“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God…”
There are a lot of people who have written God off. They can’t see Him with their eyes or feel Him with their hands, so they say that He does not exist. I know that it is not that simple, but it is the beginning of unbelief. Besides that, why would people not believe in God? People reject the existence of God because of bad things that happen in the world. The reasoning is that if there were a God, we would not have earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, cancer, you name it. There is a long list of bad things that happen and seem to be unfair. What they do not take into account is that we live in a fallen world. This is written plainly in the Bible and is plainly seen in history. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their perfect world came to an end. I do not try to explain why bad things happen, or why bad things happen to good people. That is the way the world is and, until Jesus brings in the kingdom, that is the way it will be. For myself, I am just glad that in the midst of all of the bad things that happen, there is a God who loves you and me and He is with us even when the bad things happen. (I thought that I should add that there are a lot of good things that happen too.) People reject the existence of God because they do not want to be beholden to a higher power. Belief in God puts brakes on our natural inclinations. Every time we read of someone doing a bad thing, we need to say: “Except for the grace of God there go I.” The Bible says that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” People have always tried to get around obedience to God, because He curbs their natural inclinations. The history of the Jews in the Old Testament shows this to be true. No matter how many times God warned them not to give in to the sins of the countries they were displacing in Palestine, they gave in to their sinful inclinations and disobeyed God. If one does not believe that there is a God, there is no One out there to answer to and one can do as one pleases – no matter how bad it is. David is a good example of this. No one believed in Jehovah more than David, yet when he saw Bathsheba, he disobeyed the commandment not to commit adultery. But David also knew that he had to answer to God, and in Psalm 51 he asked for God’s forgiveness. Those who do not believe in God see no need to repent or ask for God's forgiveness. People reject the existence of God because those of us who believe in Him sometimes act as if He does not exist and that we do not have to answer to Him for our actions. We see this in churches all of the time. The New Testament teaches that we are to be in unity in Christ’s church, but the world sees us disobeying this and acting like people who do not have to answer to God. I know that we are “only human” but this does not relieve us of the responsibility to live a Christian life before the world. The world is crying out for we who believe in Jesus Christ to make Him real in our lives. It is my daily prayer that my life will show this. I want to show it, for example, by how I treat people who serve me in places of business. There are times when I encounter a waitress or a clerk with a bad attitude that I want to return the favor. I’ve got to tell you that it is not always easy, but I just try to remember that I represent Jesus, and that my attitude should be like His. It is my prayer that people will not base their unbelief on my behavior!!! Make that your prayer as well. There are many other reasons why people don’t believe in God, but these are uppermost in my mind today. Let’s show the world what a profound belief in an almighty God can do in one’s life. Bro. Joe
0 Comments
“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for He is faithful that promised.”
Some times when I get a case of “writer’s block,” I will write down a word and try to make an acrostic of it. This time I wrote the name of Jesus, and what follows is the acrostic that I came up with to describe Jesus, our Savior.
J- Justification – It is through Jesus we can be saved and justified in spite of the fact that we are sinners. Here is what Paul wrote about justification in Romans 3:23-24: “For all have sinned and short of the glory of God; 24. Being justified freely by His grace thorough the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” In spite of the fact that we are sinners, we can be justified before God almighty through faith in Jesus Christ. It is a matter of confessing your sins and asking Jesus to come into your life and save you. This justification is available to all people – even you! E- Eternal life – Eternal life in heaven is made possible through Jesus Christ. I want to quote from Paul’s Roman letter, chapter 6:22-23: “But now being made free from sin, and become servants of God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23. for the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The mortality rate on earth is 100%. We will all die, but by faith in Jesus Christ we can have eternal life in heaven when we invite Him into our lives. This eternal life is available to all people – even you! S - Soul Satisfaction – It is true that soul satisfaction is given us through faith in Jesus Christ. What was written in Psalm 107:8-9 is true about Jesus: “On that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men. 9. For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry with goodness.” This is what Jesus does for those who put their faith in Him. Eternal life is available for all – even you. U - Understanding – There are a lot of things that we will never understand. It is difficult sometimes to understand the ways of the Lord. But Jesus gives us understanding of the greatest truth. I will let 1 John 5:20 explain what I mean. Read it carefully: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and has given us understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” This understanding is available for all – even you! S - Surety – Perhaps you are unsure about what is written above. I want to share Hebrews 7:22 and 25 – 22. “By so much more was Jesus made a surety of a better testament. 25. Wherefore He (Jesus) is able to save them to the uttermost who come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them.” This assurance is available to all people – even you. Well, that ends my acrostic, but I hope that this does not end your interest in what I have written. Read it and share J-E-S-U-S with the world. Bro. Joe "And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He shall show to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. 14. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace (or be still)."
