"For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."
From what I have been reading about changing social mores, where right is wrong and wrong is right; I'm beginning to wonder if we think that God has changed. Malachi 3:6 says that God has not changed. We often hear people say:“This is after all the Twenty-first Century.” But I am yet to hear anyone say that it would be alright if their husband or wife committed adultery because this is the Twenty First Century. I am yet to hear parents say that it is alright if their children lie to them or become chronic liars because this is the Twenty First Century. I could go on, but you get the idea. First, let's consider that God has not changed. He has not changed his mind about sin. Sin is still sin to Him. If it was sin in Bible days, it is sin today. We just need to be careful that we are not too selective about what we think sin is. We would do well to remember that all sin is still under God's judgment. He judged it in the Garden of Eden and still judges it today. He does not smile on it. Second, let's consider: "Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." While God has not changed in relation to sin, He also has not changed in relation to love, mercy and grace. It was because of God's unchanging grace that "Jacob" was not consumed. Consider these words from one of the most negative books in the Bible, Lamentations 3:22-23: "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. 23.They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." Jeremiah recognized that God's hatred of sin did not mean that He hated His people. Every time I read these words, a chill goes up my spine: "Thy (God's compassions) are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." God is faithful to be compassionate towards us. (Let's insert a "Hallelujah" here.) God's love and compassion are stated succinctly and profoundly in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." In spite of our sinfulness, God loves us. Romans 5:8 tells us that: "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". This has not changed either. His death still atones for our sins. This does not mean that we have carte blanche to sin at will and that God does not care that we sin. He does care, but His love, mercy, and grace have been given to us in His Son so that we can be forgiven. 1 John 1:9 promises: "If we confess our sins, He (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us for our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Yes, God still hates sin, but He still loves us. He loves you. That will not change, but He wants us to recognize our sins, confess them and be forgiven and changed by Him. He definitely does not want us to try to redefine sin, nor to excuse our sins, no matter how trite they may seem to us. Give praise to the unchanging God!!!! I don’t know of anyone who believes in Christ who believes that God has changed. In fact it would be devastating if God changed. He is, after all, all-knowing and all-powerful. He knows everything from before the Garden of Eden to the end of the ages. For one example, it would be devastating if God changed and decided that instead of dealing with us in grace, He would only deal with us in judgment. We would all end up in hell and heaven would be emptied, because no one could be saved if God changed his mind about grace. Thank God for His unchanging grace!!!! Bro. Joe
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“Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, the we should be called the sons of God; therefore, the world knows us not, because it knew Him not.”
The first thing that I want to do in this article is to establish the fact that God loves us. I know that this is a theme that I have written about time and time again, but it is a theme that we can’t get enough of. Some people are so hung up on the judgments of God in scripture that they cannot see the great love that He has for them. John 3:16 tells us 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.” 1 John 4:8 says “God is love.” That is a statement of fact. It does not just say that God loves, but that God is love. The Bible depicts God’s love as being so great that it is His very nature. His love is so great that He will not let us off, and He will not let us get by with what is bad for us. It is called God’s discipline. Here is the proof text for it: “And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as children, my son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, or faint when you are rebuked by Him. For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not? God’s love for us is complete." (Hebrews 12:5-7) The second thing I want to do is to establish that it is because of God’s love that we can be His children. (“Sons” can also be translated “children.”) The fact that we can become children of God is the fulfillment of God’s love. The great God of the universe loves us so much that He wants to establish a relationship with us. As we saw in John 3:16, God went to great lengths to give us a personal relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ. Romans 5:8 gives us another glimpse of the greatness of the love of God: “But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In His matchless love, God did not wait until all of us got better; He showed His love for us while we were still sinners. In the New Testament this is called grace. God’s grace tells us that He loves us and will save us in spite of our sinful selves. We need to grasp the reality of this. There are people who will not come to Jesus because they think they are too sinful. They just do not understand the matchless love of God. He is in the business of forgiving all sinners, and He does not measure how deep in sin they are. All He wants to do is to dig us out of the depths of sin. Every individual on this earth is a candidate to become a child of God. That is how far-reaching His matchless love is. The third thing I want to establish is that when we surrender to God’s love and receive Jesus as our Savior, our lives take on a new purpose. It becomes our responsibility, and our purpose, to share the love of God with other people. The text tells us that “the world knows us not, because it knew Him not.” In other words, the world does not determine our lifestyles or our theologies. Our task is to show Him to the world in order for them to become His children too. This is why at the end of each of the gospels, Christians are told to go out into the world and witness about the matchless love of God. Just because the world doesn’t know Him, or us, does not mean that the world cannot come to Him or join us. Our purpose is to share the matchless love of God with a world that is filled with envy and hate. It was love that compelled God to save and it is His love in us that compels us to share that love with others. Pause now and thank God for His matchless love, and ask Him to give you opportunities today to share His love with others. Bro. Joe “Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.”
