2004-10-15
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Once again, the Holy Spirit is guiding me along the path that God has been taking through human history in the gradual civilization of his human creation. You will remember that all of this need to transform human hearts from ones of sin and deceit to ones which please and glorify Him was made necessary by the original sin in GN 3: 1-6 of Adam and Eve. Satan, once Lucifer-God’s favored angel in charge of worship in heaven-fell taking one third of the heavenly host with him [IS 14: 11-15; EZK 28: 11-19]. That laid the scene for the original sin to happen, and what completed this act was the willingness of Eve and then, Adam, to give into the lies of the serpent (Satan) and the appetites of their own flesh. Before the creation of the world, God knew what would happen and had already prepared a solution to the problem [COL 1: 29-20; 1 PET 1: 20-21]. It was the sacrifice of His Son on the cross, so that believing and repenting mankind could be released from bondage to sin and be saved [JN 3: 16; RO 3: 24-25; HE 8: 12 and 10: 17].
Our lives have a very important purpose, and God wants us to know what that is. JER 32: 38-40 states it long before Christ’s incarnation. “Then they will be My people, and I will be their God. I will give them a single purpose in life: to honor Me for all time, for their own good and the good of their descendants. I will make an eternal covenant with them. I will never stop doing good things for them, and I will make them fear [have reverence for] Me with all their heart, so that they will never turn away from Me.” Dear Ones, this is huge! We need to consider it’s implications to every facet of our lives. Never before had such a prophecy ever been made. This eternal covenant would be the new covenant, under which we, as believers in Christ, are now privileged to live. Let’s see what we can glean from this important passage.
1) God is saying that there will be a time when we are all enjoying the unity of one heart-that transformed heart which God is giving us. Because of the depth of our sinfulness, God is having to chip away at that sin, experience by experience, all the while teaching us His ways. That’s the process of sanctification. The Psalmist in PS 66: 10-12 understands this process. “You have purified us with fire, O Lord, like silver in a crucible. You captured us in Your net and laid great burdens on our backs. You sent troops to ride across our broken bodies. We went through fire and flood. But in the end, You brought us into wealth and great abundance.” Taken in the spiritual sense, that fire and flood is the process of learning His way from the circumstances of our lives, which are never easy. That wealth and great abundance is the opportunity to spend an eternal bliss in close fellowship with Him in heaven. 2) Our lives will eventually be examples of reverence for God for our children to see. This so closely ties in with DT 6: 4-7, part of God’s great commandment which includes the “Shema” –statement of the need to believe in the one and only God, Jehovah-given so long ago to the Jews. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God; the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Never forget these commands that I am giving you today. Teach them to your children. Repeat them when you are at home and when you are away, when you are resting and when you are working…” God’s will on this matter has been crystal clear for that long a time, and yet, mankind struggles to live the kind of godly lives that obey it. We need to think of the long-range consequences of our decisions and actions, not only on ourselves, but also on our children, grandchildren, and others. 3) Christ has been given to us to model the values God wants us to live by. The story of Christ overturning the tables of the moneychangers in front of the temple [MT 21: 12-13] is a great picture to have in our minds as an example. His view is worship God, not material wealth. Moreover, Christ cites IS 56: 7 and JER 7: 11, when He says, “It is written in the Scriptures that God said, ‘My temple will be called a house of prayer.” Then, He chastises the moneychangers by saying, “But you are making it a hideout for thieves.” Paul supports this teaching in 1 TIM 6: 10 when he says, “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil…” God’s part and our part of the eternal [new] covenant on the issue of material wealth are illuminated in HE 13: 5, “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be satisfied with what you have. For God has said [DT 31: 8; JS 1: 5; IS 49:14-16], “I will never leave you; I will never abandon you.” The issue of material wealth is only one example. Space limitations don’t permit me to deal with all the others here.
JER 32: 40 reveals God’s great power to help us remain faithful. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to do our part. We might ask if that makes us puppets on God’s string. The answer to that is flatly, “no.” We must use our free agency to take responsibility for our own decisions and actions. We must choose to repent, come to faith, and keep our hearts open to God’s intervention through the Holy Spirit. We must willingly and faithfully obey Him, even when we don’t understand what He is asking us to do or why, even when it takes us out of our comfortable zone. Where our comfortable zone should really be is in the knowledge that our Lord never leads us to evil, for He has no evil in Him. That comfortable zone is living our lives in Him, knowing He will lead us to eternal joy, bliss, and fellowship with Him in heaven.
PRAYER: O Lord, we come before Your throne today as sinners thankful that You have given us a way out through repentance and faith in Your Son [RO 7: 24-25]. If we are honest with ourselves, we can see that any family or congregation led by Jesus Christ without human interference, is a group with unity in Him. Christ encourages us to cooperate with Him and with each other, which is why His new commandment in JN 13: 34-35 tells us to love one another. As He loves us, so we should love one another. That way others will know we are His disciples. We can see the supernatural bond You have forged that can’t be broken between true believers and You. Those who rebel against Your teaching as a lifestyle are opting themselves out of the motivation You have given us for good. We should never waste the transformation You have wrought in our hearts, for eternal life with You depends on it. We yearn for all decisions, relationships, and actions taken in our lives to be various kinds of worship of You. We see that we should be honoring You and bringing You glory with every aspect of our earthly lives, for these are habits You want us to bring to eternal life with You in heaven. You keep Your promises; this we believe. We acknowledge that You are an amazing God Who will never abandon, stop loving, or cease to bless those who love and obey You. You are our Provider, Comforter, Guide, and Protector. We will never stop being grateful. To You belongs the glory for all that is good, right, and honorable. You deliver us from evil [PS 23: 1-6] and heal our illnesses [PS 20: 6]. We acknowledge that Your constant presence is crucial to our lives. For that and so much more, You deserve our eternal praise and thanks. In Christ, we pray. Amen.
Next week, the Spirit leads me to conclude this discussion of the blessings of the Covenant of Grace. If space permits, we’ll begin looking at the mechanism by which God can transform the human heart to one that pleases Him. I keep using the words “amazing” and “awesome” to describe God. How woefully inadequate they are! Nothing is impossible with God. We are all familiar with MK 10: 27, “Jesus looked directly at them [His disciples] and said, ‘This is impossible for man but not for God; everything is possible for God.’” That is why long before Christ’s incarnation, the Psalmist could truthfully write in PS 118: 5-6, “In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and He answered me and rescued me. He is for Me! How can I be afraid? What can mere man do to me?” That is also why Paul could ask in RO 8: 31-32, “In view of all this [all that had been said beforehand in RO 8], what can say? If God is for us, who can be against us? Certainly not God, Who did not even keep back His own Son, but offered Him for us all! He gave us His Son-will He not freely give us all things?” I plan to spend this week thinking about how these truths impact my life, and it is my hope that each of you will do the same concerning your own lives. We never have to feel alone or abandoned when we have true faith in God and the new perspective, His view of things, it gives us. Each day, the Lord stands beside a true believer every minute. While it’s true He is the Judge, His main reason for doing this is to aid us in learning to live lives of holiness, as we were commanded to do in LV 11: 44-45, LV 19: 2, and 1 PET 1: 16. What better Friend can we have? His will is to bring as many of us as will obey back to the Father’s side in heaven [JN 6: 39-40]. How more blessed can we be!?
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn