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!”
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
The salvation that our Lord gives us, through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, is received by faith and having trusted the Lord, we become children of God and with that, the privileges of being part of the family of the most High God are ours.
In joining the household of God, Phillipians 4 verse 4 - 9 prescribes a way of optimizing our experience in the family into which we have been adopted;
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
The Apostle Paul, referring to the Phillipians as brothers and sisters, affirms that we are all members of the same family. In this family, we can rejoice always and we can be free of anxiety and we can live before God with thanksgiving and the transcendent peace which guards our hearts.
In cultivating the tranquility of God, we can think on things which are noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.
Praise our Lord and God who adopts us into such a wonderful family of peace.
Amen.
Saturday, January 29, 2022
OUR LORD WHO WATCHES OVER US
The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day, Nor the moon by night. The LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.
The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in From this time forth and forever.
This astonishing passage out of Psalm 121 verse 5 - 8, gives us a picture of the Lord's committed watch over those who look to Him for help. He guards us continually and eternally.
Our every motion is before Him and at every turn, the Lord protects us and keeps us.
Whereas we humans sometimes ask Cain's famous question, "Am I my brother's keeper", the Lord our God instead, wholeheartedly gives Himself to the protection and guardianship over those to turn to Him for help.
Psalm 32 verse 8 says this;
I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
Part of the Lord's care us is that He teaches us and guides us in the path we should follow and because His eye watches over us, His knowledge of us is exhaustive and His counsel for us is precisely tailored to each of us.
The fourth verse of the book of Obadiah says this;
Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down,” declares the Lord.
This declaration by the Lord is directed at Satan when he deigned to ascend to the heights of heaven to take administrative and political control over creation.
Even though Satan, from his lofty perch, thought He was beyond reach, the Lord God Almighty did in fact reach him and cast him down in an event that Jesus Himself witnessed and described this way in Luke 10 verse 19;
And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.
In the same way, any men who become haughty enough to see themselves as having the power of judgement over all of humanity seeing them as poor and therefore beneath them, should know that “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” as it says in James chapter 4 verse 6.
Any man, arising in fraternity with the kingdom of darkness and claiming for himself authority over the earth that he did not create and that he does not sustain, the Lord shall oppose him and he shall be cast down for Jeremiah 50 verse 31 says; “Behold, I am against you, O arrogant one, Declares the Lord God of hosts, “For your day has come, The time when I will punish you.
Let us thank the Lord for His great salvation from the proud who, at the behest of the kingdom of darkness, try to rise above us to oppress us.
Amen.
Reference resource: bible.knowing-jesus.com/
Thursday, January 27, 2022
OUR LORD WHO DISSOLVES EVIL PLANS
Isaiah 19 verse 3 says this;
The Egyptians will lose heart, and I will bring their plans to nothing; they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead, the mediums and the spiritists.
Following on from yesterday's reading in the same chapter, we see here that the effect of God's intervention against Egypt's plans to oppress God's people is that the Egyptians lose heart. They become completely discouraged as their plots and schemes dissolve to nothing.
In a desperate attempt to reverse their collapsing fortunes, they consult with mediums and spiritist to get guidance on how to overpower the opposition that is undermining them.
The attempt to gain spiritual leverage, however, has the opposite effect.
As the next verse Isaiah 19 verse 4 says;
I will hand the Egyptians over to the power of a cruel master, and a fierce king will rule over them,” declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.
Rather than gain leverage in the spiritual realm, the Egyptians were consigned to a fierce oppressor who cruelly ruled over them because the Egyptian rulers had foolishly made a faustian bargain.
Let us thank our Lord for His intervention in the spiritual realm to save us from oppression and let us be cautioned to never consult with voices that speak from the kingdom of darkness lest we invite a strong man into our midst from whom escape is difficult.
Amen.
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
OUR LORD WHO DISCOMBOBULATES HIS FOES
Continuing from yesterday's reading, let's look at Isaiah 19 verse 14. Verse 13 and verse 15 are read for context.