I don’t know how this verse has escaped me all of these years, but it recently caught my attention. When I read Psalm 116:5 I saw it as a great description of God, and I base this on my experience with Him and on what I read in the Bible. Actually, the verse was the result of the psalmists experience with God during a trying time in his life. In verses 3 and 4 he wrote: “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. 4. Then called I upon the name of the Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.” The result of that prayer was the text written above. How does it describe God? It tells us that the Lord is “gracious.” Of course the word “gracious” is similar to our word “grace,” which tells us a lot about God. Graciousness is defined as kind, beneficent and benevolent. That is certainly a good description of God. A lot of people put so much stress on the wrath of God and His punishment of sin, that they overlook God’s graciousness. I certainly don’t intend to minimize God’s wrath, but, at the same time, I do not want to minimize His graciousness. One of my favorite points that I make about God’s treatment of us is that He really and truly wants to bless us, but we really and truly need to live a life that brings on God’s blessings. Throughout the Bible we see the graciousness, kindness and benevolence of God at work, and throughout the Bible we see people doing everything that they can to run away from His blessings. This is greatly illustrated by the nation of Israel. No one in the Bible had greater treatment from God than Israel, yet they continually disobeyed and disappointed Him. They preferred gods made of wood and stone to Jehovah. All these false gods brought to Israel was heartache and destruction. The good news to us is that God is still gracious, kind and benevolent. He proved that through the sacrifice of His Son. Accept and claim the graciousness of God in your life, and don’t let the cares of this world turn you away from Him. It tells us that the Lord is “righteous.” This word means a lot of things, the greatest of which is that God is Holy. God is totally and completely holy and good. It means that He is always right and righteous in what He does. The great thing is that He offers to share this righteousness with us through faith. One main theme of the apostle Paul was that any righteousness that we have comes by faith. God knows that we are all sinners, and by His grace He has made us righteous through faith in Jesus. It is called “imputed righteousness.” This means that God gives us His righteousness to enable us to live the Christian life. It was said of Abraham, that because he believed the promise of God that God would bless him and make of him a nation that God “imputed it to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:22) It tells us that the Lord is “merciful.” This means that God is compassionate. He cares about what happens in our lives, and He cares about the quality of our lives. We shouldn’t take God’s mercy for granted, but we can be assured when we take a wrong turn in life, that when we see the error of our way, confess, repent and ask for His forgiveness, we will get it. It was God’s mercy that carried Israel through the Red Sea when they were exiting from Egypt. It was God’s mercy that carried Israel through the wilderness to the Promised Land. It was God’s mercy that brought Jesus into the world to save us from sin. It was God’s mercy that placed our sins upon His Son on the cross. Without God’s mercy, we would be in dire straits and it would be impossible to be saved. Do you see what I mean by “a great description of God?” These three great qualities are fundamental to our relationship with God, and we need to be reminded of them often. Bro. Joe “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.”
