“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the Gentiles.”
This great promise given to the Isralites, based on the way God works with His people, the promise certainly pertains to us. There is nothing written here that cannot be seen in the way the Holy Spirit works in our lives. The basis of the promise in this verse is “I will keep you.” The Lord said, “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness.” God’s keeping us is bound up in the fact that He has called us. This means that He called us and we responded to the call and when we did, we became intrinsically bound up in His will and leadership in our lives. We need to realize that in our answer to His call, God has ownership in our lives, and becomes a part of all that we do in life. This is difficult for some people for they think that God’s ownership of us takes away our free will. Jesus said that “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Frankly, I had rather be free in the arms of God than in the trap of Satan. The Lord said, “I will take hold of your hand.” This is good news. The promise of Jesus is that He will never leave or forsake us. It is comforting when we are held in God’s hand. I remember walking across the dark schoolyard in my hometown with my dad to “shoot some baskets” at the gym. I used to reach out periodically and take his hand so that I would know that he was still with me. (lol) This is not all that prayer is, but there is a sense that when we talk to Him, we have a sense of safety. It is a great relief to me that the Lord is holding my hand and that “underneath are the everlasting arms.” Take comfort in the fact this is true for your life. Reach out your hand to Him and discover the security of having the Lord hold your hand. The Lord said, “I will keep you and make you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the Gentiles.” He called them to reach out to the world, just as Jesus called us to reach out to the world. Throughout the Old Testament the prophecy about the coming of Christ and about his salvation for the Gentiles is prominent. The Lord does not call us, keep us and hold our hands, to live a self-contained life. He calls us to reach out to people and to be a witness to them of the love of Christ. This begins by our living exemplary lives before the world and showing them to love and the righteousness of Christ. Praise the Lord for His promising to keep you, and let Him do it! Bro. Joe
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“He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.”
Someone wrote that “life is like a bowl of cherries, take one and you want another.” This is essentially what Solomon meant in Ecclesiastes 5:10. Another translation of the text is that “he who loves money shall not be satisfied with money.” We can actually put almost anything that we can hold, touch or possess in the place of silver and it will be the same. Try this: “He that loves food will never be satisfied with food.” Any way, you get the idea, and you know that it is true. Here is the principle: There is nothing on this earth that can bring us total satisfaction. Think back on your life: Did you ever tell your parents that if they would buy you one thing or another that you would never ask for anything again, because you thought at that moment that this “thing” would give you total satisfaction, only to discover that it really did not? I’m almost certain that you did, at least I know that I did. Your parents were probably like mine and knew better, so they did not give in to your whim. God is like that too. He knows that we are never totally satisfied, and that is another reason why He doesn’t give us everything that we want. You can name almost any human desire, or whim, and this principle will hold true. Life just goes on and we go from one desire to another. The point is that we have to look beyond this earth to find true satisfaction. The real values of life are spiritual. In the place of trying to satisfy our whims and wants, we should seek to find contentment in God. Contentment means that we have come to grips with our human needs and wants, and have decided that they are not the “be all and end all” of life. In Philippians 4:10-13, Paul gave us the principle of contentment: “But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again: wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. 11. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Paul was in prison at this time and had received a monetary gift from the church at Philippi. He wanted them to know that he was truly grateful, but that He had found contentment in something much higher than money. At some point in our lives we have to ask ourselves where our real satisfaction, or contentment, lies. If our satisfaction lies in what we possess, then we are cheating ourselves out of the richness that God’s blessings can bring into our lives. Earthly pleasure can become so addictive that we move from one pleasure to another, and usually end up digging a deeper hole as we go. We need to find our satisfaction, or contentment, in the “riches of God’s grace.” Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 2:4-7: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us. 5. Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. (by grace are you saved;) 6. And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7. that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward through Christ Jesus.” While many are pining away here, endeavoring to fulfill their earthly desires, God has acted on our behalf through His Son to help us find contentment in the “riches of His grace.” Now, there is real satisfaction that will last for eternity. We do not understand that now, but we will understand it “by and by.” Bro. Joe “Stand Fast in the Lord” Philippians 4:1