The officials of Zoan have become fools, the leaders of Memphis are deceived; the cornerstones of her peoples have led Egypt astray.
The Lord has poured into them a spirit of dizziness; they make Egypt stagger in all that she does, as a drunkard staggers around in his vomit.
There is nothing Egypt can do—head or tail, palm branch or reed.
The Egyptians, as they seek to establish their power to oppress God's people, are afflicted by the Lord with a spirit of dizziness or disorientation.
The Lord pours disequilibrium on the leaders and the counsel of the regime causing the whole nation of Egypt to stagger and lurch from one irrational position to the other completely unable to take any concrete actions.
The confusion causes the state of Egypt to act like a drunkard, reeling and slipping around in his vomit.
This is an unseemly image for sure but it clearly illustrates the effect that God's countermeasure has against the aggressive and oppressive regime of Egypt.
The Egyptians hautily claim for themselves authorities they are not allotted and the Lord resists them by removing their capacity to reason intelligently and they collapse into the quagmire of their own making.
Let us humbly thank the Lord for his mercy on us and His intervention to deliver us from those who would oppress us.
Amen.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
OUR LORD WHO CONFOUNDS THE WISE
Isaiah 19 verse 12 - 14 says this about the oppressive powers of Egypt when they sought to crush the Lord's people;
Where are your wise men now? Let them show you and make known what the Lord Almighty has planned against Egypt.
The officials of Zoan have become fools, the leaders of Memphis are deceived; the cornerstones of her peoples have led Egypt astray.
The Lord has poured into them a spirit of dizziness; they make Egypt stagger in all that she does, as a drunkard staggers around in his vomit.
Those who were charged with planning the actions of Egypt's oppressive regime lost their ability to reason. They became foolish and delusional. The bad decisions and advise they offered to the leaders of the regime led them hopelessly astray.
In defense of His people, the Lord will confound those who attempt to harm His inheritance.
Bless the Lord our God who intervenes to save His people.
Amen.
Monday, January 24, 2022
OUR LORD WHO RESTORES OUR SOULS
One of the most famous passages from the bible is found in Psalm 23. The New King James rendition is the most familiar and the first three verses go like this;
1- The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2- He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3- He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
When we accept the Lord as our shepherd, we are brought into His fold and our focus is on the things of His Kingdom and by His grace, He undertakes to take care of all that we have need of.
He makes us lie down in green pastures which means that He gives us rest and because we are surrounded by provisions, we are assured of his care for us and thus we are not worried or anxious about anything.
He leads us beside still waters which means that Jesus provides water to refresh us that we would no longer thirst. The still waters also symbolize that He stills the turbulence in our hearts so that our souls can be still and quiet before Him. In this hushed condition, we can hear His still small voice as He comforts us and guides us. The still waters are also reflecting pools where we are invited to truly see ourselves the way He sees us and understand the purpose for which we were made.
While we are in this repose, Jesus restores our souls from the injuries, traumas, pollutants, toxins and evils deeds we encounter that bring structural damage to the spaces of our souls.
The delicate work of the reconstruction of the ruined portions of our souls involves a complex mix of revivication, stitching, rescusitation and inner healing to return our souls to their original design specifications.
Our Lord Jesus, the good shepherd, patiently and kindly mends our souls when we learn to trust him and commit ourselves to Him.
With restored souls, Jesus is better able to lead us in paths of righteousness for His name's sake so we should look for every opportunity to quieten ourselves before Him so he can make us lie down in green pastures and lead us besides still waters where he can do the work of restoring our souls.
As Psalm 103 verse 1 says, Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless His holy name.
Amen.
Sunday, January 23, 2022
OUR LORD BY WHOM ALL THINGS WERE MADE
Refering to Jesus as the Word who was in the beginning with God and was God, John 1 verse 3 also says this about Jesus:
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
This exceptional assertion is one of the most profound in a book of profound assertions.
Jesus, who walked the dusty roads of Nazareth and who had brothers and sisters among us, is the one by whom all things that are made were made.
