Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....December 30, 2019
We wish you all a very Happy and Blessed 2020:)
We begin this year in hope...hope for a year of blessings and protection...both from God. I will be sharing a messge in January about the new year and what we can do, as Christians, to be more prepared for the years surprises, both positive and negative. One thing will be sure for us....in order to be focused we must be aware of the Gospel and what it can and will do for us.....
The Power Of The Gospel
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation” Romans 1:16).
People want to change. All advertising is based on the presupposition that people want things different from the way they are. They want to look better, feel better, think better, and live better. They want to change their lives but, except from an external standpoint, they are unable to do so.
Only the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to change people and deliver them from sin, from Satan, from judgment, from death, and from hell. Acts 4:12 says, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” And that name is Jesus Christ.
So God’s Word, which is all about Jesus Christ, can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We are sinful and unable to remedy our condition, but from God comes the incredible, limitless power that can transform our lives.
All those who profess to know Christ speak of salvation, but many know little else. But the Scriptures speak of a change that takes place in an individual when they are saved; a change that is so dramatic that it simply cannot be explained. It is the kind of change that makes a drunk sober, a drug addict clean, and a prostitute pure.
Understanding this, it is little wonder why so Christ speaks of so many who profess salvation, but never possess salvation. No one can encounter the living Christ, experience the change that He alone makes possible, and be the same person they were before.
This week, I will either encourage you, or challenge you. If you truly know Christ in salvation, you will be encouraged to understand all the implications that salvation brings. If you are, however, a "talker" and not a "walker", you will be challenged to the very core of your religious beliefs. Religion has never taken anyone to heaven. Only genuine salvation in Christ will accomplish that.
Read each of the points in this message and know the I is you...
I. I AM A NEW CREATION IN CHRIST. 2 Corinthians 5:17
London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs.
Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior.
As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage.
“Forget about the repairs,” the buyer said. “When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building; I want the site.
Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God’s, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17).
He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build.
A. I Am Indwelt By The Holy Spirit. Romans 8:9-11
1. My whole being, nature, life, and behavior have changed because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (1 John 3:4-9)
2. I was dead in trespasses and sins, but now I have been made alive. (Ephesians 2:1)
3. I am now a child of Almighty God. (Romans 8:14; Galatians 3:26; 1 John 4:4)
B. I Am Circumcised “Without Hands.” (Colossians 2:11-15)
Several years ago an orthopedic surgeon performed an operation on the son of a friend of mine to repair a torn ACL. The operation didn’t restore his knee to its original condition, but it did allow him to walk, even though he still experiences pain from time to time.
Recently my friends wife had surgery to remove a ruptured disk in her back. Once again it was successful, but she, too, was not restored to her original condition. She was spared much of the pain she was experiencing, but her back will never again be like new.
Then it was my friends turn to have surgery. He tore the meniscus in his left knee, and part of it had to be removed. Yet again a successful operation alleviated the pain he was experiencing. But his knee will never be what it once was.
There was another operation, however, that was performed on those who follow the Lord that was “without hands.” It was a spiritual operation performed by God the moment you were saved. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13) and made alive (Ephesians 2:1), being raised with Christ through faith (Colossians 2:12). You put off the body of the sins of the flesh (Colossians 2:11), and have been forgiven of all your trespasses (Colossians 2:13). This operation no doctor can perform. It can be experienced only by submitting to Jesus Christ in faith. This is the “new birth,” and it didn’t make you better, it made me an entirely “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
II. I AM RECONCILED TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
A. I Have Peace With God Through The Blood Of Christ. (Colossians 1:19-20)
In the day of horse and buggies, a father went to the school house to pick up his three children ages 9, 11, and 17. As soon as he had them in the buggy--just before he stepped in--probably out of fear of the storm, the horses bolted and took off in the blizzard. Hours and miles later, when he found his children, the 17-year-old girl stood over the dead and frozen bodies of her brother and sister ages 9 and 11. Sobbing uncontrollably, she collapsed into his arms. When she had regained her composure, she explained to her dad that she tried to take her big, heavy coat and wrap it around them all. But she said, "The coat wasn’t big enough."
The blood that Christ shed on the cross was big enough to cover all of your sins and mine--all your lusting, all your lying, all your cheating, all your hatred, all your own faults.
