“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; 4. And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to scripture.”
I am really not trying to be an old “killjoy” when I tell you that I think that we put too much emphasis on eggs and bunnies during this season of the year. We celebrate a miracle, but the miracle is not that rabbits somehow lay eggs at Easter time. (Try to see the humor here) The miracle is that Jesus was crucified and that three days later He arose. Paul wrote about Christ’s resurrection as a historical fact: “He was dead and He arose again the third day…” On March 31, 2013, we will celebrate the fact of Christ’s resurrection. We have good reason to celebrate, for His resurrection brought/brings good news. What is the good news that we celebrate? We celebrate the fact that Christ is still alive. Christ really died on the cross. Some scholars, who had nothing better to do I guess, came up with the idea that Jesus only “swooned” and did not really die. (Ironically, it is called the “swoon theory.”) Others have said that the whole “resurrection thing” is just a myth. The fact is that Christ really died on the cross and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Christ’s resurrection is not a myth, and He did not merely “swoon” – Christ died. The miracle is that He rose on the third day. He broke the bonds of death and came forth from the grave. Christ was not the first person to be raised from death in the Bible, but He was the first to be raised without outside intervention. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection took place in the heart of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christ Himself defeated death on the cross. This is important, for if this didn’t happen, Christ is still dead. If this is true, “We are of all men most miserable.” (1 Corinthians 15:19b) Furthermore, Christ is still alive today. In Matthew 28, just before Christ ascended, He told His disciples that He would be with them to the end of the ages. The Bible teaches that Christ ascended to the right hand of the throne of the Father and is there making intercession for us. Christ is not a dead Galilean, as some would have us believe, but He is the Living Savior!!! The Bible also teaches that He is coming again. If Christ is dead, He certainly can’t be with us, and He certainly cannot come again. Jesus Christ is alive! Celebrate! We celebrate the fact that we are alive in Christ. The Bible teaches that before Christ saved us, we were dead in trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2:1 “And you hath He quickened (made alive) who were dead in trespasses and sins.” We were not physically dead, of course, but we were spiritually dead. Christ’s entrance into our lives brought us to new life in Him. People who do not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ are still dead in trespasses and sins. You might disagree with me on this, but you are disagreeing with the Bible, not me. Those who are not alive in Christ have nothing to celebrate, for the resurrection has no personal meaning to them. But we who are no longer dead in trespasses and sins have every reason to celebrate. Christ is alive in us!!! I’m sure that you have heard the line from the hymn He Lives: “You ask me how I know He lives, He lives within my heart…” We celebrate the fact that Christ is alive in us. If Christ is alive in us, we are aware of it as much as we are aware that we are still alive in 2013. It doesn’t end there, for the Bible teaches that we will live with Christ throughout eternity. Eternal life is the ultimate benefit of having Christ alive in us. Eternal life begins the day that we accept Christ as Savior and culminates in Heaven – which is another good reason to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. Let the celebration begin!!!!! Bro. Joe
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My good friend, John Townsend, sent me an Email today that really caught my attention. The Email was about a man who had a heart attack. The hospital staff tried to revive him but could not get a heartbeat. Finally, they pronounced him dead and had begun to prepare him for the morgue. The doctor who pronounced him dead is a Christian. He said that the Lord spoke to his heart and said to turn around, go back to where the man was and pray for him. At first, he was a bit hesitant, but the “still small voice” was so persistent that he did what the voice told him to do. He went in and prayed for the man, then told the technician to shock him one more time. To make a long story short, the technician applied the paddle to the man, shocked him and he revived. He is still alive today and is indeed a believer because of the experience. (What I failed to add above is that the man was not a Christian, and is glad he was called back, because while he was dead, he was in a dark place and was all alone.) Do you believe that this sort of thing can happen today? Well, do you believe the Bible? There were all kinds of miracles in the Bible in the Old and New Testaments. Miracles occur by the hand of God, who is sovereign over human affairs. In other words, not everybody is healed when healing is prayed for, and not everyone is raised from the dead when people would wish it to happen. But if God wants a miracle to occur, it will occur. Our part is to have faith in Him, believe in what He can do, and trust Him to do what is best for us.