Yes...that Jesus, the man who, at the graveside of His friend, openly wept in our midst and who chatted cheerfully with the Syro-phoenician woman about whether the scope of His mission included her or not and who diverted His team of diciples across a stormy lake to find and bring deliverance to a demonized castaway who ran naked among graves stones cutting his own arms with rocks and who was offered all the kingdoms of the world for the easy price of bowing down to Satan but instead chose to gain all the kingdoms of the world by paying for them with His own shed blood and agonized death by a brutal crucifixion and who faced judgement in hell where a single flaw in Him would have doomed Him forever but who, in His immaculately clean conscience, knew that Satan had nothing on Him and when the glory commensurate with his righteousness broke forth in brilliant light, the powers of darkness were made a public spectacle from which they never recovered and who rose again from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God the Father where He was crowned the King of the creation that was made by Him and through Him and for Him.
Who is this King of Glory? Psalm 24 verse 10 gives the answer;
Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty—he is the King of glory.
Amen.
Saturday, January 22, 2022
OUR LORD WHO EXTENDS TIME FOR MERCY
In Genesis chapter 5 verse 25 - 27, an account of the longest living man named Methuselah is given. The passage goes like this;
When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. After he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.
Methuselah lived until he was 969 years old then died in the year that Noah's flood began.
It is said that by the interpretation of the name Methuselah (which could be read to mean " His death shall send"), the life span of Methuselah was what was holding back Noah's flood waiting for people to repent and seek refuge in the ark.
When Methuselah's life was stretched to the extreme limit, he died and the deluge of judgement began.
To read the text this way points to a tendency of God to wait out the clock for the longest possible time even to the point of deferring Methuselah's death till he was 969 years old so that people would have the greatest possible time to repent.
In our present time, spiritual turbulence can be sensed and as it says in Isaiah 13 verse 4 - 5 ;
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.
Here, like the era of the flood, we are under warning that the whole country will be destroyed by the wrath of God. This is a time when people are being called to repent and seek refuge in the Lord through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The clock is running but what metric is holding back the judgement?
Is it the lifespan of a man? Is it the number of people accumulating into a particular dispensation category like in Roman's 11 verse 25 - 26 that says;
I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery,brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved.
Pray to our Lord for mercy and call upon His name to save us.
Amen.
Friday, January 21, 2022
OUR LORD WHO CONFOUNDS OUR ENEMIES
Isaiah 19 verse 11 to 14 says this.
The officials of Zoan are nothing but fools; the wise counselors of Pharaoh give senseless advice. How can you say to Pharaoh, “I am one of the wise men, a disciple of the ancient kings”?
Where are your wise men now? Let them show you and make known what the Lord Almighty has planned against Egypt.
The officials of Zoan have become fools, the leaders of Memphis are deceived; the cornerstones of her peoples have led Egypt astray.
The Lord has poured into them a spirit of dizziness; they make Egypt stagger in all that she does, as a drunkard staggers around in his vomit.
There is nothing Egypt can do—head or tail, palm branch or reed.
Egypt is a type of regime of oppression that controls its people by coercion and fear. Such a regime enslaves its people using economic strangulation and intimidation until the people are subjugated.
When the regime of Egypt threatens the inheritance of God, the Lord undertakes to save His people and one of the ways that He defends against Egypt is to confound them and render them unable to make intelligent decisions.
The princes and decision-makers charged with pushing forward the agenda of the Egyptian regime are made dizzy by the Lord and they stagger in one place, unable to work their way out of their previous mistakes which worsens their plight with each step they take.
Ultimately, their schemes are shipwrecked. They are unable to move forward and the whole agenda of oppression is driven back and destroyed.
God's people are set free and can pursue the destinies the Lord has set for them.
Amen.
Thursday, January 20, 2022
OUR LORD WHO BRINGS JUDGEMENT
In the book of Micah chapter 1 verse 9, the prophet writes this;
For Samaria’s plague is incurable; it has spread to Judah. It has reached the very gate of my people, even to Jerusalem itself.
The Lord God looked at the transgression of Samaria and saw it encroaching on Israel right up to Jerusalem herself.