1. We need reconciliation because sin has ruined our relationship with God. (Romans 5:12)
2. Because of sin, we are naturally children of wrath and are at enmity with God. (Ephesians 2:3)
3. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christian’s relationship with God is changed for the better. (Romans 5:10; Ephesians 2:16)
4. We are now able to have fellowship with Him. (1 John 1:3; Philippians 3:10)
B. In Christ I Am Blameless And Above Reproach. (Colossians 1:21-22)
1. God has justified me as one of the elect. (Romans 8:33)
2. I am beyond condemnation because my sins are paid for. (Romans 8:1-2)
III. I AM AN AMBASSADOR OF GOD. (2 Corinthians 5:20)
A. An Ambassador Is An Authorized Representative Of A Sovereign.
1. He does not speak in his own name, voicing his own opinions.
2. He speaks on behalf of the ruler whom he represents.
3. His whole duty and responsibility is to interpret the ruler’s mind faithfully to those to whom he is sent.
B. I Am An Ambassador Proclaiming Christ’s Message To The World. (Ephesians 6:19b-20)
1. I do not speak in my own name, voicing my own opinions.
2. I speak on behalf of God whom I represent.
3. My whole duty and responsibility is to interpret God’s mind faithfully to those to whom I am sent.
IV. I AM REDEEMED THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
One of the old favorites is the story of the father and son who worked for months to build a toy sailboat. Every night when he came home from work the man and his boy would disappear into the garage for hours. It was a labor of love--love for each other and for the thing they were creating. The wooden hull was painted bright red and it was trimmed with gleaming white sails.
When it was finished, they traveled to a nearby lake for the boat’s trial run. Before launching it the father tied a string to its stern to keep it from sailing too far. The boat performed beautifully, but before long a motorboat crossing the lake cut the string, and the sailboat drifted out of sight on the large lake. Attempts to find it were fruitless, and both father and son wept over its loss.
A few weeks later as the boy was walking home from school he passed his favorite toy store and was amazed to see a toy sailboat in the window--his sailboat! He ran inside to claim the boat, telling the proprietor about his experience on the lake.
The store owner explained that he had found the boat while on a fishing trip. "You may be its maker," he said, "but as a finder I am its legal owner. You may have it back--for fifty dollars."
The boy was stunned at how much it would cost him to regain his boat, but since it was so precious to him he quickly set about earning the money to buy it back.
Months later he joyfully walked into the toy store and handed the owner fifty dollars in exchange for his sailboat. It was the happiest day of his life. As he left the store he held the boat up to the sunlight. Its colors gleamed as though newly painted.
"I made you, but I lost you," he said. "Now I’ve bought you back. That makes you twice mine, and twice mine is mine forever." (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988) pp. 37-38.)
A. My Redemption Was Obtained For Me At The Cross. (Hebrews 9:12)
B. My Redemption Was Sent To Me In The Gospel. (Psalms 111:9)
A childhood accident caused poet Elizabeth Barrett to lead a life of semi-invalidism before she married Robert Browning in 1846.
There’s more to the story. In her youth, Elizabeth had been watched over by her [oppressive] father. When she and Robert were married, their wedding was held in secret because of her father’s disapproval. After the wedding the Brownings sailed for Italy, where they lived for the rest of their lives. But even though her parents had disowned her, Elizabeth never gave up on the relationship. Almost weekly she wrote them letters. Not once did they reply.
After 10 years, she received a large box in the mail. Inside, Elizabeth found all of her letters; not one had been opened! Today those letters are among the most beautiful in classical English literature. Had her parents only read a few of them, their relationship with Elizabeth might have been restored. (Daily Walk, May 30, 1992. Cited online at http://www.bible.org.)
· The Holy Bible is God’s love letter to mankind.
· Unfortunately, many have never opened it, and have never become a new creation.
· Becoming a new creation only comes through faith in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Word of God.
· When we submit to Him, confessing our sins and making Jesus the Lord of our lives, nothing can separate us from His love.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39
May 2020 be a year of eye opening experiences for you and your family.
NEXT WEEK...We continue our series on celebrating the new year through focusing on Gods Word...
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
Our relationship with Jesus…
Love, Grace, & Faith… so sweet,
Knowing that He died to save us
We kneel humbly at His feet.
On this earth much strife and turmoil,
Seeking peace when there’s no peace,
When we give our heart to Jesus,
Only then will searching cease.
Do you know Him, really know Him?
Do you go to Him in prayer?
What a blessing… What a treasure…
When you know that He is there.
On Calvary He died to save us,
From our sins to set us free,
Do accept His gift of mercy
He gave His all for you and me.
Please dear Lord our steps do ‘order’
All through life we need Your care,
Guide our steps… alone we falter…
As we seek Your will in prayer.
Our relationship with Jesus
Love, Grace, & Faith… so sweet,
When we know Him as our Savior
Then, in Him, we are completed.
Thank you Lord.
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
As we continue our verse by verse journey through the Bible, we look at the Israelites moving into their new home....
The Moral Problem of the “Promised Land”
As we have just noted, the book of Joshua poses a moral dilemma. It appears to present a God who plays favorites, dispossessing one group of people in favor of another that “he” likes better. This is a serious problem, especially since we are more sensitized now to the potentially devastating effects of religious exclusivism.
Bible literalists present the text of the Bible as if it had no historical context, as if every word were timeless and divinely authored. This is a distortion of the Bible’s meaning. The Bible is “timeless” only in the sense of its relevance, not its historicity. The Bible contains no one consistent understanding of God. And that is exactly its point: our understanding of God has changed and evolved over time, and the Bible faithfully records this process.
