“And the night following the Lord stood by him and said, Be of good cheer, Paul for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.”
Paul had been arrested by the Jewish council ostensibly for bringing a Gentile into the temple area. It was the night after his arrest that God spoke to Paul about why he was going through this treatment. This answers why Paul was willing to endure two years of wrongful trial, imprisonment and a tortuous sea voyage – It was God’s will. When we endure hardship we need to consider this text, because God is probably preparing us to carry out His will. God had a higher purpose for Paul in allowing him to endure the aforementioned hardships. Is it possible that God has a higher purpose in allowing us to endure hardships? Don’t dismiss this idea out of hand. God wants to use us and He always has a higher purpose for our lives. We can learn from Paul’s reaction to his hardships. The first thing that we need to consider is that Paul accepted God’s will. There is no indication that Paul hesitated to accept God’s will, no matter what it entailed. Paul was told to “be of good cheer,” or to “take courage,” for this was God’s means of getting him to Rome. He could have said, “Lord, can’t you let me get to Rome without all of this hardship.” He just accepted The Lord’s will and courageously faced what he had to face in order to carry out God’s will for his life. I don’t mean to imply that following God’s will always entails hardships, but we should learn to accept God’s will for our lives in spite of whatever hardships it might involve. It’s not easy to accept that God’s will might mean hardship for us. Actually, we usually expect God’s will to take us from one blessing to another. But this is not always the reality. Paul is a good example here, and we might also think of Moses and what he had to endure to carry out God’s will. This could be said of countless others in the Bible, e.g., Abraham, Joseph, and all of the eleven true disciples of Jesus. Pray about accepting God’s will for your life if you haven’t already. The second thing that we need to consider is that Paul simply believed God. In Acts 27:25 in the midst of the storm at sea, while on the voyage to Rome, Paul told those with him: “Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as He told me.” (God had earlier assured Paul that he would get to Rome in spite of the storm.) The only two choices that Paul had was to believe God or doubt him. Think of what we would have missed if Paul had doubted God instead of believing Him. We can believe God or doubt Him. Think of what we will miss in our lives if we doubt God instead of believing Him and realizing His higher purpose for our lives. Think of what we will miss if we prefer the easy way instead of God’s way. The stakes were high for Paul to get to Rome God’s way. The stakes are also high for us to accept God’s way. (They are high for our families and churches as well.) The work of the kingdom of God will go on whether we accept God’s purpose for us or not, but we will miss the blessings that will come our way because of it. Consider this as you pray. The conclusion of the matter is that in his obedience, Paul realized God’s higher purpose for his life. Paul went to Rome God’s way and great things were accomplished. Philippians 4:22 tells us why: “All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar’s household.” Paul won people around Caesar to Christ, who in turn carried the message to Rome and to other places in the world. Who knows what Jesus might use us to do for Him if we simply believe Him and obey Him? We will never know if we do not believe and act. Which leads me to ask: Have you accepted God’s will for your life, and would you carry it out if it included hardships? Until you say “yes” to Jesus, you will not realize your higher purpose. Bro. Joe
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“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof. 13. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under law but under grace. 23.The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Sin is one of those facts of life that we have to deal with every day. (As though you didn’t already know that.) In fact, it is the major thing that we have to deal with, because God hates sin. He hates it because it is disobedience to Him. He hates it because it drags us down. God knows that sin is sin and that because we do not commit adultery, or something like that that we consider a “big” sin, we have no problem with it. God hates all sin – let’s just rejoice that He loves us in spite of it. Let’s look at the seriousness of sin: We will begin with the last verse written above: “The wages of sin is death…” Sin kills!!! When people are in the throes of sin, they do not feel like it is sin because it brings physical and mental pleasure. But the inescapable fact is that sin kills: "for the wages of sin is death.” Go back to the Garden of Eden. What did God tell Adam and Eve would happen if they ate the forbidden fruit? He told them that they would die. We know that they did not die immediately, but they did eventually die. In fact, the rest of their lives became what we can call “the process of dying.” All we have to do is look at our aging bodies and realize that we are dying. Sin has killed everyone since Adam and Eve, for the Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Sin is serious because it not only kills us, it ruins our lives if we let it have control of our lives. Paul wrote: “Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.” “Members” means parts of our bodies. For example, we are not to use our hands as instruments of unrighteousness. With just a little imagination, you can recall ways that you can use your hands to sin. (Don’t get too carried away.) Another example, and perhaps a more pertinent one, is our brains. Since the thought is the father of the deed, we need to be careful where we let our thoughts go. In fact, sin is a thought before it is a deed. That is why the Bible reminds us time and time again to be careful what we think about. Satan is aware of all that I have just written, and he is always at work on our minds, trying to sidetrack us from wholesome thinking. How do I know so much about this? Well, I have a brain – enough said, or written. We know that sin is serious because of what it cost God to deliver us from it. Romans 6:23 tells us: “The wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is not our own righteousness, or our own will power, that delivers us from sin. It was/is Jesus who delivers us from sin. He did it by His death on the cross. He paid the price for our sins on that cruel cross. 