Fear not and go forward (Exodus 14:15)

What are we to do when we perceive a threat that is greater than our resources to resist? There is danger bearing down on us and there is no place to hide. We see what feels like the proverbial “death star” on the horizon. How should we as believers respond to these situations?

One of the blessings of the word of God, the Bible, is that it is filled with teaching and stories that give us guidance for every circumstance in life. Because we are weak people living in a fallen world and we frequently encounter frightening threats, one of the most common themes in the Bible is that of overcoming overwhelming and dangerous situations with the power of the Lord. In Exodus 14, the children of Israel were in a dangerous situation.

SETTING THE STAGE FOR EXODUS 14

            The people of Israel have just escaped from Egypt after the LORD killed all the first-born in the Passover, and now they are heading out into the wilderness. The LORD directs the people to encamp in front of the Red Sea, intentionally making them vulnerable to an attack from behind. The LORD then hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that he regrets letting the people go and decides to chase after them. So, the situation is that the people of Israel have murderous Egyptians closing in behind them and the Red Sea in front of them. The people of Israel became very frightened and cried out to the LORD (Exodus 14:10).

            Was this threat real? It most certainly was! In fact, the situation appeared hopeless. The Egyptian army with chariots and horses was bearing down on defenseless Israel and they had nowhere to run or to hide. This is the nature of our God, that the Lord will sometimes ordain situations which test our obedience and that tempt us to fear. In those circumstances, we are to continue to obey Him and to do those things He has commanded us to do.

A TIME TO ACT

            Moses tells the people, “Do not fear! Stand firm and see the salvation of the LORD. The LORD will fight for you (Exodus 14:13-14).” Moses reminds the people that the LORD is with them and therefore they need not fear. Even though the danger appears to be great, “the LORD will fight for you.” If the LORD is the one fighting for you, the danger has suddenly lost its threat.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward.” – Exodus 14:15

            There is a time to cry out to the LORD and there is a time to ACT. The LORD is making clear that now is the time to obey Him with action. “Go forward!” Huh? To obey the LORD’s command, the people need to begin walking out into the Red Sea.

            Of course, the LORD has a plan. “As for you . . . (14:16)” Moses will divide the sea with his staff and Israel will walk through the sea. All Israel must do is obey and go forward.

            “As for Me . . . (14:17)” For His part, the LORD will be honored through Pharaoh and his army as He destroys them in the Red Sea. “Then the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD (14:18).” Thus, the LORD delivers Israel, destroys the Egyptians, and receives honor for Himself as He displays His power.

LESSONS

“Be strong and courageous and act (1 Chronicles 28:20).”

“Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed (Joshua 1:9).”

“Tell the sons of Israel to go forward (Exodus 14:15).”

These commands in Scripture are all given because the Lord is with His people. That is, I can be strong and courageous not because I am competent and mighty, but because my Lord who guides me is all-powerful. Because the Lord is with us like a dread Champion (Jeremiah 20:11), the believer is to have these commands as a persistent attitude and is to be ready at any time to put this attitude into action.

            This world is filled with threats and dangers, and our fallen flesh fans the flames of fear, but we are called to fear not, stand firm, and courageously go forward with the Lord.     

SDG                 rmb                 12/29/2020

Psalm 110 – Part 1: The LORD speaks to the Lord

NOTE: This post is longer than most because it is intended to teach how to interpret and understand difficult and complex verses of the Bible. So the purpose is primarily INSTRUCTIVE. rmb

Jesus is the central figure in the Bible. The more a person reads and studies the Bible, the more obvious this becomes. Jesus is the subject of the prophecies and the foreshadows and the types in the Old Testament, as the people of God looked forward to the Messiah’s coming. He is the regal King of the gospels, as He displays His deity through His miracles and His teaching, and He is the suffering servant of the Lord, enduring His passion and dying His sacrificial death on the cross. He is the Firstborn from the dead as He rises victorious from the grave, the resurrected King of kings and the one who ascends to the Father’s right hand. The New Testament looks back to His death on the cross and His glorious resurrection, but the New Testament also looks forward to His Second Coming, when He will descend from heaven as the Judge of all the earth to “tread out the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty (Revelation 19:15).” From Genesis to Revelation, Jesus is the subject of the Scriptures. He is the glorious one, the star of the show.

But even though Jesus is the Person who dominates the Scriptures, it is not always easy to find Him in every passage of the Scriptures. What I mean is that sometimes Jesus is hidden by the mysterious way that a passage is written. Sometimes the Holy Spirit has inspired a passage in the Bible that is loftier than our current thoughts or that stretches our concept of who Jesus is. Because the Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), there will be times when we can understand the words that are used in a passage, but we may not understand the full meaning of what is being communicated. For those passages, we must slow down and dig deeper to find the treasure hidden in the passage. Psalm 110 is such a passage. This psalm was written by King David about 1,000 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and yet it tells amazing truths about the Lord Jesus and about what He will accomplish in His advents.

The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” – Psalm 110:1

ASKING QUESTIONS TO UNDERSTAND THE VERSE

            At a first reading, this verse appears to be a complete mystery. The context of the verse is unclear, and the message of the verse is even less clear. What is this verse about? But before we despair, let’s see if we can ask some questions that may give us at least some direction.

            We have already established that Jesus is the central figure of the Bible. As we answer these questions, we will learn more about Jesus and about the whole flow of redemptive history and will see that this verse has a powerful message about Jesus.

  1. Who is speaking in this verse?
  2. To whom is He speaking?
  3. When does this conversation take place?
  4. What is the significance of “sitting at His right hand?”
  5. When will the promise of this verse be fulfilled?
  1. Who is speaking in this verse? First, we observe that the English text gives the name of the speaker as “LORD,” where the name is all capital letters. Why is this? We must understand that the original language of Hebrew had several names for God. The name translated as “LORD” is the Hebrew word “YHWH” or “Yahweh.” This is the covenant name for God that can also be understood as God the Father. Our God is one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the context of this verse, we would understand this “LORD” to be God the Father. So, God the Father is speaking.
  2. To whom is He speaking? Now we encounter another Person referred to as “Lord,” but notice that only the first letter of that name is capitalized. Again, the English is attempting to capture the meaning of the original Hebrew. The name translated as “Lord” is the Hebrew word “Adonai.” This is a name for God, but it is obviously different from the LORD, who is God the Father. David refers to Him as “my Lord.” Who is this? There is only one suspect for this mystery. Amazingly, in this verse God the Father is speaking to God the Son, Jesus Christ. What the psalmist, David, is relating to us in this verse is an “inter-trinitarian” conversation between God the Father and God the Son.
  3. When does this conversation take place? To answer this question, we need to look carefully at what God the Father is telling God the Son. The Father is telling the Son to “sit at His right hand” until some future date. This means that there must have been some time before this conversation when the Son was not sitting at the Father’s right hand. When was there a time when God the Son was not at the Father’s right hand? That time was when the Son was sent by the Father to earth in His first advent. Now the Son has completed His mission and has accomplished His work (John 17:4; 19:30) and He is returning to heaven. What we see, then, is that God the Father is speaking to God the Son after God the Son, Jesus Christ, has finished His work of atonement on the cross, has been resurrected and has ascended back to heaven. Thus, we see that this conversation takes place when Jesus Christ ascends to heaven after His first advent.
  4. What is the significance of “sitting at His right hand?” We have already seen that this verse, Psalm 110:1, is telling us that Jesus Christ, God the Son, has completed His work of redemption and has ascended back to heaven. God the Father is telling Him to sit at His right hand. Jesus is to sit. Sitting is what one did after you had completed your work. To be invited to sit meant that your host was inviting you to rest from your labors. “You have earned a rest. Take a load off your feet!” Jesus had perfectly accomplished His mission and had completed His work, so now God the Father invites Him to sit down. (See Hebrews 1:3.) Jesus it to sit at the LORD’s right hand. The right hand was the place of highest honor. It was the place where the king placed his most trusted and valiant counselors. Jesus, who had always occupied that seat until His first advent, assumes the place of highest honor after His mission is accomplished.
  5. When will the promise of this verse be fulfilled? God the Father not only invites God the Son to sit at His right hand after His ascension, but He also gives the Son a promise, that He will make the Son’s enemies a footstool for the Son’s feet. Up till now we have been focusing on Christ’s first advent, but now the focus shifts to His Second Coming at the end of the age. We know from other passages of Scripture that there will certainly be a time in the future when Jesus will again rise from His seat in heaven and will again come to earth, this time as a wrathful Judge and as a terrifying warrior. All of Christ’s enemies will be trampled under His feet (Revelation 14:19-20; 19:15, 20-21).

WHAT HAVE WE DISCOVERED?

            As we have carefully and deliberately gone through this difficult verse of Scripture, we have been able to discover some powerful truths. We used thoughtful questions to dig treasure out of this mysterious verse and, by bridging between what we already knew and what careful observation revealed, we uncovered new things about Jesus and about the future of the world.

            The Bible is all about Jesus Christ, and we have learned from this one verse of this ancient psalm of David, written a millennium before Christ was born, that:

  • There is evidence of the Trinity even in the psalms.
  • Jesus will be sitting at the right hand of God the Father throughout the time between His advents.
  • There will be a time in the future when Jesus Christ will return to destroy all His enemies.
  • Jesus has perfectly accomplished His mission and His work of redemption in His first advent and is therefore worthy to sit at the Father’s right hand.

Therefore, we can be encouraged as we make our way through our walk through this life, because Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and that He is soon coming from heaven to bring us home to Him.

SDG                 rmb                  12/28/2020

God demonstrates His own love (Romans 5:8)

Today, of course, is Christmas Day. It is the day of the year set aside for giving gifts to one another so that we remember God’s most valuable of all gifts when He sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to be our Savior.

Early this morning, as I waited for the rest of the family to rise and get ready for our gift-opening ritual, I considered the extravagance of God. Our God pours out His gifts on His creatures in so many ways. In His providence, God feeds all His creatures and supplies them with water and shelter. He is extravagant with the beauty He pours out onto His favored planet with sunsets and mountains and valleys and flowers and birds of every color in the rainbow. He gives us tastes and sights and sounds, and then He graces us with the senses of hearing and seeing and smelling so that we can enjoy what He has made. God is generous and patient with humans and “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).” God is patient with those who have rebelled against Him and who have broken His laws and commandments and withholds His judgment during their years of wandering and their years of rejecting Him and gives them time to repent (Romans 9:22-23; 2 Peter 3:8-9). Such extravagant patience toward those who deserve His wrath!