I don’t know what else the scribes and Pharisees needed to see from Jesus. If we take a look back at some of the things that Jesus did before they asked for a sign, we will see why their request was needless. Jesus had healed people, and had even raised a young girl from the dead. (To get a good picture of what I mean, read chapters 8-10 of Matthew.) They weren’t satisfied with what Jesus had done; they wanted to see something else. In the ensuing verses in Matthew 12 Jesus told them that the only sign he would give them was the “sign of the prophet Jonah.” This was a reference to the three days that Jonah spent in the belly of the “great fish,” which was a reference to Jesus’ resurrection when he was in the grave and rose again after three days.. I think that we are as guilty today as the Scribes and Pharisees were then. Before we will commit ourselves to Jesus, we want Him to prove Himself to us – to do something else. Good lands! What else does He need to do? God has already given us His magnificent creation. Psalm 19:1-3 deals with this: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament (sky, space, stars, etc.) shows forth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” We can look around us and see the handiwork of God both day and night. I know that there are people who look at what God has created and all they see is a “natural world.” To them this world started with a big bang and everything else just happened by chance. People see what they want to see, but as I look at the order of the universe and the beauty of the earth, I see what God has done and rejoice in it. God has already given us His Word – the Bible. Let’s return to Psalm 19 and see what it tells us about this. In verse 7 the psalmist wrote: “The law (which is the part of the Bible that he had) of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” All the way from Genesis to Revelation, God is revealing Himself through His word. I know that a lot of people read the Bible and cannot see the word of God in it. They give many reasons why they take this view, but we who believe have this dynamic record of God’s work through creation and redemption as solace for our souls. I know that I am glad that I have God’s word to study each day. There are times when I want to see God do something else, but then He reminds me that if I can’t find Him in what He has already revealed, then I won’t find Him. God has already given us His Son. Hebrews 1:1-3 speaks eloquently to this: “God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 2. Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; 3. Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.” I’m not saying that God no longer acts in this world, of course He does, I’m just saying that He doesn’t need to give us anything else to help us believe, because He has done enough already by sending His Son to die on the cross for our sins. Understand that God does not have to do anything else to prove Himself to you. Yes, He can, and will, do marvelous things in your life, but that is to bless you, not prove Himself to you. If what God has already done doesn’t suffice to help you believe, I doubt that “something else” will suffice either. Remember, faith is believing without seeing. Bro. Joe “But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5. To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”
This text states what God did in order for us to be able to become His children. He sent His Son into the world to save us from sin. Jesus was Immanuel – “God with us.” This act of God changed the world and brought on the three great acts of God that would, indeed, change the world- though the world does not always agree. The Manger When God sent forth His Son, He did not send Him forth as a king, but as a baby. The amazing thing is that when this occurred, it didn’t happen in a palace or some ritzy Roman resort of its day. It happened in a stable and His crib was a manger – a feed trough. On top of that, He was born into a carpenter’s family. Carpentry was a noble line of work, but it was not a job of the elite. It is also noteworthy that when Jesus was born the announcement was not made to Herod, or any other important Jewish dignitary. The announcement was made to shepherds. Shepherds were important to the economy of that day, but it was considered to be a lowly job. It was to shepherds that the angels made the big announcement, and it was these shepherds who were the first to see the Savior of the world, “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” The manger reminds us that Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die for all people. In Luke 2:10, the shepherds were told: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.” This baby lying in a manger in Bethlehem was destined to change the world. He left great teachings that we have in the four gospels. He left a great example of what it means to live a good life, but what He mainly did was to give His life so that we could be saved, which brings us to the second great act of God: The Cross I don’t mean to diminish the life of Christ, for we can learn a lot from His sojourn on earth, but His main task took place on a cruel Roman cross. Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. 2. Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Something took place at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross that changed the world’s access to God. When Jesus died, the veil of the temple that separated the presence of God from people was torn in two, which meant that at His death, Jesus opened up full access to God. The Empty Tomb The manger and the cross would have been all for nothing except for the empty tomb. Three days after He was crucified, Jesus arose from the grave. He taught His disciples for forty days, and then ascended to the Father. He is alive forever, and still has input in the world that He created. There is a lot of scriptural evidence for this, but I think that Hebrews 7:24-25 sums it up for us: “But this man, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. 25. Wherefore He is able to save them to the uttermost that come to Him, seeing that He ever lives to make intercession for them.” The resurrection of Christ changed the world forever. I think that you will agree that these three acts of God did, indeed, change the world forever. The birth of Jesus, which we celebrate at Christmas, and His resurrection, which we celebrate at Easter, make all of the difference in the world in our salvation. Without these the world would be doomed forever. I know that a lot of people do not believe this and scoff at it, but it is nevertheless true. If you are reading this, it is almost certain that you are not scoffing, but rejoicing. Bro. Joe “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”