1 John 4:10 tells us: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” “Propitiation” means that Jesus took the wrath of God that was rightfully ours, upon Himself on the cross. That is why Jesus cried out: “MY God, My God, why have You forsaken me….” Jesus paid the price that we owed in order to give us the salvation that we can only have by faith in Him. I hope that you have already taken God up on His offer of Jesus to save you from sin, from its penalty and its doom. Sin does not have to rule the day, because God has made it possible for us to defeat sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. Either rejoice in the fact that you have trusted Jesus to save you, or do it now. Bro. Joe “O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise Him all ye people. 2. For His merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise ye the Lord.” “Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.”
In Romans 14-15, Paul deals with the differences that prevailed among the people who comprised the church in Rome. There was an odd assortment of people who came together to make up that church. There were Jews who had been converted to the Christian faith. There were out and out pagans who had been converted. Given the differences in paganism and Judaism, we can only imagine the difficulties that the church in Rome had. The differences there were even more complicated than the differences in paganism and Judaism. In Romans 14, Paul deals with the problem of eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols and put up for sale in the meat market. Suffice it to say, there were myriad problems in the Roman church, centered in the ultimate cosmopolitan city of that day, and made up of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Paul had a simple solution for dealing with those problems: “Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.” The solution is found in these words, “just as Christ received us…” This was the solution to the problem of differences in backgrounds for the Roman church and for us. What does it mean? It means that we are to receive one another just as Christ received us – just as we were. Unless you are from Mars, you have heard, and probably sung, the hymn “Just as I Am.” The meaning of the hymn is that we come to Christ just as we are in order for Him to make us into what He wants us to be. As it was with the people in Rome, we come from different backgrounds into one church and we have to deal with those differences. Some were raised in the church and it has been the center of their lives all of their lives. Some have come to the church from, for lack of a better word, pagan backgrounds, and the church has had no bearing in their lives until they received Christ. The point is that when each of the church members were saved, they were saved just as they were. They were all sinners who appealed to God’s grace through faith in Christ to be saved. Just as Christ received us just as we are, we are to receive one another. There are probably people in your church with whom you are having difficulties. Probably one of the reasons for the difficulties is differences in backgrounds and outlooks on life. These differences can lead to a lot of complications in church life. For example, today one of the difficulties between Christians, particularly between younger and older members, is the kind of music that is used in worship. I grew up on “Holy, Holy, Holy,” for example, and I really love that old hymn. It has meant a lot to me and has taught me about the holiness of God over the years. However, there are others who have come into the church who are not at all familiar with the old hymns. We just need to remember that Christ received us all by faith in Him, regardless of what kind of music we prefer. We just need to rejoice that we all have Christ in common, who received us just as we were and who loves us all the same. Here is the bottom line on the subject of dealing with differences among church members – “to the glory of God.” The point is that all that we do as a church is to bring glory to God. Christ brought us all together in one church to bring glory to Him, not to ourselves, our forms of worship, or any other peripheral thing that we prefer. What is important is that through all that we do in church, all that we do in our daily lives and in our dealings with the world, that we seek to bring glory to Christ. Our differences are not more important than Christ’s glory. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves if we are bringing glory to Christ in our individual lives or in the life of our churches. If we are not, then we need to change the way we live and the way we deal with our differences. Incidentally, this means “you” and not just “them.” Just Saying! Bro. Joe “I remember the days of old…” “Do all things without murmurings (complaining) and disputings (arguing); that you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in a dark world.”
