THE LORD OUR GOD IS WONDERFUL

The God of all creation is unimaginably powerful and resourceful.

He operates in superlative excellence and precision. The engineering behind the structure of the physical universe and the biological spheres beggars understanding. 

It is commonly said in academic halls that the phenomena in our universe arrived at its current state by happenstance but this is an obvious misunderstanding of the  nature of phenomena and the nature of happenstance.

The universe and all that is in it was made by God and therefore,  every mind-numbing and mind-blowing form and  feature of this universe are attributable to Him.  Any fair observation of the world around us would have to fill the observer with awe and fear of the author of all things.

The salient question is now this: What are we humans to do with the understanding that God exists and is in fact supremely powerful and awesome?

Being sentient entities, we should compare our sentience to the sentience of the creator.  We should try understand the universe and the workings of it structures. The scriptures say, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to find it out". - Proverbs 25 verse 2

In doing our comparison between God and us, we should come to the realization that we have fallen short of the glory of God. We should realise that God is perfect and that we humans have morally lapsed and discover that this is in fact why we are separate from God. 

In other words, we become aware that the universe was made by a brilliant and perfect person but we are also perplexed because we have no direct contact with this person who seems to be hidden from us.

It is here where we discover that God is truly wonderful. We come to the realization that we are separate from God because we, as a race, have rebelled against Him and have tried to set ourselves on a course of self-rulership. 

A cursory look at the nature of the world that we have created for ourselves should inform us that we have not been successful in this enterprise and that without God, we are deteriorating rapidly into a hellish realm of rulership of brute force by some humans over others.

By the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, Jesus, God made a way for us to gain connection to Him again. He has paid the price to restore us out of our rebellion to Him and then has made a way for us to be joined to His family and then made us co-heirs with His Son Jesus Christ in the enterprise of reclaiming as many people as possible into a reconnection with God. 

This is our wonderful God. He wonderfully made us and then He wonderfully saved us and we will see Him with our own eyes and we will behold His wonder and glory.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS GOOD

A rich young ruler approached Jesus and asked Him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  - Luke 18 verse 18

Jesus replied thusly, "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone."

                                        - Luke 18 verse 19

Jesus responded to the use of the honorific, "good", by declaring that it is a title that can only be ascribed to God and yet this man was ascribing it to Jesus even though he did not know that Jesus was God.

Had the young man believed that Jesus was the eternal God, would he not have listened to the wisdom of Jesus to sell all that he had, give it to the poor to lay up treasure in heaven and then follow Jesus?

The lesson from this short narrative is that we should believe that Jesus is God and in doing so, believe that He is good and that we should then surrender all we have to Jesus so that we are under the kingship of the great God who is good. Out of His goodness, we are not only given eternal life but we are given life and life more abundantly.

To get to the place of eternal abundant life in God, we must do what that young man could not. We must believe in the divinity of Jesus. We must believe in His power to save us from our sin and we must trust that He has the power to store our treasure in heaven and we must follow Him.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR DELIVERER

The Lord our God has undertaken to extricate us from the kingdom of darkness that we were conscripted into when we, as a race, rebelled against God.

The Lord, in His vast wisdom and understanding, structured a process of practical and legal positions  so as to fulfill the requirements of delivering His people out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

The initialization of these positions was to get His Son Jesus to be born on the earth incognito. While the kingdom of darkness was prepared to stop any redemptive action by God, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was a widely celebrated fulfillment of prophetic scripture which evading the attempts by the kingdom of darkness to snuff out the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus then grew up and gained stature and wisdom and was able to directly resist the kingdom of darkness. He was tempted by the devil and He deflected the attempts by countering the temptations with scriptures.

He then began to directly confront the kingdom of darkness by healing the sick and casting out demons. After Jesus had set the example of kingdom authority for us, He gave His life up to the cross so that He could die for us. 

The critical juncture in the redemption story had to be carried out without the kingdom of darkness realizing that the death of Jesus was going to be His glorious vindication and victory.

The scripture in fact says : "the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory"

                              -  1 Corinthians 2 verse 8

It was here at  the crucifixion of Jesus that the redemption story was brought into sharp focus.

