WHAT THE SPIRIT IS SAYING TO THE CHURCHES: ELABORATION
A helpful way to understand the book of Revelation is to realise that the application of the message comes, not towards the end as in other books of the NT, but in the beginning. The messages from the Lord to the seven chapters in chapters 2 and 3 are to communicate the greatness and power of the Lord Jesus and the dangers of compromise with evil and idolatry. It is also a warning to prepare the churches for what is to come – the enormity and the severity of the opposition to the people of God that will grow in strength in the last days – the power of the dragon, Satan, with the political and religious pressures (the 2 beasts) on God’s people before the end comes.
The people of God in the churches must listen to what the Spirit is saying to them! They, in reading Revelation, should not add to, or subtract from the Word of God in this book – otherwise there would be serious consequences and judgment. Listening well and hearing well to what the Spirit is saying would prepare the churches to be faithful and to overcome in the face of intense, almost unbearable persecution and opposition.
Before we look at the details of the messages to the seven churches, we must note that the message to these churches is also addressed to all the churches in all generations, including us. As Revelation is the last book in the Bible and the summons is made in this book to the seven churches in Asia minor (the number ‘seven’ often refers to the completeness of, and the inclusiveness of those addressed), we need to hear rightly and to keep and hearken to what the Spirit is saying in this book, and is continually saying subsequently to all churches that follow in future generations.
First, the general aspects of the message to the churches: There shall be no compromise as far as evil and apostasy are concerned; the churches should not depart from the purity of preaching, teaching, applying, and practising what God has laid out in Scriptures through the authorship and illumination of the Holy Spirit. When corrected, preachers and teachers should be open to examine what the Spirit is actually saying – notice that in the OT context, the kings and leaders of God’s people refused to be open to the prophets of old in their prophesy and exhortations, and what they thought was unlikely took place – the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. We should not make the same mistake as the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, when confronted with the truth from Jesus.
The church must learn a spirituality of repentance and put away from them the false spirituality and idolatry which arise. The church needs to look to the hope of the future and endure victoriously and faithfully (this is what being overcomers means) as she awaits the return of the Saviour. She must not allow discouragement and despondency to cause her to fail to persevere and to lose hope.
More specifics: The message to the church in Ephesus is – ..”you have forsaken the love you had at first..” Our love for God may be ‘diluted’ by our love for other ‘gods’ and other ‘idols’; this may be happening to churches which seem diligent and persevering, like the church in Ephesus, but the reality is that the love for God and His ways and teachings has been compromised. There is a need to repent.
The message to the church in Smyrna: “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.” Be fully aware that the churches in various countries are now undergoing such persecution – God has allowed it and despite the pain and suffering, the call is to be faithful, even to the point of death. We know that eleven of the twelve apostles died for their faith and their faithfulness; only John remained to write the book of Revelation. But consider the extent and effectiveness of the ministry of the 12 – it is still continuing, in time and in depth.
To the church in Pergamum: “…there are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality.” ‘Idolatry’ and ‘immorality’ would feature prominently in the last days, even among the churches which are thought to be faithful. Do not take sexual sins lightly. Promiscuity, idolatry, unnatural sex, visits to harlots and prostitutes – all these may be dismissed as ‘normal,’ in this age and time. Someone once said to me, ‘King David committed adultery and murder in the case with Bathsheba -my pastor told me that God has forgiven my past sins, my present sins and my future sins. Beware the teaching of “Hyper-grace”. Let us not forget that King David repented deeply, but there were consequences from his sin – his own son Absalom tried to usurp his throne, and his own reputation was badly tarnished. ‘Idols’ worshipped in the form of wealth, prestige, positions (not only in society, but even in the churches) are abominable to God.
The church in Thyatira was rebuked for tolerating false teaching and false messengers and prophet (the woman Jezebel was highlighted), resulting in adultery. God promised to punish her with intense suffering and this will include those who follow her -each one would be repaid according to their deeds.
The church in Saridis was told that although she has a reputation of being alive, yet she is dead – her deeds are not finished in God’s sight. She needs to ‘wake up’ before Christ comes again suddenly. Notice that the punishment may be having their names blotted out from the book of life! This is indeed serious.
The church in Philadelphia is the only one commended; although she has little strength, she has kept God’s Word and remained faithful and has not denied the name of the Lord.
The church in Laodicea: The message: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” This church thought that she was rich and did not need anything; yet in reality, she is wretched, poor, blind and naked. What may be worse than knowing you have sinned is to believe that you are spiritually alright and you need no correction, even though the Spirit of God warned you of your spiritual state and the need to repent!
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH AND THE SPIRIT OF HOLINESS
TEACHING ON THE SPIRIT BY THE LORD JESUS IN JOHN 14
It is not often that we look to Jesus’ teachings on the Holy Spirit, given specifically to his disciples, prior to his departure to the cross and to his return to the heavenly Father.
In John 14, a unit of teaching by the Lord Jesus is encapsulated in between by verse 1 and verse 27(at the end); and it is basically words that were repeated along the following: “Do not let your hearts be troubled”.
We see the context between these two verses: The disciples were anxious and fearful because Jesus had told them that he was going away; they did not know where Jesus was going and how they would be able to contact him (vs. 5).
One can imagine their fear; their living and working with Jesus was going to be removed, and how will they be able to continue their relationship with the Father, as Jesus had revealed to them the way to know God personally.
It is in the light of this that Jesus gave the teaching about the Holy Spirit to them:-
The knowledge of God will still come to them – how, they might ask? After all, Jesus did say that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man can come to the Father (God) but through him. If Jesus is no longer around, how could they follow the way, the truth and the life, in order to know God?
The knowledge of God will still come for all generations through a knowledge of Jesus himself, but this knowledge, which is “truth”, ultimate and absolute, will be provided by the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus described as “another “Counsellor”. The Counsellor will be exactly like the one they have with them – that is, the Spirit will be exactly like Jesus. Jesus then revealed that he would ask the Father to send them the Holy Spirit (the Paraclete, on Pentecost).
He is to be the Father’s witness or advocate, just as Jesus, the Son, came to earth to do the same thing, and the Spirit will fulfil the same role as Jesus, in God’s people. Jesus promised that the Spirit will plead the Father’s cause, through the Son – as the Spirit of God the Father, and of Jesus Christ the Son, he will reveal the nature of God to mankind and give true witness to the ultimate and eternal reality. He will open our minds, which have been blinded by sin, so that we understand who Jesus is and what he has done for us. It is the Holy Spirit who brings us to salvation, through Christ’s death and resurrection. It is he who creates in us a faith in Christ that is personal and life-changing; it is only he who can bring us to the knowledge of God.
The Spirit is given as God’s free gift of himself to men and women in this world, at the request of the Lord Jesus (vs. 16) and on the grounds of all that he has accomplished. Those who love Christ, not just as a passing emotion, or a profession of words, will prove their love by practical obedience to his commands. The Spirit is the other Jesus, of exactly the same essence and being, and he comes to bring the very life of God within the souls of men and women like us, by bringing us the truth.
Keeping his commandments is the only guarantee that our love is genuine. It is however not the obedience that earns us the Spirit; we must not forget that the Spirit is the free gift of God’s grace. Obedience, nevertheless, does keep the channels open, so that the Spirit can continue to work in and through us. If we do not obey God’s Word, we shall only grieve and ultimately quench the Spirit. And here we realise the significance of knowing accurately the ‘truth’ from God’s Word, conveyed to us through the Spirit, who is the author and illuminator of the Scripture. Because the Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of truth”, every act of disobedience to His teaching and Word is effectively a denial of the truth of God’ Word, to which the Spirit testifies. The one who preaches and teaches the Word of God therefore has a sober and serious responsibility to ensure that what he communicates is the ‘truth’ from God!
When we refer to the Spirit as ‘holy’, we are affirming his full deity as well as the fact that he is the one who provides holiness, who works in the lives of all who receive him, to make them like the God to whom they belong. He is sent in Christ’s name to continue Christ’s work in an in-depth application to our lives (Christ at the right hand of the heavenly Father is still continuing his work in the lives of his disciples through the Holy Spirit, to reach the world and to bring back the elect).
If we are to become increasingly like Jesus (and this is the only proof that our profession of faith is real), we need the Holy Spirit to change us, and it will be a life-long process. God has embedded the seed of his life into those who believe and this seed will grow to be a plant with fruits; those without fruit may be those in whom the seed has not been implanted into their lives.
The Spirit is the teacher of the church, recalling Christ’s teaching in her memory, explaining and interpreting his words and so enabling the church to believe and obey her master’s voice. The apostles were the original disciples to whom Jesus was addressing – they were the channels of divine revelation, directly inspired by the Holy Spirit in the writing of the New Testament scriptures, as the inerrant and infallible word of God. As they wrote the four Gospels of the Lord Jesus, explained and applied in the Acts and the Epistles, they served a unique and unrepeatable function for the formation of the church (hence the claim of having apostles of this calibre today is misplaced). The authenticity of their testimony written in the NT is guaranteed by the coming of the Spirit as God’s gift to them, and through them to every succeeding generation. We cannot remember, as they did, for we have never been the eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses which they were (2 Peter 1:16-18). Yet our remembering while totally dependent on their authoritative witness, is just as real and vitally necessary today, in our context of discipleship, so many generations later.