“Therefore my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.” The words “stand fast” are frequently seen in Paul’s writings. It was important that Christians not let the world around them keep them from living a life that would be pleasing to the Lord. The people to whom Paul wrote lived in a predominantly pagan society, which meant that there were many temptations to sin. Today’s society is not unlike the society in which the Philippians, etc. lived; therefore, it is important for us to “stand fast.” Today we might say “stand firm,” or “stand pat.” However we say it, it means to not be swayed by the sins of the world around and to remember who it is that we serve. So, how are we to “stand fast”? We are to “stand fast in the Lord.” This means that we are not to stand fast in our own opinions or prejudices. In our human flesh we do not have the power to stand on our own, we need to stand fast in the Lord, and to obey His will for us. We need to remember that we do not just represent ourselves, but we represent the Lord. The world needs to see the Lord’s people living like His people. Standing fast in the Lord means that we stand fast in His power. When Peter and John encountered the beggar at the Beautiful Gate of the temple in Jerusalem, the beggar wanted them to give him some money. Peter told the man that he did not have silver or gold, but that what he had he would give him. In the name of Jesus Christ, the man got up from his beggar's spot and began to run and leap and praise God. When the people marveled, Peter wanted to make sure that the people realized that it was not his own power that healed the man, but that it was the power of Jesus. Here is what Peter told the people: “And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness, we had made this man to walk.” He went on to tell them that the man was healed by the power of Jesus, whom they had denied. Peter stood fast in the Lord and not in his own power. We have the power of God on which we can stand, and we need to make sure that people know that it is the Lord’s power and not our own. Standing fast in the Lord means that we stand fast in His love. As we confront a pagan society, we need to remember that the kingdom of God is built on love and not on hatred. It is one thing to be angry about the direction of the society in which we live, it is quite another to confront it. When Jesus looked at the waywardness of the people of His day, He was moved with compassion toward them. He saw them as “sheep without a shepherd.” Compassion is love in action. Jesus stood firm in His commitment to die for the people, and He did that out of love. It is important for us to remember that Jesus told us: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love for one another.” (John 13:35) People see Jesus through the love that we have for them. This does not mean that we have to compromise Christian principles when we confront society, but it means that we oppose our sinful society in the love and compassion of Jesus. It is at this point that we need to remember to “hate the sin and love the sinner.” At lot people scoff at this, but it is possible and is how we should confront the world. Standing fast in the Lord means that we stand fast in His presence. We need to remember that Jesus promised that He would never forsake us. To seal this promise, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us. When we stand fast, we are not standing alone. We have the constant presence of the Holy Spirit to comfort, strengthen and assure us. It does seem sometimes that we are standing alone when we stand in the righteousness of God, but we are not alone. So, “stand fast in the Lord.” Bro. Joe “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.”
Good news! If you feel insufficient to meet all of the challenges of your life, you are in good company. The great apostle Paul declared in this verse his own insufficiency. No one suffered for the sake of Christ more than Paul, and through it all he depended on the sufficiency of the Christ that he served. This is a lesson that we need to learn. I think that we unconsciously try to take on the challenges of our lives on our own without considering that we have a resource in Jesus that can take us over all of the challenges and trials of our lives. We just need to confess our insufficiency and trust the eternal sufficiency of our Lord and God. What does it mean to depend on the sufficiency of God? It means that we can depend on Him in whatever we face in life. We find that when we get to the end of our rope that there is a greater rope to grasp. We do not know what it means to depend on God’s sufficiency until we run out of our own resources. I have testified that after seventy-two years of life on this earth, and after over fifty years in Christian ministry, I fully realized the sufficiency of God when I had to battle illness over a two year period. I thought that I knew something about faith, grace, prayer, and all of the great things of the Christian faith, but when I could do nothing but trust God, He proved sufficient to meet all of my needs. Sometimes God brings us to the end of ourselves and our puny resources in order for us to see His real strength. We just need to trust that we can depend on God in all of life through the good and the bad. Someone has written, and rightfully so, that, "When we are flat on our backs, we can only look up." It means that we need Him to teach us how to really live the Christian life. This world is rife with temptations that call us away from the life that He wants us to live. Our Lord Jesus Christ experienced all of temptations without sin. He emerged victoriously, and enables us to contend with all of the issues of life. One of the most difficult lessons that Christ taught us was to love people like He loves us. This means that we should love people unconditionally. This is not humanly possible. We can’t live out the sacrificial love of God on our own. That is one of the reasons that Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to indwell us and guide us into the wilderness of life. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can love as Jesus loved. All of the virtues of the Christian life are possible for us because we have the sufficiency of our God to help us live them. Keep in mind that none of us lives them perfectly, but we can live good lives because of God’s sufficiency. It means that if we try to live the Christian life on our own without depending on the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we will make a big mess of it. There are Christians all over the world who are not enjoying the victorious life because they are trying to live it in the flesh and not in the Spirit. Lest I seem too self-righteous here, I know this is true because I have tried it myself. I have found that after God has done a great work in my life, I can take credit for it myself if I’m not careful. This is when Satan has come into the picture and turned victory into defeat. When we stop thanking God for His sufficiency in our lives, and when we stop giving Him the credit that He deserves, we are defeated in our spirit. There is not a person on this earth who is sufficient unto himself or herself. All you have to do is look at what a mess the world is in to see what human beings do when they do not lean on God’s sufficiency. Just take this as a reminder that He is your sufficiency too and lean on Him. Bro. Joe “In Him (Jesus) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”
