2015-10-02
Good Morning Dear Ones,
There are many reasons for us to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and supremacy over our lives. It is He Who has the power to open the Book of Life or books of death at the time we must make a final accounting of our lives before Him, the time of the Last Judgment. It is He Who remembers His covenants with us as He did in EX 2: 23-25 with the Jews who had been enslaved in Egypt. His heart can be seen is PS 86: 6-7, “In the day of my trouble I will call to You, for You will answer me.. Among the gods there is none like You, O Lord: no deeds can compare with yours.” In the course of the first five Commandments (of the Ten) God commands that we worship no other god or idol, only Him. [See EX 20: 1-6]. The remaining Commandments have to do with our behavior [see EX 20: 7-17]. God addresses the evil-minded by commanding that they change their ways and seek Him when He is near, promising to pardon them if they stop the sinful behavior they engage in [IS 55: 6-7]. There is Biblical evidence that serial sinners who are unrepentant will be forgotten [LK 12: 9 and also MT 12: 31; MK 3: 30]. Only one sin, the sin of serial unbelief against the Holy Spirit, is unforgiveable [LK 12: 10; LK 13: 3].
God’s Book of Life is mentioned in a few places in the Scriptures, most notably in EX 32: 32-33, when Moses was interceding in prayer on behalf of the Jews, and in PS 87: 6, “The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: ‘This one was born in Zion.’” I find that intriguing because of my own often-repeated prayer that good-hearted Jews who die without accepting Jesus will be given some kind of chance to do so, that God has not told us about. But I can’t say that I know this hope for sure. Is being born in Zion only the people born in Israel, or is it all Jews who have good hearts and love the Lord no matter where they are born? Does this include Jewish innocents who were slaughtered in the Holocaust? This is not for us to know until we gain eternal life. PHIL 4: 3 is part of Paul’s exhortations. “Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the rest of my fellow workers, who names are in the Book of Life.” In this situation Paul was dealing with a disagreement between two women, Euodia and Syntyche. His practice was not to take sides, but instead, to enlist the help of people closer to them to help them find a settlement to their differences. In Paul’s tactful handling of the situation he feels confident of reconciliation between them. His use of the term “yokefellows” includes both men and women, who are working with him in the cause of the Gospel as equals. Later, in the book of Revelation [events still in our future], we see the Book of Life mentioned three times: REV 3: 5, 20: 12, and 21: 27. REV 3: 5 [Christ speaking] is included in the message to the church at Ephesus, “He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in what. I will never blot out his name from the Book of Life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and His angels.” The Book of Life is a listing of the citizens of heaven. Anyone culled from this list won’t be found in heaven due to his sinning. REV 20: 12 describes the Great White Throne Judgment, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the book.” Since (14) tells us, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire…and (15) If anyone’s name was not found in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire,” we get a more rounded picture of the purpose of these listings. REV 21: 27 is in the description of the New Jerusalem. “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
During the time that Pastor Dean Nadasdy [now the president of the MN LCMS central Synod] was our senior pastor, he taught a course which supplied Scriptural evidence that the righteous dead are held in a place called Paradise and the unrighteous dead where held in a place called Hades. This waiting places filled with people who are physically dead and judged preliminarily to remain in place until the Second coming of Christ and the White Throne Judgment. At that time, those in Hades go to the lake of fire and brimstone [sulfur] called “gehenna” for eternal and conscious pain and torment from which there is no escape. This is spiritual death; they are listed in the books of the dead. Those in Paradise go to heaven for a blissful and eternal fellowship with God at His side. According to RO 8: 17, they will rule jointly with Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is spiritual life which never ends, and a description of gaining eternal life. Whether as an individual you subscribe to Pastor Nadasdy’s theories, there is no question that God will separate the sheep from the goats [see MT 25: 32] once and for all.
PRAYER: O Lord, once again we come before Your mighty throne to acknowledge You as our God, and that we seek to be Your people. We do so in reverence and in awe of You. Our heads are bowed to indicate our heart-attitude. We find our paths to righteousness difficult. There are many challenges, things that disappoint us, hurt us, cause anger in us, weaken us in illness, and leave us feeling bereft. However, we do not forget that we can turn to You at any time of day or night, any day or night of our lives. We pray to You for Your help, Your wisdom, and Your compassion. These are things that we need in order to achieve maturation spiritually and live righteously. We discern the difference between self-righteousness and righteous living. It is our understanding that the only way we can achieve living righteously is with Your help. So we ask for that today and every day. All around us others are going through the normal sufferings of our lives. We have compassion for them and pray for them. We also understand our need to uncover sins we are committing, to confess them genuinely to You, and to stop the behavior. For the sins that are harder to stop, we ask Your help and Your direction. We rely on the healing hand of the Holy Spirit to be laid on us when we are ill. We know there will be some cases where Your will is to bring a person back to Your side at that time. That person won’t be healed but will come to You. Our faith in You tells us, he will be in the best hands possible. In those times, we ask for You to comfort us in the name of Your Son. Otherwise, those we pray for who are ill will be healed by the Holy Spirit. We ask that You direct us in ways to avoid horrific confrontations with others who have wronged us. In those cases, we will look first for reconciliation and barring that, to put distance between us and those who wrong us. We understand that holding grudges never is constructive. Therefore, we will refrain from this behavior. Dearest Lord, we praise and thank You for all You do and all You are, in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: Once again, we will look into the past for lessons that help us in our present lives and to prepare for a godly future. We acknowledge that God is in control of any final outcome. God couldn’t allow the idolatry of the Jews in Isaiah and Jeremiah’s time to go unnoticed. He still loves His original “chosen people” and needed to punish them without destroying them. It was a tough but necessary call. We’ll look at the consequences the people had to suffer for things to be brought to where God would send His only begotten Son, for the sake of salvation, justification, and eternal forgiveness [see JN 3: 16; RO 3 24-25; RO 4: 3; 1 JN 1: 9]. God is like a father in disciplining His children, so that they can move forward in their understanding of His love. Consider modern children being brought up with no discipline. Ask what kind of adults will they be? What kind of parents will they be? On the other side of the coin, there are parents who over do it in disciplining their children. They too bring about dysfunctional future adults. Somewhere in the middle, with the use of consistency, loving and careful forethought, today’s parents can do a good job in raising responsible and productive adults. This isn’t easy, but it is very necessary. Going to God in prayer and listening for His direction, as well as knowing Him well through the Scriptures makes a lot of sense in this process. If we ask for it in Christ’s name, God will give us the help we need to do a good job as marital partners and as parents. In today’s climate of same sex partnerships being legalized all over our country and Canada, we must respect the law, even if we realize God never intended this. It was always His idea that one man should leave his parents and marry one woman to establish a home [GN 2: 24]. We can build each other’s faith by befriending other believers in Christ and by reaching out to seekers with the word of God, so they can know the Gospel too. Praise be to God!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2015. All Rights Reserved.
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