The Holy Spirit brings God’s truth to our minds, explains or teaches us its meaning, with a view of encouraging us to act upon it, in detailed dlsciplined obedience. It is this discipline to the truth which produces holiness, or Christ-likeness of character. If the truth is not being taught, then it is impossible for holiness to develop, for Biblical holiness is not produced neither by mystical experiences, nor by internal, emotional intensity (so we need to be cautious with religious mysticism, and emotional experiences which are devoid of God’s truth).
God’s truth has to grip the mind, if it is to activate the will, in order to change the life. The truth of God has to address the mind and this is the work of the Holy Spirit (and this takes place wholesomely in our proper personal time with God and the Bible; also in our Bible study in small groups; and in public worship and services when the truth is preached and taught ‘accurately’).
The important point is that change in behaviour begins with change in the mind . Only a mind that is responsive to the teaching of the truth, by the Holy Spirit, can produce the fruit of a holy, Christ-like life. How can we expect to raise up a generation of Christians committed to holiness if we do not teach God’s truth, in our churches, at every level. Today many Christians are Biblically illiterate and that in terms of life-style it is increasingly difficult to distinguish us Christians from our unbelieving neighbours. It is only when we are truly convinced for the truth, that we really become concerned about seeing it worked out in our lives and in the lives of our fellow-believers in the church.
How does the Holy Spirit change the ingrained bias of our fallen human nature, with its perverse desire to be able to justify ourselves by our knowledge, or orthodoxy, or accomplishment? Not by rules,but through deepening our relationship with him – and this can happen through our study of Scripture. As we read God’s word, dependent on the illumination of the Spirit who is the primary author, he begins to stir our wills to have new concerns and desires, which reflect his nature, rather than our own sinfulness. The mind and heart of God are revealed to us, as we see his amazing grace and goodness to us in all the benefits which are ours because of the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What we do is the product of how we think. Hence we cannot be complacent and indolent as far as making efforts, in dependence of God, to understand the ‘mind’ of the Spirit and to grow to become those who can think in line with Him and HIs teachings. The Holy Spirit can and does give us the strength to live differently, if we are prepared to obey Scriptures (the accurate teachings of God’s Word and not the distorted one, for a half-truth is no truth at all).
BURDEN FOR THE GOSPEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Some have asked me why I am sending so many sharings recently and the sharings are so long that many find it a chore to read through them (of course, many also sincerely shared that they have not been reading them).
Recently, I penned, perhaps my last book, entitled “The Pertinent Message to the Church in the Last days – this book consolidates my burden for the church of God, particularly in these last days (the time between the first and second coming of the Lord Jesus). The book has an overview in the website ‘http://www.livinginthelastdays.com; some hard copies are available. But there is just so much one can express and compress into a book; thus the many sharings on the gmail and website to elaborate on this pertinent message and to share what the burden ‘involves’ – As written in the book, I have been privileged to serve the Lord God and HIs people through many years, and on the last part of my journey, I feet it is a stewardship responsibility to crystallise this burden, for it has been a burden that weighs heavily on me, especially in recent years.
The recent number of sharings started with “A crisis in preaching and teaching the Bible in the church”; it went on to “The diminishing authority of the Scriptures today” and ended up with several sharings on the Holy Spirit – “The Spirit’s role in the kingdom of God”, “What the Spirit is saying to the churches in Revelation”, including the ‘elaboration’ and the “The Spirit of truth and holiness”.
I take the liberty now to crystallise what these sharings focus on, and why and how they have to do with the spiritual state of the church in her witness, life, and fulfilment of the Great Commission (sharing the gospel, making disciples and faithfully undertaking to be God’s light in this world of darkness until Christ comes again).
The first aspect of this burden has to do with the minimizing approach to the task of teaching Christian truth. The modern minister does not usually ask how much he ought to teach but rather how little he needs to teach. One main reason is the reluctance of those sitting in the pews to learn. When they come to ‘worship service’ or sit in Bible study groups, the biblical truth conveyed does not arouse any significant interest or approval in the congregation. During worship service, the main interest is to find the ‘in-group’ to interact before and after the service; and not too few find it in order to leave their seats when the minister is preaching. Bible study groups are often time for more interaction on current secular issues, careers, family matters etc.; but there is not much concern for the accuracy of what is being discussed (in the light of the truth from the Spirit of truth), and various ones are interested in finishing the discussion and making it short and sharp, despite the fact that often the applications to the truth are not clearly spelled out, and certainly one cannot honestly expect applications to end up in obedience and outworking, when the main focus subsequently is where to go for lunch or meals, and with whom.
Some may say that it is a waste of time preaching to modern hearers about the law and sin, for such things mean nothing to them. Instead, we should just appeal to the needs which they feel already, and present Christ to them simply as one who gives peace, power, and purpose to the neurotic and frustrated – a super psychiatrist, in fact.
This above suggestion illustrates the danger of the minimising approach. If we do not preach about sin and God’s judgment on it, we cannot present Christ as Saviour from sin and the wrath of God. And if we are silent about these things for fear of ‘hurting the feelings’ of some, then we are guilty of not preaching the Christ of the Bible, and certainly not preaching the true gospel.
We are in fact bearing false witness and preaching a false Christ, and a distorted gospel. An imaginary Christ and a ‘feel good gospel” will not bring a real salvation!!
Continuing from this, the devil delights himself to bring in many into the church who are truly not born again – they masquerade as faithful members of the church because they are ever so willing to be involved in as many activities as possible to ‘qualify’ them as faithful members of the church. Some of them, because of their prestigious positions in society, are immediately recruited to be leaders, teachers, and even elders of the church; and this is so even though they are not actually equipped spiritually to fulfil these roles. Some of these may be sincere, but without the adequate spiritual reality in their lives, they resort to management principles, organising abilities (all gleaned from their major roles in secular organisations) to contribute to the church, and surely we must realise that God’s work has to be done in God’s way by godly individuals and not those with many titles before their names that have nothing to do with building the kingdom of God.
The deepest problem of man before God is his sin; which evokes wrath, and God’s basic provision for man is propitiation, which out of wrath brings peace, through His salvation plan effected by the Lord Jesus, and applied to believers through regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
Sin means not social error or failure in the first instance, but rebellion against, defiance of, retreat from, and consequent guilt before God the Creator; and sin, says the New Testament, is the basic evil from which we need deliverance, and from which Christ died to save us. All human problems (problems of our relation with ourselves and our fellow humans and our environment) – the gospel does bring solutions to these problems – but it does so by first solving a deeper problem – the deepest of all human problems, the problem of man’s relation with his Maker, And unless we make it plain that the solution of those former problems depends on the settling of the latter one, we are misrepresenting the message and becoming false witnesses of God.
No reader of the Bible can miss the fact that the Bible knows all about our human problems – fear, moral cowardice, illness of body and mind, loneliness, insecurity, hopelessness, despair, cruelty, abuse of power, and the rest – but equally no reader can miss the fact that it resolves all these problems one way or another into the fundamental problem of sin against God.
THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE
In the previous sharing we shared on the minimizing approach in preaching and teaching Christian truth. One obvious way in this approach is to neglect the call to repent when we share the gospel and seek to bring various ones back to the fold, that is, into the kingdom of God.
Take note that when John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, his main saying was , “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:1-2)
When Jesus began to preach, He also sounded the main message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)
When Jesus sent the twelve out two by two, they went out and preached that people should repent (Mark 6:12). Notice that ‘repentance’ is featured in all three passages – repentance is the message of John the Baptist, that of Jesus, and also that of the twelve disciples sent by the Lord.
The necessity of repentance is without doubt for men and women to turn back to God and to be accepted into His kingdom.
“Repentance” is inseparably connected with right views of God, of human nature, of sin, of Christ, of holiness and of heaven. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). All need to be brought to a sense of their sins – to a sorrow for them – to a willingness to give them up – and to a hunger and thirst after pardon.
Nothing less than this is required for the salvation of any man or woman. Nothing less than this ought to be pressed on man,by everyone who professes to teach Bible religion. We must bid men repent, if we would walk in the steps of the apostles, and when they have repented, we must bid them repent more and more to their last day (because ‘repentance’ is a way of life, and we are righteous sinners even as Christians, and although the penalty of sin and the power of sin has been broken “at the cross”, the presence of sin still persists until we enter the new heaven and new earth).
More importantly, have we ourselves repented? It is well to know what the apostles taught. It is well to be familiar with the whole system of Christian doctrine. But it is far better to know repentance by experience, and to feel it inwardly in our own hearts.There are no impenitent people in the kingdom of God. All who enter in there have felt, mourned over, forsaken and sought pardon for sin. This must be our experience, if we hope to be saved.
