Thoughts on Christ and His Word

 God has a time for everything.  Although He lives outside of time, in this world He created, He has a time for everything according to His purposes. In speaking about the destruction of Babylon God said: "That country has many rivers and rich treasures, but i ts time is up , and its thread of life is cut." Jeremiah 51:13 GNTD God has a time-frame for our life that we will not surpass.  We get to choose to cooperate with God and his will for our life or not.  But we don't get to violate the time he decreed for us.  Let us use our time wisely fulfilling God's purpose for us so that we may be rewarded richly in Heaven where our time will never run out.

Henry Blackaby shares great insight into the reason God moved the Israelites into the Promise Land the way He did: "God’s primary concern was not giving His people land; it was developing a relationship. On Mount Sinai, God said, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself” (Ex. 19:4). The promised land was simply the means God used to establish a unique relationship of trust and obedience with His people". Many times God leads us to great things but only by taking us through a route of trials and tribulations.  The faith and character we learn through these is what God uses to make us more like Christ.

Why would the wrath of God be upon unbelievers especially in sending them to hell?   When we put our faith in Christ we immediately become identified with him. The blood of Christ is applied to us and cleanses us from all sin. We immediately become children of God just as Jesus is the Son of God. We get baptised into the body of Christ and therefore we are of Christ. We are identified with Christ and our identity is in Christ.  When a person rejects Christ they are identified with Adam in his sin who rejected God when it came to the forbidden fruit. But they also identify with all those who called for Jesus' crucifixion as he was being crucified. They are identified with the Roman soldiers who physically crucified Christ. But they are also identify with the religious Jews who called demanded the crucifixion of Christ. And so just as those who called for and crucified Christ will receive the wrath of God, so too all who have rejected Christ will receive the wrath of God at the Great

The key to a healthy spiritual and emotional life is healthy, wholesome thinking. Peter wrote: "Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking."  2 Peter 3:1 So we are encouraged to engage in "wholesome thinking".  But what is the basis of wholesome thinking?  Peter tells us: "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles." 2 Peter 3:2 So the foundation of healthy and wholesome thinking is meditating on the words of the O.T. prophets, the words of Jesus,  and the words of the apostles. In other words think Biblically.  When the foundation of our thoughts and belief systems are rooted in the Word of God, we will think more clearly and feel a whole lot better about the future. God's thoughts are the basis for Truth and Hope. 

"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart." Hebrews 3:8  This verse from psalms 95 is repeated 3 times in Hebrews, twice in chapter 3 and once in chapter 4. Throughout chapter 3 and 4 God puts the responsibility of faith and and a soft receptive heart on man.  Obviously the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and the Father draws our hearts to him. But at the end of the day man must choose to have a soft heart and believe the gospel.  

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 1 Timothy 4:1  20 years ago someone would jokingly say "I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body" and everyone would laugh.  Now they aren't kidding.  Not only do they feel like a woman, they can feel like whatever they want and expect everyone else to accept their "feelings" or "gender identity". This ideology has its roots in radical feminism and its end-goal is to eradicate the traditional concepts of male and female.  To make genitals irrelevant since one can decide one's own identity apart from biology.  Therefore, at its core it is a person recreating or re-imagining themselves - thus they put themselves in the position of God. That is why gender ideology is evil.  It replaces God with self, it replaces facts (male and female) with fiction, and allows people to live in a make-believe world.  And on top of th

Election by Association.   Israel is God's chosen people because they came from Abraham.  God chose Abraham as His vehicle to bring forth the Messiah.  He chose Israel as His people because of their association with Abraham, though many of them were evil. The Church (believers) are God's Elect, His chosen people because of our association with Christ.  God knew from the foundation of the world who would respond to Christ in faith and chose all those in Christ by faith to be his chosen people.

 God does not change. Now to some people that sounds like God is inflexible and unwilling to bend in light of our weaknesses and hurts. Malachi 3:6  says "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Notice why rebellious Israel is not completely destroyed. It is because the Lord does not change. In his essence "God is love" 1 John 4:8. If God changed into some other kind of god, he would have completely destroyed Israel, since he would have been a god of lesser love than He is. "God is love" which means He is faithful to his promises. He promised the Jews that he would send the Messiah who would save Israel and the world from their sins. Thank God that He does not change.