Jesus suffered agony on top of agony and ultimately died on the cross in a way that appeared to be an abject  failure but was in fact, a triumph when His death became the propitiation for the sins of mankind. The goal of providing the legal framework for redemption of the human race was accomplished right under the oversight of the rulers of that age. 

He paid the extremely costly price to deliver us out of darkness and to usher us into His kingdom all the while avoiding detection of how the redemption was going to play out.

He delivered us out of condemnation and into His righteous kingdom by His great wisdom and perfect nature.

Praise His Holy name forever.

Amen.

THE LORD IS BLESSED FOREVER

Yes I will bless the Lord

With all my heart

For He is worthy to be praised

He shines brighter, brighter than the sun,

He is worthy to be praised.  (  X 3 )

OUR LORD OF FAITHFULNESS

In human terms, faithfulness seems like an ordinary human trait that some people exhibit and some don't. Faithfulness, however, is a profound function of spiritual significance.

We sometimes take faithfulness to mean marital faithfulness which connotes the idea that a faithful  spousal partner is one who does not stray from the relationship.

We also sometimes take faithfulness to mean that a person steadily and reliably attends to a requirement or need voluntarily. An example would be when person faithfully attends to their elderly neighbour's yard without obligation or prompting to do so.

Those two common uses of the term faithfulness can be joined to derive an accurate definition of the term. Faithfulness is a singular self-imposed duty to a voluntary commitment that ensures its sustenance  and its ultimate fulfillment and completion.

In the bible, our Lord Jesus is described as faithful  to His Father. "but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the boast of our hope."   -  Hebrews 3 verse 6.

Our lord is described as faithful to us. "He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” Psalm 91 verse 4.

Our Lord is also faithful in His priestly ministry. "Therefore He (Jesus) had to be made like His brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted"                                                                         - Hebrews 2 verse 17 - 18.

Our Lord's faithfulness is compounded because his faithfulness is eternal and it is backed up by the wisdom and power that only God has.

Praise his Holy name.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO GIVES LIFE

In the beginning, God made Adam and Adam became a living being when God breathed into him. This is described in Genesis 12 verse 7 as: "Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Adam was a living being and in that state, chose to try run his life separate from God. It was this condition of rebellion against God that separated Adam and the whole successive human race from the life of God. We were equipped with minds and bodies that could operate in the coporeal realm but our spirits, which are the only parts of ourselves that could connect  with God, died.

God, in all His wisdom, began working on the gargantuan project of reconstituting the human race as creatures with living spirits again.

This task was four thousand years in the making. During that time, major portions of human history played out. Empires rose and fell, peoples were enslaved and freed, generations came and went and when finally everything was ready, a baby was born in an obscure village in an animal barn. 

That baby boy was the nexus of all of earth history and was the full preoccupation of heaven for all of existence.

That little boy carried the hope of all creation that we who were dead, could one day be made alive in spirit again and  rejoin our creator who loved us and who moved heaven and earth to redeem us from the thick darkness we were lost in.

Jesus, born in humble circumstance, lived to be the perfect sinless man. Exactly opposite from Adam, Jesus was perfectly obedient to God. Unlike Adam, Jesus could not be enticed by any scheme of darkness to compromise a single article of God's law. 

Having lived a perfect life of obedience to God's word and commands, He nevertheless gave His life up for crucifixion to take the punishment that Adam (and we who were born into His line) deserved. 

At His death, Jesus entered the strongholds of  hell but this cosmological injustice of placing a perfect man into the punishment of hell could not be contained by the flimsy  chains of hell and the crackling eye-searing light of His righteous glory shone forth and the denizens of hell suffered a shattering blow that left them burned and deformed.

The power of the resurrection of Jesus left hell permanently crippled and in disarray and in abject subjugation to the authority of Jesus Christ.

In this verse from John 10 verse 10, Jesus summarized all of world history

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Whereas the kingdom of darkness stole and killed and destroyed God's own people from Him, Jesus came to earth and by  His death,  redeemed us and gave us life and life that was even more abundant than what was alloted to us under Adam. 

Praise the holy name of Jesus. 

Amen

THE LORD WHO BLESSES

The Lord is gracious like a father who loves His children.

He blesses His children in wisdom such that they can be helped towards maturity in God.

He know what we have need of and provides without us even needing to ask.

Blessed is the Lord our father who blesses us.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO FINDS US

The Lord Jesus, our great saviour, equated Himself to a good shepherd. He described his followers as His sheep. He says that as a shepherd of a hundred sheep, He would leave the ninety-nine so that He could search for and find the one who was lost.

In this parable, Jesus is saying that He will never leave us or forsake us. He is declaring that He will conduct a fullscale search for any of His who are lost.

The Lord is faithful to those who trust in Him. He will leave no one who is His behind.

Amen.

OUR LORD THE VICTOR

The Lord is lowly and humble. When He walked the earth in Israel, the great God who created all things could not be differentiated from other men.  The bible says that there was nothing about Him that would make us prefer Him over others. 

This is because we humans are made in the image of God so that means that if God tuned down His appearance far enough, He could pass for a regular human being. As Isaiah says in chapter 53 verse 2,  "He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him."

Yet, this appearance belied a majestic, thunderous and overwhelmingly powerful and unapproachable  presence. 

If He were to stand in a police line-up with 10 other regular men, we would not be able to isolate Him as the one who created Aldeberon and betelgeuse and even the largest known star,  UY Scuti. 

Looking at Him standing there quietly while you looked at his family history that has him being born in a barn at the edge of a small village, you would not guess that the universe violently exploded into existence at His command and that He continuously sustains the universe and all  that is in it by His great power.

The person in a humble attire and sandals would not be identifiable as the victorious Lord of Lords who was soon to humiliate and scatter the entire  kingdom of darkness after He breached the headquarters of Hell.  He sent spiritual powers and principalities  scrambling in a frenzied panic when He unleashed the blinding fire of his righteousness on them. Many are still smouldering in embers to this day after that encounter. 

The humble and lowly person Jesus Christ  is now the absolute and final victor and He sits at the right hand of God the Father. He reigns over a kingdom of justice and righteousness and He offers  reconciliation with God that was made possible through His sacrifice on the cross and the brilliant victory over darkness.

Praise Him who has authority  over all things.

Amen.

CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD

Call upon the name of the Lord

He will save you ( repeat )

Call on the God of Heaven

Call Him by Name

You will never, never, never, never, never be the same.

Call upon our saviour Jesus

Call Him by name

You will never, never, never, never, never be the same.

Click to play audio.

THE LORD IS OUR TEACHER

While Jesus was walking on the earth, He interacted with many people. He did works of healing for them but also talked with peoples from all cross sections of society.

To this day, Jesus is most famous around the world for the miracles He performed but next to that, Jesus is very well known for what He taught.

Most commonly, we see Him in the gospels teaching his followers the basics of the Kingdom of God. For example, He told the disciples that the Kingdon of God was like a mustard seed, the smallest seed that grows to be the biggest tree of all. This illustrated the truth that what Jesus was starting with the twelve men was going to grow into a huge tree that would be a dominant force in the earth.

We also see Jesus teaching people who came to Him with questions that they hoped He would have the definitive answer for. 

An example of this was when Nichodemus, a priest of the temple,  came Jesus in the night saying, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs You are doing if God were not with him.” - John 3 verse 2.

 It was during this meeting that Jesus uttered the immortal words, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”   -  John 3 verse 3

Another example was when a rich young ruler came to Him and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

Jesus gave him the truth to His question and unfortunately, the young man was disappointed and walked away. After this exchange, Jesus again said words that have echoed through the ages: "Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”                                                        - Luke 18

For those who are born again, Jesus continues to be our teacher. Through the Holy Spirit, He guides our steps and deals us situations in life to prepared us for the life of the kingdom of God.  

The Lord could place us in the wilderness of life to teach us how to be resilient and steadfast. He could then place us in a stressful situation to teach us how to be patient and how to navigate the shoals of integrity and purity.

Be teachable by God. Be humble before Him and accept His counsel and discipline. Learning from the Lord is a great thing and let no one take it away from us.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR COMFORTER

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

                           - 2 Corinthians 1 verse 3 - 4

God comforts us in time of trouble so that we may comfort others with the comfort we get from God. A good example of this model of comfort was when Paul the Apostle was travelling across the Mediteranian Sea.

Just before dawn Paul urged them all to eat. “For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head.” After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat. They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves. 

                                  - Acts 27 verse 33 -36

In this part of the narrative, Paul was the only experienced Christian on the ship. Using wisdom, knowledge and guidance he got from God, he calmly directed the actions of the crew and reassured them that all was going to be well with them.

In the end, they all survived the shipwreck and Paul had a pivotal role as a comforter to other people because He was reassured himself. In fact,  so much so, that when he was bitten by a poisonous snake, he just shook it off into the fire and suffered no ill effects.

Praise the Lord our comforter.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO LOVES US

Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.  

                                       - John 15 verse 13

The Lord our God loves us to a degree that we cannot fully imagine. He loves us so dearly that "I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

                                  - Romans 8 verse 38 - 39

The great God of heaven undertook to die a grisly death for us to save us from being lost to the kingdom of darkness. Further to that, He embarked on a customized project for each of us whose aim is to turn us into mature sons of the Kingdom of God. This project   involves the renewing of our minds and the putting to death the flesh such that we become subjects of the Spirit of God.

The Lord our God demonstrated His own perfection through Jesus and simultaneously,   paid our ransom to claim us out of darkness and all this was motivated by His love for us.

How then should we relate to the God who completed such a great and costly project on our behalf?q

Should we not brim with gratitude for His sacrifice for us? And in being grateful, should we not seek to know Him and love Him?  And in loving Him, should we not commit ourselves to the purpose He has reserved for us that pertains to the work of His Kingdom?

In other words, should we not wholly give our lives to our King to use for His own strategic and momentary purposes of His kingdom?

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO SANCTIFIES US

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.   

                                - 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 23

The Lord Jesus died to pay for our sins. He died to redeem us. He died to pay our ransom so that we could be released out of the captivity of the kingdom of darkness. This is the beginning of the process.

Our spirits are born again when we believe in the work Jesus did for us and we trust in His willingness and ability to save us.  We are filled with His Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit takes residence in us, a process of turning us into the likeness and pattern of Jesus is now underway.

Our souls and our bodies are to be brought under the Lordship of our God who saved us. As we grow nearer to God by being with Him and serving Him, our minds are renewed and our bodies brought into subjection of the cross of Jesus.  Whatever parts of our sinful selves remain, they are systematically obliterated and what is left of us is a creature who is sanctified by God and who is led exclusively by Spirit of God and no part of us is yielded to the kingdom of darkness to perform the deeds of darkness.

This means that our souls cannot be tricked into participating in evil and our bodies are dead to sin and cannot participate in the activities of darkness.

In this state of sanctification, the Christian is living in Christ and is living for Christ. No selfishness or sinful inclinations have dominance in us such that can be used as platforms to be operated by the kingdom of darkness.

Our God undertakes this work of sanctifying His people and He who began a good work in us will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Bless His holy name.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO DELIGHTS IN US

The Lord our God knew us from before we were born.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

                                      Jeremiah 1 verse 5

The Lord also sings loudly over us as He rejoices and exults over us with gladness.

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

                                          Zephania 3 verse 17

Our God thinks many thoughts about each of us. He knows all the details of our lives and gladly dispenses wisdom to guide us.

Bless the Lord who paid so high a price to save us even death on a cross and then, having done that, loves us and delights in us and rejoices over us. 

Bless His holy name forever.

Amen.

THE GLORY OF GOD

The heavens declare the glory of God;

    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

    night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;

    no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,

    their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.

It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

                                                      - Psalms 19  verse 1 - 5

The visible universe does declare the glory of God. The beauty and vastness and wonders of our universe display the unimaginable skill and power of our Lord.

The heavens, in spiritual terms, also declare the glory of God. They shed abroad the incredible riches and majesty of the most High.  The ear that is inclined to hear will perceive the ongoing exaltation of the great God of heaven. 

This broadcasting is not in word or speech but is a voice carrying knowledge that reaches all corners of the world. 

In this spiritual realm, the 'sun'  has a tent from which he emerges like a bridegroom to complete his circuit.

The glory of God should be our permanent pursuit. Our thoughts, our words and our actions should glorify God all the days of our lives.

Amen.

OUR LORD IS OUR TREASURE

The Lord Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. He is the only exact representation of the Father. If we have seen Him, we have seen the Father.

The Lord Jesus is the highest and most excellent expression of God. He is the most perfect and the most incorruptible person who walked in our midst.

One day, He went to His friends home to visit  Martha and Mary.  Martha was doing the work of preparation for dinner and got irritated because Her sister Mary was sitting with Jesus listening to Him.  Martha spoke up and said to Jesus, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”

Martha was being a good host and was taking care of the hospitality for the visit. She was attending to the material details of hosting Jesus and His disciples in their home. 

Mary, however, was enraptured with the presence of the Lord and could not pull herself away from the  source and center of all existence.

Jesus noted this when He replied to Martha, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Mary had sensed that spending time in the presence of Jesus was the most valuable commodity that could be pursued.

Jesus is our treasure. While we are living on the earth and cloaked in our earthly bodies, we are able to seek Jesus and spend time with Him. This span of time that we pull away from other activities and seek Him  is the most precious treasure we will have for the rest of eternity. 

These moments of closeness will be before we see Him in His mind-shattering glory. The earth will shake at the power of His presence. Anybody who meets Him after that event will have a certain distance while those who grappled to believe in Him and be subject to Him without seeing Him will be blessed. 

The Lord whom they trusted and loved by faith, will retain the relationship that was built in silence and darkness and sorrow and trembling and loneliness and distance. 

Use your time on earth to adore the Lord in worship and prayer. Spend time with the Lord at all costs for the bible advises us thusly:  "He is no fool who sells what he can never keep to buy what he can never lose."

Amen. 

MY GOD MY FATHER FOUND ME

My God, my Father

You found me wandering in the dark

You saved me by your precious blood

You put  joy in my heart .

I was a prisoner

You died for my release

You gave me your righteousness

And your perfect peace.

THE LORD IS A GOD OF STRENGTH

"...the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one."

The Lord our God is unimaginably strong. To try to quantify all the energy and mass and momentum and velocity in the universe can give a glimpse into the capabilities of power that the Lord possesses. 

He can marshall His overwhelming strength to rescue us as He did when making a passage through the Red Sea for the children of Israel.

He can call on great spiritual power to undertake our defense against enemies as He did when He slew the Assyrian army of 185,000 men who had besieged the city of Jerusalem.

The Lord is strong to provide. In the deserts of Arabia, the Lord provided abundant water out of a rock for the children of Israel.

The Lord is a strong fortress to whom the righteous can run and be safe.

Our mighty and strong God has the power to save us from our sins and redeem us from the kingdom of darkness.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR KING AND PRIEST

The Lord is our King as described in the book of Daniel.

“I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language Might serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed."

Our Lord is also described as a Priest in the book of Hebrews

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

We who believe in the Lord Jesus are called to be kings and priests ourselves.

Looking at those two roles that are exemplified by our Lord, how should we then live if we too are to be kings and priests ourselves?

How should we behave as kings?

To be kings, we must serve our King's kingdom. We must conduct ourselves impartially to all men for all men are called to serve our King alongside of us. 

We must show forth His glory so that our conduct reflects the Kingship of our Lord. We must behave with all of eternity in mind as our actions and deeds have eternal consequences.

We must walk in the spirit so that our steps are guided in the way of kingship by the Spirit of God.

How should we behave as priests? 

Here too we must be in the spirit and ascend into heaven and we must be unwavering in our profession. We must be empathetic towards those we represent to God to whom we bring intercesion.  We must be merciful in our prayers for our families and our neighbours as we ourselves have been tempted and have been shown mercy.

At the throne of grace, we can approach boldly knowing who has saved us and what He has purchased for us by His blood. 

Let us be kings and priests before our God acting in the service of our King in His kingdom  and always be interceding for those God has given us to intercede for before the throne of grace.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR HOPE

The Lord Jesus is the great King of kings and Lord of lords. He is mighty in power and awesome in wisdom.

He said He would never leave us or forsake us. His word and His promises are sure. If you secure a promise from the Lord, you can count on that promise because it is backed up by the word of the Most High God whose word cannot be broken.

This is the Hope that we have in Him. That His salvation is sure and that His promises are yes and amen to us for the glory of God.

Amen.

THE LORD JESUS IS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

Light is a peculiar thing. It is both tangible and abstract at the same time.