This text comes at the end of the saga of Joseph and his eleven brothers who sold him into slavery. This is years later, when Joseph had the time to look back on everything that had transpired since his brothers had betrayed him. He tells his brothers that he knows that they really wanted to get rid of him, not caring whether he lived or died, but that God had a greater purpose for all that transpired in that event. In other words, Joseph came to realize that after all is said and done, God was in control of that situation, for He knew what would take place with His people Israel, and He took the evil that they intended and turned it into good for His people. This has not changed, for God is still in control of all of the things that take place in our lives. It might not seem so at first, but as things work out, we can look back and see the handiwork of God in our lives. Recognizing God’s control in our lives is all-important. We need to see that it does matter who is in control of our lives. The sinking of a ferry in South Korea that is in the news as I write this is a case in point. The captain of the ferry turned the control of the ferry over to a novice who had never taken the ferry through those treacherous waters, and the result was the needless loss of many young lives. This is what happens in our lives when we cease to recognize God’s control in our lives. Many lives are “shipwrecked” today because they took control of their own lives, or turned their lives over to someone besides the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s control in our lives is important because God alone knows what the end of the matter will be. We might have something that takes place in our lives that shakes us to the core. For example, it might be a serious illness that sidetracks us for awhile. During that time we can feel useless, or we can use the time of suffering to draw closer to the Lord. We just need to trust the Lord day by day that He knows what is going on and what the result of our illness will be. I would never accuse God of making us ill, but I do know that He uses those times to grow us and to lead us to His successful conclusion of the matter. It might be a setback in your plans for your life. It might be that you lost your job and did not know which way to turn. That would not be pleasant, but if you will seek God’s control, you might find that God had something else that He wanted you to do. God’s control is important because He knows what we really need in our lives instead of what we think we need. Many people have decided when they were young to follow some career that would bring them riches and maybe even fame. But God had other plans, and began to steer us in the direction that He knew we need to go. We might have been well-meaning in our plans, but God meant better for us. “Better for us” is always what God wants of us instead of what we want for ourselves. If you have been disappointed in your life at this point in your life, consider whether or not you have surrendered to God’s control, or to your own control. We like to think that we are “masters of our own fate,” but we make poor masters for ourselves. Surrender all that you are and have to God’s control and see what can happen in your life. Like it was with Joseph, you might meet many pitfalls along the way but in the final analysis, your life will be better and you will be better off under His control. It could be that the Lord has you reading this article now, because you need to turn control of your life over to Him. Go quickly to prayer and start to seek God’s guidance and see what a difference it will make in your life. Bro. Joe Isaiah 40:28-31 is probably the most familiar text in the Old Testament. We quote it often when we are in distress. I discovered this morning that it gives us a description of God and the promise of His work in our lives.
First, is the description of God: "Hast thou not heard? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching His understanding." The God who works in our lives is "everlasting." This means that God has no beginning or end. He has just always been. He is the creator of everything. He does not faint or get tired and is never weary. Also, He is beyond our understanding - way above our intellect. The amazing thing is that this magnificent God is interested in our lives. Second, is His work in our lives: "He giveth power to the faint (the tired); and to them that have no might He increaseth strength." God, who is never exhausted, is aware of our exhaustion and gives us His power to overcome it. Didn't Jesus say, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will you rest"? We have His promise to give us rest in Himself. Our bodies may be tired, but the Lord lifts up our spirits and gives us the strength to go on. I have experienced this a lot over the past year. Third, He not only lifts our spirits, He helps us to thrive: "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." When I read that this morning, I thought of John 10:10b: "I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly." The Lord's presence in our lives makes life better, even when we are going through hard times. Being human, we will get weary, and we will be what we call "down in the mouth." We don't have to stay that way because we have a wonderful God who is at work in our lives. What particularly fascinated me when I read this text was that the God described in verse 28 is interested in our lives and does what verses 29-31 tell us. He doesn't have to give us new energy and strength, but because of His great love, mercy and grace He does. Let's just praise Him!!!!! Bro. Joe "And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled in their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil." Zephaniah 1:12
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9 There is a hapless theology called "Deism." The gist of this theology is that there is a God but that He created the universe, then just forgot about it. According to this theology God will do neither good nor evil. Basically, this means that God will do nothing. He is just out there in the ether somewhere doing "god things" while we work it out for ourselves here on earth. The Biblical view of God is that He is involved in every aspect of human life. He will do good, i.e., He will bless us (good), or He will judge us (bad). If you believe the Bible, God is not neutral concerning our lives, nor is He neutral as to how we live our lives. What does this mean? Does it mean that I am trying to scare you into belief in the God of the Bible? I mean the exact opposite. God is not neutral concerning your life. He is concerned about your life. The Bible tells us that even the hairs of our head are numbered by God. That means that, while He is not always pleased with us, He still loves us - that includes you. Peter wrote in his second letter that God is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Without trying to be insipid, I am telling you that God is on your side; that He is pulling for you. In His great heart, God is longing for you to have a relationship with Him. That is why He sent His Son, Jesus, to die to save us from sin. God does not want to mess up your life, rather, He wants to give you abundant life. If someone came to you and said, "I've got a lot of money that I want to give you so that you can have a higher standard of living," you would probably accept it. Well, through Jesus, God wants to give you abundant life here and eternal life in heaven. You can be cynical and say that you do not need this, but that will not mean that you do not need it. It would mean that your life would change, but the change would be for the better. I have been on both sides of this, and I can tell you that, with Jesus in it, my life is a whole lot better. I am certainly not perfect, but I have a quality of life with Jesus that I could not have known without Him. Take the Bible's word for it. God is not neutral about you. He wants to make your life better. You might be a drifting Christian or a non-Christian, whichever, God is on your side. Believe it!!!! Bro. Joe "I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images."