And then, as if that were not enough, “God demonstrates His own love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us (Romans 5:8).” God’s love toward His people is not reluctantly given or disguised in obscurity, but it is vividly and boldly demonstrated in the giving of His Son to be sacrificed on a cross to atone for the sins of His people. The sacrifice of the Son of God is the central act of the entire Bible when God extravagantly demonstrated His love through Jesus Christ. This is the God we serve, the God who demonstrates His love for His people in the most extravagant way possible.

RESOLUTIONS

As I considered how God gives gifts, and thought about how He is extravagant beyond comparison, I realized that the way I give gifts is very different from the way God gives gifts. I made several resolutions as I repented of my giving habits.

Resolved: Show people you love them in tangible ways, and do this often, not just at Christmas and on their birthday. This is a LIFE LESSON. God demonstrates His love in tangible ways. Shouldn’t I do the same?

Resolved: The best use of money is in extravagant expressions of love. This is a LIFE LESSON. Make sure you don’t die with a bunch of money you could have used to demonstrate love to others.

Resolved: Seek opportunities to tangibly demonstrate my love for people in time, gifts, hugs, smiles, money, etc. Christmas is one time built into the calendar to be extravagant. Don’t miss these opportunities.

Resolved: Because I never know when my life or any other life will end, express my love TODAY. Do not wait till tomorrow to demonstrate your love. Tomorrow may be too late, and once you are gone or the loved one is gone, the opportunities to demonstrate love are also gone.

Resolved: To regularly pray to the Lord to change me and make me into a conduit for demonstrating love. PLAN WAYS to demonstrate my love. SPONTANEOUSLY demonstrate my love.

Let’s make 2021 the year that we demonstrate our love to others. Don’t let your love be a secret. Boldly let others know you love them. Let the love of Jesus Christ flow through you in extravagantly giving yourself away.

SDG                 rmb                 12/25/2020

To fulfill the Scriptures: Thoughts on Christ’s advents

“How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled? But all this has taken place to fulfill the Scriptures of the prophets (Matthew 26:54, 56).”

            When Jesus was being “betrayed into the hands of sinners (Matthew 26:45),” His disciples attempted to defend Him so that His arrest would not happen. But Jesus told them to put their sword back into its place and consciously allowed Himself to be taken away. Why did He do that? This was done because the Scriptures, written centuries before, must be fulfilled. Not the smallest letter or stroke could pass from the prophecies about His passion and His crucifixion until all was accomplished (Matthew 5:18). In a sense, Jesus was not free to conduct His arrest and crucifixion any way He wanted, because these events had already been scripted in the Law and the Prophets, and the Scriptures must be fulfilled. To know the events that lay before Jesus as He gave His life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28) we would need only to carefully study the pages of the Old Testament to see what the prophets had written.

            The point that I am making is that the Scriptures, as the Word of God, will certainly be fulfilled. Every prophecy about the Lord Jesus will be accomplished because these prophecies have been etched forever in God’s Word and are, therefore, manifestations of God’s truth. This has direct bearing on our understanding of Christ’s first advent and especially on His second advent.

AS THE FIRST ADVENT, SO THE SECOND COMING

            As all the Scriptures’ prophecies about Christ’s first advent were fulfilled by the Lord Jesus in the events and circumstances of His earthly life, from His conception to His birth to His earthly ministry to His suffering and crucifixion to His death and resurrection and to His ascension into heaven, so all the prophecies about His Second Coming must necessarily be fulfilled before He will return.

            God’s prophets and His faithful people carefully examined the Scriptures to anticipate Christ’s first advent (1 Peter 1:10-12; Simeon in Luke 2:25-35; Anna in Luke 2:36-38). In the same way, Christ’s people rightly examine the Scriptures to anticipate His Second Coming and to wait eagerly for His return (Hebrews 9:28), when He comes to judge the earth (Psalm 96:13; 98:9) and to bring all His people to heaven.

            In this way, we can get a right perspective on the study of “eschatology,” also known as “last things” or “end times.” It is for the purpose of anticipating our Lord’s glorious coming and for the goal of increasing our eagerness that we carefully study the prophecies of the end-times that God has placed in His Scriptures. As we eagerly anticipate Christ’s coming, our strength to persevere is increased. The prophecies of the time before our Lord’s return include severe testing of the church through persecution and trial. A hope that is fixed on heaven and an eager anticipation of our soon-coming King will hold our feet firmly on the Rock.

            In Matthew 24, it is clear that the Lord Jesus expected His disciples to look forward to His return. He tells them of the events of the distant future (“Behold, I have told you in advance.” v. 25) so that they will know that He is the one who will bring these things to pass, and He tells them, “When you see all these things, recognize that He (the Son of Man) is near, right at the door (v. 33).” It seems to me that Jesus wanted us to be excited about His return, and He put all sorts of prophecies into His Word so that we would have a reason to get excited.

