Children of God without fault

 

Philippians 2:15

so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world

This seems like a tall order – how can we be blameless, innocent, uncontaminated, without fault - while we are living in a morally corrupt and spiritually perverted generation? Without spots or blemishes while we are living here on earth in our natural bodies, as the above verse seems to suggest?

To understand this verse, we of course must read it in the context of what was written before it. We read in verse 12 that we have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. This does not mean that we must earn our salvation, but that we have to do our very best to live our lives in such a way that all areas of our lives show evidence of God’s presence in us. This will be the case if we have a respectful reverence of God - the fear and trembling being the result of our awesome encounters with the living God, not our fear of God because we feel guilty about our sin. We have to persistently refuse to live like the world around us dictates, making the right choices over and over again, never yielding to ungodly pressure to do otherwise.

Verse 13 shows us that God takes immense pleasure in energizing us and creating in us the power and desire to both will and work for Him.  This is not a reason to decide to do nothing on your part because He is doing it all inside you. If you understand His Lordship and presence all around you, it motivates you to be more dedicated to Him.

Paul gives practical ways to accomplish his entreaty, in verse 14. We have to stop complaining and disputing, and according to Spurgeon this means to stop complaining against the providence of God (let Him do what seems good to Him); against one another (do not raise controversy amongst your brethren); and against the ungodly world (of non-Christians).

This then leads into our verse 15. With God’s help inside us, we are ever preparing ourselves and working at it to be seen as people that are completely unable to harm or devour; no ungodly actions can be attributed to us; we follow and obey our Shepherd with total commitment; we refrain from complaining and bickering. Christians and non-believers alike cannot find evidence of wrongdoing in our lives; and our God does not judge us because we are under the covering of atonement through our faith in Jesus. Who then remains to condemn and find fault in us?

 Among whom you shine as lights in the world. This is not an instruction to shine; it is a statement of fact. We are shining lights. What do lights do? Lights expose things; they show the way; they are used to alert you of danger; they bring goodwill and cheer; they are used to make sure that things are safe.

Points to ponder:  Being in a dark place is a greater incentive to shine. How brightly are you shining? Which areas in your life are in darkness, and you are not letting God shine through?

 Shine Jesus shine

Experiencing God

 

Gen 3:9

But the LORD God called to Adam, and said to him, “Where are you?”

Ever since time began, God wishes us to have a relationship with Him, to have a divine connection with Him, to experience Him. The evidence for this abounds throughout both the Old and New Testaments.

In our quoted verse, God did not ask Adam where he was because He did not know - He was asking Adam why he was hiding from Him. He was showing Adam His willingness to re-establish the connection between them, no matter what had happened to break it off. It was now up to Adam to decide how close to God he wanted to live his life.

God never intended for us to know Him on a purely intellectual level, He is always longing for us to know Him through unique personal experience. Regarding this we can learn so much from Moses, who had such a remarkable walk with the Lord.

He had an intimate relationship with the Lord:  Deut 34:10 “There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.”

He experienced intimate communion with the Lord: Ex 33:11 “Inside the Tent of Meeting, the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend…”

This gave him special intimate privilege:  Num 12:5 “Then the LORD descended in the pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the Tabernacle. “Aaron and Miriam!” he called, and they stepped forward. And the LORD said to them, “Now listen to what I say: “If there were prophets among you, I, the LORD, would reveal myself in visions. I would speak to them in dreams. But not with my servant Moses. Of all my house, he is the one I trust. I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles! He sees the LORD as he is. So why were you not afraid to criticize my servant Moses?”

How then are we to go about knowing God in this new, fresh and life-giving way? We must approach Him in humility; willing to learn; with childlike faith because the deeper things of God are beyond our mental capacity to understand. He wants our love more than anything else, which will ensure that we spend time with Him; waiting on Him, and not just squeezing our meeting with Him somewhere in between our rushed daily schedule of activities.

Someone who knew very well what an intimate walk with the Lord looked like, is Walter Beuttler.  Here is his description of one of his personal encounters with Jesus: “As soon as I did this, the Lord walked through the door into the room where I had been waiting upon Him. I did not see or hear Him, but it was so real that sight could not have made it any more real. The Lord walked in, and His presence followed behind Him, which was as a Royal Dignitary walking to His Throne with a long robe following, which spread throughout the entire room.” May this recollection inspire us to move ever closer to God!