This somber situation means that the judgement aimed at Samaria would also come to Israel as well.
Fear the Lord for "he comes down and treads on the heights of the earth.
The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope."
- Micah 1 verse 3 - 4
Amen.
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
OUR LORD WHO PROVIDES FOR HIS SERVANTS
In 1 Corinthians 9 verse 4 - 14, the Apostle Paul says this;
Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living?
Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest.
If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
In this passage, Paul talks about how He and his fellow preacher, Barnabas, forfeited their right to be supported by those who benefitted from their work preaching the gospel because they did not want to hinder the gospel.
He, none-the-less, explains that it is the right of any man who shares the gospel to share in material support from their spiritual beneficiaries.
Let us remember to materially support those who tirelessly serve the Lord in His kingdom by preaching the gospel. Let us recall all those who intercepted our lives with the good news of the gospel and where possible, bless them.
Amen.
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
OUR LORD WHO GIVES GRACE MERCY & PEACE
1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 1 - 2 says this;
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul greeted His beloved Son in the faith with the blessing that he would receive grace, mercy and peace from both God the Father and from Jesus our Lord.
This blessing summarizes the primal needs of any Christian walking out their faith in Jesus.
To have grace is to have the freedom to draw near to God even when we are not perfect. Grace provides the buffering that we imperfect people need in order to approach our Holy God and commune with Him especially during the time we are growing in the Spirit into maturity as we are made closer and closer to the image of our Lord Jesus.
To receive mercy is to have the compassion of God afforded to us so that even when we commit serious errors and wreck things in our lives and fall into lack and desperation, the mercy of the Lord our God provides for our restoration to Him and the cleansing of our sins and setting us back on our feet when we stumble.
To recieve peace from God is to have the stormy sea of our hearts calmed and made still. In this indescribable peace, we who believe in Jesus find the quiet space to listen for the still, small voice of our Lord when He calls on us and speaks.
Grace, mercy and peace. Let us bless our Lord and God who gives us these priceless gifts by which we can step up to gain more of our awesome God who in Genesis 1 verse 21, made the great sea monsters.
Amen.
Monday, January 17, 2022
OUR LORD WHO DOES THE WILL OF HIS FATHER
Mathew 4 verse 1 - 4 gives an account of the first temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The passage goes like this;
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
The Lord, hungry after a protracted fast, resisted the temptation to follow the will of the flesh to gratify itself with bread by quoting Deuteonomy 8 verse 3 that says this;
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Here, the principal is established that the paramount sustenance for man is not earthly bread but rather every word that comes out of the mouth of God.
Jesus, in John 4 verse 31 - 34, just after conversing with the woman at the well, discusses food with His disciples. In this passage, the principal of being sustained by the word that comes from the mouth of God is brought into sharp focus;
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Here, Jesus says that man does not live on bread alone but that His food is to do the will of Him who sent Him. This is an exposition on the passage in Mathew that says that man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
These companion scriptures, when looked at together, bring out the weight of what Jesus is communicating to us.
Firstly, and most basic, physical bread is not the primary sustaining source for mankind but rather, obedience to the word of God is the true sustainance for men.
Secondly, whereas the tempter insinuated that the test for the validity of the title, "Son of God", was whether or not He could turn stones into bread, Jesus asserted that the true test for the validity of the title, "Son of God", was whether or not He lived on every word that came from the mouth of God by obeying it.
This revealing statement by Jesus then makes us look at Him again and consider how He obeyed the word that came from the mouth of God even unto death on a cross.
In fact, when Jesus was on the cross and about to die, He shouted, "It is finished" which was referencing the passage in John 4 verse 4 where Jesus said His food was to do the will of Him who sent him, "and to finish his work".
Another thunderous unspoken assertion that was contained in that statement by Jesus was that the tempter himself was disqualified from conducting a test of the validity of the title, "Son of God", because he had failed his own test of heeding the word of God and had instead said in his heart, “... ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.
Here the tempter is taken to task for diameteically pursuing his own ambition and his own will rather than pursuing the will of God and thus could not be an authority on what the Son of God could and could not do.