It is noteworthy to read what John the Baptist said to the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to where he was baptising:-
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe has been laid to the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:7-10)
What is clear in John’s teaching is that only repentance can save them from the coming wrath and judgment (even though they were religious leaders and teachers of the Law); and true repentance must necessarily produce fruit in keeping with the repentance. This applies to us today; let us not assume that because we have been so faithful in ‘attending church’ and we are familiar with the Bible in some ways that repentance does not apply to us; similarly, if our lives do not manifest the fruit that is in keeping with our professed repentance, then something may be drastically wrong with regard to our claim of salvation.
God is gracious in offering us pardon and salvation in the completed work of our Lord Jesus; but let us not take God’s grace for granted and think we rightly deserve to be forgiven and to be saved. John reminded the Pharisees and Sadducees of this – God is not limited and restricted in His plans. He cannot be held ‘captive’ by our unreasonable demands; and He does not need us to fulfil His plans if we choose to go our own ways. That is essentially what John probably meant when he raised the possibility that God can raise children for Abraham out of the stones (after all, God created man from the dust).
To those who have yet to believe, the message is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”; to those who have believed, continue to walk in obedience and righteousness before God, and to continue to repent when we do fail each time such that the ‘light may not be blotted out by the darkness’ in our lives. God saves us with the purpose that we shall be like Christ; and the process of transformation is a long and difficult journey; but He promises us that as long as we continue to trust Him and walk with Him, He would bring us to the end of our journey into HIs waiting arms.
THE GREATEST AND MOST MAGNIFICENT HOPE
God made us humans as hoping creatures who live very much in our own future; looking forward to better things and good things that we foresee, drawing forth joy and strength to cope and to go through with the present from our expectations of future fulfilment and delight.
As young children, we work hard in our studies, looking forward to good educational achievements, exercising discipline in hours of learning, looking forward to a fulfilment of a bright career and a future; parents endure much in bringing up their babies and children and they draw strength and joy in the present from the expectations that their children would grow up to be successful adults who will bring delight to them; and the examples go on and on.
In the absence of anything exciting to look forward to, existence itself becomes a burden and life no longer feels worth living. I recall one of my teachers in my medical studies saying this along this line: ‘I have achieved the top of my career, I have all that I aimed for in life; but it is certainly very lonely at the top, and life would have no more meaning if not for the fact that I have God in Christ’. In the passage from Luke 12, Jesus told the man who wanted him to tell his brother to share the inheritance with him that ‘life does not consist of the abundance of possessions’; the Lord Jesus also shared a parable of a rich man who took comfort in the security of his wealth and riches and looked forward to a life of ease – and he was called a “fool” for not being rich towards God, for his life was to end on that same day. He did not prepare for eternity.
To be without hope is a tragic thing, the more so because it is needless.God never intended humankind to live without hope, and He has in fact given Christians the most magnificent hope that ever was. Our hope is the sure and certain hope of glory promised to us in the gospel – the glory to which a life of faithful endurance is guaranteed to lead us.
“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19). Anchored ships stay steady; anchored Christians do the same. And the anchor that can and does hold us steady is the hope that is ours in Christ.
The New Testament presents this hope in various ways but the basic assertion which the apostle Paul wrote: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Jesus Christ himself, to whom we who believe are united with even now, is the Christian’s hope. Each genuine Christian is travelling along a road that He has appointed for us to an eternity of joy in which He will be the center, the focus, and the source of our endless delight. Indeed, this is our greatest and most magnificent hope!
Seeking the truth with all your heart
“Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianityh looked terribly probable…unless you teach your moods ‘where to get off,’ you can never be a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.” – C.S. Lewis
It is a great misunderstanding of faith to oppose it to reason or knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact, faith – confidence, trust – is rooted in knowledge. And when faith has to do with what is eternal, what has eternal consequences for our souls and our loved ones, then it if foolish to dismiss the examination of what it entails – this is especially so when we raise objections and angst when the subject is raised, and yet we decide not to look at the reasoning and the facts (and knowledge) because it is too long and too ‘demanding’ to read – and then conclude that ‘all is well with me’ as far as God, salvation, and our eternal destiny is concerned.
In the Bible, it is written that if we seek God with all our heart, we shall find HIm; but unfortunately, we prefer to seek lesser things with much time and concentration consumed, when the fact is, as Solomon wrote, “All these things are vanity (meaningless), and a striving after wind” after he has examined all that his wealth and position allowed him to (book of Ecclesiates)- and his conclusion at the end: “fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of every human being, for God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
FAITH AND SANCTIFICATION
Faith is the outstanding means of sanctification. By faith we continue to grasp our union with Christ, which is the heart of sanctification. In regeneration, which is totally a work of God, we are made one with Christ and enabled to believe in him, but we continue to live in union with Christ through the exercise of that faith (Eph.3:17).
By faith we accept the fact that in Christ sin no longer has the mastery over us. Believers must not only recognise intellectually but embrace in full belief the truth that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin (Rom. 6:6) and that sin is no longer our master because we are not under law but under grace.
By faith we grasp the power of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to overcome sin and live for God. Through faith we must appropriate the encouraging truth that by the Spirit we are to put to death the misdeeds of the body (Rom. 8:13) and that if we live by the Spirit we will receive strength to cease gratifying the desires of the sinful nature and to bring forth the Spirit’s fruit (Gal. 5:16,22-23).
Faith is not only a receptive organ but also an operative power. True faith produces fruit. It produces works (1 AThess. 1:3); the goal of God’s command to us is love “which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim 15).
It is most important for us to realise that sanctification is not something we do by ourselves, with our own efforts and in our own strength. It is not first of all a human activity but a divine gift.
Sanctification however also involves our responsible participation. We must fight against sin, both of the body and of the mind. God works in us the entire process of our sanctification – both the willing of it and the doing of it (Phil.2:13). God works in us and we also work. But the relation is that because God works we work; it is not the relation strictly one of cooperation as if God did his part and we did ours.
Eph. 4:22-23 tells believers that they have put off the old self and have put on the new self. The new self they have put on has been created like God in true righteousness and holiness. Believers are no longer the old selves they once were. They are not both old selves and new selves (like the analogy of Jekyll and Hyde) but are indeed new selves in Christ. The old self is the unregenerate man; the new self is the regenerate man created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
Although believers are new persons, however, they have not yet attained sinless perfection; they must still struggle against sin. The believer must still struggle against tendencies to sin which remain within. “Flesh” used by Paul in Gal. 5:16 refers to the inclination that is still in us to rebel against God’s will; we may call this tendency ‘indwelling sin’, or “sinful nature” and we need to fight against these tendencies as long as we live (note the struggle and conflict for the believer as described in Romans 7). This conflict means a struggle within the heart between the old nature and the new, the flesh and the spirit, which are to be found together in every believer (Gal. 5:17).
Although the struggle against sin is very real, Paul teaches, implies that we have been freed from the slavery of sin because we are not under law but under grace, sin shall no longer be our master. The sin which still inheres in the believer and the sin he commits does not have dominion over him.
Believers have both a sinful nature (against which they must struggle) and a new nature (according to which they should now live). But they are no longer old selves or old persons, since this concept describes human beings as totalities: the old self is the total person enslaved by sin, whereas the new self is the total person ruled by the Holy Spirit (though not yet perfectly). Believers, in other words, are new persons, who must still struggle against their old natures. In the strength of the Spirit they are now able to resist sin, since for every temptation God will provide a way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13).
In the strength of the Spirit believers are now able to resist sin and even overcome sin increasingly, but not perfectly (and this is detailed in Romans 8). The conflict in Romans 7 would continue but it can become less and less a struggle as the believer grows more and more to be like Christ. Romans 8 begins with ‘no condemnation” for believers (referring to justification); and it goes on to explain how the law of the Spirit overcomes the law of sin and death. The whole chapter of Romans 8 affirms the security of the believer in Christ and ends up with “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ”.
In conclusion, Justification removes the guilt of sin, whereas sanctification removes the pollution of sin and enables the believer to grow in his or her likeness to Christ.
Justification takes place outside the believer and is a declaration made by God the Father about his or her judicial or legal status. Sanctification, however, takes place within the believer and progressively renews his or her nature.
Justification takes place once for all and is neither a process nor a repeated event. Sanctification, however, is a process which continues throughout life and is not completed until after this life is over.
Justification means the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the
believing sinner wholly apart from the believer;s deeds – that, in other words, our justification is based solely on the suffering and obedience of Jesus Christ, and not one based on our own good deeds.
Justification and sanctification must never be separated; God does not justify anyone whom he does not also sancatify. Both of these blessings are aspects of our union with Christ. Our justification is one of the fruits of our oneness with Christbut we cannot be in union with Christ without at the same time being involved in the process of sanctification, whereby Christ through the Spirit makes us progressively more like himself. Although justification must never be separated from sanctification, both blessings are distinct – they must be carefully distinguished from each other.
OUR UNDERSTANDING NEEDS ‘RE-ORIENTATIONS AND RE-EDUCATION
This is especially so with regard to our understanding of God, Christ, our salvation, and our role on this earth until the consummation. Much of our wrong responses to God and the gospel has a lot to do with our unwholesome perceptions in this regard; and God gives us the Bible and His Holy Spirit to set things right and to enable us to remain faithful to our God and Creator.
