Tag: Bible

The love beyond all loves

Isaiah Chapter 43

(God is talking to Israel here, but Gentiles are grafted into Israel through Jesus Christ)

I really needed encouragement today, and God provided as I was reading his word. I hope this will give someone else encouragement as well.

FEAR NOT, FOR I HAVE REDEEMED YOU (verse 1)
Who redeems us? Do we redeem ourselves through our own works? NOPE. “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)
Can other people save us? NOPE. “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him–the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough, that he should live on forever and not see decay.” (Psalm 49:7-9)
Sounds like we’re up the creek, unless God himself is willing to do the deed. “But God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself.” (Psalm 49:15)

That is the best possible news! But I know what a horrible, wicked, ugly person I really am. Why would God be willing to redeem ME?

I HAVE SUMMONED YOU BY NAME, YOU ARE MINE (verse 1)
What is this telling me? Only that God knows me and you each personally, to him we are not just a blur in an ocean full of faces. He knows us each by name and says we belong to him. God in his omniscience knows every last detail about me — the good (not much) and the bad (tons). Yet he says I belong to him. I am his possession and he owns me spirit, soul, and body. People generally love the things that belong to them, so wouldn’t God love them even moreso?

YOU ARE PRECIOUS AND HONORED IN MY SIGHT (verse 4)
God is with us through all the hard trials of our lives, through flood and through fire (verse 2). Although in punishment God’s people were sent into exile, he never forsook them, never forgot them. It was all part of his long plan of redemption. He reminds Israel (and us) again in verse 3, “For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy one of Israel, your savior.” He’s trying to get it through our skulls that he alone is our savior, he wants to do it and he will do it. Ultimately in Jesus Christ he HAS done it. But why???

BECAUSE I LOVE YOU (verse 4)
Well, I know I am not lovable by nature, so God must have made a conscious choice to give me his love, anyway. That means his love is unconditional. We don’t earn the love he gives us, it is not dependent upon our performance or our natural charms. God won’t love you any better if you were a more holy person, or if you were prettier or smarter or stronger. He loves you completely, with everything he has to give, because it is his will to do so and he’s never going to take it away even if you screw up 100 times a day like I do. I don’t know about you, but that is a huge burden off my shoulders.

GOD IS MAKING A POINT AND WANTS US TO PAY ATTENTION
“I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.” (verse 11) Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” We don’t save ourselves, God alone saves us, and he does that through Jesus (for details read the Gospels).

GOD NOT ONLY FORGIVES OUR SINS, HE FORGETS THEM
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (verse 25)
We don’t deserve anything from God except his wrath and an eternity separated from him and everything good. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way,” (Isaiah 53:6), but God himself takes care of our sin problem. He paid a debt he did not owe in order to save us from a debt we could never repay. “The Lord has laid on him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6).

Why on earth would God save us? Because he loves us. Why does he love us? Because he made the choice to do so. Not only that, but God loves us with all of Himself, he holds nothing back. He gave us everything that he had to give. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son [Jesus], that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17). Jesus gave us everything he had to give us when he laid down his life to save us from the eternal death we bought for ourselves.

God doesn’t just love you, he loves you with all of himself. A love so big, so wide, so deep, so high, that our little human selves can’t even begin to comprehend it. But it is amazing! If you are a Christian, be encouraged and uplifted by remembering what God has done for you. If you do not yet belong to Christ, all you have to do is ask him in and all this forgiveness, new life, love, and joy can be yours right now.

“…if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, ‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile — the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for ‘Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved’. ” (Romans 10:9-13)

Thank you, Jesus! Please come for us soon.

(Just like) Starting Over

The last time I decided to read the Bible from cover to cover it took me three years. I spent six months just going through the Book of Psalms. Thought I was going to die slogging my way through Leviticus – Deuteronomy. Got more than my fill of bloodshed, perverts, and idiots reading through Judges. Ruth was like an oasis in the desert. Fell in love with Isaiah. Couldn’t keep the minor prophets straight. Devoured the gospels, so hungry to see Jesus in person again after just getting hints of him in the OT. Still a little afraid of Paul. Not as freaked as I used to be by Revelation because we’ve seen so much of the imagery already in the Old Testament.