These passages also hint at a hidden dynamic at work. God is Spirit (John 4:24) and man is spirit, soul and flesh. What is truly wonderous is that the word proceeds out of the mouth of God who is Spirit, is heard by the spirit of a man, then translated into earthly instructions and then is carried out by the soul using the physically body of a man.
It is like being a stepdown-transformer for the will of God to the earth and the implication is that to be in the service of God in this way is to be a conduit for God's will upon the earth and acting as that vessel incurs the sustaining power of the life of God which supersedes mere bread as the sustenance of man.
Bless the Lord our God who sustains us.
Amen.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
OUR LORD WHOSE WORD LIGHTS OUR WAY
Psalm 119 verse 105 characterizes the Word of God this way;
Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
When we are immersed in the Word of God, it sheds illumination onto our circumstances, our choices and our direction.
The Word of God stabilizes us so that we are not blown around by every wind of doctrine and it assures us of our standing with the Lord by reminding us of His promises.
When Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, He was tempted to turn stones into bread but He countered the temptation with these words;
“It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
This means that the primary life source for mankind is not the food that sustains our bodies but rather every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God because, when obeyed, they bring spiritual life and guidance to our feet.
As Psalm 119 verse 130 says:
The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.
Let us bless our Lord who has given us His word to guide us and shed light for us.
Amen.
Reference Resource: openbible.info
Saturday, January 15, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS THE GREAT JUDGE
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.
In the book of Leviticus chapter 25 verse 47–49 is a distinct article of the law of Moses about how a person who sells themselves to be a slave could potentially be recovered out of bondage. The passage says this:
“ ‘If a foreigner residing among you becomes rich and any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to the foreigner or to a member of the foreigner’s clan, they retain the right of redemption after they have sold themselves. One of their relatives may redeem them: An uncle or a cousin or any blood relative in their clan may redeem them. Or if they prosper, they may redeem themselves.
This redemption law gave an opportunity for a person to be redeemed by compensation paid to the holder of that person to satisfy the price of release from the contract of ownership.
This legal framework of redemption pointed forward to the salvation story where our eternal Lord Jesus Christ, by living a sinless life and then suffering the death of a criminal on a cross, paid the contract price for our release.
Because Jesus was born as a man and lived in everyway as a man and yet did not sin, He was qualified to pay the price to redeem us from the bondage of the law of sin and death.
Under Levitican law, a person, were he able to afford the price of his own redemption ( after gaining an inheritance for example ), could redeem himself but in the case of redemption from sin, no person, other than Jesus, could afford the high cost of remption because "All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. ( Romans 3 verse 23 ) and thus no one can pay the price of perfection to redeem themselves.
Let us humbly give thanks to the Lord Jesus for the Great Redemption He paid on our behalf.
Amen.
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Friday, January 07, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS THE GREAT SALVATION
The Lord Jesus is our Great Salvation.
In Hebrews 2 verse 2 - 4, we are given a scale by which to measure the importance of the salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The passage goes like this;
For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward;
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;
God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
These verses reference the words spoken by angels that, when overlooked by men, were followed by a just renumeration.
If the word of angels drew sure and swift repercussions when disobeyed, how great a recompense are we to expect if we neglect so great a salvation provided for us by our Lord's sacrifice on the cross especially when the divine credentials of the Lord Jesus were publically and frequently attested to by God through signs and wonders as well as gifts of the Spirit?
Our Great Salvation gave us a treasure so precious as to redeem us from darkness. We neglect this free gift at our peril.
Bless the name of the Lord.
Amen.
Thursday, January 06, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS THE GREAT LIGHT
We who were lost and in deep despair can relate to the words of Isaiah the prophet when He describes a people trapped in pitch blackness and suddenly, an overwhelmingly bright light appeared.
Isaiah describes the event this way;
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Interestingly, when Mathew quotes this verse in Mathew 4 verse 16, it goes like this:
The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
It seemed like over the passage of time, the people who were walking in darkness when Isaiah was writing were now sitting in darkness like they had given up and had ceased wandering in the dark and just sat down.