The Israelites escaped from Egypt and had gotten as far as the Red Sea, when they saw Pharaoh's army pursuing them. They began to grumble and complain to Moses and Aaron because they were afraid of the Egyptian army. Let's not be too hard on them, for our initial reaction would probably have been fear. But Moses gave them a word of encouragement in the text printed above. "Faith" is not an Old Testament word, but these verses are an Old Testament call to faith. In this crisis, they were to stand still and see what God could do, for He would be fighting for them. Then he told them to "hold their peace." One way of looking at this is that Moses told them "shut your mouths and believe." Another translation of this is "and you shall be still." On the one hand, when we are going through trials, we should just keep our mouths shut, quit complaining and believe. (From my own personal experience, I could probably write a book on this.) On the other hand, we are to "stand still" or "be still." This reminds me of Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." When we fret and worry about what is coming, we are not utilizing our faith. We need to heed Moses and the psalmist and be still, shut up, and wait to see what God will do. God is working on my heart about this business of "standing still and shutting up and see what He can do." If we will be still and wait on God, He will do things that we cannot imagine. Who would have thought that the Red Sea could be divided - but it was. They saw what only God could do. We do not see what God can do because we worry and fret and try to work it out for ourselves. That is sad, for we can only do what we can We need to learn to depend on God and let Him do what He can do, then we will see great things. We need to do as Moses and the psalmist suggested and just be still, stand firm and let God be God. I don't know what you are going through right now, but I do know that whatever it is, the Lord will be with you and fight for you. Believe it! Bro. Joe “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath made the one over against the other, to the end that man should nothing after him.”
As we have seen in earlier articles, Ecclesiastes, written by King Solomon, is unpredictable. Solomon was writing as a world-weary fellow who had everything that his heart desired and he found it rather boring and empty. The idea was that the full meaning of life is found in fearing God, or as we would say from the New Testament perspective, reverence and trust in God. In this verse he reminds us that good and bad will happen, and that we will have uncertainty about the future. His first advice was to be joyful when things are going good. This seems like unnecessary advice, but is it really? Sometimes we can’t enjoy the good things because we are worried about a lot of other things. Like Martha, we are sometimes “careful and troubled about many things.” (See Luke 10:38-42) Or like the seed in the parable of the sower that fell among the thorns, we become choked up by the cares of this life that we are so negative that we can’t really rejoice over the things that are good. We need to adopt the verse from Psalm 118:24: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” It could be that one might be so depressed that they can’t recognize a good, and prosperous, time when he is in the midst of it. His second advice was then we face days of adversity that we should consider that God is part of both good and bad days. This could mean several things. One is that when we face adverse times we need to consider that they are inevitable, and that we might consider what God is trying to teach us. When Paul was enduring his “thorn in the flesh” he went to God in prayer and was told that he would keep his “thorn in the flesh,” and that Christ’s grace would be sufficient to see him through it. Considering this answer, Paul saw that through his weakness he could discover God’s strength. In other words, he saw his utter dependence on Jesus. A second thing is that we need to consider is that we are not the only ones who have gone through times of adversity, and that we are not too good to have bad days. Sometimes they might be a reminder from God that we need to make some changes in our lives. Another thing that I have discovered is that the adverse times will end. One of my favorite sayings when I am going through adverse times is to say, “this too shall pass,” and it always does. Some adverse things last longer than others, but they, too, will eventually end. Think about what this verse can mean in your life. Bro. Joe “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
Afflictions come in all shapes and sizes, and they come to everyone. Afflictions can be because of health problems, family problems, spiritual problems or any number of things. We should not be surprised when we have to face afflictions. We should not get mad with God when afflictions come, because we live in a fallen world and afflictions are part and parcel with this fallen condition. Who are “the righteous” mentioned here? From the New Testament perspective, they are people who are right with God through faith in Jesus. David wrote, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous…” We would think that the righteous would be delivered from all afflictions. In fact, when we face afflictions, we begin to wonder why God is mad at us. We might think, :“I have been as good as I can be; why is this happening to me?” Read what David wrote again: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” You did not misread that. The Bible is filled with stories about the afflictions of the righteous. One Bible character who comes immediately to mind is Job. Job was declared to be righteous by God Himself, but God allowed him to go through afflictions beyond anything that we will ever know. Who was ever more faithful to Jesus, and to his service to Jesus than the apostle Paul? Yet Paul could write to the Corinthian church, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed: we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken: cast down, but not destroyed.” Paul didn’t waste his time complaining about his many afflictions, he just kept on believing and serving. Why do we go through afflictions? As already mentioned, we go through them because we live in a fallen world. Furthermore, we go through afflictions because God uses these afflictions to give us strength. The great people in the Bible were made stronger by the afflictions that they encountered. Moses was a stronger person because of all of the problems that he had with the Israelites, not to mention the problems that he had with his own humanity. The people in the church in Acts were made stronger through the persecutions that they encountered. It is noteworthy that when a great persecution broke out against the church in Acts, those early Christians did not give up, but they went to other parts of the world and shared the word of God way beyond Jerusalem. There is a promise in this text that we need to consider: “But the Lord delivers him (or her) out of them all.” When we suffer for righteousness sake, we can know that God is in the process of delivering us, even as we go through them. God “delivers him out of them all.” Notice that God delivers the righteous “out of them all.” This doesn’t mean that He delivers us from them all together, as noted above. It means that God will see us through all of the afflictions of life, and we will be victorious over them. Whether in this life, or in death, God delivers his people who are right with Him by faith in Jesus out of all their afflictions. We just need to face life’s afflictions in the faith that God will deliver us. Bro. Joe “…Who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the things formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?”