Points to ponder:  Refocus. Put Jesus at the centre of everything you do!

Turn your eyes

Those who hate peace

 Ps 120:6-7

Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. I search for peace; but when I speak of peace, they want war!

If we look at current events, these words seem to come from Israel’s collective soul throughout history! The roots of the Jewish people in the land of Israel spans thirty-five centuries, and their presence there has been unbroken during all this time. Even after Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, renaming the region Palestine and exiling a portion of the population, some Jews remained. In the roughly two thousand years after this, many different empires came to colonize and rule Palestine, disappearing again, while Jews remained there during all these changes. This fact notwithstanding, when the modern great return of Jews to the land began, the Arabs living there had developed a Palestinian nationalism and a desire for independence, and they rejected the right of the Jews to self-government.

The mediation process to establish a two-state mandate in Israel started in 1936 and has been ongoing ever since. In that year, the British Peel Commission offered the Arabs 80% of the disputed land. Israel voted to accept their portion of 20%, the Arabs rejected this offer and continued their violent rebellion against British rule. This has unfortunately been the pattern for no less than four subsequent offers from mediators up to now, where the Jews voted four times to accept a mandate of having two independent states in Israel, which the Arabs rejected outright four times and then followed this up by waging war or initiating terrorist actions against Israel.

In Gen 16:10-12 we read that the Angel of the Lord gave a glimpse into the future of Ishmael, son of Abraham by Hagar, and ancestor to the Arabs of centre, western and North Arabia. It says: …  “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. He will be a wild man, as untamed as a wild donkey, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” The Angel foresaw the scenarios playing out between the Arabs and the Jews in Israel, thousands of years ago.

Is there a solution to this problem? Yes there is, and the solution does not lie in dividing up the land of Israel. God warns very clearly in Joel 3:2 “I will gather the armies of the world into the valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will judge them for harming my people, my special possession, for scattering my people among the nations, and for dividing up my land.”

The answer is a Man, Jesus! He is the Messiah the Jews are longing for, the Redeemer of all other nations on earth, including the Arabs. In Him, Jew and Arab will unite as one new man, operating out of His love, joining hands, and making Israel prosper among the nations!

Points to ponder:  Pray for all inhabitants of Israel to accept Jesus, as the peace of Jerusalem will only come when Jew and Arab together call out: “Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem

And then the end will come

 Matthew 24:14

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

This verse is most often interpreted as being a prerequisite for the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which of course it is, but the time of the fulfilment of it is later than most people realize – in the time of the last few years on planet Earth, called the Tribulation.

This becomes clear when we study the context of the verse where Jesus spoke these words. He was answering His (Jewish) disciples’ question about what the sign of His coming and the end of the age would be. Keep in mind that Jesus was speaking to Jews about the end of the age here, warning them about what they as Jews would be facing during what He called a great tribulation. You can pick up the clues proving this as you continue reading in Matth 24 about “those who live in Judea”; “those on the housetop” referring to the booths built during the feast of Sukkot; “pray that your flight is not on a Sabbath”.

That the Tribulation is meant for Jews primarily is further confirmed by two Old Testament prophets:  Jeremiah 30:7 “How awful that day will be! No other will be like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob (meaning Israel), but he will be saved out of it.”  And also the angel Gabriel explains to Daniel in Daniel 9:24 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city…” where Daniel’s people of course are Jews and his holy city is Jerusalem, and the last (or seventieth) week referred to here, is the seven years of the Tribulation at the end of the age.

Back to our verse 14 quoted above.  In verse 15 following right after it, Jesus starts with “So”, connecting the two, and thereby placing verse 14 in a specific time frame.  He then speaks about the appalling sacrilege Daniel warned about, which is when the coming Antichrist will set himself up in the Holy of Holies in the third temple, declaring himself god, and demanding that all peoples everywhere worship him. He did not need to explain what he was referring to as His disciples - being Jews – knew the writings of their prophet Daniel. We know from reading Daniel that the timing of the event Jesus spoke about here, is in the middle of the Tribulation, right before God executes His final judgment through the seven bowls, leading to the end of the age.

When the book of Revelation speaks about this same time, we find our verse 14 of Matthew 24 being fulfilled, as we read in Rev 14:6 “Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people.”  The next events Revelation describes as happening on earth after this flying angel, are the seven bowls judgements, and then the visible second coming of Jesus.