When God says that He is a "jealous God," He is not speaking from insecurity. He is speaking out of concern for people who ignore Him, or worship other "gods." In the USA we are not overrun with "graven images," but we have surely come up with some good substitutes. Today, we have secularism. The strategy of secularists is to take all spiritual, or religious, things out of our society and put our Christian witness into a church ghetto. Secularists are doing a good job of helping destroy our country and God is not pleased, because "He will not give His glory to another." Closely tied to secularism is atheism. It appears to me that the national religion is becoming atheism. They have succeeded in getting the Bible and prayer out of schools, but have succeeded in some quarters in getting condom distribution in schools. Say what you want, atheism is a religion today. Atheists have put their faith in the hope that there is no God. Then there is materialism. To a certain extent, we are all guilty of this. We are as guilty as the atheists and the secularists. We are enamored with "things" to the extent that we run up credit card debts that we cannot pay back. (By "we" on the credit card issue I don't mean Mary and me. She pays off the credit card every month.) Now I'm really going to meddle. "Churchanity" is a "graven image." What is churchanity? Notice that this replaces Christianity. In chuchanity we put buildings and programs ahead of Christ. Buildings and programs are important, but they are not to be our focus. We are to focus on Christ and put Him at the head of our churches. (Read Colossians 1:16-18) The final "graven image" is doctrinal compromise. There are churches and preachers that have done away with Biblical doctrine and have replaced it with secular doctrine. The guide for churches is the Bible, and if the Bible condemns something everytime it is mentioned, then it does not belong in a Christian church. There are other "graven images" but these are on my mind at the present time. Isaiah 42:8 is still true: "I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." He still means it. Bro. Joe “The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
The world had become so wicked that God put all living things to death except Noah, his family, and the animals that he took aboard the ark. After the flood, God gave Noah a promise that He would never send a worldwide flood again. The sign of His promise was the rainbow. Even today when we look at a rainbow we can remember the promise that God made concerning a flood that will never drown every living thing. The rainbow gives us a message about the nature of God. It is a message about the sovereignty of God. What do I mean by “sovereignty”? I mean that God is in charge of everything all of the time. There is nothing that God cannot do. There are plenty of things that God will not do, because part of His sovereignty is His holiness. God created everything; He knows everything; He is in charge of everything all of the time. The reason that God could make a promise like the rainbow promise is that, in His sovereign majesty, He knows that if He does not want it to flood it will not flood. There are also plenty of things that God allows to happen in His sovereignty. A good example is God’s dealings with Israel. His promise to them in the Old Testament was that if they would obey Him and live by His will, they would do well. They did not, so they went into Babylonian exile. Of course, there is a lot more to the story, and the story has not ended, but the point is that God allowed Israel to be defeated at that time because they disobeyed Him. We should rejoice in the sovereignty of God. It is comforting to go to bed every night and wake up every morning to a world in which God is in charge. It is a message about the power of God. I want you to think about the flood for a moment. It was not just forty days and night's of rain that flooded the whole earth over the tops of mountains; it was that God unleashed the water under the earth. Here is what the Bible says about it: “On the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.” (Genesis 7:11b-12) Only God has the power to unleash all of the power of nature for such a cataclysmic occurrence as the flood. Human beings are capable of a lot of harm, but even the most powerful human being could not unleash all of the waters of the heavens and the earth at one time. We should rejoice in the power of God, because it is through His power that we are able to be saved and to serve Him. It is a message about the grace of God. If the message stopped with the sovereignty and power of God, and those two things were all that characterize Him, we would need to be really afraid. But the rainbow also tells us about the grace, mercy and love of God. He looked with pity on the world and promised that He would never again send that kind of flood upon the earth. We can trust our sovereign and powerful God, because He is a God of grace. His grace is seen throughout the Bible. This doesn’t mean that everything that God brings about is positive. What it means is that God is working everything to the good of His people. According to Jeremiah in his Lamentations, that it is because of the mercies of God that Israel was not consumed, “because His compassions fail not.” (Lamentations 3:22) This was written even while Israel was being taken into Babylonian Captivity. In the final analysis, God will work out everything for all time in His grace. What a great promise and what a great cause for rejoicing. I’m sure that this is not all that the rainbow tells us about God. These are things that are uppermost in my mind about the subject. Bro. Joe |
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