The Christian faith is not built on “why,” a word that usually asks a question. It is also built on “that," which states a fact. The Bible does not often tell us why certain things are true, but it does tell us that certain things are true. God does not feel the need to explain Himself to us, for He wants us to live by faith instead of by sight. I want to look at a few examples of “why” and “that." We are not told why God created us as He did but that He created us as He did - in His image. This does not mean that we look like God but that He created us in His spiritual image. We are more than skin, bones, tissue and organs. We are more than warm bodies. We do not know why we are created in God’s image, but we know that we are created in His image. God created us to have fellowship with Him. Augustine wrote: “You have created us for yourself and we are restless until we find our rest in you.” The fact is that God created us to need Him. God created us to want to know Him and long for His presence. God created us to need to converse with Him, i.e., to pray. We are not told why God loves us but that He loves us. The premier statement of this is found in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." No explanation is given for this love, and if one was given we would probably not understand it. The fact is that God loves us and that it is our responsibility to believe it. We are to believe that God loved us enough to give His Son in order for us to have eternal life. We are told of this love again in Romans 5:8: “But God commends His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” We are not told why God wants to use us in His service, but that he does use us. It seems odd that an omnipotent, sovereign God would need us. We know that God put Adam in the Garden to “dress and keep it.” He sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. God could have done either of these, but He chose to use both Adam and Moses to do them. It is not clear why God uses us, but it is certainly true that He does. God doesn’t need us, but we need Him and we need to be used of Him. We don’t know why He does, but we know that He does. It is not our lot to know “why”, but it is our responsibility to know “that.” Stop questioning and obey. Bro. Joe “And they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore have you dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? 12. Is not this the word that we did tell you in Egypt, saying, let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.”
The text above was written just before the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. They were afraid, because Pharaoh’s army was behind them and the Red Sea was in front of them. Instead of trusting God, they wanted to turn their backs on Him and return to slavery in Egypt. This seems ridiculous to us because we know the outcome, but they didn’t know the outcome at that time. Would we have reacted differently? Would we turn our backs on God after all that He has done for us at Calvary? Why would we turn our backs on God? The Israelites were willing to turn their backs on God, because they knew what they had in Egypt, but they had no idea what lay beyond the Red Sea. They left Egypt in the first place because they wanted to be free of bondage to the Egyptians, and to go to a land that God had prepared for them. We make a mistake when we cling to the failures of the past because we are afraid to go forward in faith into the future. We might turn our backs on God because we prefer the security of the bad that we know to the good that God can do for us. Living a life of faith is about giving up the past and going forward into the future under the leadership of God. The old way of life with its habits and moral lapses gives us false security. What God wants to give us are His blessings and His presence. What is holding you back from going forward in faith? What is making you want to turn your back on Jesus? The Israelites were turning their backs on God because they did not stop and think that God had gotten them to where they were. They had forgotten about the plagues that God brought upon Egypt on their behalf. They had forgotten the joy that they had when they loaded up and left Egypt behind. Satan’s work is to make us forget what God has done for us, and make us think that we were better off in sin’s bondage. The joy of sin is an illusion, because it brings momentary satisfaction, but leaves us with lingering regrets. Just as the Israelites had memory lapses of the really hard times they had in Egypt, we forget the heartache and pain that sin causes in our lives. The amazing thing here is that God did not change His plans for Israel, for He did not turn His back on them. The God who had gotten Israel to where they were would continue to get them where He wanted them to be. Stop and think about your own life and you will realize that God does the same with you. He will not turn His back on you. The Israelites did not turn their backs on God, because Moses gave them a message of hope in Exodus 14:13-14: “And Moses said unto the people. Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will show you today: for the Epyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever, 14. The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” Just so, we will not turn our backs on the Lord, because we know that He will fight for us that He will go with us, that He will deliver us. He sent Jesus to go before us, to die for us, to rise from the dead for us, to ascend to the right hand of the throne in heaven to insure that we can go forward in faith. Hold your head up, pray and thank God for what He has done for you and march forward in faith. Bro. Joe |
AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
All
Archives
September 2021
|