The Bible’s great strength, often misunderstood, is that it presents human experience as it actually happens. It does not create an ideal world that never existed. At that time - and throughout most of human history, including our own time, as we keep discovering - war, not peace was the norm. Different groups were constantly struggling and clashing with each other for living space and scarce resources. The conquests recorded in the book of Joshua are not unique. Many nations perpetrated them and bragged about them. The Bible does not negate human history. Rather, it describes the search for God within it and in spite of it.
The ancient Hebrews were human and no different from anyone else - except by being involved in this search with its consequent moral self-judgment, only very barely evident in the book of Joshua but becoming far more apparent in later prophetic history. No people, in ancient times or modern, ever criticized itself as harshly and as publicly as the Hebrew people. Joshua represents only the bare beginning of this evolution of conscience, and so must be understood. People did then what people have always done. But these people tried to find God while they were doing it.
At first it is a frightening God, a God who even sanctions genocide through the liquidation of one Canaanite city after another. Imagine how terrified the citizens of Jericho must have felt, hearing the trumpets of the Hebrew army surround them every day for a week until the city walls collapsed. Rahab, the inhabitant of Jericho who sheltered the Hebrew spies, would have been considered a traitor to her people. But the Bible portrays her as a heroine, and Matthew even includes her in the genealogy of Jesus!
But the God people think they know changes as the Bible progresses. At first, as in the book of Joshua, we have a God who is very tribal, the partisan of a single group of people. By the time of Isaiah, God becomes more universal. We have already seen hints of this universality in the idea of the one God who permits no others, but we aren’t there yet, and won’t get there until the later prophets. The people’s understanding of God in the time of Joshua is still quite rudimentary.
As noted in the previous section with the incident of Achan, the people clearly are not ready to live up to the highest spiritual ideals. The Bible itself actually admits this fact! “It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you” (Deuteronomy 9:5). This is a statement of a historical truth in religious language: when the moral fabric of a society weakens, it becomes liable to collapse. The Bible records much corruption in the pagan societies of the time, even including practices like child sacrifice (Deuteronomy 18:10). The genius of the Bible, even in such an early stage of its development, is that it does not spare even its own people from the consequences of violating moral standards:
Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves. Thus the land became defiled; and I punished it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the citizen or the alien who resides among you for the inhabitants of the land, who were before you, committed all of these abominations, and the land became defiled); otherwise the land will vomit you out for defiling it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. (Leviticus 18:24-28)
This is precisely what happened later on: Hebrew society also became corrupt, and the people were indeed expelled from their land - and the agents of that expulsion, the Assyrians and Babylonians, were called by the prophets instruments of God! The same fate that befell the Canaanites in Joshua comes upon the Hebrew people in 2 Kings. Moral laxity corrodes a society and leaves it vulnerable to collapse, and there are no exceptions, not even among God’s so-called “chosen” people.
In conclusion, there is no moral justification for what Joshua and his followers did in attacking the land’s inhabitants. These were people who lived as everyone else lived at the time, competing and fighting with other groups. We do not see here a finished product, but only the beginning of an attempt to find God in the workings of human life. Achan’s punishment is an example of this fledgling and often unsuccessful effort to live by a higher standard. Its present failure will not be the only one.
Ironically, Bible literalists and those who condemn the Bible make the same mistake: they read the Bible as a static divine pronouncement, rather than as a process truthfully describing the dynamics of morality and faith in human experience.
The critics condemn the divinely sanctioned violation of the rights of others that seems so apparent in Deuteronomy and in Joshua. They believe it invalidates the Bible. The biblical literalists defend it. They believe God wants us to be intolerant of those who are different. Both are mistaken. Both views attempt to remove from the Bible its sense of history. But the Bible has good reason for using history as the background of its spiritual message. The nature of history is change. Our consciousness of God is still evolving. We will never capture the essence of God with complete accuracy. But the picture of God towards the end of biblical history is better than the one in the beginning, and closer to the truth.
Towards the end of the biblical period things are very different. Prophets talk about turning swords into plowshares, about not learning war anymore. And when the people return from the exile in Babylon, they do not reconquer the land as in the days of Joshua. They do not besiege cities and engage in mass displacements. Instead they live in an admittedly uneasy tension with the Samaritans, the people who are already there. This major historical difference is evidence that the way people understood God has greatly evolved.
Another irony: most scholars today do not believe the book of Joshua has much if any historical value or that the conquests it records even occurred. Among other things, the archaeological record does not support them. Nevertheless, the Bible’s inclusion of these events as something God would support poses a moral dilemma. This dilemma can be solved only by taking an evolutionary rather than an absolutist approach to the biblical text and biblical theology.
We need to study the Bible with respect for these subtle changes. A little less concern about the infallibility of every word actually does more honor to the text and gets us closer to its truth. The Bible’s enduring power is not that it is perfect, but that it is so real.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou