OUR LORD MUSTERS HIS ARMY

The prophets of old, looking into the distant future,  foresaw a remarkable occurrence that was unique in human history in its nature and scale. Isaiah prophesied this:

I have commanded those I prepared for battle; I have summoned my warriors to carry out my wrath— those who rejoice in my triumph. Listen, a noise on the mountains, like that of a great multitude!

Listen, an uproar among the kingdoms, like nations massing together! The Lord Almighty is mustering an army for war.

They come from faraway lands from the ends of the heavens—the Lord and the weapons of his wrath— to destroy the whole country. 

Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

Because of this, all hands will go limp, every heart will melt with fear. Terror will seize them pain and anguish will grip them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame.

See, the day of the Lord is coming —a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.

                                - Isaiah 13 verse 3 - 5

Joel the prophet prophesied it like this:

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming.

It is close at hand—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness.

Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times nor ever will be in ages to come.

Before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes. Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste—nothing escapes them.

                                    - Joel 2 verse 1 - 3

The armies described in both visions are a sight to behold. They are summoned together and those who see them are aghast at  their appearance.

In both cases, fear and trembling grip those who are confronted by it.  

This event, now upon us, is to be a truly epic event where the Lord musters  His army that he has been  preparing and suddenly, they  emerge in unimaginable array and bring with them a thunderous counter to the work of the powers of darkness.

Honour the great and mighty Lord.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO PREPARES

By definition, to prepare means to make advance arrangements for an upcoming event or circumstance. It also can mean the training or conditioning of a person for an approaching station in life. An example of this usage is, "College prepares you for life in the work place".

Preparation is a function of foresight and the desire for a particular  result in the future.

In the scriptures, our Lord is shown to make preparations and  one of the most famous instances of this is found in John 14 verse 2 - 3 where Jesus says:

 “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

Here, our Lord, with foresight and desiring to have His people be where He is, went to prepare dwellings for us.

Another place where God is shown as a one who prepares is in Psalms 23 verse 4 - 5.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.

Here, the Lord is described as preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies. The preparation the Lord does is to put in place the accoutrements of provision and support in the midst of those who are hostile to us so that when we arrive in that place, we find our advantage already built into the fabric of existence even though we are embedded in enemy territory. 

When we are moving along the path the Lord sets for us, we find that the preparations of the Lord result in our cups running over.

In this instance, God prepares a table of provision before us and blessing for us but in this next case, our Lord prepares the work that we were born to do in His kingdom.

Ephesians 2 verse 10 says this:

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

This scripture says that God deliberately and individually made us to do specific good works which He prepared ahead of time so that it was in place for us, with our individual specifications, to do.

This would be like an engineer crafting a beautiful and powerful car and then placing it on a custom-built speedway that he had prepared in advance that could properly showcase the power and engineering that was designed into the car.

Bless our wonderful and awesome Lord.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO STRENGTHENS US

We, as people,  are fragile and insufficient. There is not one human in existance who is able to live in this world without being upheld by others against the powers of nature, the powers of other people and against the powers of darkness.

Against this backdrop of vulnerability, the Apostle Paul says this:

But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.

                       - 2 Thessalinians 3 verse 3

In the world of the spirit, we are even more insufficient and we are dependent on our Lord to make us lie down in green pastures and lead us beside still waters.

It is when we are most vulnerable, when we are fearful and dismayed,  that we can count on our Lord's direct promise to strengthen us that is found in this passage in Isaiah.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

                                -Isaiah 41 verse 10

When we are strengthened by God and now can overcome the wiles of the evil one and the challenges of our lives, what are we then to do with the strength we have?

Paul the apostle clarifies this question in the book of Phillipians.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.                           

                            - Phillipians 4 verse 13

All things indeed. 

The strength the Lord imbues us with gives us the capacity to do all things. 

This is not to say that all things that can be done are profitable to ourselves or to God but with the options we have as strengthened children of God, we should endeavour to deploy the strength He gives us towards His express purposes for our  lives.