            The Lord has given us His Word, the Bible, so that we would know all He has chosen to reveal to us about the future and about the return of our glorious King. All the prophecies concerning Jesus’ return are “the things which must soon take place (Revelation 1:1).” All the Scriptures about our Lord’s coming will certainly be fulfilled, and when we see all these things, we know that He is right at the door. We therefore study the prophecies of the end-times to glorify God and to strengthen our resolve to persevere.

SDG                 rmb                 12/22/2020

Religions hate the Bible

My most recent post was about THE distinguishing mark of “religions,” where I argued that the common trait of all false religions was that they could function and continue to exist if Jesus Christ had never existed. This is true because religions are invented by Satan to prevent people from encountering Jesus Christ and thus being saved.

While intentionally obscuring the Lord Jesus is THE distinguishing mark of religions, another distinction of all religions is that they hate the Bible and therefore do everything in their power to prevent people from reading the Bible, which is the word of the living God.

SATAN’S ATTACK ON THE WORD OF GOD

            We first meet Satan in Genesis 3, where he appears in the Garden as a serpent. The very first thing that the serpent asks Eve is, “Has God said . . ?” As the father of lies (John 8:44), since the beginning Satan has been calling into question the truth of the word of God, and in the Garden his temptation resulted in sin and the fall of man.

            And since Satan hates the word of God, so the false religions he invents hate the word of God, as well. False prophets and false teachers are the primary means that religions use to attack the word of God. Thus, the Bible contains many warnings about false prophets. In Deuteronomy 13:1-5 we read how false prophets lead astray the unsuspecting. In Jeremiah 23, the whole chapter is devoted to warning about false prophets and the judgment that will fall on them. Jesus’ most excoriating words were reserved for the scribes and Pharisees because their teaching distorted the Word of God (Matthew 23). The book of Jude is essentially devoted to a warning about false teachers. To say it again, religions hate the Bible and their first line of attack of the Bible is through false prophets.

THE WORD OF GOD, THE BIBLE, HAS ALWAYS BEEN ATTACKED

            The Bible as the word of God has always been a target of attack for Satan and his false religions. We have already seen that, in Genesis 3, the serpent asked, “Has God said?” In Jeremiah 36:20-26 we read how King Jehoiakim slowly burned the scroll of Jeremiah by cutting it off the scroll and throwing it into the brazier. Ever since it was written, the Bible has been attacked by religions. The Bible has been destroyed by burning and shredding and being outlawed, the Bible has been distorted by twisting its meaning and intentionally misreading and misinterpreting it, and the Bible has been denounced by claims that the stories are myths, and the truths are mere opinions or outright lies.

            False religions have hunted down people who read or preached the Bible to persecute them and kill them. William Tyndale was pursued and tracked down and finally burned at the stake simply because he translated the Bible into the English language. Religions forbid owning or reading Bibles and they kill those who defy their prohibitions. There are 52 countries on the planet today where it is illegal to own a Bible, with varying degrees of penalties.

            Finally, there are several religions which have their own sacred books which are written in an attempt to destroy the uniqueness of the Bible. “You have your holy book, but we have our holy book, too, and your book is no different from ours.” These books are clumsily written musings from one author and are obviously of man-made origin, but they are passed off as being profound. The purpose of these books must be clearly understood. Their purpose is to obscure the Bible, to malign the Bible, to reduce the Bible to the mere musings of an ancient people with no relevance for today, to make sure that no one takes the Bible seriously and thus comes to faith in the Lord Jesus. It is evident, then, that religions hate the Bible.

WHY DO RELIGIONS HATE THE BIBLE?

            We have touched on this already, but we need to answer the question, “Why do religions hate the Bible?” In other words, what is it about the Bible that religions want to silence or leave unknown? Here are some of the reasons that occur to me:

  • Because the Bible is the truth (John 17:17 – “Your Word is truth.”) and Satan and his religions hate the truth.
  • Satan and his religions are liars (John 8:44 – “He (Satan) is the father of lies.”) and are opposed to the truth and love lies (see above).
  • The Bible tells the truth, and the truth sets us free (John 8:32). Religions do not want you to be set free from sin or to be set free from the chains of their religion.
  • The Bible exposes the darkness and people love the darkness of their sin (John 3:19-21; Ephesians 5:12-13). Religions are okay with darkness and allow all kinds of sin, and do not want you to know about the darkness and the Light.
  • The Bible shows us how to be saved from our sins (2 Timothy 3:15).
  • The Bible is the book that tells people about the living God, about the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, about sin and the consequences of sin, about the coming judgment, about the wrath of God, about heaven and hell, about salvation, and about the gospel that declares that through faith in Jesus Christ and belief in His death and resurrection as the means of my salvation, any sinner can be forgiven of their sins and reconciled to God forever. Religions do not want you to know any of these things and they, therefore, do everything in their power to prevent you from reading the Bible and discovering these truths.

APPLICATIONS

            This post and the previous post are intended to keep us alert for the encroachment of false religions, especially as our age becomes more confusing and godless. Jesus warned us to be alert for false prophets (Matthew 7:15-23) and told us that, at the end of the age, false prophets and false Christs will arise and will almost mislead the elect (Matthew 24:24). False prophets are the ministers of false religions whose intent is to obscure Christ and lead people into the broad way of destruction. So, we need to be alert to these things and run away from any so-called church or group that does not love the Bible and the Savior whom the Bible reveals.