It would seem that the end of opportunities to proclaim the gospel to all nations before Jesus returns and the end of all things then comes, lies here - in the middle of the seven-year Tribulation.

Point to ponder:  We have limited time!  When the bowl judgements start, it spells the end of God’s grace with mankind.  How can you increase your involvement in winning souls for Christ – ask Holy Spirit to show you new, creative ways to tell/show others Who He is!

The Gospel

I am a spirit being

 Is 26:9

My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.

This is one place in the Old Testament where we become aware of the fact that we have a soul and a spirit, separate from each other.  We usually look to the New Testament to affirm this, as it is written in 1 Thess 5:23

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are mostly not aware of our spirits until it is pointed out to us that we actually have one!  We tend to live in the soul-area of human emotions, will and personality.  This is then also the part of us most often fed through worldly persuits like education, entertainment, promotions, hobbies, and the like.  Soul rules, and decisions are based on external factors which we filter intellectually and then choose the options best suited to our personality, our particular world-view, and our humanly-acquired wisdom.  Spirit is present but largely ignored, just going along for the ride, not allowed to really give an input.

But God!  When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, our spirits are instantly transformed and come alive to God!  We suddenly have a beautiful holy spirit within us, a place where God can dwell through His Holy Spirit, a place where God wants to meet with us and build a love-relationship with us, a place where we can behold Him – how awesome is that!

From then on, we have to start changing the order of command in our being.  God designed our spirit to be dominant and our soul to be subordinate to it.  And it really is a decision that we have to take concerning ourselves, as Scripture says in Prov 25:28 “ Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls”.  How do we go about it?

Firstly acknowledge that you are really a spirit being, who lives in a body and has a soul, with which you interact with the world around you.

Start feeding your spirit with spiritual food – read the Word; pray both in the Spirit and in the body through using your mind and speaking your earthly language; worship God; meditate on Him; actively seek a living relationship with Him; spend time with Him.

Bless your spirit with spiritual truths and promises from the Bible spoken over it – how?  Call your spirit to the fore and read those blessings over you, this is how you grow your spirit.

Points to ponder:  As you get up every morning, call your spirit to attention and instruct it to follow Holy Spirit’s promptings throughout the day, leading body and soul on this journey!

By Your Spirit

Holy Spirit's voice

 

2 Cor 10:5

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

Why is it necessary to take every thought captive to obey Christ? We need to remember that not every thought we have, is our own. Some thoughts are a communication from the spirit realm, either from Holy Spirit, or from Satan and his demonic forces.

How then are we to discern where our thoughts originated from? One of my favourite teachers, Neville Johnson, speaks of the spontaneity of the Spirit’s voice. Your own thoughts mostly come out of your deliberations concerning a specific matter, it is based on your own logical reasonings and arguments about it. Which mostly cannot be trusted, as it comes from you! But the Spirit drops a thought into your mind spontaneously, it just suddenly is there, out of the blue as it were.  I was reminded of this when a friend gave her testimony on how she was packing for a camping weekend, and a thought just arose:  Pack an extra pair of contact lenses. Which she ignored because it was not something she usually did - to her detriment, as one lens tore while she was on the camp!

Holy Spirit’s voice sounds just like your own thought voice, it is not an audible voice from outside (although God can speak to you in this manner if He wishes to). It sounds the same because there is a Spirit-to-spirit communication which then reaches your brain instantly, using your physical neural pathways. But there is a certain awareness or feeling of the person behind the voice. The character of the speaker shines through. If what is thought makes you anxious, or afraid, or makes you feel condemned and ashamed, or puts you down, or alters your mood so that you now feel depressed – you can surely know that Satan and his demons are behind this communication. He is the father of lies, he hates you, does not want you to have the joy of the Lord, and will always try to deceive and mislead you. Holy Spirit, on the other hand, will give you thoughts to uplift you, guide you, give you truth, and even if you need correction will never make you feel condemned, but just quietly and lovingly convict you that you are now on the wrong path.

God has given us a test by which we can discern who is communicating with us:

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Is that thought in your mind conveying truth? Will it lead to behaviour that is noble and honourable? Does it encourage me to do what is right? Is it pure, lovely, admirable? Can I praise whatever it is suggesting to me as excellent? If not – cast it out of your mind!