I’ll just go ahead and admit that I do complain from time to time, and that I have to make myself not argue. For example, when I read some things on Face Book that I completely disagree with, I am sorely tempted to make a comment and point out how much I disagree with what they think. This is especially true when they make demeaning statements about Jesus. There are two things that I have to do in these cases: (1) consider the source, (2) know that my comment will not change them and will just get an argument started. I have mentioned in prior posts that I try not to argue, because it only runs up my blood pressure and makes me have to deal with unneeded anger. As to complaining, I must admit that from time to time I have to make myself not complain. I think one of my main problems about complaining has to do with my computer. It is so aggravating that it sometimes seems to have a mind of its own. There are times when I am trying to complete a thought and the thing will freeze up and not let me do anything until it decides to unfreeze. However, I must admit that no matter how much I complain, my computer goes on doing its own thing. If we will stop and think, this is true about almost all, if not all, of our complaints. Paul wrote this admonition to the Philippian Church not to make them feel better about themselves. He wrote it to remind them that to chronically complain and argue is a poor witness. This is especially true when this takes place in the fellowship of the church. We need to be careful about complaining about our churches among ourselves or in the public arena. It bothers me that church members complain about their churches in places where they gather in the secular world. This does not make people who are “unchurched” want be “churched.” They are probably thinking that they have enough problems in their lives without adding another one. This should not be thought about the Church of Jesus Christ, but it is if that is what we advertise. Often what we complain about has nothing to do with the kingdom of God, or the ongoing mission of Jesus Christ to this world. Paul pointed out that we are to “shine as lights in a dark world.” When we needlessly complain and argue, we extinguish the light of Christ in our lives. Jesus told us in Matthew 5:14 and 16 that we “are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. 16. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” We need to be careful not to say or do anything that will dim, or extinguish, the light of Christ in our lives. People should be able to hear what we say and see what we do and glorify God. Nobody knows anymore than I do how aggravating life can be, and how aggravating people can be. I just have to remind myself that I might be one of those aggravating people to somebody else. Let’s make a resolution that before we complain and argue, we will stop and think about what it will mean to the person, or people, to whom we are complaining and with whom we are arguing. I know that it’s not easy, but it is necessary if we are to “shine as lights in a dark world.” Bro. Joe “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did that which was right in their own eyes.”
Somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory, I think I have written on this text before. (So much for my “memory.”) Nevertheless, I read it again this morning as I finished reading the book of Judges and had some thoughts on it that I want to share with you. This is nothing new in scripture, and it is not new in our world today. People are good, or bad, at doing “what is right in their own eyes.” Isn’t this what Adam and Eve did? Remember, they were in the perfect Garden of Eden, and were told not to eat the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” But they did what seemed right in their own eyes and ate the fruit anyway. Of course they had the help of the same personage who helped the people in Judges to do what was “right in their own eyes.” According to Jesus, Satan is a liar and “the father of lies,” so it is no surprise that he was at the bottom of this dilemma in the Garden and in Judges. We like to think that when we follow our natural sinful inclinations, we are doing “what is right in our own eyes.” Actually, they were doing what was right in Satan’s eyes. We human beings like to think that doing what we want to do is a sign of our independence. This is one of Satan’s lies. We are not doing our own thing; rather, we are doing Satan’s thing. That is what Adam and Eve did and that is what the people in Judges were doing. We do “what is right in our own eyes” when we ignore God’s commandments. The Ten Commandments were no secret to the people who lived during the time of the Judges. By that time, the laws that God gave Moses were fairly well-known. They could not claim ignorance of what was right and wrong. The same is true of us today. Bibles are abundantly available today. People are ignorant of the commands of God because they want to be. I have never known anyone who would say that he or she did not know right from wrong. Even when I was doing prison ministry, I never had a prisoner say that he did not know right from wrong. Let’s just admit that we do wrong because we want to in spite of God’s commandments. We do “what is right in our own eyes” because that is the easiest thing to do. There was a song that was popular when I was a youngster called “Doing What Comes Naturally.” The theme of the song was that the people the singer grew up with lived simply because they did what comes naturally. Actually, this is not a good thing. Doing what comes naturally is not a virtue. This is what the people in Judges did, what people have done throughout history, and what we still do. It doesn’t take a great amount of will power whatever to do what is pleasurable. I know that everything that brings pleasure is not sinful, but we do not really take the time to figure out the difference. Like the people in Judges, we just plunge headlong into pleasure whether it is right or wrong. You might ask, “Preacher, how do you know so much about this?” I live in the same world that you do and I face temptation every day just like you. I’m not claiming self-righteousness in this article. I am claiming that all of us need to be careful that we not take the easy way out. I know that when I have, I have lived to regret it. How can we refrain from just doing “that which is right in our own eyes”? We need to spend time in God’s word and in prayer. You could have guessed that I would have recommended this. Another thing that we need to do is to pay close attention to what we allow into our minds and hearts. Proverbs 23:7a warns us: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” We learn from Proverb 4:23: “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” We need to be careful what we allow into our minds and hearts, and we need to be careful whose urging we follow when we are tempted to do what is wrong. We just need to be careful to follow what we know is right based on God’s word and on our own common sense. Bro. Joe “Oh, give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name, make known His deeds among the peoples!” NKJV
Psalm 105 is a relatively long psalm about God’s relationship with His people, Israel. It tells of God’s faithfulness to His people in delivering them from Egypt. The psalm concludes with these words: “He brought out His people with joy, His chosen ones with gladness, He gave them the lands of the Gentiles, and they inherited the labor of the nations, that they might observe His statutes and keep His laws.” The psalm is a reminder to God’s people of all ages in a metaphorical sense that He has delivered us all from our “Egypt’s” into abundant life in Him. In this spirit, I saw in the first verse three priorities for all of God’s people of every age. The first priority that I saw in this verse was that God’s chosen people are to “give thanks” to Him. Of all people, we should be the most thankful people on earth. Throughout the Old and New Testaments we read of God’s faithfulness to His people – to the Jews first and then to believers in Jesus Christ. We should be thankful that God seeks a relationship with us, indeed, longs for a relationship with us. I’m afraid that just as Israel forgot about the blessings of God, we will do the same if we are not careful. The call of the world is strong, and Satan, our greatest enemy, knows this and tempts us with the world’s goods. But God’s mercy and grace keep us and continually calls us back to obedience. We need to understand this and get it down good: We owe it to God to be thankful to Him for all of His blessings in our lives. We owe it to God to be thankful for Him because of who and what He is – period. Pause now, and “give thanks to the Lord.” The second priority that I saw in this verse was that God’s chosen people are to “call upon His name.” Of course you know that this means we are to pray. Prayer is not a task that God has given us; rather, it is a privilege and a perpetual joy that He has allowed us. Prayer should be the first priority of our spiritual lives, or I should say that prayer is the first priority of our spiritual lives. Those who know about such things say that communication between a husband and wife is of utmost importance in the fulfillment of the marriage relationship. The same is true of our relationship with God. Prayer should be a reflex, for lack of a better word, in the life of a Christian. It should be as automatic as breathing. We have God’s ear all of the time, not just on special occasions. In fact, it is when we are going through the most difficult of times that we should call upon the name of the Lord. It is a pity that some people get out of communication with God during troubled times and do not feel like praying. We do not pray just because we feel like it; we pray because we have to. If you haven’t already, make prayer a priority in your life. The third priority that I saw in this verse was that, along with being thankful and praying, we should “make known His deeds among the people.” This means that in spite of the fact that many people today see religion as “a personal thing,” the Bible does not teach us that this is so. Throughout scripture, we are reminded to tell other people about what God has done in our lives. Israel had many magnificent stories to tell about what God did for them in choosing them and delivering them. These are our stories as well, to which we can joyfully add that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Surely, each of us have stories that we can tell about what Jesus has done in our lives. This is what “make known His deeds” means. It is important to tell others about what the Bible says about God’s great deeds, but it is also important to tell others about the great deeds that He has done in our lives. This begins with the fact that when we believed Jesus saved us from our sins. Keep in mind that these should be your priorities too!!! Bro. Joe “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. 34. ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? 35. Or who has given to Him and it shall be repaid him?’ 36. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.”
