final plague God sent on
the nation of Egypt,
and it was the one that finally ended
the brutal 400-year
enslavement of the people of Israel.
The other plagues were terrible (see Exodus chapters 7—10),
but the tenth plague was particularly harsh.
How was it just for God to cause the death
of all the firstborn sons of Egypt?
There are at least two primary things to remember.
First, God gave
Pharaoh and the Egyptians
nine warnings,
in the form of nine plagues, before He sent the plague that
caused the death of the firstborn.
With each plague, the Egyptians
had an opportunity
to repent and release
the
Israelites from slavery.
Every time, the Egyptians
refused.
Three times Pharaoh said that he would
let the Israelites go,
only to change
his mind once God ended a plague
(Exodus 8:15; 9:35; 10:20).
Further, God gave Pharaoh advance warning
that all of the firstborn sons
of Egypt would die in Exodus 11:4–8.
Even after that
direct warning and all the other
plagues,
Pharaoh still would
not release
the
Israelites from slavery.
Second, Pharaoh and the Egyptians brought
this plague on
themselves by their own actions.
Exodus 1:22records a grim edict from the king of Egypt: “
Then Pharaoh gave
this
order to all his people:
‘Every Hebrew boy that is born
you must throw
into the Nile, but let every girl live.’”
That command was given prior to Moses’ birth.
Eighty years later,
Moses came
to
Pharaoh and asked for him
to release the
Israelites from slavery.
There is no indication that the murdering of
Hebrew boys ever ceased.
How many thousands of Israelite sons had been
murdered by the Egyptians?
How many Israelite men and women had been
murdered in 400 years of
slavery
in Egypt?
In a way, the tenth plague and the death of the firstborn
in Egypt was poetic
justice
for the targeting
of
Hebrew boys for
slaughter.
There is no denying that the tenth plague causing the
death of the firstborn of Egypt was severe.
But, with 400 years
of slavery
and countless Israelites
murdered by Egyptians,
whether as adults or as infants, the
Egyptians brought
God’s
brutal judgment on
themselves.
God had promised Abraham, “
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses
you
I will curse”
Genesis 12:3
The Egyptians, in choosing
to curse
Abraham’s children,
brought a curse upon themselves.
0 CommentsIdols Lead to Destruction6/13/2023
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Judges 17 and 18
record the story of a man named
Micah
who built a shrine
and worshiped
human-made idols
(This man should not to be confused with the prophet Micah.)
Obviously, what
Micah did was
wrong
The author of the Book of Judges includes the story
in order
To teach us some lessons
First, it is clear
That worshiping
Idols stands in Opposition to
God’s
commands
The first of the Ten Commandments reads,
“You shall have no other gods
before me”
(Exodus 20:3)
Second,
external religious actions are
not enough;
faith in the true God is
required.
Micah was certainly zealous.
He built a shrine,
made an ephod to use in
religious activities,
and
fashioned some household idols.
He was excited to have hired his own, personal priest:
“Now I know that the LORD will be good to me,
since this Levite has become my priest”
(Judges 17:13).
However,
Micah’s actions were not based on
The teachings
of
God’s Word.
He sought to serve God the way he wanted,
Not The Way
God had commanded.
Third,
false beliefs
lead to
wrong actions
When the people of Dan inquired concerning a place to settle,
Micah’s priest told them what they
“wanted to hear”
Go in peace.
Your journey has the LORD’s approval”
(Judges 18:6).
Yet the Danites’
journey
was a violent one that resulted
in the
destruction of a peaceful
town
Fourth,
sinful actions by one person
can have
a long-term impact
The closing verses of this account leave us with these words:
“The Danites set up for themselves the idol,
and Jonathan son of Gershom,
the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for
the tribe of Dan until the time of the
captivity of the land.
They continued to
use the idol
Micah had made,
all the time the house of God was in Shiloh”
(Judges 18:30–31).
Micah’s false gods
led to
false worship among
an entire
tribe of Israel
for
several generations
We may not think
our sinful
actions hurt others,
yet
they do.
They can even leave a
long-term
negative impact
on
entire communities
for
years to come.
The Micah of Judges 17—18 offers
an example
of how
not to worship God,
and his story illustrates
the
consequences
of
practicing religion
according to what we think is best
rather than
according to
God’s teachings
God’s Word
is given to
guide and protect us,
as well as
to
Bring Him Glory
As 2 Timothy 3:16–17teaches,
“
All Scripture is God-breathed
and is useful for
teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness,
so that the servant of God may
be thoroughly
equipped for every good work.”
Josiah
was the king of Judah
from
approximately 640 to 609 B.C.
His reign in Jerusalem
is discussed in 2 Kings 22–23 and 2 Chronicles 34–35.
Josiah was the son of
King Amon and the grandson of King Manasseh--
both of them wicked kings of Judah.
Yet Josiah was a godly king and known as one of the
world’s youngest kings;
he began his reign at age 8 after his father was assassinated.
A highlight of Josiah’s reign
was his
rediscovery
of the
Law of the Lord.
Second Kings 22:2
introduces Josiah by saying, “
And he did what
was right in the eyes of the
LORD and walked in all the way of
David his father,
and he did not turn
aside to the right or to the left.”
In the eighteenth year of his reign,
he raised money to
repair the temple,
and during the repairs the high priest Hilkiah found the
Book of the Law.
When Shapan the secretary read it to Josiah,
the king tore his clothes,
a sign of mourning and repentance
(2 Kings 22:10–11).
King Josiah
called for a time of
national repentance.
The Law was read to the people of the land,
and a covenant
made between the people and the Lord: “
The king stood by the pillar and made a
covenant before the LORD,
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