Points to ponder:  Am I just accepting all thoughts which arise in my mind as my own, or am I discerning where they come from?  Ask Holy Spirit to teach you and start practising to recognize His voice.  You can stand on His promise given in Joh10:27 that His sheep do indeed hear His voice!

Spirit lead me

The wonder of Israel's rebirth

 Is 66:8

Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.

When Isaiah penned these words from the Lord, I am sure that he wondered greatly about its meaning! This prophecy was fulfilled in recent history.

The Belfour Declaration in 1917 paved the way for the United Nations to adopt Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, officially declaring Israel as the homeland of the Jews. (Provision was made for the division of the land between the Arabs and the Jews, a solution plan which the Arabs rejected).  On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, thereby establishing the first Jewish state in 2 000 years. The State of Israel officially came into being upon termination of the British mandate in Palestine that same evening at midnight – and a country was born in a day!

There is another wonder associated with this day in history. Since the 6^th century, the rabbis from the Babylonian exile had divided the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and later the Haftarah (the books of the Prophets) into sections to be read publicly in synagogues, the aim being that they take one calendar year to read through.

The day following the proclamation of the State of Israel was a Sabbath, and the reading from the prophets for that day was Amos 9:11-15, of which verses 11, 13 and 14 are given here:

In that day I will restore David’s fallen shelter— I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins— and will rebuild it as it used to be,

I will bring my exiled people of Israel back from distant lands, and they will rebuild their ruined cities and live in them again. They will plant vineyards and gardens; they will eat their crops and drink their wine.

I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

These words echoed throughout the world from synagogues on the first day of modern Israel’s existence – only God could have orchestrated this!

Points to ponder:  Let these events from the history of Israel greatly increase your faith in the God Who keeps His promises, and Who knows every little detail of your life!

 Hatikvah

Spring means the harvest is ready

 Song of Solomon 2:11-13

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come, and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.

Song of Solomon can also be interpreted as the journey of the bride of Christ from the moment she meets Him, her Beloved Jesus, and through the seasons of her life thereafter. The above verses stood out for me because it is now spring in South Africa, and we can physically relate to what the writer is describing here. 

Up to this point the Shulamite shepherd girl (identify yourself with her) has met and fallen in love with the King (Jesus), as described in Chapter 1.  He is her First Love, and she yearns to spend time with Him, but the more she experiences His perfectness and beauty, the more she becomes aware of just how dirty and unkept she is, and this makes her feel ashamed and unworthy.  And yet she remembers how He sees her as perfect and lovable, without spot or blemish!  This sustains her, so that she renews her efforts to be of service to Him and to introduce Him to her friends.

This could be a dangerous place for the bride to find herself in, because often, and I would venture to say more often than not, the religious community (my mother’s sons in 1:6) sees her vigour and passion for Jesus and puts her to work in the church, using her anywhere and everywhere because she is willing and able. The day then inevitably arrives where she finds herself having less and less time to spend alone with her Beloved, even while spending more and more time serving Him! As soon as she realises this, she withdraws herself from many responsibilities and returns to His chamber of rest, and this is the best decision she could make, even if she then must endure the criticism of those who do not understand.  Now she can fall in love all over again, and her Beloved sternly adjures her brothers and sisters not to awaken her love until it pleases Him, until He considers her ready to be sent out again.

And this is what the above verses refer to:  He has seen that she is ready and is now calling her forth from her place of worship and rest in the King’s chambers, inviting her to come to the nations with Him.  He has prepared the ground with rain, the cooing of turtledoves shows that her love for Him is restored, and He has already prepared the harvest to be gathered. On reading further you will see that she does not respond immediately.  This does not keep Him from calling her His darling, His beautiful one.  Nothing you will ever do, or not do, can change His love for you!

Points to ponder:  Where are you on this journey of the bride and her Beloved?  Are warning lights flashing as you realise that you are not spending time with Him because you are so busy working in other people’s vineyards that you neglect your own? Return to Him, He is waiting with open arms to receive you!