To me this is one of the greatest passages of praise in the Bible. In ensuing verses, Paul had pointed out that in His sovereignty, God’s knowledge is past our understanding. The Bible helps us understand what God wants us to understand about Him, but we should never think that we have God all figured out. That’s why Paul wrote: “How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.” What it comes down to is that we praise God for what we understand about Him and for what is incomprehensible to us. Instead of worrying and fretting about the ways of God, we just need to praise Him and thank Him that He loves us and is interested in our lives. We owe God praise and worship for who and what He is. Verse 36 gives us the answer of the true depth and riches of God. The verse begins: “For of Him….” This means that all creation came from the mind and the hand of God. He is the creator of all that we see around us and He is the creator of us as well. This reveals the greatness of the dimensions of God. We understand today something about the immensity of the universe. This gives us some idea about the greatness of God. If we cannot find an end to the universe, we certainly cannot find an end to the greatness of God. When we look around us at the wonders of the earth, we can know that these wonders came from the hand of God. When we look into the sky and see the far flung galaxies that make up God’s universe, we can know that these wonders came from the hand of God. The dimensions of all of it are far above our limited human understanding, so what we need to do is just praise God, for “of Him” are all things. The verse reminds us: “and through Him….” Whatever we have belongs to God. One of the main teachings of the Bible is that we do not really own anything and that ultimately everything belongs to God. For example, when we make out a check to our church as a means of stewardship and gratitude to God, we are simply returning a portion of what God has given us. It is through God that we have what we have. David shared this understanding with us in Psalm 24:1-2: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. 2. For He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters.” God is sovereign over all of His creation, including all of us. There is nothing that is not through God. That is why it is so important for us to be good stewards of what He has given us. If we have the understanding that we ourselves and all that we possess ultimately belong to God, returning a portion of it to Him will make more sense. A greater sense of God’s ownership will help us to look at our lives and our belongings in a different light. It should cause us to worship and praise Him in a greater way. The verse concludes: “and to Him, are all things….” If we understand anything about the Bible, we understand that the world is moving toward a rendezvous with God – with Jesus Christ. We might think that we are masters of our own fate, but in reality we are not. God is in control, and one day we will understand that. Paul wrote about this in Philippians 2:9-11: “Therefore God has highly exalted Him (Jesus) and given Him a name which is above every name, 10. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” When you wonder about what the world is coming to, the above scripture is your answer. Think today of the depth and riches of God and rejoice in His greatness. Bro. Joe “Then came Peter to (Jesus) and said, Lord how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? 22. Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, until seventy times: but, until seventy times seven.”
Some of my great moments of truth come to me in the morning when I am shaving and looking at myself in the mirror. When one comes face-to-face with oneself, he just has to face the truth. This happened this morning as I was shaving, for I said to myself: “Get over it.” God did not reveal to me what I specifically needed to get over, but He knows what is in my heart, mind and soul. This put me in a theologically-philosophical frame of mind (That’s deep. lol), and I felt a blog coming on. Whatever, or whoever, it is that is stuck in our sub-conscious, or conscious minds, we need to get over it. That is basically what Jesus was telling Peter in Matthew 18:22. Peter thought that forgiving seven times was a gracious plenty, but Jesus told him differently. (Don’t start doing multiplication here, for what Jesus meant was that we are to just keep on forgiving – period.) Why do we need to “get over it”? First, if something is eating away at us, it is not hurting the person who caused the “eating,” it is hurting us. We need to get the grudge out of our systems. Years ago, I read about a fish that is called the “hog fish” – at least I think that is what it was called. (It might have been "hag fish," but I digress.) This fish attaches itself to a larger fish and begins to eat the fish from the inside. That is sort of like what happens when we fail to forgive and move on with our lives. We will not move on, or grow in Christ, until we just get over whatever it was that has eaten at us. We will just be eaten away a bit at a time. Second, we need to think about the times when we have hurt other people. I don’t think that it ever occurs to us that we might be the cause of someone’s grudge. There are people out there who need to forgive us for the wrong that we did them. When we look at it this way, it should make it easier for us to forgive those who have hurt us. Perhaps we need to forgive ourselves for wrongs that we have done others. Third, we need to forgive others because we have been forgiven by Jesus. Ephesians 3:31-32 gives us this advice: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” The fact that we have been forgiven so much by Jesus should be an incentive for us to forgive others. Fourth, we need to forgive others because God expects it of us. In the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:12), Jesus said that we should pray to be forgiven our “debts, even as we forgive our debtors.” In verses 14-15 Jesus went on to say: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Now this should really give us even greater incentive to forgive others. This doesn’t mean that you will be eternally lost, but it does mean that your Christian growth will be at a standstill until you find it in your heart to forgive others. Let me put it this way: God is serious about this matter of forgiveness. We seem to think that our failure to forgive is not very important, but according to Jesus it is very important. No one knows better than you what you need to “get over.” Today would be a good day to settle that matter. Jesus is waiting, ready and able to forgive you. Bro. Joe |
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