            Most importantly, we as believers need to be people of the Bible. At least for now, in America we continue to have the privilege of being able to read our Bibles anywhere and anytime we choose. Many Christians in the world, both today and in the past, have not had this privilege. We must be good stewards of our Bibles and diligently read and memorize them, and we must proclaim the truths of the Bible to others so that God may be glorified.

“For You have exalted above all things Your name and Your Word (Psalm 138:3).”     

SDG                 rmb                 12/21/2020

The distinguishing mark of a “religion”

The distinguishing mark of every “religion” is that, if Christ had never come into the world and there was, therefore, no cross and there was no resurrection and no empty tomb and Christ was not coming again to judge the earth, the “religion” would continue to function without interruption.

            This, in fact, is basically a functional definition of any “religion”: Any system of man-made practices and rituals intended to provide a worldview that intentionally operates or can operate without any meaningful reference to Christ. The point I am trying to make is that this is not an incidental product of the religious system but is completely intentional and is the very reason that the religion was created and exists. As we consider some examples of “religions,” it will be apparent that these systems are deliberately antichrist.      

A COMMON AUTHOR AND INVENTOR

            All religions are invented and crafted by the chief antichrist himself, Satan, and are therefore designed to exclude all references to and reliance upon the finished work of the Lord Jesus, to deny His glorious resurrection, and to omit and ignore the fact that He will return one day to judge the earth. Although religions come in a wide variety of guises, their primary purpose is to prevent the religious slave from seeing their own sinfulness, and from “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4).”

Satan invents religions and then passes them on to wicked men who then propagate the lies of the religion so that religious devotees will never encounter our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, they will not become aware they are sinners, and they will become ensnared in useless rituals and works and ideas which profit them nothing. Religions are Satan’s primary means for obscuring Jesus. They avoid the biblical Jesus, they distort biblical teaching, and they twist the meaning of biblical words and ideas, and they do so intentionally and actively. Again, the reason they all have common characteristics is that they are invented by the same person, Satan, and they have the same purpose.

Religions exalt the devotee by appealing to the “works” that the religious person does to merit their “salvation.” The works and the efforts involved vary from religion to religion, but all religions base the achievement of the end goal (purgatory, nirvana, paradise, oblivion, heaven, your own planet, etc.) on the meritorious efforts of the followers. If the follower works hard enough and long enough, and they are good enough, they might get in. Oddly, this results in strengthening the chains of slavery that bind them to the religion by appealing to their fleshly pride and encouraging them to rely on his own efforts to please God.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A RELIGION

There is a marked and easily detected difference between true biblical faith and practice, and “religions.” Here is a series of questions that will help make this distinction:

  • Regarding SIN – Is sin clearly defined and presented as a major issue and as the guarantee of condemnation to an eternity in hell, or is sin undefined or vaguely defined and seldom or never addressed?
  • Regarding man – Is man portrayed as a sinner in need of rescue, or is man presented as basically good and possibly in need of a little help from above? Is man declared to be wretched and rebellious, or is he “better than most” and “doing the best that he can?”
  • Regarding the centrality of Christ – Is Christ the center of the worship and the preaching of this group and, therefore, mentioned often, or is Christ off to the side somewhere and seldom mentioned? Is Christ central or is He expendable?
  • Regarding salvation – Is man’s need for salvation made clear and then is Christ presented as the only means of that salvation, or is man’s need for salvation vague or unknown and Christ’s role in salvation likewise unclear?
  • Regarding the cross of Christ – Is the cross of Christ preached from the pulpit and exalted by all, or is the power of the cross and the purpose of the cross unknown? Does this group proclaim what Jesus accomplished on the cross or is this group ignorant of what Jesus accomplished on the cross?
  • Regarding the resurrection of Christ from the dead – Is the resurrection of Christ from the dead regularly preached from the pulpit without apology or nuance, or is the resurrection not mentioned at all or is it ignored as unimportant or explained away by natural means?
  • Regarding the return of Christ at the end of the age – Is the return of Christ something that is anticipated with excitement and that is proclaimed loudly by pastors from the pulpit, or is the return of Christ effectively unknown?

BE ALERT AND BE WARNED; THERE ARE FALSE RELIGIONS OUT THERE

            In his short epistle, Jude says, “Have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh (Jude 22-24).” The last verse is addressed at false religions. Be wary and be warned! They are dangerous.

            There are many antichrists (false christs, false prophets, and false teachers) who have gone out into the world (1 John 2:18), and so the church is to be warned that there are deceivers and liars all over.

            What should we do in light of these things?

            Know your Bible as if your life depended on it. Be able to recognize false doctrine instantly by being intimately familiar with true doctrine.

            Find a solid fellowship in which you can trust the pastors and elders of the church to teach the word of God faithfully and truthfully. You must be able to trust that you are not the only one defending yourself from false teaching. You must know that your pastors and elders are guarding the flock from any false teaching and from false teachers. They are watching for wolves who would destroy the flock (Acts 20:24??). This trust in the pastors and elders must be implicit, and their vigilance must be intentional, not just incidental. The church must be serious about guarding itself from false teaching.