OUR VIEW OF GOD
The apostle Paul brought up some aspects of this in Romans 9 when he dealt with God’s sovereign choice (concerning the poor outcome of Israel’s salvation as a nation despite her privileges, and God’s choice of those from many nations to be among his people).
Paul first revealed that the true children of Abraham are those who are children of the promise and not physical descendants; he also pointed out that Jacob was chosen instead of Isaac among the twins and the choice was made by God even before they were born; and he quoted what God communicated to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” -implying that it is God’s prerogative and not man’s; for God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and hardens whom he wants to harden. Even if some may protest, Paul went on to ask, “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay som pottery for noble purposes and some for disposal of refuse?
Notice that God’s disclosure in this discussion of his sovereignty reveals who he really is, and who we really are in his sight. Not understanding and appreciating this wholesomely causes many of us to question God on the subject of ‘fairness’ and how this can be proper if God is God (from our perspectives).
Several needful conclusions on our part:
We are in no position to answer back to our maker and creator (vv. 19-21). In Isaiah 45:9, God warns Israel, “Woe to him who quarrels with his maker”. For us to question God is in fact preposterous – it is like the pot talking back to the potter. He is God and He has the right to do with us as He wishes and sees fit. All mankind is made of the same sinful clay and God the almighty Creator has the prerogative to choose to bless some but not others without being obliged to explain his choice (although we know that God is perfect and good in all His ways and we are finite and limited in our understanding). Recall even ‘righteous Job’ questioning God why he was made the target of the almighty. But we know that the reality is far from this ‘accusation’, for Job was not even aware of an enemy called Satan.
God can use those who don’t receive mercy in order to extend His purposes of mercy towards others – even us vv. 22-24). For instance, God chooses to hold back His wrath from those who will eventually be destroyed such as Pharaoh, in order to reveal His glory to those whom He will eventually save. We, as believers, should understand that God has been patiently putting up with those destined for judgment, so that we might know the great extent of His mercy and blessing towards us.
What about our appreciation of who Jesus Christ is?
OUR VIEW OF JESUS
The NT pictures Jesus’ heavenly activity as standing ready to act (Acts 7:56), walking among his people *Rev. 2:1) and riding to battle (Rev. 19:11-16), but it often expresses his present authority by saying that he sits at the Father’s right hand – not to rest, but to rule – this is a picture not of inactivity but of authority.
Psalm 110 depicts the Messiah at God’s right hand as king and priest – as king to see all his enemies under his feet, and as priest to serve God and channel his grace forever.
Christ rules over all the spheres of authority that exists, both angelic and human (Matt. 28:18; 1 Peter 3:22). His kingdom in a distinct sense is the church (comprising OT and NT saints), which he leads as his body and governs by his Word and Spirit (Eph. 1: 22-23). All need to acknowledge that Christ is Lord of all; Christians seek in every sphere of life to do his will and to remind ourselves and others that all are accountable to Christ as judge, whether they be governors or governed, husbands or wive, parents or children, employers or employees – all rational beings will finally give account of themselves to Christ as judge (Matt. 25:31; Acts 17:31; Romans 2:16; 2 Cor. 5:10).
All believers, in recognising this, must constantly seek to give him the honour and glory as Lord and head of God’s kingdom. In the real sense, we do not have any claim to the glory and honour that belong to him. Someone rightly remarked, ‘If you say you are a great preacher, then God is not great’; ‘if you claim to be a great Christian leader, then God is not Lord’.
The preacher must stand behind God at the rostrum; God is speaking through him and he is not the one who carries the authority of God’s word ultimately; the leader must learn to serve and not to claim any glory for himself, for Christ came not to be served, but to serve, and what has his servant to do with claiming the honour for himself?
The kingdom God’s servants are building is God’s kingdom – it is never the kingdom of man – so what is all the fuss about ‘my church’ ‘my ministry’?
GIVING OUR ALL TO GOD AS HE HAS GIVEN HIS ALL TO US
The lunar New Year has a special meaning for me; this is after what my late mum shared with me years later about the circumstances surrounding my birth. I am aware that this is part of a rather personal sharing, but I need to share this to bring across the love, grace and mercy of God.
In years past, CNY was accompanied with the unceasing sounds of fire-crackers; and during one such CNY, my mum told me that the sounds of crackers reminded her that both she and I would have died years ago during one such CNY.
It was during a Chinese new year period that my mum was in labour, delivering me; however, she was way past her due date and during labour, the doctor discovered, to his horror, that the baby (me) was not in the normal position for delivery – it was not ‘head first’ but rather ‘buttocks first’, and on top of that, because of the delayed ‘due date’, the baby was huge, 9 pounders and above.
The delivery was not in a hospital, but in a normal dispensary (probably due to financial reasons) and the doctor was ‘struggling’ to deliver the baby over a prolonged period. My mum told me that she was in agonising pain, and apparently there was a real danger of asphyxia and foetal distress for the baby. The doctor’s wife was a previous midwife and thankfully, she came in later and managed to carry out the delivery successfully but with much difficulty.
My life began with the real possibility of birth damage and death.
When I ponder over this every CNY, I realise that I may not be here to share about God’s goodness and mercy.
Another incident took place in my life in the ‘beginning’ of my medical practice. I was assigned to a neurological ward in the previous TTSH; in my ward, there was a case of an infectious ‘Torula meningitis’. I was told and reminded specifically not to go near this patient unless I was in full PPD (referring to being fully gowned, masked, gloved, and protected). However, during my ward around, the patient collapsed and he needed resuscitation quickly before any permanent brain damage set in. I had not sufficient time to put on my PPD, and in a reflex action, I went forward to resuscitate the patient. Subsequent to that, my superior chided me and told me that if I developed a fever in the next one week, I was doomed. The week passed and I was still alive and well.
There are many near-death incidents, from viral pandemics, from being ‘struck’ by ?Coxsackie virus’ and being admitted to ICU from chest pain and ‘inability to breathe’. But through all these, I learned precious lessons from the Lord God, some at that point of time, and some, years later.
The result: I was convicted (and am still convicted) to show myself truly grateful for His mercy by the thoroughness of my commitment to Him henceforth, for holiness means giving our all to God as God has given, is giving, and will give His all to us. As I meditate on the love, grace and mercy of God, I am reminded that ‘love’ means His going out to bless those He sees as having no claim on Him; ‘grace’ means His going out to bless those whom He sees as meriting His rejection; and ‘mercy’ means His going out to bless those whose state He sees to be miserable. Love expresses God’s self-determining freedom, grace His self-generated favour, and mercy His compassionate kindness.
I learn that the holy sacrifice that gives God pleasure is the Christian whose heart never ceases to be grateful to Him for His grace. God is pleased with the believer whose aim every day is to express that gratitude by living to Him, through Him, and for Him.
Jesus said that we are to love our God with everything we have got. And He is effectively defining for us the purity of heart of which He had elsewhere said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). Purity of heart is indeed a matter of willing one thing, namely to live everyday of one’s life loving God. It is a matter of saying and meaning what the psalmist said, “There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25) – nothing that is, that I would not consent to lose if adhering to God required it.
It is a matter of making knowing and loving and pleasing and praising God my life task, and of seeking to lead others into the same God-glorifying life pattern.
The above is my desire and motivation; but I need to conclude that I am still struggling to do it consistently. But I know that the HolySpirit is strengthening me and my brethren constantly in our weakness; God has given us the BIble as a message, “God’s Word written.” We need to recognise God Himself as its source, subject, and actual speaker. As we struggle, and travel along the “pilgrim’s road”, we need to exercise our faith and trust in the God who is faithful and the One who keeps all His promises and would bring all of them to pass.
This CNY, I am aware that I am on my last journey home. My fellow medical classmates and I are close to 80 years old, and certainly we are also aware that many of our dear classmates have departed.
As I shared above, time is not in our hands. God is the One in whom we live, and He can terminate our ‘breath’ instantly. If He gives us time to turn back to Him, let us not presume that we have all the time in the world to decide. The world and all that belong to it would soon pass away; only those who do the will of God will abide forever.
As someone said, “only one life that is soon to pass, only what’s done for Christ shall last” and I trust that this may be your ‘motto’ too, as it has been mine all these years as I express my gratitude to the Triune God. Blessed CNY to all who observe this celebration.
THE PURSUIT OF GODLINESS (A)
Before God’s people had come into existence, or before the foundation of the world (see Eph. 1:4), God foreknew (in the sense of foreloved) his chosen people. Those he foreknew he foreordained or predestined to be made like the image of his Son. Since the Son is the perfect image of God the Father, we can conclude that the expression “the image of his Son” as being equivalent to “image of God.”
That image has been so corrupted or spoiled through man’s fall into sin that he needs once again to be conformed to that image. Conformity to the image of the Son – is the goal for which God has predestined his chosen people (note that it is not just individuals but a new humanity and community). This goal, though it is beginning to be carried out here and now, will not be fully realised until the life to come, at which time we shall be perfectly like Christ (1Cor. 15:49; Phil. 3:21; 1 John 3:2).
