2015-12-18
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Last week I was called upon to discuss the watchman, found in EZK 33: 7-18. God has told Ezekiel, the prophet in exile and a leader of a group of Jews living in the Chabar River area of Babylonia, that the watchman must take responsibility if he knows a danger is coming and doesn’t warn those in his care. However, if the watchman has warned them, and a person doesn’t heed the warning, he and not the watchman must bear the responsibility for the consequences. Previously, we learned from JER 30: 1-3 that the Jews in exile would be brought back to the land their forefathers once possessed. That prophecy actually came true at the end of the first dyaspora in approximately 444 BC. That is when Cyrus the Great of Persia began releasing Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls around the city. You’ll also remember that wrongful priorities led to about 30 years delay in rebuilding the temple, with the rebuilding of the people’s homes first. Also, the priesthood had to be reformed. The point of God’s consternation is that He should have been put first.
One of the most significant prophesies of all time came in JER 31: 31-34, written by Jeremiah (c.650-582 BC). “’The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, though I was a Husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be My people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,‘ declares the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’” Every element of this prophecy is said again and again in several repetitions because of its importance [for example, JER 24: 7; EZK 11: 20; EZK 36: 28; EZK 37: 27-28; HO 2: 23; REV 21: 7]. From a historical point of view, Israel had been living (quite against God’s will) as two separate kingdoms. It was clear that it would be reunited into one nation again [EZK 37: 20-22], and such was the case after the return of the exiles in three waves (led by Ezra in 457 BC, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah in 444 BC).
I keep returning to DT 8: 3b, “…Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.” Because of the misinterpretation of God’s words that became such a bone of contention between God and His chosen people. This led to idolatry that God could no longer ignore. This was the reason for the dyasporas [scattering and loss of nationhood] in the first place. But God never stopped loving the Jews, which led Him to punishing but not exterminating His children. The Jews had become legalistic and had completely missed the true meaning of God’s teaching. God knew He had to do something to correct this. God’s heart for His people could be seen in His supply of all their needs, which still is on-going. PS 81: 10, “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” I often wish God had said, “Open wide your hearts, and I will fill them with the Holy Spirit,” because I believe that is what He means.
We already know that the law was intended to let mankind know what pleases God and what doesn’t. However, alone it can’t bring salvation, justification, and eternal forgiveness, as faith in Jesus Christ does [JN 3: 16: RO 3: 24-25; RO 4: 3; 1 JN 1: 9]. What the law did was to cause man to think about the sins, including idolatry, the sin God detests the most. So the law alone didn’t stopped sinning. Like to minds of lawyers who feed off of being in adversarial positions, the first to third century AD rabbis ballooned the original Ten Commandments up to 613! Christ alone could keep all these perfectly. No ordinary human can. (This is the Oral Torah, which is fully human-crafted and is still appended today in traditional Judaism’s Talmud, Midrash, and Mishnah). The assertion made in JER 31: 33 is familiar to us because it has been repeated in so many other places in the Scriptures. The promise of JER 31: 34 is repeated in HE 8: 12, “For I [God] will forgive their sins and remember their wickedness no more.” The consistency of God’s teaching throughout the Scriptures impresses the truth on our hearts, found in HE 13: 8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” We must consider how blessed we are that our God brought His Son, Jesus, to us, so that we could be saved by our repentance and faith in Him.
PRAYER: O Lord, sin is darkness and distance between a person and You. The greater the sin, the greater that distance we cause. We come in reverence with heads bowed before You today, to praise and thank You for giving us the law, to let us know what pleases You and what doesn’t, and our Lord, Jesus Christ, Who made our justification, eternal forgiveness, and salvation possible. You gave us the treasure of faith in Him and created it in us, so that we could choose not to sin. All these truths motivate us to be obediently faithful to Your Son. The law alone only served to remind us of the sins You detest. We are far from perfect, but we ask for Your help to be better believers by living righteously. Becoming Your friends rather than Your enemies really helps [RO 5: 9-11]. Your Son has said, in JN 15: 5, “I am the Vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” This speaks to our need to be connected by our faith and lifestyles to You. He has told us, in MT 5: 3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” You always have great lessons for us, and we need to be cognizant of them making them fixed parts of our lives, by decision, thought, and action. We are grateful for Christ’s presence in our lives and His intervention when needed. Your willingness to listen to our prayers, to answer them, and to send us messages/lessons in the Bible readings we do are priceless and precious to us. We offer You praise and thanks for helping us to know and believe that we are saved and thus, have agreed to the Covenant of Grace You have given us. We can always count on You to be here for us. We feel the urgency of our need to believe, serve and reach out to others on Your behalf. We remember Your Son’s directive in MT 28: 19-20 to pass on that teaching to others. Witnessing must be done with patience, creativity, and diligence, because building His Kingdom is the most important thing we will ever do. We lift You up in thanks and praise, offer You our loyalty and honor-- to Your glory, in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: I’m led by the Holy Spirit to continue writing this “Light Pierces Darkness” segment of the “Our Covenant” messages. Restoration through the veil of Christ’s flesh will be discussed. Because of my own on-going research into Biblical truth, I’ve spent considerable time meditating on these two passages from Ephesians: EPH 2: 8-10 and EPH 2: 19-22, “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has already prepared for us to do…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. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” This is like finding a mother lode rich in precious ore! The ramifications of what these two passages mean to each of us spiritually and ethically are enormous. We are given God’s grace, while hardly deserving; remember grace is unmerited favor. We are given direction when there hasn’t been any in our lives before Christ entered them. We no longer feel alienated or alone without a family. Like many of you, I was reared in a family with plenty of dysfunction, and I felt worthless, unimportant to anyone. That turned out to be a lie. All the while God had me in His sight. He led me gradually to Him, opening my heart wider and wider to His Spirit as I experienced Him. Eventually, He replaced my negative feelings with more inner peace than I had ever experienced. Then, He led me to serve Him by serving others and reaching out with His word. I rarely discuss details about the lives of others, because I don’t profess to have the right to do this. All I can say is that Christ has pierced the darkness of my former life with His light and motivated me to spend the rest of my life serving Him. He can do the same for anyone He chooses, so I leave you with the prayer that He is doing this or is about to do this for you. Praise and thanks be to God!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2015. All Rights Reserved.
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