We get the picture that these people, after a protracted period, became despondent and gave up trying to find a way out of the uncharted gloom they were trapped in.
It was at this time of having given up and fallen into despair and just sitting in the impenetrable darkness when a Great Light sudden appeared.
How those people must have trembled and wept and cried out when the Great Light shone over them and showed them the way out of the shadowy desolation.
Our Lord is a wonderful God, who appears in blinding incandescent light to chase back darkness and bring us into His marvelous light.
Amen.
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS THE GREAT KING
In Mathew 5 verse 34 - 35, Jesus tells us not to swear by Jerusalem for it is the city of the Great King. The passage says this:
“But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
In this verse, Jesus includes a quote from Psalm 48 verse 2 which goes like this;
Beautiful in its loftiness, the joy of the whole earth, like the heights of Zaphon is Mount Zion,the city of the Great King.
Here, the majesty and beauty of mount Zion from where our Lord Jesus reigns is called the city of the Great King.
Our Lord Jesus is the Great King which is the post He attained from God the Father when he ascended into heaven having defeated sin and death and had risen from the grave.
The coronation of the Great King is described in Psalm 110 verse 1 - 2;
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.
His rulership as the great King of Zion was established here and His greatness is demonstrated in how He rules his kingdom while it is embedded in the midst of His enemies and being able to govern the details of this vast kingdom with customized attention to each individual administered with grace and mercy and gentleness and righteousness.
How wonderful is our Great King.
Praise His name forever.
Amen.
Tuesday, January 04, 2022
OUR LORD WHO IS THE GREAT I AM
Our Lord and God exists. He is. He has being.
When, in Exodus 3 verse 14, Moses asked God whom he should say sent him;
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
The God who is, told Moses to reference Him as 'I AM'. God is and it is from his being that all other things including us are derived.
As Acts 17 verse 28 affirms;
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Our Lord's being is the only non-paradoxical explanation for our own existence.
Efforts to explain our existence by other means unfailingly result in peculiar contradictory mental constructs that elucidate nothing and obfuscate everything.
The Lord our God is good.
Praise and honour Him.
Amen.
Monday, January 03, 2022
OUR LORD FREED US FROM BONDAGE
Right from the drawing board, the Lord designed the human being as an autonomous entity who could choose his own path and who could relate to His creator out of his own free will.
On the schedule of the garden of Eden, the Adam and Eve would operate all day carrying out their assignments of stewardship as they chose and in the cool of the evening, the Lord would visit and share the daily events that they was experiencing.
When the human race chose a route of operating apart from God, we fell under the dominance of the kingdom of darkness and lost our freedom because the dominion of darkness is characterized by deception, bondage, sin and ultimately, death.
To remedy the fall of mankind, the first step of the salvation that the Lord provided for us was the emancipation from the bondage of darkness.
By the sacrificial death of Christ our Lord on the cross, legal provision was made for us so that by faith, we can now re-enter the freedom of the kingdom of God.
This pivotal notion is encapsulated in the words of Jesus in John 8 verse 34 - 36;
“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
Jesus makes us free as we were designed to be because by His salvation, we are no longer slaves but are sons born into the household of God.
Amen.
Sunday, January 02, 2022
OUR LORD WHO HEALS US
The most prominent part of Jesus' ministry was the healing of the sick and the disabled.
Everywhere He went, people with all manner of conditions approached Him and He graciously healed them.
In some cases, the Lord healed leprosy and in other cases, He restored sight to the blind.
In some cases, paralytics were able to walk again while in other cases, the deaf were able to hear.
In some cases, epileptics were freed from their debilitation and in other cases, people with withered limbs were able to stretch them out again.
In one recorded case, a woman with severe menstrual problems was cured while in another, a man plagued by demonic spirits was liberated from them.
In every variant and form, human afflictions were met with the power and authority of the Lord Jesus.
These afflictions were summarily reversed in order to restore the sufferers to normal lives by the miraculous capabilities weilded by the Son of God.