This transformation comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. The thought that Christians need continually to grow in being conformed to the image of God is also spoken of as putting off the “old man” and putting on the “new man” – recent translation render these expressions as “old nature” and “new nature or “old self” and “new self” (Colossians 3:9-10).
The old self is what we are by nature: slaves to sin; the new self means the person in his unity ruled by the Holy Spirit. Even this new self is not yet perfect, it “is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (vs 10).
The apostle Paul looks upon believers as those who have once and for all taken of their old selves, and have once and for all put on their new selves – new selves that are being continually and progressively renewed. In other words, in the light of this passage believers should not look upon themselves as slaves to sin or as “old selves,” nor as being partly “old selves” and partly “new selves,” but as those who are new persons in Christ. Yet the new selves believers have put on are not yet perfect or sinless, since these new selves must still be progressively renewed by the Holy Spirit. Christians should therefore see themselves as persons who are genuinely new, though not yet totally new.
This new self that the believer has put on is being renewed in knowledge. It is a rich and full knowledge, a knowledge that involves not only the mind but also the heart. The goal of redemption is that, in knowledge as well as in other aspects of their lives, God’s people will be totally and flawlessly image-bearers of God!
The second passage that speaks of putting off the “old man” and putting on the “new man” is Ephesians 4:22-24.
Here Paul says that a Chriswtian is a person who has decisively and irrevocably put off the old self and put on the new self, and who must continually and progressively be renewed in the spirit or attitude of his or her mind. A once-for-all change of direction is to be accompanied by daily, progressive renewal. In other words, the Christian is a new person, but he or she still has a lot of growing to do (and this growing has a lot to do with the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge, assimilation, and application of the Word of God in Scripture).
Not only is our renewal into greater likeness to God something that the Holy Spirit works in us in the process of redemption; it is also pictured in the New Testament as something that involves our own efforts. To be sure, this renewal is primarily the work of God – he who sanctifies us through his Spirit; but the New Testament also indicates that renewal into greater conformity to God is also, at the same time, the responsibility of man. There are of course many ways in which we cannot be like God – such as in his omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence. But in other ways, we can be like God, if not perfectly, at least in principle. In Ephesians 4:32, Paul tells us that we should forgive one another as in Christ, God forgave us; and in the following (5:2), Paul continues, “And live a life of love, just as Christ loved us” (the heart of the image of God is love). We can be like Christ in his humiliation, in his willingness to humble himself for the sake of his brothers and sisters. We must be ready and willing to imitate Christ, who is the perfect ofGod (Philippians 2:5-11).
The final goal of our sanctification is that we shall be totally like God, that we shall perfectly image God; becoming completely like Christ, who is the perfect image of God. Our future existence will be glorious, because we shall be perfectly like Christ!
PURSUIT OF GODLINESS (B)
We have considered in the previous sharing that God has foreordained those he foreknew to be made into the image of Christ.
But as we look at the scenario in the church today, and among God’s people in different settings, what we see in the people is an outlook that is one of casual haphazardness and fretful impatience, of grasping after novelties, entertainments, and “highs,” and of valuing strong feelings above deep thoughts. They have little taste for solid study, humble self-examination, disciplined meditation, and unspectacular hard work in their callings and their prayers (as needed in fulfilling their responsibility to work hard at transformation in tandem with the ministry of God’s Spirit).
They conceive the Christian life as one of exciting extraordinary experiences (like the Jews who clamoured for more miracles from Christ) rather than of resolute rational righteousness. They dwell continually and constantly on the themes of joy, peace, happiness, satisfaction, prosperity, and rest of soul with no balancing reference to the divine conflict and discontent of Romans 7, the fight of faith of Psalm 73, or the “lows’ and ‘discouragements’ of Psalms 42, 88, and 102. And they hardly give the scriptural virtue of steadiness and steadfastness a thought.
Such believers need to reflect on certain needs and apply them if they ever desire to be mature in Christ and be made like His image:
The insistence on the primacy of the mind, and on the impossibility of obeying biblical truth that one has not yet understood (hence the need to study and meditate on the Scripture for understanding);
The demand for humility, patience, and steadiness at all times;
The acknowledgment that the Holy Spirit’s main ministry is not to give thrills, but to create in us Christlike character;
The recognition that feelings go up and down, and that God frequently tries us by leading us through wastes of emotional flatness (hence the need to walk by faith and not by sight {which mainly involves feelings alone]);
The stress on the need of regular self-examination by Scripture, in terms of Psalm 139:23-24, and not allow pride, self-glory to take hold of our lives;
The realisation that sanctified suffering may be prominent in God’s plan for His children’s growth in grace (and not to ‘give up’ and ‘turn back’ from the narrow path of the pursuit of holiness);
The singling out of worship as life’s primary activity for the Christians who yearn to know God and not just know about God.
Sometimes, believers, in the apparent pursuit of orthodoxy, may focus on, and conform to convention and caring much more, as it seems, for programs than for people. Perhaps there are no truths about the Spirit that Christian people more urgently need to learn today than those that relate to the inner life of fellowship with God.
If our theology and our insistence on orthodoxy and accuracies in hermeneutics do not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both. We need to remember that for ‘essentials’, there is no compromise, but for ‘non-essentials’ there is much room for flexibility and fellowship. Our beliefs must encourage the commitment of faith; otherwise they reinforce the detachment of unbelief; if they fail to promote humility and dependence on God, they inevitably feed pride and self-centeredness.
ENTERING GOD’S REST
Hebrews 3:1-19
Verses 7-11 has a parallel passage in Psalm 95: 7-11:
Both speak of the need not to harden our hearts (as in the rebellion of the Israelites in the wilderness). Those who heard and rebelled were the ones who experienced firsthand the goodness of God in bringing them out of Egypt. They had every encouragement to persevere, but they disqualified themselves from entering His rest because they persistently disobeyed HIm – this disobedience was because of their unbelief (lack of faith).
It is faith that provides the underlying foundation for confidence in God and His promise; persevering faith is a mark of true conversion (cf. Mark 13:13). Faith is not a good work that saves us but the means by which we hold on to the promises of God and remain in the relationship He has made possible for us through His Son.
The promise of entering His rest has been given to us in the gospel. Our situation is somewhat like that of the Israelites in the wilderness such that the writer of Hebrews can say “we also have had the gospel preached to us just as they did.”
The Israelites received the promise of entering the promised land (se Exodus 3:7-10; 34:10-14) and were summoned to live by faith in the word of God – in that sense they had the gospel preached to them (cf. Galaians 3:8-9). The writer then remarked, “let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.” There is always the possibility that some members ot those to whom the writer of Hebrews was addressing (i.e. those Jewish Christians who were contemplating returning to Judaism to escape persecution from the Roman Authorities) might fail to attain the promised rest for the same reason that the Israelites under Moses fell short of obtaining their inheritance: ‘the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.’ In other words, they did not share in the faith of those who obeyed. This was seen by the fact that the majority did not share the faith of Joshua and Caleb when it came to the point of entering the land of Canaan (Numbers 14). But what we, in our context, need to realise is that this applies also to us in the church today. Hearing the message with faith is essential for salvation (cf. Romans 10:14).We who have believed enter the rest which Psalm 95:11 speaks.
In the argument of Hebrews, God’s rest is equivalent to the ‘heavenly country’ (Heb. 11:16) , the ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ (Heb. 12:22), the ‘kingdom that cannot be shaken’ (12:28 – that is, the “kingdom of God” [the inheritance of the Christians of the OT and NT]).
From one point of view, the ‘rest’ already exists for us in the heavenlies and can be ‘entered now, by faith (12:22); it has been in existence since the creation of the world. From another point of view, we are on a pilgrimage to ‘the city that is to come (13:14), and we wait to be ushered into ‘the world to come’ (the new heavens and new earth).
In essence, Hebrews present the same tension between “now” and “not yet” that is found elsewhere in the NT. Jesus has made it possible for us to enjoy certain blessings in the present, as an assurance that ‘we will possess everything promised to us in the end (cf. Eph. 1:13-14). The ‘rest’ that the Israelites experienced in the time of Joshua was an earthly anticipation of the ultimate, heavenly rest (Note: It cannot be referring to the physical land of Canaan – they were already in that land when the writer of Hebrews penned the letter to them).
The writer of Hebrews goes on to argue that the way into that ultimate inheritance has been secured by the Lord Jesus Christ (e.g. 6:19-20; 9:15; 10:19-22). If Joshua had given the people their ultimate rest at the time of the conquest, God would not have spoken later about another day (Psalm 95) – the hope of God’s people is a heavenly rest, not the re-establishment of the Jews in the land of Israel. The fundamental promises of the old covenant are fulfilled in a transformed way by Christ.
Since faith is the means by which we enter God’s rest (applicable to believers from OT and NT), the writer of Hebrews is clearly restating the warning about hardening our hearts in unbelief. He is not saying that we secure our salvation by good works; if faith is genuine, it will be expressed in obedience. So our concern should be that no-one will fall by following the example of the disobedience of the Israelites, as highlighted in Ps. 95:7-11. The gospel brings the promise of salvation as well as the warning of judgment (cf 2:1-4). However, it is also clear that Psalm 95 can function as the voice of God, calling us to faith and warning us about hardening our hearts.
Hence the warning in Hebrews and in Psalm 95 – So, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did.
That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.”
The writer of Hebrews goes on to say, “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.
They did not enter His rest because of unbelief and disobedience. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no-one will perish by following their example of disobedience. “Make every effort does not mean that we secure our salvation by good works. Genuine faith will express itself in obedience. God intends HIs people to share in His own Sabbath-rest – this involves resting from the work that is committed to us at present (cf. Rev. 14:13), just as God did from His. However, we are not to think of God’s rest as the rest of inactivity. Scripture makes it clear that He continues to uphold, direct and maintain His creation, having completed the work of establshing it. The image is
rather one of freedom from toil and struggle, to enjoy with God the satisfaction and perfection of His work in creating and redeeming us. In other words, we will be liberated from all the trials and pressures of our present existence to serve God without hindrance and to live with Him for ever (cf. Rev. 7:13-17). There is therefore the need to make every effort to enter that rest. This is in line with:
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.” (Phil. 2:12-16a)
WILLINGNESS TO WORK OUT THE DEEPER IMPLICATIONS OF OUR FAITH
This follows the sharing on ‘Entering the Rest of God’, and the focus now will be on Hebrews 5:11-6:8.
The context: Under pressure of persecution, converts from Judaism must have been tempted to give up more and more those features of faith and practice which were distinctive of Christianity, and yet to feel that they had not abandoned the basic principles of repentance and faith. Such ones were in fact in danger of falling away from the faith
The writer wrote that they were only able to partake ‘milk’ and not ‘solid food’ in their spiritual growth towards maturity; indeed, resistance to spiritual growth may lead people to fall away or completely rebel against God, because they are hardening their hearts against God (6:1-8).
The readers have become slow to learn ; a certain sluggishness has crept in and they become dull to what is heard. One sign of this developing slackness is their unwillingness or inability to be teachers although they have been Chrisitians for some time. Anyone instructed in the faith ought to be able to explain it to others, if they are unable, a serious case of arrested spiritual growth has developed, and this is seen in their unwillingness to work out the deeper implications of the gospel and respond with faith and obedience.
Hence, they can only partake ‘spiritual milk’ and not ‘solid spiritual food’ – they can only receive the elementary teachings about Christ and not go on to a deeper understanding of fundamental spiritual truth, and thus are not trained to distinguish good from evil.
What is disturbing is that this condition actually describes the spiritual state of many Christians in our churches today; they need the insight and commitment that solid food can bring and they may reach a point when they are ‘hardened’ beyond recall and are in a position of committing apostasy.
We are aware that those who are truly regenerate will never fall away; but the genuineness of the new birth is proved by persistence in faith. This means that we cannot exclude the possibility that some of the number in this category of ‘hardening their hearts’ are rebellious at heart and, unless there is a radical change, will find that they have reached the point or irremediable apostasy (recall the teaching of the Lord Jesus of the four ‘soils’) and here in Hebrews there is reference to two possibilities: the good soil that drinks in the rain often falling on it and produces a good crop and that which produces thistles and thorns that are worthless and are in danger of being burned and cursed (cf those who enter into God’s rest by faith and obedience and those who fail to enter because of unbelief and disobedience).
Listening to sermons, Bible study, teaching at different levels – all these are meant to help various ones grow from partaking ‘milk’ and go on to partake’ solid food. If we are lazy and indifferent, and continue to remain as ‘spiritual infants’, we are in real danger of failing to go on to maturity and are in fact vulnerable to spiritual deceptions, wrong and distorted teachings and doctrines which invariably may lead to disastrous spiritual consequences.
THE ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY OF JESUS
Mark 1:22 states: “They were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”
Jesus himself declared that his teaching is divine in origin and eternally valid in its own right; he appealed to no human authority but put his teaching at the same level as the teaching of the Father who sent him (John 7:16).
“What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (12:49-50).
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31) – Jesus told his hearers that their eternal destiny depended on whether, having heard his words, they kept them (Mathew 7:24-27).
Ponder: Has anyone ever claimed such authority and equated their teachings as divine in origin and eternal in validity??
Jesus Christ claimed divine authority for all that he did and taught. He never opposed his personal authority to that of the Old Testament; he never qualified the absolute authority of Scripture for others and submitted to it unreservedly himself. When he says, “It is written,” that is final (and in the temptation scene when Jesus encountered the devil, again and again he said, “It is written”, upholding the authority of Scripture).
It is not in fallen man to acknowledge God’s authority (i.e. Jesus’ authority) or to receive God’s truth presented to him. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned”(1Cor. 2:14). Only the person who is born again of the Spirit of God will repent of the sin of intellectual self-sufficiency and consent to be taught of God through His written Word.
Only a new outpouring of spiritual life can bring home to the minds of Chrisians the power, the authority, and the meaning of “God’s written Word” and enable believers to see their mental sins and intellectual pride.
Only the Holy Spirit can clear the intellectual compromises and betrayals of truth that reside in the minds and hearts, and show them to be what they are; and only the Spirit can give believers strength of mind to repent and cast out the sinful ways of thinking.
When the fires of spiritual life burn low in the church, the sinful lust for intellectual autonomy reasserts itself (and this may come from the most unlikely sources, even bible institutions and colleges, unwholesome bible commentaries, liberal thoughts, and ‘traditions’ that were regarded in church history as ‘heretic’ and yet become fashionable today).
When God’s name is hallowed, and His Word is received as His authority and revelation, then the heart is purified, and attitudes and motives are positively renewed, and self-centeredness, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance are ‘melted away’; we are led to work humbly, in a God-honoring, God-fearing, God-dependent way.
In God’s eyes, motivation is an important element in our outworking, for God looks not only at the outward behaviour but also on the heart, and any motivation that exalts itself will render our work unacceptable, even rotten to the core.
As we lament the poor spiritual state of the church in these last days, may God revive His work in His church, that His people may once again learn to think and live to His honour and glory.
DISCIPLESHIP OF THE MIND (B)
This is an elaboration of the first sharing on the same topic. In the previous sharing, we noted that Christianity thrives not in the darkness but in the light’; one of the means the Holy Spirit will use is an awakening of the intellect. The Spirit will illumine the mind to understand Scripture and to see the world and God’s plan of salvation from God’s perspective and views, that is, understanding and seeing the world and ourselves from the perspective that is firmly rooted in the Christian gospel. Before elaboration on the perspective that is needed to be rooted in the Christian gospel, perhaps it is helpful to address a related problem.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been prominent in the current news and development, not only locally, but globally. AI has its usefulness and positive effects on society; but it also has its limitations and setbacks. In the world of health and medicine, for instance, a recent finding is that information on the subject of health from AI is generally not so accurate because it is dependent on the input it receives from those in the health sector – it collates what it receives and comes out with the information and conclusions – hence it is highly dependent on the sources from which it gleans the necessary facts and information. If the sources are not accurate or are misleading, the information generated would also be ‘contaminated’.
When it comes to understanding the Bible and God’s perspective, AI also is dependent on the sources it receives. We are aware that in church history, there have been many heretical doctrines and teachings; even today, many Christian groups and churches hold on to doctrinal teachings that are, not just inaccurate, but also distorted truths. We need to depend on the Holy Spirit, the author and teacher of Scripture, for accurate and life-giving revelation and interpretation so as to avoid being led astray subtly (remembering also that we have a formidable enemy who can also quote Scripture and spiritual warfare is indeed ongoing until the final battle when Christ comes again).
In the light of the above, it is needful to crystallise the Christian gospel which, unfortunately, has been ‘distorted’ from many ‘camps’ (including apparent Christian groups).
1. The gospel is from God and about God; it comes from Him and is all about Him. The gospel is not ours to alter in any way (not even from self-confessed theologians and Christian leaders; and certainly not from AI). The gospel is a message from God and we are to pass it on as it is given to us (and not add or subtract it, or even adorn it with our own so-called ‘insight’).
We must be faithful to His message and we can leave God to be responsible for His gospel; if people are offended by it, it may be that they will take it out on us, but ultimately they should take it up with Him (but let us not be guilty in being unwise and uncouth in our sharing of the gospel).
2. The gospel is a message about Him – His character and HIs action through Christ. We must not place ourselves at the heart of our message, so that we suggest to friends that there is something missing in their lives and that only God can fill it – we must beware of slipping into such a human-centred message, when such an approach will always be popular, but are we actually communicating the true gospel?
If we wish to see God working powerfully in HIs world, we should proclaim HIs message.
3. The gospel is about Jesus and for Jesus. It is not about us but it is about Jesus, the promised Messiah and Lord of all (as studied in the Gospels). It is often so easy to sideline Jesus in our evangelism and even not mention HIm in our sharing of the gospel. Remembering His identity, and His absolute authority over all (shared previously), we need to ask where we stand in relation to Him. Telling people about Jesus should not be done for our reward but for the honour of His name.
4. The gospel demands a response of faith. We need to call various ones to the obedience of faith; although we expect people to be offended by the call for them to obey God, the gospel is radical and should effect radical change.