It is tangible in the sense that we can manipulate its activity. We can direct light where we wish by positioning a lamp. We can also cover it and hide it from showing. 

As well, light  is abstract. To say that light is illuminating something is almost identical in the sense that we mean that a matter is illuminated to our minds. In fact, very often, it is exactly the same event.  Light, bringing illumination to a subject also illuminates that subject to our minds.

Jesus is the Light of the world. His absolute moral supremacy is a guiding light that all human should use as a beacon.

Jesus, in sacrificing himself for us, engineered the way by which the powers of darkness would be conquered and brought into subjection of His light.

As the bible says, "those who sat in darkness saw a great light." This terrifying scenario describes people who are helplessly stagnated in pitch darkness. They have no means of helping themselves.They may have tried to feel their way to an exit from the darkness but by the time of the narration, they just sat down in the darkness and despaired. 

It was now when the true hidden power of Jesus becomes evident. While on earth, Jesus was indistinguishable by appearance from other men.  The only difference He displayed were how He  spoke and how He conducted Himself. He was absolutely perfect. After Jesus died on the cross, the cosmic impossibility of a perfectly innocent man being executed  like a criminal played out. 

Jesus, having been admitted into hell, suddenly manifests the light of God. This piercing and brilliant light exposed the powers of the kingdom off darkness exposing them and making a public spectacle of them.

It was then that Jesus moved into the pitch darkness shining as a great light and all who sat in darkness saw it. This light is the same light that awakens us out of spiritual darkness and brings us into His marvelous light.

Believe in Jesus  for God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. 

                                        2 Corinthians 4:6

Amen

THE LORD JESUS IS THE LIFE

Our Lord said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me".

Having touched on the "Way" and the "Truth" over the last two evenings, let us look at the last existential attribute Jesus mentioned of Himself; the "Life".

What is life?

As obvious a property as life seems to be, ( at least in a biological sense ), it is a truly undefinable quality.

At first glance, life seems to be related to the undisturbed continuum of biological functions. If you leave living things alone, they tend to continue  living while if, on the other hand,  you disturb them to the point of interfering with their ecological and internal processes, the living things can sometimes stop living.

By this standard, life can be said to be a biological continuity. 

This answer does not really cover the question properly because it uses a characteristic of life ( namely biological continuity) to define life itself. If biology is continuing and thus sustaining life, what exactly is being sustained within the functioning system?

If I have a car engine that I am able to keep running indefinitely by ensuring  all its requirements are supplied, could it be said that the car is a living thing? Probably not.

To us, living things have to also have a far more complex property and that is the ability propagate themselves by reproduction. My car does not propagate its own "carness" by reproduction or any other means, therefore we cannot consider it a living thing.

So, when Jesus says He is the Life, does He mean "life" in the biological sense?

I would say yes, in part.

Jesus, the creator of all things, is Himself living. He is Life itself. By His own Devine will, He imbued that property of life on sentient and non-sentient entities whether they are biological or not.

In the case of biological beings, the mechanisms of sustaining continuous processes in systems made of physical matter is the requirement life needs to find expression in this physical universe.

In a non-physical realm, the same life of God would be sustained in entities by different mechanisms other than biology. What those mechanisms are may not be easily studied by us humans but I would hazard a guess that the mechanisms are metabolic at some level because the bible describes angels as having bread to eat. 

Any living thing whether angelic or human or animal, derives  life from the initial spark of life that was in Jesus. In the case of biological beings, this life was dispensed  to the progenitors of all species and life cascaded down to us in our time.

Jesus, being the Life, can make the dead to live. As with the famous story of Lazarus who was dead and returned to life at the command of Jesus, we too, though once dead in our sins, can be made alive by Jesus through His Holy Spirit.

When we are cleansed of our sins by the sacrificial blood of Jesus, we are made alive by His spirit and we are born again. We emerge as new living things and now can share in the Life of Christ our saviour.

To reach this position, we are cleansed from our sins when we believe in Jesus and then humble ourselves before Him and then acknowledge our sins and then repent of them.

The great salvation given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ is the only hope we have of being filled with the Life of God because no comes to the Father but by Jesus.

Amen.