SDG                 rmb                 12/17/2020

Humility in the face of God’s mystery (Deuteronomy 29:29)

Spending time exploring biblical eschatology is a humbling endeavor. The study of “last things” involves pouring over apocalyptic visions and confusing prophecies written in vague and unusual prose as the author describes things that seem beyond language’s ability to describe. After reading passages of Scripture literally dozens of times and then reluctantly scurrying to commentaries to find out “the right answers,” my common experience is to come away thinking, “Yeah, I think this commentator is guessing, just like me.”

Does anyone really understand this stuff,

or do they, like me, just make their best bluff?

SCRIPTURES NOT UNDERSTOOD

            After about thirty years of consistent Bible reading and diligent Bible study, I have discovered this: Not everything that is written in the Word of God is meant to be fully understood. That is, there remain mysteries in the Bible. In writing His Scripture, God the Holy Spirit has inspired some passages whose meaning is intentionally hidden from us. Daniel in his prophecy and John in Revelation both confess that there are times when they did not understand all that they themselves saw and wrote.

Moses voices the same idea when he writes “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever (Deuteronomy 29:29).” Clearly, there are secret things that God has left as mysteries. Recently, I have been reading through Isaiah and am constantly awe-struck by the Scriptures he wrote. Did Isaiah really understand the meaning of these astonishing prophecies, or was he just obedient to what the Holy Spirit told him to write, even though his oracles were beyond his own comprehension?

            To display His glory, God has inspired His Bible to reveal everything necessary for His people to know Him and to serve Him, and to fear and love and worship and obey Him, while at the same time including passages whose meaning and understanding elude even the most diligent and learned of Bible students. This is not a mistake in editing, but is BY DESIGN, to confirm that the Bible is breathed out by God and contains writing that God alone can fully comprehend.

AS JOB WAS HUMBLED, SO SHOULD WE BE HUMBLED

When the LORD confronts Job in chapter 38, the Creator asks the creature where he was when the LORD created the universe. At one point, the LORD says to Job, “Who shut in the sea with doors, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said,

‘Thus far shall you come and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” – Job 38:8-11.

The LORD is sovereign over the oceans and has determined their exact limits. The “proud waves” must stop when He ordains and may not go farther.

He seems to be saying something similar about His Scriptures. We may read our Bible anytime and we are free to read it and study it as often as we like. We are to take great pleasure in reading God’s word and delight in it as precious treasure, but we must acknowledge that the Bible is God’s book, and that there will be times when our proud intellect will be humbled. While we are here on this earth, there will be times when we encounter mysteries which God has left in His Scriptures. When we encounter these passages, we can hear the Lord saying, “Thus far can you understand, but no farther, and here shall your proud intellect be stayed.” This is because not everything that is written in the Word of God is meant to be fully understood.

HOW, THEN, ARE WE TO STUDY THE BIBLE?

      Because the Bible contains mysteries, are we to despair of ever understanding it or are we to abandon our zeal in studying it? A resounding “no” on both counts! Although there are still parts and passages in God’s Word that lie beyond our comprehension, there is a lifetime of delight dwelling in its pages for our joy, for our reading pleasure and for our spiritual edification.

      The more earnestly and diligently you seek the treasures of the Bible, the more you will bring out of its limitless riches. So, the first key is to apply yourself to earnest and diligent study each time you open the Word. Consider the context of the passage. What is the main message of the text? Are there other passages of Scripture that may shed more light on this passage? If you have some knowledge of the original languages (Hebrew and Greek), explore those sources, and see if there is some nuance in these words. Mainly we must realize that reading and studying God’s Word deserves serious effort and we must be willing to work hard to draw out all we can from the text.

      At the same time, we must humbly realize that even our most earnest efforts will sometimes leave us confused or unclear about the full meaning of a psalm or a prophecy or even the full meaning of a narrative account. “What is going on here?” We should apply all our energy to understand all we can, but also be ready to humbly bow before the mysteries the Lord has left in His word.

      The main point in what I am saying is that there is a finite limit to how much of the Scriptures anyone can understand. That is, no matter how many times you read the Bible or even read a book of the Bible, there will always remain mysteries. The Bible is God’s book, and, as part of His stamp of authenticity, there are some things that no human can grasp.

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Be anxious for nothing (Philippians 4:6)

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

            Our world is a factory of anxiety and worry, and the production of this factory has radically increased in 2020. Reasons for anxiety bombard us from every side, and the bombing is constant. Yet Paul tells the believer to be anxious for nothing. How are we supposed to do that? Many people today have a natural bent toward anxiety and worry. Is it realistic to suppose that someone living in this dangerous day and age can be free of anxiety, or was that just for people who lived in the simpler times of the first century?

            Of course, worry is a huge topic and there are those who have much more expertise in this field than I have, but I wanted to take a few minutes to consider this topic of anxiety (I will use worry and anxiety interchangeably) and see how the believer can slay this dragon by obeying the Bible’s teaching on the subject.

JESUS’ TEACHING ON WORRY – FIRST STRATEGY

            In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus teaches His disciples that they are not to worry because their heavenly Father cares for them. If the Father cares for them, then worry makes no sense. In the end, Jesus commands a change of focus. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (6:33).” Focus on the kingdom of God first and foremost, and then trust God to take care of you. This may be a bit oversimplified, but that is the basic point.