5. The gospel is for all; it is for different people groups – it is God’s gospel about His Son.
6. Sin is rebellion against God; our rejection of God results in a change in the object of our affection (i.e. our idol which may be other persons, things, even ourselves – we are replacing God with this idol).
7. God’s wrath is being revealed in the gospel; God must punish our rebellion and sin and that He has already handed us over in judgement. There is no solution unless God provides one. Everyone is under God’s wrath (Rom. 1:18) because everyone has wilfully rejected their creator, refusing to glorify Him and to give thanks to Him. God’s promises of blessing are accompanied by promises of a terrible future judgment. There will be a day when God will punish all the arrogant and every evildoer (Mal, 4:1). All we deserve is that God should destroy us instantly, but He delays His final judgment, giving us time to repent. Although we are not saved by works, we are judged by our works, because they reveal the underlying attitude of our hearts. To those who do evil, there will be wrath and anger from God (2:8); to those who do good, God will give eternal life. On judgment day, people will get exactly what they deserve – there is no doubt that God will reward those who have done good and punish those who have done evil. God’s wrath is inescapable. It is only because Christ ‘drank the cup of wrath’ on our behalf and became our substitute on the cross that we can become right with God.
8. In the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed – God’s solution must be apart from the Law because no-one’s good works can be sufficient to secure a righteous verdict on judgment day. God’s righteousness is appropriated in a different way – by faith – God’s righteousness is given to all who believe (or have faith). Hence, although all face condemnation for their rebellion against God, all are able to be ‘justified’, to be declared righteous (Rom. 3:24). Someone is justly acquitted because the penalty for his crime has been paid – so God’s verdict comes as a generous gift from God; it cannot be earned – it is through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ (vs. 24). Our rescue comes free to us, but at great cost to God – God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement i.e. God Himself gave HImself to save us from Himself.
The gospel tells us that God does not leave us facing His terrible wrath – He has stepped in and provided a solution; it is a solution that comes by faith, apart from the Law. Through Jesus’ death, the price has been paid – for by grace, we are saved through faith – it is a gift from God – it is not from our works or merit; it is God’s mercy extended to us. (All these are clearly ‘spelled out’ in the book of Romans (particularly from the first 11 chapters; when it comes to Chapter 12, we will note the application for our lives as Christians as we appreciated the gospel clearly shared in the earlier chapters of Romans).
We must take note that all these aspects of truth come to us from God’s revelation in the Scripture – it is only understood and appreciated because God chose to reveal it to us. It calls for humility and gratitude as the Spirit moulds us into the image of Christ and renew our minds to understand God and HIs ways.
DISCIPLESHIP OF THE MIND (C)
We spent some time to ‘crystallise’ the gospel in God’s salvation plan in the last sharing. In view of God’s mercy in the gospel, Romans 12:1-2 outline the essence of the Christian’s response to God’s mercy; at the heart of this response is a transformation, and this should happen within the life of a Christian as a result of the new mind that he has been given.
The Christian, regenerated and united with Christ by the Spirit, is no longer a rebel, but rather, through God’s work in his life, he now delights in God’s law in his inner being (Rom. 7:22). Yet he still needs actively to offer God his body, a body that remains influenced by the sinful realm of Adam and which will still rebel instinctively against God (7:23,25) until it is resurrected (8:11).
When we were rebels against God, our bodies were given over to sinfulness, but now God has given us new minds, by giving us His Spirit – we are to give ourselves back to God and not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by our new minds. This is the exhortation in Romans 12:1-2.
To recapitulate, starting first in Romans 1:18-3:20, Paul taught that each of us deserves only to face God’s righteous anger and wrath because of our rejection of HIm. From 3:21, he explained how God stepped in to make us righteous, through the substitutionary sacrifice of His Son, and how this righteousness is appropriated through trusting in HIs promises (3:27-4:25). Then from 5:1-8:39, Paul showed us the consequences of our justification: our freedom from the ruling power of sin and death, and the unbreakable promise we have of a certain future, when we shall be glorified with Christ forever. We deserve none of this, yet God has graciously given it to us out of His mercy.
It is fitting therefore that our lives as Christians should be devoted to Him in wholehearted gratitude; it is a total dedication of a life given to God. Paul’s use of the words “our bodies being living sacrifices that are holy and pleasing to God” reminds us of the instructions given to the Israelites in Leviticus. Paul tells us to offer our bodies totally to God; the bodies are no longer ‘instruments of wickedness’ but they are to be dedicated entirely to God, bringing our bodies in line with our inner beings, which are now controlled by the Spirit, so that our whole lives are devoted entirely to God; and this is true spiritual worship.
To worship God truly is to live in such a way as to give Him His full worth and value, acknowledging all that He is and all that He has done. True worship is thus the Christian’s appropriate response of devoting his or her whole life, in this world, to God.
That means we should no longer allow ourselves to be squeezed into the world’s rebellious mould; we should refuse to think as the world thinks or act as the world acts. Instead, we are to be transformed by our new mind – our minds have already been changed, at conversion (i.e. by the renewal of our minds) – and they are now ‘set on what the spirit desires’ (8:5). We now delight in God’s Law in our inner beings at the deepest level, we are no longer set in rebellion against God. Since we have been given new minds (in genuine conversion), we need to bring the rest of ourselves, i.e.our thinking and behaviour, into line with our minds. It would be a lifelong battle for us in our transformation, but this is what it means for us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.
What follows is a new relationship with God, a new relationship with one another and even a new relationship with our enemies.
We have thus an overview of what the true gospel is all about and what ought to be the implications and outworking in the lives of those who are truly ‘born again’ by the Spirit. If this is absent in our lives and is still lacking, we need to seriously come before God and sincerely and honestly question the genuineness of our conversion and regeneration. We are reminded that Jesus told His disciples not to rejoice that the evil spirits obey them but rather to rejoice that their names are written in heaven (i.e. in the book of LIfe) – and this is the most important assurance as compared to even Christian ministry and activities.
FAITH, TRUTH, AND OUR ETERNAL WELFARE
Christianity is built on truth, that is, on the content of a divine revelation. Christianity announces salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, in and through whom that revelation came to completion: but faith in Jesus Christ is possible only where the truth concerning him is known.
The New Testament reveals that God has made provision for the communication of this saving truth; He entrusted this to the apostles, and through them to the whole church, a message from Himself which conveys it. This is called “the word of God,” “the word of the Lord, or simply “the word” (Acts 4:31; 1 Thess.1:8; Acts 8:4). Its divine origin guarantees it to be “the word of truth” (Eph. 1:13).
Men come to faith through receiving this word, and such faith is specifically described as “obeying the truth” (Gal. 5:7). The faith of God’s elect goes with “their knowledge of the truth” (Titus 1:1). But if this truth is rejected or perverted, faith is overthrown (2 Timothy 2:18) and men come under the power of a lie (2 Thess. 2:10-12) with terrible results. One’s eternal welfare may depend on what one believes – doctrinal error and outworking is a grim reality, and spiritual “shipwreck” comes in its wake!!
What this means is that distorted truth, perversion of the truth, and the application and outworking of this truth in those who claim to be Christians may lead to spiritual damage and ‘destruction’, and even negative eternal outcome in their lives. If we base our ‘faith’ not on the truth revealed by God in the Scripture, then we can be sure that our faith is misplaced, and genuine faith in Christ is ‘overthrown’ or missing – and what follows is that we are not built on the word of truth, the Word of God, conveyed from God to the apostles and subsequently to the church!!
We have been looking at the book of Hebrews and we noted that the writer was warning the Jewish Christians not to turn away from Christianity and to return to Judaism, for fear of persecution from the Roman Authorities. This is tantamount to rejecting the Son of God, the Messiah; and the rejection of the salvation He accomplished as our Mediator and Sacrifice. The Jewish Christians were arguing that they were still believing in the same God when they returned to Judaism; in reality, they were abandoning the new Covenant God was establishing through Christ – “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds….Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” (Heb.1016-17; Jeremian 31:34). This is also the new covenant God makes with the church and Christians – notice that the law is no longer written on tablets of stone (as in the days of Moses) but is written in our hearts and on our minds (through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, in the Word of God).
Earlier on, the writer had laboured to tell the readers that Jesus is greater than Moses, greater than the angels; He is the eternal Son of the living God and the final revelation and message of God. If we reject such a great salvation given by God through His Son, how can we escape the judgment of God? It is tantamount to crucifying Christ all over again!
Let us deliberate on what the writer wrote:
“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:26-31).
The writer went on:
“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very litle whole, “He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.” (Heb. 10:35-38)
Take note that what was written in Hebrews referred to a real historical time when the Roman empire was in control of the Jewish nation; the persecution of Christians (Gentile and Jewish) was intense, real, and many lost their homes, their families and loved ones; imprisonment and death were also common. In such a context, one may feel that it is understandable for the Jewish Christians to consider abandoning Christianity and returning to Judaism.