Song of Solomon

When God changed His mind

 

I am sure the title raised your eyebrows a bit! Surely God decides matters and then keeps His word? We find these interesting verses in Amos 7:

Amos 7:1-3

The Sovereign LORD showed me a vision. I saw him preparing to send a vast swarm of locusts over the land. This was after the king’s share had been harvested from the fields and as the main crop was coming up. In my vision the locusts ate every green plant in sight. Then I said, “O Sovereign LORD, please forgive us or we will not survive, for Israel is so small.”  So the LORD relented from this plan. “It will not happen,” He said.

If you continue reading, you will find that it happens again, when God wanted to punish Israel with fire and in response to Amos’ plea relented and decided to revoke His sentence. One righteous man pleading for his nation has the power to stay God’s hand. However, when Israel still did not return to Him, He shut the door of mercy and did not spare them any longer and allowed them to be exiled from their land.

What would move God to have mercy and grace for us to such an extent that He does not judge us as a nation or a city with the punishment we so richly deserve?

We find the answer in Jonah, who had been sent by God to warn Nineveh of their impending judgment:

Jonah 3:10

When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.

The whole city, (120 000 people!) fasted and repented of their evil ways and violence and then turned away from their evil doings. And herein lies the key:  repentance does not merely mean to say that you are sorry. Repentance means to make a U-turn concerning those wrong thoughts and behaviour and then move in the opposite direction, actively refraining from doing them again.

It would seem that our task here is twofold – as intercessors we need to stand in the gap for our nation and our cities, repenting on their behalf of the sins that are continually  being committed, pleading with God for an extension of His grace and mercy, begging Him to  delay His inevitable judgment.  But secondly, we need to send out as many workers in the field as possible to lead people to repentance and turning to God!

Points to ponder:  Think about your twofold role in saving your nation from the terrible wrath and judgement of God on their stubborn refusal to acknowledge Him – are you actively involved in both?

Song of Repentance

Daniel's 70 weeks

 

God revealed many detailed facts about the end times to His beloved prophet Daniel. Among them was the unfolding of events leading up to the first coming of Israel’s Messiah, and then further into the future, to events in the time of the Antichrist. These are to be found in Daniel 9:24-27 and are well-known as Daniel’s 70 weeks. Let us take a closer look at those four verses.

Daniel 9:24-27

“A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.”

What I wish to highlight here, is the fact that the seventy units of 7 years each (hereafter called Daniel’s weeks) all have to do with Israel and the Jewish people, as the angel Gabriel says to Daniel, “your people and your holy city”. This includes the last 70^th week, (the last unit of 7 years), a most important fact to remember, as this last week is the 7-year Tribulation period just before the second visible appearance of Jesus.

Verse 25 “Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One—comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defences, despite the perilous times.

Sixty-nine of these special seventy weeks are broken down into two parts: the first part would last 7 weeks and would start when the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem. This was fulfilled when Artaxerxes instructed Nehemia to go and rebuild the city on 14 March 445 B.C. (Neh 2). The second part would last 62 weeks and would be the time that Israel waits for her Messiah to come. They were told how to recognize Him by Zechariah in Zech 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” This was fulfilled on 6 April A.D.32, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey colt to shouts of Hosanna! and palm branches, hailing Him as King of Israel, their long-awaited Messiah. Anderson, in his book “The coming Prince”, calculated that the difference between these two dates is exactly 69 units of 7 years each, or 69 Daniel weeks!

Verse 26:  After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.”

‘After the 62 weeks’ actually means after 69 weeks, as we have to remember to add the 7 weeks preceding them.  Jesus was put to death, He certainly did not leave any earthly treasures behind, and here at this point the prophecy starts to extend beyond its fulfilled history and into the end times. There came a Roman ruler called Vespasian who destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D. But there will also be another ruler in the future who will destroy Jerusalem and the third temple, yet to be built, and war after war will follow him – the Antichrist.

Verse 27 “He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

After an interval of several years, called the Church Age which started when Jesus died and rose again, this last 70^th week will start. It will start with the Antichrist making a peace treaty with among others, Israel, which he will break off in the middle by positioning himself in their temple and declaring himself god.  Great Tribulation for Israel and the whole earth will follow, until God’s decreed wrath brings a complete end to Antichrist’s rulership on earth.

Points to ponder:   The exact details of fulfilled biblical prophecy, as proven in history, is the guarantee that future unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible will also come to pass in exact detail.  Let us look them up, take them to heart and warn others to do the same!

Jesus is coming