“Redemption “is a word that we do not use a lot today. The word, as used in the Bible, is a legal word used for freeing slaves. If someone, or the slave himself, bought a slave’s freedom it was said that he was redeemed. This is really what Paul intended in this verse from Ephesians. He wanted us to know that our freedom from slavery to sin had been purchased for us through Christ. Christian redemption is centered in a person: “in Him.” Jesus Christ is the only source of our redemption. In John 14:6, Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” If it wasn’t for Jesus everyone would be hopelessly lost, and there would no hope of heaven for anyone. Jesus is the one who sets us free. Here is what Jesus said about it in John 8:36: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” Christian redemption is certain: “we have.” Being set free by Christ is not something that we can only wish for. There are people who say that we can’t know whether or not we are saved, or have been set free. But according to Paul, this redemption is something that “we have.” The New Testament is written to let us know that we can know that we have been redeemed. We know whether or not we have received Jesus as our Savior. Redemption in Jesus is not something to be taken lightly, but it is something that can be taken with certainty. Christian redemption is costly: “through his blood.” 1 John 1:7 tells us: “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Revelation 1:5 tells us: “And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood.” Redemption through Christ is free for the taking, but it is certainly not cheap. It cost the life of God’s Son. I don’t know why it had to be this way, but I do know that it was God’s plan, and that it is the result of His love for us. Don’t be ashamed to talk about blood redemption, because it is absolutely necessary. Christian redemption has a great cause: “the forgiveness of sins.” Forgiveness of sins is what redemption is all about. The first thing that a person has to do to be saved is to realize that he or she is a sinner in need for forgiveness. No one comes to the Lord for salvation having earned it, or demanding it. Paul wrote: “For by grace are you saved through grace, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: 9. not of works lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)The problem that Jesus had with the Pharisees in the gospels was that they did not think that they needed to be forgiven for anything. This is a problem for a lot of people today, because they refuse to see themselves as sinners in need of forgiveness. We never get to a point that we do not need God’s forgiveness. Isn’t it amazing that this one little verse in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians tells us so much about the redemption that we have through Christ. If you are not redeemed you can be today. If you are redeemed ---- rejoice! Bro. Joe “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29.Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. When I read it, I get a picture in my mind of Jesus standing on the side of a mountain with His arms outstretched, bidding the whole world to come to Him for rest. That is a great message for this tired old world. He does not invite us to sit down and do nothing, but to find our rest in Him. Saint Augustine said: “Oh God, you made us for yourself, and we are restless until we find our rest in you.” How true this is. It is rest for our souls, the deepest part of us. When we come to Jesus, He gives us what Paul called “peace that passes all understanding.” He rids us of our fear of life and fear of death. We can go about our business daily, knowing that we are resting in the powerful arms of Jesus. All of the twelve apostles of Jesus (except Judas)underwent terrible persecutions. They willingly gave their lives as martyrs as the years went by. At least one of them, the Apostle John, lived to a ripe old age, but according to some accounts, he was martyred as well. Why were they willing to give their lives for this former carpenter that they followed for three years (THEY REALIZED THAT HE WAS MORE THAN A CARPENTER) They heard His promises, and they heard Him say that He would give rest to those who come to Him. It is not just rest in this life but rest in the life to come as well. When we are resting in Jesus, we are not afraid even of death. Besides resting in faith and confidence in Jesus, knowing that He is with us and will not forsake us, we are called to rest in His“yoke.” No doubt you know that a yoke was the instrument that was placed over the necks of oxen to lead them in the work that they were to do. When we come to Jesus, He places His yoke on us and calls us to service. One thing about the yoke that we need to know was that it enabled its owner to guide it where He wanted it to go. When we come to Jesus, He leads and guides into what He wants us to do. We can rest in that yoke, because we know that Jesus will not guide us into anything, or to anywhere, that He will not be there with us. Another thing about the yoke is that it was usually designed for at least two oxen. Jesus called us to serve Him in yoke with our fellow believers. We can rest because we know that we are not in this alone. Jesus has yoked us together to serve Him and rest in Him together. The “yoke” illustrates for us that there is no such thing as a solitary Christianity. We are all in this together, and we are, or should be, a comfort to each other. That’s right, as we rest in Jesus, we rest in fellowship with other Christians. This fellowship is very important in our service and in our sense of well-being. Jesus put us in His yoke together so that we can pray for and encourage each other. The author of Hebrews wrote this: “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting (encouraging) one another; and so much the more as ye see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24) Come to Jesus and get the soul rest that He promises you in your service together with other Christians. Bro. Joe |
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