THE LORD JESUS IS THE TRUTH

The Lord Jesus said He is 'the Truth'. By asserting this,  He is ranking himself as 'Truth' itself rather than a correct or accurate rendering of an event or reality.

He is conflating Himself with the source and origin of all things which confers on Him the title of 'ultimate Truth'. This means that everything in existence can only gets its actualization from its position on a framework that is established relative to Him.

'The Truth' is different from what is true in a quantitative sense.

What is true about us humans is that we are mammals who use complex language for communication and that we live on a planet near a yellow sun. These are true things about human beings. 

The architecture of our societies and our roles in them may also have some true prescriptions for us but these can only give partial or temporal answers to our inquiries about what we humans are.

However, Truth, as far as what is ultimately going on with us humans,  is what the  actual position and status of our species is on the framework relative to Jesus Himself. 

Knowledge of this would give us the correct coordinates so that we could ( at the very least ), understand what we actually are and perhaps what we are actually supposed to be doing here.

The One who is the Truth, Jesus, is the only provision that is given to the human race for gaining the proper understanding of our  status as humans. 

That status is that we are hereditarily enjoined to a kingdom of darkness  to which we would be eternally committed except for the intervention by the Truth Himself, Jesus. He, the Truth, stooped into our fallen world to redeem any who would hear His offer of salvation and willingly accept it.

This great salvation was paid for by the pain and agony of Jesus on the cross and  by the blood He shed to pay the ransom to extricate us from darkness.

Whatever else you do, don't overlook so great an offer of salvation. There is no other route provided to get to the ultimate truth and to our God.

Amen.

THE LORD JESUS IS THE WAY

An early name for Christians was 'People of the Way'.

This is what Christianity was understood to be at its onset: 'The Way'. The definite artical indicated the exclusivity of the path that Christianity was  presented as. It is not that it was reserved for an elite few but rather that it was the only way a person might be saved from their sins.

Other world views of the time had elaborate patterns of religious activity to atone for the sins of their adherents while others required sacrifices of different kinds to appease the capricious  gods who ruled over them.

Christianity alone pointed to an ultimate God who gave Himself as a sacrifice to redeem those who responded to His offer of salvation.

With the ultimate God so recently on ground in the presence of witnesses, the confidence of Christians was game-changing. 'The Way' swept through every corridor of society from the slave quarters to soldier's barracks. It eventually percolated up to the higher echelons of the prevailing cultures.

Jesus Himself said that He was the way.   He did not say that He knew 'the way'. He said that He was the Way and that no one could reach the Father except through Him.

This is the extraordinary thing about Christianity.  The God of all creation was Himself the way out of our sinful quagmire and up to the destiny our creator intended  for us.

By sacrificing His own life and dying on a cross for us, the Lord Jesus became the Way through whom we might be saved by believing in Him. 

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR HIDING PLACE

The Lord is inaccessible to all beings. He dwells in unapproachable light that is blinding and infinitely unbreachable.

The Lord can take us and put us under His pinions ( or wings ) and while we are there, we are beyond finding or discovery by our enemies.

He can cloak us by His power so that we cannot be localized and detected as He did for Jesus when the elders tried to push him off a cliff. He can also disguise us so that we are not recognized like He did for Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Jesus was disguised beyond recognition so that people discussing Jesus could not recognize Him as He walked and talked with them. This also happened on the sea of Galilee when Jesus walked on the water and the disciples had to be persuaded that it was Jesus.

The Lord our God is our hiding place whenever we are in need of refuge.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR FRIEND

Abraham was the first in the bible to be called a friend of God. Abraham shared time with God and welcomed God into His home to have a meal.

The Lord called Abraham His  friend and conferred with Him over important matters. The description of their relationship as a friendship elevated Abraham and indeed all of mankind into the rarified position of being a species that could be counted on to be a friend of the eternal and majestic God of creation.

Jesus, soon before He died, also called His disciples friends and in doing so,  ascribed to them an astonishing ranking of being able to conduct a friendship with the King of kings and Lord of lords.

What is a friendship in familiar terms? When we have a network of people we know, we tend to categorize them into three groups.

 The most distant from us are those we know and recognize but we are barely aware of their existence and have only occasional contact with them. We are generally friendly towards them and they towards us but if we never saw them again, we would not notice their absence right away. Maybe an event would remind us of them but other than that, only faint recollections exist.