IS IT FEAR OR IS IT WORRY?

            For the purposes of this article, I am going to make a distinction between “fear” and “anxiety” to make sure that we know what we are discussing. You may see that some of what you call “fears” are actually nothing but justified worries.

            Fear is objective, meaning that all people can see the danger. Anxiety is subjective. It is unique to the possessor and other people have difficulty feeling your anxiety.

            Fear is adrenal. It causes feelings of “fight or flight.” It demands action. Worry is cerebral. It festers inside your head and there are no courses of action that seem to help.

            Fear is spontaneous, rising suddenly to a high pitch, whereas worry is prolonged, droning on and on at a fairly low level of constant negative stress.

            Fear bypasses the mind, but anxiety flourishes in the mind.

            Fear is a rational response to a genuine, imminent danger, a response that rises within us before we have a chance to bring up our defenses or bring our faith out of the sheath. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a prolonged sense of nervousness and unease when a person is concerned about an undefined or relatively insignificant or very unlikely threat.

THE PROBLEMS WITH WORRY

            “Everyone deals with worry, especially in this crazy world. Have you never heard of COVID-19?” This comment about worry is completely justified coming from an unbeliever. They should be anxious and worried about almost everything because they are all alone in this world.  But, despite many attempts and much poor teaching on the subject, worry is a source of serious spiritual problems for the believer. Here are some of them.

            Worry is a spiritual cancer that will hobble your spiritual life because worry is ongoing, persistent lack of trust toward God. Any lack of trust toward God is dangerous.

            No spiritual fruit flourishes in the soil of anxiety. “The worry of the world chokes the Word, and it becomes unfruitful (Matthew 13:22).” Anxiety will choke out your spiritual life.

            When the believer has anxiety, he is living as an orphan. Having been adopted into God’s family as a fellow heir with Christ, he now lives as a street urchin who does not know where he will sleep or what he will eat.

            To continue to live in anxiety and worry is to openly distrust the Lord and to despise His faithfulness. God has displayed His faithfulness countless times:

  • In the Scriptures by His power over enemies, by His promises of protection, and, supremely, by His salvation through Jesus Christ.
  • In our own lives by His providence, by His answered prayer, and by His patience.

Anxiety is living as if none of God’s displays of power and none of His promises are good enough to have you trust Him. This is serious.

Do you see the point? Anxiety is sin, and the disciple of Jesus must master anxiety and worry at all costs.

PAUL’S TEACHING ON ANXIETY – SECOND STRATEGY

            Here in Philippians 4:6, Paul gives us a two-fold strategy for combatting anxiety and replacing it with the peace of God. Paul gives a command to be obeyed and a means for obeying.

            First, Paul commands that we be anxious for nothing. Do not miss this essential first step. The disciple is to repent of anxiety. We are not to coddle it or condone it or to cuddle up with it. Rather we are to repent of our anxiety. Have a loathing for all anxiety as you would for any other sin and any other threat to your spiritual vigor. Put worry to death (Colossians 3:5). When you sense anxiety is trying to rear its ugly head, shoot to kill.

            Step two, we are to cry out to God in prayer and supplication in a spirit of thanksgiving. We are to bring whatever it is that is causing the worry directly into the light of God. We are to expose it to the light (Ephesians 4:13). Confess it to God for what it is – sin. Thank the Lord that He is mighty to save and “He is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20)” and ask Him to act on your behalf. Your job is to kill the worry and then to trust God for everything. His promise is to bring you to heaven and let you spend eternity with Him.

            In this way, “the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:7

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Forgiveness of sin and consequences of sin (Psalm 130:3-4)

If You, LORD, should mark iniquity, O Lord who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with You that You may be feared. – Psalm 130:3-4

What does the Lord do with the consequences of sin? “There is forgiveness with the Lord,” but after forgiveness, what does the Lord do with the consequences of sin? Will He remove the consequences of sin from the sin that is forgiven, or does He leave the consequences, even when He forgives the sin? And what about the sins of unbelievers? Since all their sins are unforgiven, does the Lord bring on these people all the consequences of their sins? I was thinking about this recently and wanted to share some brief thoughts.

THEOLOGICAL TRUTH, BUT GOD IS GRACIOUS

It must be said up front that God’s forgiveness of sin does not mean that God will remove the natural consequences of sin. God is never under any obligation to remove any of the consequences of any person’s sin. If the worst consequences of every sin came to pass, God would not have violated any of His justice. He would remain perfectly just. God is obligated to forgive all the sins of every person who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ, but He is obligated to remove none of the consequences of anyone’s sins. Having stated this theological truth, we need to also state that God “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and great in lovingkindness (Psalm 145:8),” and, because of His grace and mercy, He ordinarily chooses to remove the consequences of people’s sins, of believers and unbelievers alike.