Bless His holy name.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO AWAKENS US

In a general sense, our God awakens us from death ( or from sleep ) in the way he awoke Lazarus from the grave. Lazarus had been dead for four days and Jesus awoke him as from sleep.

This He said, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.”

                                   - John 11 verse 11

We, who were dead in our sins, are awoken to life by our Lord when the debt of our iniquities is paid for by Jesus' blood and we pass from death to life.

Once we are alive in Him, we are filled with the Holy Spirit who then awakens us day to day to engage in learning the ways of the Spirit so that we become able ministers in the things of the kingdom of God.

The Lord GOD has given Me the tongue of disciples, That I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple. 

                               - Isaiah 50 verse 4

The progression into service in the Kingdom of God is to be generally awakened from death to life and then be awoken from slumber at every opportunity to learn from our Lord the ways to His righteous Kingdom.

Bless the Lord.

Amen.

Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Awakening

OUR LORD WHO LIBERATES US

The scriptures introduce a startling concept of liberty to us.  In 2 Corinthians 3 verse 17, it says:

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

This verse paints a picture of bondage or enslavement where the Spirit of God is absent and in the presence of the Spirit of God,  freedom or liberty are available and in a way of understanding, so is  access or belonging.

Let's look at this passage in John 8 verse 31 - 36:

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 

Jesus, while teaching at the temple, told those who were listening to Him that if they held to His teachings, they would know the truth and the truth would set them free. 

Here, a note could be made that Jesus is saying that truth sets us free and elsewhere in the scripture , we could note that the Spirit of God is sometimes called the Spirit of Truth (But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. - John 16 verse 13) and so we could concatenate the two axioms and correctly say that where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom or liberty.

Jesus' listeners objected to idea that they were slaves but Jesus quickly countered their objections by saying that by sinning, they could be correctly classified as slaves to sin.

Jesus then brings the logical structure to its apex where the full meaning of Liberty is made plain  and the full implication of Jesus' mission is laid out.

Sinners are slaves to sin and thus, like slaves in a household, are not part of the families they serve. Jesus then contrasts this to the sons of the family who are eternally part of that family. In this context, Jesus said that He is the one who sets us free from sin and thus are no longer slaves and are thus sons of God.

This is where the word liberty means freedom from enslavement but then also means access to the privileges of the family by being sons and then also means membership in the family of God by sonship.

This is the  wonderous gift that Jesus gives us when He died for us. He set us free and wow, did He ever set us free.

Bless His holy name.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO IS HUMBLE  (revisited)

It is hard to imagine ( but nonetheless delightful  to )  that the God of the universe is down to earth and lowly in spirit. This passage in Isaiah speaks of God's high and holy place of dwelling but also that He dwells at the level of people with humble and contrite hearts.

For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. 

                              - Isaiah 57 verse 15

In Mathew, Jesus said these famous words that are parallel to the verse in Isaiah.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  

                          -  Mathew 11 verse 28 - 30

Consider that the God of the universe is a consuming fire who ignited the gigantic stars and initiated space and time by decree and also that the sustainance of all existence is in His hand.

Our God of incomprehensible power is also gentle and humble.

The God of all creation identifies strongly with the humble and the contrite of heart. In fact, Psalm 51 verse 17 says:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

This means that it is against God's nature to reject a humble heart. Any person who comes before Him with a humble and contrite heart will find themselves with access to the heart of God who is himself  humble and thus easily  associates with the humble.

These are the words in Luke where Jesus delights in the fact that the Father himself delights in entrusting the fate of the kingdom of God into the hands of  the lowly and humble rather that to the wise  and the lofty. 

At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.

                          - Luke 10 verse 21

Here, Jesus our Lord identifies with the humble and rejoices when they are made central to God's plan.

Bless our wonderful Lord.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO SEALS US BY HIS SPIRIT

Ephesians 1 verse 3 - 14 is an extraordinary passage of scripture that catalogues the awesome privileges we have as believers in Jesus the Son of God.

The passage culminates in the assurance that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as belonging to Jesus on the merit of our faith in Him. Here is how it goes :

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,  just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. 

In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,  to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. 

In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. 

In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Bless the name of the Lord.

Amen.