Jesus did all kinds of miracles in His ministry on earth. He did things that were way above the level of possibility. For example, Jesus turned water into wine. Now, you can’t make wine out of water. When water sits for awhile it only becomes brackish, has little green things in it, and is harmful to drink. Water cannot be made into wine – period. Another example of Jesus doing miracles is His power over demons. They were absolutely subservient to Him. When Jesus told them to come out, they came out. Now, demons are cast out today, but the casting out is not from the power of people, but from the power of Christ. It is our faith in Jesus that can cause Jesus to do things far above what we would humanly expect. To me, that is the exciting thing about being a Christian. We can’t do everything that we want to do, but we serve a God who can. You might be thinking right now: “Bro. Joe have you ever seen a miracle?” Let me put it this way: I have prayed for people to be healed and they were healed. I didn’t slap them on the forehead in front of television cameras, but I prayed for them in the quiet of my place of prayer, God heard and answered. Needless to say, I have prayed for people to be healed and they were not healed because God had other plans for them. Did I pray for myself to be healed in my recent bout with cancer? Of course I did, and I was healed through medicine and the prayers of many Christian friends and family members. God did not see fit to heal me immediately, but He grew my faith in Him while I was recovering and He was healing me in the process both physically and spiritually. I am not trying to explain to you why God does what He does in various lives. I’m just telling you that our sovereign God always works on our behalf, and sometimes that does not jibe with our ideas of what He should do for us. Like Paul, I don’t think that God has to explain to me why He does what He does. We just have to confess that when God inspired Isaiah to write that His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts, He wasn’t playing games with us. He is beyond our understanding. I just rejoice that by faith in Jesus Christ, I can serve God and see what He can do in the lives of individuals. It is beyond our power to determine when God will perform miracles. It is in our power to trust Him when He inspires Paul to write in Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” That is a miracle within itself. Believe it! Bro. Joe “If you come across your enemy’s stray ox or donkey, you must return it to him. 5. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying helpless under its load, and you want to refrain from helping it, you must help with it." HCSB
As many times as I have read these two verses over the years, they have never really caught my attention. These verses are part of a major biblical theme, and that is what to do about one’s enemies.The text written above shows us that we are not to treat one that we would consider an enemy badly. There is something in us that says otherwise. If someone hates us it seems that we should have the right to ignore their ox or donkey. In fact, what we would sometimes like to do is to chide them and say that they are getting what they deserve. We might say, “Who cares about your old ox or donkey?” But the Bible does not leave room for that. Let’s dig a little deeper into this subject of how we are to treat those whom we consider our enemies. In fact, let’s look at what Jesus, who is always our final authority on any issue, had to say on the issue. A good example is Matthew 5:43-46:“You have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy, 44. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45. That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. 46. For if you love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans (tax collectors) the same?” Jesus went far beyond returning an enemies stray ox or donkey, and helping an enemy when his donkey is under a load too heavy for it to bear. Jesus said that we are to love our enemies and even bless those who curse us and pray for those who would persecute us. Man, this really goes against our grain doesn’t it? You are probably thinking about someone right now that you would literally like to scrub their heads and chew them out. But that is not an act of love. Let’s go a little deeper into what Jesus had to say about us and our enemies. He said that if we want to be "God like" or as we would say “Christ like,” then we will love our enemies and do good to them. I don’t think that Jesus meant that we had to love our enemies in order for God to love us, but I think that He meant that people will know that we belong to God when we treat all people equally, whether they love us or not. In John 15:17 Jesus said, “These things I command you, that you love one another.” Again in John 13:34-35 Jesus said: “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. 35. By this shall all men (people) know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” The love that we show to one another in the church sets an example for the world, and helps them to know that we belong to Jesus. They might even want to become a part of us if they see such love. Think of your life now. Do you really love the people who are in your church? I’m sure there are some that are difficult to love, but that should not make them your enemies. If we follow what we read in Exodus and what we read in Matthew and John, we are not given the right to have enemies at all. What we all need to do right now, if we want to be witnesses to a world in bad need of Jesus, is to love one another and let that love seep over into the world around us. Love is contagious, and if you want your church to grow, let people all around you see the love that you have in your church and they will want to be a part of that. Is that what they see now? What are you going to do about it? Bro. Joe “Take what is yours, and go your way: I will give unto the last even as unto you. 15. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own? Is your eye evil, because I am good? 16. So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many will be called but few chosen.”
In the parable of the “Workers in the Vineyard,” Jesus proved a point to His disciples, and to us, about who is most important in God’s kingdom. In the parable, the vineyard owner goes into town and begins to hire workers for the day. The first workers hired agreed to a denarius as their pay. (A denarius was the day’s wage for that time.) He went out three other times and hired workers. The last hired probably worked only an hour. When the time for the workers to be paid came, the owner paid all of them a denarius. Those who had worked all day were irate, because they thought they should be paid more. The owner reminded them that they agreed on a denarius for that day’s work, besides; the owner reminded them that He could pay what he wanted to pay since he was the owner. We have to admit that we cringe a little when we read this. It does seem a bit unfair. But Jesus is making points here that we need to know about working in the kingdom and the rewards for it. First, since all of Jesus’ disciples were Jews, he was reminding them, and future generations. that Gentiles would be rewarded the same as Jews, though the Gentiles were late coming into the kingdom. If God wanted to include Gentiles in His kingdom, that was His business, and He could reward Gentiles as well as Jews. Second, the parable is a reminder to us that we do not serve in God’s kingdom for what we can get from Him. There is always a danger that we will think that God owes us more than He does others. We might think that we have been Christians from an early age, and God certainly owes us more than He owes those who came into kingdom late. Let’s use “deathbed repentance” as an example. There are people who do not believe that one can be saved just before his or her last breath. But if God wants to save someone in their last hour, why would we be upset that He wanted to do so? Who can be saved is God’s prerogative, not ours. I’m not pushing hard line Calvinism here. What I mean is that no matter when one repents and asks to be saved, it is God’s prerogative to save him or her. It is not our task to decide who can come into the kingdom; rather, it is our task to witness to others in order for them to be included in the kingdom. Third, the parable is a reminder that there are no “big I’s” and “little you’s” in the kingdom of God. After all, we were not saved to get what we can from God, either here or in eternity. We are saved to serve Him and not to lord it over other people. We are supposed to serve Jesus out of love for Him and thankfulness to Him for being our Savior. The rewards for this service are up to God. Service for our Savior is its own reward. I have gotten to the point in my life that I just thank God that He allows me to preach His word. He doesn’t owe me anything for it, and I owe Him my whole being for allowing me to do it. It should be the same for all of us, whether we are choir members, song leaders, Sunday School teachers, deacons, missionaries, or whatever. We should have the same attitude toward our witness for Him to the world. He has empowered us to do it, and allows us to do it, in spite of our own sins. Let us not quibble over who will be “first” and who will be “last.” It’s all up to God. Bro. Joe |
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