THE GLORY OF GOD’S GRACE

Now, we should consider these things for a moment to understand the greatness and the glory and the compassion of our God. Because God is gracious and merciful, and because He is mindful that we are but dust (Psalm 103:14), He has sent His Son Jesus Christ to become flesh and to dwell among us and to die on the cross for us, and God has obligated Himself to forgive all the sins of every person who believes in Jesus. God has promised that any person who believes in Jesus is forgiven of all their sins and will never come under judgment. But while God has obligated Himself to forgive the sins of believers, He is not obligated to remove any of the consequences of those sins. But because God is, by His very nature, merciful and gracious, and because His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8), then God ordinarily and usually chooses, by His perfect wisdom and for His glory, to remove the consequences of people’s sins, not only those of believers, but also those of unbelievers, even though the sins of the unbelievers are not forgiven and even though unbelievers remain under God’s wrath and judgment. Think about how foreign this is to our human experience. In this world, we expect enemies to receive no mercy, but God’s mercy manifests itself by usually (but not always) removing the worst consequences of the sins of His enemies.

In Romans 9:22, we read that “God, though willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.” What this means is that God deferred His wrath and His judgment on the reprobate, even though they were destined for hell.

In Romans 3:25, Paul writes that, “in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.” Again, God delayed judgment because of His grace.

Paul is addressing the pagans in Lystra when he says that “In generations gone by God permitted the nations to go their own way,” while still giving them rains and good things. The point is that God’s common grace means that He defers His judgment, and He often removes the consequences of sin.

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Conditional blessings (Isaiah 8:12-14a)

12 “You are not to say, ‘It is a conspiracy!’
Regarding everything that this people call a conspiracy,
And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it.
13 It is the Lord of armies whom you are to regard as holy.
And He shall be your fear,
And He shall be your dread.
14 Then He will become a sanctuary. – Isaiah 8:12-14a

As we read Isaiah 8:12-14a, it becomes clear that the Lord is a sanctuary. He has always been a sanctuary and always will be a sanctuary. This is part of who He is. The question is, “Is the LORD your sanctuary?” And the answer to that question is, “It depends.” And so we encounter the idea of conditional blessings.

To be clear, for believers, all objective blessings of salvation are unconditionally given and sealed to the believer the moment the believer places their faith in the Lord Jesus. All these blessings depend only on God’s faithfulness and are conditioned only upon the sinner’s faith in Jesus. In the parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20, all the workers received a denarius regardless of how long they had worked in the vineyard, because they had all been hired by the master of the house.

But there are conditional blessings that accrue to the believer only when the conditions for those blessings are met. For example, in Psalm 1:3, we read of the blessings that will come to a certain man, but those blessings depend on the man not doing the wrong things (1:1) and also on him doing the right things (1:2). So, the Bible does contain conditional blessings, and here in this passage we encounter one of those blessings, the blessing of the Lord being our sanctuary. Would you have the Lord of hosts be your sanctuary? Would you receive the sanctuary blessings from the Lord? Then you must meet “the sanctuary conditions.”

We see, then, in Isaiah 8:12-14a that the Lord’s offer of His sanctuary is not automatically received. Rather, it comes to us “Then.” “THEN He will become a sanctuary (8:14a).” So, the LORD will become my sanctuary WHEN certain conditions are met.

This means that all believers do not experience the LORD in the same way, and it seems that this is because all believers do not seek the LORD in the same way or serve the LORD in the same way. All of God’s blessings are made potentially available to all those who have bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus, but the actual tasting of those blessings is reserved for those who meet the Lord’s “terms of blessing.” In the same way that the breathtaking grandeur of the Grand Canyon is experienced only by those who travel to that place in search of that grandeur, so the blessings of the LORD’s sanctuary are experienced only by those whose fear and dread is the LORD.

WHAT THE WORLD FEARS AND DREADS

The Lord commands us not to fear what this people fear or to be in dread of it (8:12). But what is it that this people fear, and what do they dread? They fear all the things that people without a sanctuary fear. There is no shelter and there is no refuge, so this people fear what all threatened people fear. That means they fear death and they fear getting old. They fear any sort of loss. They fear loneliness. They fear the future, and the unseen and unknown threats that the future may bring. They fear “conspiracy (8:12),” because they always feel insecure and distrustful about the schemes of others. They fear a lot of things.

What makes this situation worse is that the world’s fears only reinforce each other, so that their fears fester and increase. Because there is no sanctuary, there is no relief and no place to hide from the fears. What the world dreads cannot be defensed or defeated, so it only looms larger. For example, for the unbeliever, death cannot be defeated, and death cannot be defensed. It lurks out there in the future and the fear of death grows stronger as death draws inevitably nearer. Thus, when you fear something other than the LORD, your fears continually grow stronger.

WHAT THE BELIEVER FEARS AND DREADS

But when the LORD is the believer’s fear and the LORD is the believer’s dread, then the believer has gained a sanctuary. “He shall be your fear and He shall be your dread. Then He will become a sanctuary (Isaiah 8:13-14a).” Meeting the “sanctuary conditions” means that you receive the “sanctuary blessings.” When the LORD is your fear, then “ordinary” fears continually grow weaker. Psalm 34:4 says, “I sought the LORD, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” The psalmist was delivered from his fears not because all his threats had gone away, but because he trusted that the LORD his Champion was greater than all his fears. When the LORD is the believer’s fear and dread, then the believer experiences the peace that comes from entering the Lord’s sanctuary.

When we encounter a “conditional blessing” in the Scripture, we should search the passage diligently to find out what the conditions must be met to receive the blessing, and then earnestly strive to meet those conditions, while asking the Lord for strength and guidance.

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