This year I’ve decided to burn through the whole Bible again, cover to cover, in just 12 months. I’m using the Bible-in-a-year guide from a calendar I got for Christmas. It has you read so many OT and NT passages each day. I’m cheating, though; I’m ahead of it in the Old Testament and way behind in the New Testament.

What really hit home with me after reading the entire Bible — I’d only ever read books and/or passages here and there before, never the whole thing — is how it really is a story. It has all the elements of great literature: Introduction / Crisis / Building Action / Climax / Falling Action / Resolution. Themes. Foreshadowing. Character development – of a nation, not just individuals. And a happy ending. The happiest of all happy endings.

Assuming that not one word of scripture is wasted, and assuming that everything points toward Christ, some passages make me scratch my head. For example, at the very end of Genesis, we have a detailed chapter about Jacob blessing the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh.

Jacob tells Joseph, “Now then, your two sons born to you in Egypt before I came to you here will be reckoned as mine; Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine.” (Gen 48:5)

Then Jacob is going to bless the two boys and a big deal is made of the fact that Jacob is going to bless Ephraim, the younger, over Manasseh, the older. Joseph tries to get Jacob to switch but Jacob is adamant. “I know, my son, I know. He too will become a people, and he too will become great. Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations.” (Gen 48:19)

Chapter 48 deals almost entirely with Ephraim and Manasseh. So it is important and we need to remember this episode. I missed this significance the first time through. I still can’t quite understand why the 12 tribes of Israel are reckoned with Joseph being the two half-tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh instead of just being called the Tribe of Joseph. I haven’t done any serious study in this before but there must be volumes written about it. Maybe I’ll dig into it more later. Maybe just reading through the book, something will leap out at me and make more sense to me this time. Scripture interprets scripture, as they say.

Now on to Exodus. I wonder how disappointed I’ll be when I get to heaven and discover that Moses doesn’t actually look like Charlton Heston.

Invaded! By God Himself!

0F5477DF-16FA-4435-BF6E-DACDC1AE1653 — He leads me beside restful waters; he restores my soul. – Psalm 23:2-3

John 1:1-4 and 14

In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through Him all things were made;
without him nothing was made that
has been made.

In Him was life, and that life
was the light of men.

… The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.
We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only,
Who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I think these are some of the most beautiful words in all of scripture. They are poetic, almost musical, but more importantly they state beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus is in fact God Almighty.

If any Jehovah’s Witnesses ever see this, please test me on this: if you go to any Greek lexicon you will see that there is no article “a” in John 1:1. It does NOT say “and the Word was a god.” That would be blasphemy, anyway, for in Isaiah the Lord says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.” (Isaiah 45:5) If Jesus was just “a” god, then there would be multiple gods and the Lord would have made himself a liar. I hope my Mormon friends might pay attention to this as well, for they believe the universe is filled with countless gods who rule their own planets. In that sense they are the most polytheistic religion in the world.

I think why not just JWs and Mormons but so many people stumble over this, is because our little minds just can’t or won’t accept the concept of an almighty, eternal God who would set aside his glory and enter into his own creation as one of us. The Muslims find it offensive. God, be a man? Suffer the indignity of being born a baby, having your diaper changed, having to eat and sleep and go to the bathroom? It is an indignity, no doubt. Nabeel Qureshi believed that becoming a man was more humiliating for Christ than what he endured on the cross. Perhaps; I’m not sure. But it was certainly humiliating for the God of eternal Glory to become like one of us. Why did he do it?

For love.

To do something for us we could never, ever do for ourselves.

There is so much more in these first 14 verses — telling us how John came to testify about Jesus; How Jesus came to his own people yet [for the most part] they did not receive him; But how through Jesus all people can become children of God.

John is establishing here the tone for the rest of his book. He wants us to first understand that we are not talking about a mere man, or prophet, or great teacher. We are about to hear the story of God himself and what he did when he invaded this enemy territory.

Almighty, Eternal God!

35E5127E-926D-4525-9B47-A574DED584C5

The Gospel of John, 1:1-13

The very first thing John is trying to get across is the fact that Jesus is God. He doesn’t start off by saying “Once there was a prophet,” or “Jesus was a brilliant thinker,” or even “Jesus was a very good man; a holy man.” What he said was:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

So right off the bat John tells us that:

Jesus has ALWAYS been with God
Jesus IS God
Jesus CREATED everything
Jesus is LIFE and that life is our light

This is absolutely astounding to contemplate. That God is the creator of all the universe. A vastness too great for even the most brilliant human mind to fully grasp, was created by the mind and will of the living God and he holds it all in the palm of his hand. That Jesus IS God, and the humble Jewish carpenter who knew what it was to be tired and hungry and abused, is the one who made us all. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. No wonder the Bible says that

…every knee will bow, in heaven, on earth, and beneath the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. – Philippians 2:10-11

It’s why I could never become a follower of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam, Hinduism, or any other religion. Their gods are too small. What their versions of eternity are, are pathetic. Correct me if I’m wrong, but here’s what I know about some of these religions:

• Mormons think God used to be a man but worked his way up until he got to rule his own planet, and he is just one god among many. They think that Jesus is just one of the many spirit-children of this little planetary god. He didn’t save us from all our sins, we still have to rely on works, the cross definitely isn’t the center of history (ever seen a cross in a Mormon church?), and except for the few lucky men who get to be gods themselves the best we can hope for in eternity is one of three levels of country club pleasantness. As far as I understand it, the lucky women who get to attend to the planetary gods spend all eternity as breeding machines.

• Jehovah’s Witnesses think that Jesus is an angel, a created being. His death on the cross wasn’t sufficient to atone for all our sins and restore us into right relationship with God. We have to go house to house and whatever to earn points. From what I’ve read in the Watchtower magazines that JWs have left with me, the best we can hope for in eternity is some kind of Ozzie and Harriet suburbia. Nice house, nice job, nice life.

• Islam sees Jesus as a prophet. Not God. He didn’t die on the cross, he didn’t save us from our sins, and he can’t hold a candle to their prophet. Islam is totally works based; your good deeds need to outweigh your bad deeds, and on the last day Allah can send you to hell, anyway, if he wants. He can also cover up some sins and multiply good deeds if he wishes, but we have no assurance of his love or salvation. Heaven is a sensual paradise for men and the best women can hope for is to be good servants of their husbands.

• I don’t really understand Hinduism but it does seem to revolve around multiple reincarnations until we finally get it right and then achieve whatever their idea of heaven is. Being one with everything and everything in us? It sounds like a total loss of identity to me.

• Atheists claim they don’t believe in God or any kind of afterlife, but I have to wonder why they spend so much time thinking about a God they don’t believe in and why they’re usually so angry about it.

Now I know I’ve oversimplified these theologies and I’m scarcely an expert in Christianity, let alone any other religion. But what I do know is that they all are totally stifling in the end. I don’t want a nice little life. I don’t want to indulge in sensual pleasures forever. I don’t want to be pumping out babies forever. I would soon rage and rail against all of these things. I would be screaming for escape from these different versions of Hell.

I want unbridled JOY. I want to know the unsurpassable ecstasy of being in the very presence of the Almighty, Eternal, One True Living God of the universe. The God who created me and loved me so much he became human like me, paid the penalty for my sins, rescued me from death and hell, and fixed the relationship that I broke by rebelling against him. I want to be with Jesus, my creator and my redeemer. I want to worship him, adore him, love him, enjoy him, have fun with him, get lost in him.

If you’ve ever been head over heels in love, I think that is just a tiny taste, a shadow, of the great Love we were all meant for.

The gods of these religions are too small, too dull, too petty. I want the real thing.

…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved…for, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. – Romans 10:9-13