Is hate simply the opposite of love or is it the consequence of love?  In God his wrath only flares up in the light of violations of love towards himself as Creator, towards his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, or his prized creation - human beings. When a father sees his daughter mistreated his anger flares up. Therefore his hate, anger, and wrath are a consequence of seeing unloving acts towards someone he loves dearly. These unloving acts are called evil and wickedness. Big words for "sin". Paul wrote in Romans 12:9 "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." We love people sincerely from the heart. We hate the evil acts of other people that sin against those we love. In his book Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund he wrote "Jesus pronounced searing denunciations on those who cause children to sin saying it would be a better fate if they were drowned (Matthew 18:6), not because he gleefully enjoys torturing the wicked but most deeply because he

The Prophet Micah was asking what God wanted from him. Burnt offerings? 1000 rams? His first born? But God answered that he wanted three things from him: Mic 6:8 - He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. God asked Micah to live a just life, doing what is right. He asked him to love Mercy, that is to learn to forgive others. And he asked him to be humble before God, which includes living in faith and submissive to God's will. This is God's will for our lives.

Have you ever thought about the depth of God's love? Paul writes in Romans 5:8  "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners Christ died for us." But have you ever thought why did Christ need to die for us? Why was the sacrifice of his Son necessary for the forgiveness of sins? Who wrote the rules on what was necessary for the Salvation of mankind and forgiveness of sins? Was it not God? Could He not have determined that eating a marshmallow or a hamburger could have brought us salvation? If nobody can tell God what to do, why didn't He invent an easier way for salvation? The only answer I come up with is so that he can demonstrate the depth of his love. It seems God chose the hardest and most gruesome way to bring about salvation so that we can understand the depth of his love for us. Praise God for the depth of his love demonstrated by choosing the sacrifice of his Son as the payment for our sins.

 Salvation always involves three attitudes. 1. A recognition of our sinfulness and inability to save ourselves. 2. A recognition of who is the true God and accepting Him as our only Savior. For Israel it was recognizing the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the one who took them out of slavery in Egypt. 3. The asking for forgiveness of sins from our only Savior. For us in N.T. times,  that  is Jesus  Christ.  This is clearly seen in Hosea 14:1-4. "Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall!  Take words with you and return to the Lord . Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips.  Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses. We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.”  “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. Hosea 14:1-4 NIV

"But which of them [the prophets] has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word?  See, the storm of the Lord will burst out in wrath, a whirlwind swirling down on the heads of the wicked.  The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come you will understand it clearly.] Jeremiah 23:18‭-‬20 NIV  In times of disasters, pandemic, world wars, people begin to question God's existence or his love. They ask if God were loving why would this be happening? But they forget that death was ushered in by the rebellion of Adam and Eve. Ever since then people gained a very sinful, self-centered, and selfish nature. So much so that one of the first two brothers killed the other out of jealousy and anger. But not only this, God cursed the Earth and the Earth has been against people also. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and killer viruses happen around the world every year. Statistically

Through the prophet Isaiah God declared: "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." Isaiah 43:25 I often wondered why God forgave Israel so many times. They were constantly rebelling against him and even when Isaiah made this prophecy they were in Rebellion against him. But this verse answers the question of why God always seem to forgive Israel. The answer is God forgives for his own sake. God was not forgiving them because they were so lovable, but because God is love and at the core of his being his Central attribute is love. (Isa. 43:4; 1 John 4:8) God chose one man from whom the Messiah would come - Abraham. And God promised to love and care for his descendants. Because God is faithful to his promises he continually demonstrated love to a rebellious Israel. (Deut. 7:7-8) God salvation of mankind is not because we're so lovable or good-hearted. God Saves people because he is love and therefore provided a way

The marriage of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2 was not solely a story of of a wedding of two perfect human beings made in the image of God.  It was a picture of a much bigger story. For the marriage theme that begins in Genesis ends in Revelation 19 so the first wedding in the history of mankind was simply a picture of the future wedding of the Creator and his bride -the Church of Jesus Christ.  The Bible starts with a wedding.

 In Psalms 119:36 the psalmist writes, "Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain." Seeking selfish gain is always opposite of the statutes of God. God's laws always about loving God and loving others. See Mark 12:30-31, the Great Commandment 

"Believing in Christ means repenting of yourself righteousness and trusting in Christ's righteousness alone."  Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum, Christ from Beginning to End