Thoughts on Christ and His Word

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. Statisti...