The next level in are those we are well aquainted with. We enjoy their company and we talk to them comfortably. We generally share knowledge of the same people and sometimes, we can detect that closer ties with them are possible as time passes. In this group, people both drift outwards to the outer circle while others draw into the inner circle.

That brings us to the closest group: Our  friends. These are people we think about a lot and interact with all the time. We have learned to trust them as we have experienced their sensibilities and personalities. We have counted on them and they have come through for us even at great cost to themselves. We would do anything to help them.  We gladly overlook their mistakes and readily forgive them. We divulge our vulnerabilities to them and they to us. We keep their confidence and they keep ours.

A friendship with God would share all the characteristics that our natural human friendships have. 

Over time, we learn to trust Him and He gains trust in us as we grow in the ability to hear him and adhere to His guidance. As we mature in our friendship with Him,  He begins to rely on us more and more to care about the things He cares about.

A friendship with God also includes keeping things in confidence. He gives us access to His thoughts and plans and we cherish them and  store them away in the secret places of our hearts like Mary did when she was given the news of God's plan for Jesus. Likewise, God  keeps our confidence and He shields us from humiliation and He himself keeps no record of wrongs.  

A friendship with God comes with a  level of contact with Him. As we think of Him and seek his company often, He too thinks of us frequently. In fact, Psalms 139 says that the number of God's thoughts towards us outnumber the  grains of sand.

He draws near to us and seeks our company as we draw near to Him and seek His company. 

Friendship with God is a wonderful thing and it must be cherished in the same way great friendships are treasured. Take nothing for granted and love the Lord our God with all our hearts.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR ADVOCATE

The Lord Jesus was confronted by the leaders of the city concerning the woman caught in adultery.

They brought her before Jesus and asked Him whether she should be stoned as the law of Moses required.

This question before Jesus was a serious legal question and a woman's life was at stake. Her life depended on whether He  could make a just rebuttal to the judgement and sentence that would be pronounced on her.

Famously, Jesus countered her accusers by saying, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone". This is a powerful argument against the woman's accusers that required that they could only carry out the sentence if they themselves had the legal standing to do so by being morally pure themselves.

Of course, each person there, in their imbalanced judgement ( that somehow excluded the adulterous man in the case ), knew that their own lives were full of the kind of sins that would have subjected them to the same punishment had the sins been known and charges pressed.

Jesus demonstrated His role as our advocate. Even as we live before Him, Jesus acts as our legal defender before the courts of the spirit. Here, He defends us and makes unanswerable defences in our favour and we are released from our accusers to return to our lives as justified citizens of His kingdom.

Honor the great Lord who continually defends us. 

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR TEACHER

The Lord Jesus taught the people around Him many things.

He taught His disciples the workings of the kingdom of God. He taught His friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus the principle of spending time  with God.. He taught Nicodemus the spiritual reality of being born again. 

Jesus taught people everywhere He went and now, the risen Christ continues to teach.

He brings illumination and revelation through His words of scripture to those who seek Him and yearn for the truth.

The Lord also teaches through His servants whom He anoints to rightly handle the word of truth.

The Lord will  give wisdom to any who ask of Him and He will do so abundantly and without restraint.

The Lord is the custodian of all knowledge and  can furnish us with portions of knowledge as we need it.

Praise His holy name.

Amen.

JESUS IS OUR LORD AND REDEEMER

All we like sheep had gone astray. We were born into a sinful nature that had doomed us into a permanent subservient  alliance with the kingdom of darkness.

We, as a race, had sold ourselves into spiritual and physical slavery from which we had no means of extricating ourselves.

The Lord Jesus, our sinless, perfect and immortal God, accepted the role of redeemer for us. This means that He would personally  pay the price to buy us out of our slavery and claim us as His own people.

Because our slavery was that of sin and rebellion against God, the only  price that could buy us was the death of a perfect, sinless and immortal man. Jesus, the only perfect, sinless and immortal person in existence, was the only one who could pay that incredibly high price but He, being perfect, accepted the cost and suffered death on a cross for us.

In dying, He paid for our sins and brought us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

Our redeemer lives and we shall see Him with our own eyes when He returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Amen.