In 2 Timothy 4 verse 1 - 2, the Apostle Paul exorts Timothy to be ready in season and out of season in service of the Kingdom of Him who will judge the living and the dead;
I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
Whereas the Lord is the Judge, we ourselves are not to judge one another lest we be judged. The authority of judging is in the hands of God and we must leave that entirely in His hands lest we invite judgement upon ourselves as expressed in Mathew 7 verse 1;
“Judge not, that you be not judged."
In Psalm 76 verse 8 - 9, the judgement of the Lord is predicted to be a fearful event but when God arises in judgment, the humble of the earth are saved. The passage goes like this;
You caused judgment to be heard from heaven; The earth feared and was still When God arose to judgment, To save all the humble of the earth. Selah.
Let us reverentially honor our Lord who, in His great authority, judges the living and the dead.
In Zacharia 3 verse 1 - 4, a court scene is described where Joshua the high priest was being accused before the Lord.
The Lord, our Great Advocate, rebuked Satan and showed that the accusations against Joshua were moot because the Lord had pulled Joshua as a brand out of the fire where he had been dealt with for His iniquity and the Lord, because of the purging that Joshua had gone through, conferred upon him festal garments and removed his filthy garments and had his iniquities removed from him. The passage goes like this;
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.”
Where as Joshua came into the court seemingly at a disadvantage, the Lord had orchestrated events and circumstances in his life that were as fire refining Him and in the court of heaven, his disadvantage was turned into an advantage by the Great Advocate.
We too have the Lord as our Advocate in the courts of heaven who demonstrates our righteousness through Jesus' shed blood on the cross. 1 John 2 verse 1 affirms this with these words;
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; And he and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
Let us bless the Lord our Great Advocate.
Amen.
Reference resource: bible.knowing-jesus.com
Thursday, January 13, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS OUR GREAT EMANCIPATOR
The children of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt for about four hundred years and the Lord God heard their cries and prepared His servant Moses to go into the land of Egypt.
Moses was sent to tell Pharaoh to release the children of Israel from slavery. When Moses first told Pharoah the command of God, he refused but the Lord brought His power to bear on Pharaoh and ultimately, the children of Israel were released from slavery and were free to leave Egypt.
After the Israelites left, Pharoah changed His mind and pursued the Israelites with His army up to the edge of the Red Sea. The Lord opened the Red Sea and the children of Israel went through but when the Egyptian army tried to follow, the opening in the sea collapsed and the army perished. It was then that the children of Israel were truly emancipated.
Exodus 14 verse 30 says this;
Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.
This astonishing narrative tells of the Lord sending someone into the land to set His people free and defeat the enslavers and lead His people to a promised land.
These historic events serve as a foreshadowing of the story of the Lord Jesus being sent into the world to free God's people and to defeat the enslavers and lead His people out to freedom.
When people are saved by Jesus through His death on a cross, the cross condemns the flesh to death in the same way the Egyptian army was killed. The works of the enemy are put to death so that we can emerge free of the enslavement we suffered under the kingdom of darkness.
Romans 8 verse 12 - 15 says this;
So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
Here, the route from slavery to freedom includes putting to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit of God as prefigured in the death of the Egyptian soldiers in the red sea. When the children of Israel were finally free, they were now able to be part of the house of God and received the spirit of God to guide them to the promised land. This prefigured the receiving the spirit of adoption by which we become sons of God.
It is by this progression out of slavery into sonship that we are emancipated by our Lord and God.
Amen.
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS OUR GREAT INTERSESSOR
Romans 8 verse 33 -34 says this;
Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
In the courts of the spiritual realm, charges and condemnations are brought against God's elect but we are justified by God and Christ Jesus intercedes for us countering the accusations that are brought against us.
Likewise, the Holy Spirit, doing what Jesus is doing in heaven, also intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words. The passage in Roman 8 verse 26 - 27 goes like this;
In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
In intercededing for us, our Lord provides our foothold in the spirit so that we are preserved against the situations that are arrayed against us in the spiritual realm of which we do not know how to pray as we should.
In following the example of our Lord's intersession, we are enjoined by the Apostle Paul in Timothy 2 verse 1 to intercede for other people;
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,
This practice of continually and methodically praying to God on behalf of other people is our primordial currency by which to operate in the kingdom of God because it is the spiritual exercise we can do alongside our Lord from when our efforts are embryonic to when we mature as intercessors.
Bless the Lord our God who is the great intersessor and who gives us agency to share in the work of intersession with him.
Amen.
Reference Resource: openbible.info
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
OUR LORD THE GREAT PROVIDER
At the start, our very being depended on the provision of existence itself by God. Subsequently, our continued sustenance has depended on the provisioning of materials and conditions that were put in place such that only a modicum of effort on our part would bring forth what we needed for survival.
In Luke 12 verse 24, Jesus said;
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!
Here, God is shown to be the provider for mankind in the same way that he is for the ravens in that what they need is brought within arms reach in order to keep them and us alive.
This provisioning is ramped up to a greater degree when people have submitted to God as their Lord. Whereas those who do not honor the Lord as God anxiously pursue the needs of their lives, God's people are provided for by God directly such that they need not fret over such things. As it says in Mathew 6 verse 31 - 32;
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
For our most dire need, the Lord our God also provided for us His great salvation.
When Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, the Lord stopped him and Abraham saw a ram caught by his horns in a bush nearby. The passage goes like this;
Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.”
For the foreshadowing sacrifice of Isaac, God provided His own sacrifice and for the actual sacrifice for the redemption of all mankind, God also provided the sacrifice of His own son.
Let us always bless the Lord who provides all we have need of.
Amen.
Monday, January 10, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS OUR GREAT TEACHER
In Mathew 7 verse 28 - 29, a scene is described where Jesus had just finished teaching the people and they were flabberghasted and astonished at how authoritative He was. The passage goes like this;
When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
In contrast to the scribes who were their regular teachers, Jesus sounded like He had direct experience with what He was telling them and He explained things in such a way that His listeners were riveted.
Anyone who has been under the tutelage of a gifted teacher knows how compelling and influential the experience is.
Jesus could teach to a superlative degree but ultimately, His greatness as a teacher stemmed from the fact that He did not teach from His own philosophy but rather taught what He had recieved from His Father in heaven. As Jesus Himself said in John 7 verse 16;
“My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.
He spent His teaching ministry conveying what was given to Him by God the Father and so the teachings carried the profound gravity of being imported from the eternal realm into the corporeal realm through the prism of Jesus who was born and grew up with the complete experience of being human.
The Lord Jesus is the Great Teacher whose interactions with people were and are almost always related to teaching and explaining things to us that are ordinarily outside of our ability to gain knowledge of.
Colossians 1 verse 15-17 encapsulates the gargantuan project of creation undertaken by the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The verses start by establishing that the Lord Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God. The whole passage reads like this;
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
All things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, all structures of spiritual governance and indeed all of time itself, were created by the Lord Jesus. And further to that, He continually holds all that is created together.
When considering the scale of the universe and then considering all the super structures that support it, the Lord our God is truly the Great Creator worth of all honour and wonder and awe.