But Hebrews was written to make it very clear that if they do so, they would face the judgment of God and will be considered as apostates, as those who abandoned Christ, the faith, and the salvation of the new covenant established by the sacrifice of the Son of God! The call to them is to persevere in faith, to have confidence in the promises of God in His Son, despite the sufferings and persecution, for they were to be expected (recall apostle Paul writing that the sufferings of believers are temporary and cannot even be compared with the eternal weight of glory that is to come).
For the Jewish Christians in those days, and for us, “there is no turning back!”. Hebrews 11 is the famous chapter on ‘Faith”; this follows from chapter 10 and it is a showcase of men and women of faith in the past; many of them did not ‘receive’ what was promised yet, but they persevered in faith, and this is written for us today to follow their example of persevering faith and confidence in God and His promises, revelation, and truth. Like them, our eternal destiny and welfare depends on our faith in God, His revelation and truth, and our obedience to Him, and our perseverance in the truth in our lives and outworking.
It is pertinent that Christians today in our church should know the truth of God revealed in Scriptures; it is also important that we receive the whole truth and counsel of God, and not half-truth (for half-truth is no truth at all; and certainly distorted and perverted truth lead to serious spiritual negative consequences). And certainly truth received must be obeyed and carried out in outworking by faith and also there is the solemn responsibility of upholding God’s truth conveyed through His apostles, through the Word of God, and to continue to persevere in the truth despite persecution and sufferings. Christ is coming soon and God’s judgment and promise would surely come about. If we shrink back God would not be pleased; in fact Christians are not “of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved”(Heb.10:39).
To those who are yet to believe, the warning from Hebrews – “How can you escape if you deny so great a salvation?” Jesus also said that to those who are ashamed of Him, He would be ashamed of them when He comes again with His angels.
Do not forget – faith (in God and His revelation); and truth (in the whole counsel of God) – all these would determine our eternal welfare and destiny!! Do not opt for half-truth or even untruth – the consequences are not worthed it even though we may feel comfortable for the moment. The stakes are high – we cannot escape God’s judgment if we deliberately reject God and His truth – the just shall live by faith!
SCRIPTURE (THE WORD) IS INDISPENSABLE FOR GOD’S PEOPLE
We have considered ‘Faith, Truth and our eternal welfare’ in the previous sharing; and the Word (Scripture) is central in it all.
Scripture is the only guide for conscience and the church, the only source of true knowledge of God and grace, and the only qualified judge of the church’s testimony and teaching. Without Scripture (and the Word), there can be no true and wholesome knowledge of God; there can no true guide for God’s church; and certainly there is no proper yardstick to measure the quality of the testimony of God’s people as well as the quality and evaluation of the teaching and preaching in the church.
And the implications and principles that follow:
God’s people, although regenerated, still have minds that are ignorant and blind through sin, and it is beyond their power to work out any true knowledge of God for themselves. Hence they need to be taught.
It is the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures that enlighten and teach us and bring us to faith and knowledge of God in Christ. Without the Spirit and the Word, there is no wholesome teaching and growth in knowledge of the Almighty.
The Scriptures are directly produced by the Holy Spirit; whatever Scriptures teach, God Himself teaches. Whatever the Word ‘speaks’, God speaks.s
The teaching of Scriptures is sufficient for our guidance in all matters of faith and life; there is no need for other sources of revelation.
The Spirit enables us to understand the Scriptures in their true theological sense, as a complex unity of witness to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Thebiblical message stands over the church and over individual believers at all times to judge, correct, and simplify their understanding of God’s works and ways.We must be cautious not to allow worldly knowledge and influence to dominate the ‘curriculum’ of God’s church.
If we appreciate the above, we would appreciate why there is so much concern for accurate interpretation of Scriptures, and why the context of the text for preaching and teaching is so very relevant and significant in reaching the right conclusions and applications for God’s people.
Conversely, without these, the teaching is invariably inaccurate and problematic; and God’s people may be wrongly guided and led to wrongful applications and unhelpful knowledge of God and His ways.
This is also why it is so very important to check that the preaching and teaching are truly from God (remember the Berean believers who check even the communication of Paul the apostle) and also why it is essential and even mandatory to speak up for the truth and to defend the truth in God’s Word.
Ultimately, it has to do with true knowledge of God and the truth; and the health of the church and her testimony in this world.
ENDURANCE: PASSIVE AND ACTIVE OBEDIENCE
“Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”
(Hebrews 5:8-10)
Though Jesus was the Son of God, he experienced the temptation to swerve from doing the will of his Father (by going to the cross) because of the suffering involved. He needed to learn what obedience to God involved in practical terms, in the conditions of human life on earth, so that he could sympathize and empathize with those similarly tested and teach us by his own example how far God ought to be submitted to and obeyed.
Learning obedience from what he suffered, Jesus was made perfect (perfected) or ‘made completely adequate’ as the saviour of his people – that is, he was perfected as the source of eternal salvation.
Every experience of suffering prepared him for a final act of obedience to the Father in his sacrificial death. By this means he achieved a salvation from sin, death and the devil, enabling those who trust in him to share with him in the life of the world to come.
Theologians have expressed the ‘obedience of Christ’ as passive obedience and active obedience (the former referring to his willingness and submission to the Father to go to the cross, and the latter to his active obedience to the Father in living a perfectly sinless life such that he can be our example in his ‘fulfilling all aspects of the Law” as well as be perfectly righteous to ‘impute’ and ‘credit’ his righteousness to all those who believe, after fulfilling and completing his mission on earth).
Christian maturity, which is holiness full-grown, is the promised end product of endurance – both passive (patience) and active (perseverance); and our example is the Lord Jesus Christ whose patience and perseverance accompanied him in his life on earth as the God-Man in his mission to carry out God’s salvation plan.
Patience,( the passive mode of endurance, whereby pain, grief, suffering, and disappointment are handled without inner collapse) is named as one facet of the fruit of the spirit; it is a supernatural gift, a grace of character that God imparts to those whom he is transforming into the likeness of Christ.
Patient endurance is most apparent when we stand steady under pain and pressure instead of cutting and running or crumbling and collapsing. Such a stance is a habit that takes some learning – to endure as Christians is no casual agenda. Many of us have hardly begun to tackle it as yet;
Jesus our Lord told the disciples that if they persecuted Him, expect to be persecuted as well; if they called HIm ‘Lord’ and rightly so, then they had to emulate Him as genuine servants, for Jesus was willing to wash the feet of the disciples (a lowly job fit for servants and slaves), for the Lord came not to be served but to serve. But not many of us are willing to be treated as servants although we do not mind being termed ‘servants of God’.
Love shines brightest when exercised for Jesus’ sake toward the unlovely and seemingly unlovable; joy when sure of God’s sovereign providence, we stay calm instead of panicking or getting all flustered up.
Integral to our holiness, our maturity, and our Christlikeness, is the habit of enduring. Forming this habit, and making sure we never lose it, is a necessary discipline for those who are Christ’s. Perseverance is the only path to the prize of final glory, and what perseverance requires is a sustained exertion of concentrated effort day in and day out – a single-minded, wholehearted, self-denying, flat-out commitment to praising and pleasing the Father through the Son as long as life lasts. Enduring and persevering is constantly demanding and sometimes agonizing; but the very meaning of perseverance and patient endurance is that you do it anyway, because you are God’s child running on what, in the profoundest sense, is for you the home stretch.
This sustained inward effort raised to the limit of what you can do with the brains, gifts, and energy God has given you, is one central aspect of Christian holiness, one without which a person’s supposed holiness would degenerate into self-indulgent softness. True holiness is neither self-indulgent and soft; it is tough; it is virile; it has backbone and guts and a face set like flint. It is fueled by a heart of joy as the winning post appears ahead. Real Jesus-likeness means this (recall the example of the Son of God in His incarnate state) and nothing less – and real holiness means real Jesus-likeness, for God desires to mould us into the image of His Son. Moulding, pruning (as in John 15) -all these involve pain, suffering and endurance. If we draw back at the slightest pain and suffering for the Lord, if we complain at the sight of ‘blood’ (in persecution, in being whipped, in being stoned, in being burned at the stake), then we do not appreciate what our brethren who have gone before us in Hebrews 11; and we certainly are not willing to take up our ‘cross’, deny ourselves, and follow HIm. Remember the apostles – eleven of them died as martyrs; remember the Lord Jesus, He set His direction to Jerusalem; He knew what awaited Him; but He did not draw back because of the joy set before Him. If God is willing to die for us in His Son, what is so valuable and precious to us that we are not willing to die for Him. The apostle Paul wrote that he no longer lived for himself but for Him who died for him and rose again; for him, Paul, to live is Christ, to die is gain.
TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS
Recall the words of this hymn: ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus; Look full in his wonderful face, and the things on earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.’
The above is in line with Hebrews 12:2: “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.”
The life of Christian endurance and perseverance is lived by fixing our eyes on Jesus. It means looking away from everything else in order to concentrate on our object of attention; the secret of endurance, says the writer of Hebrews, is to concentrate on Jesus himself; “gaze steadily at him” is the thought expressed.
The vital truth for a life of holy endurance is that Jesus is our sustainer, our source of strength to action, our sovereign grace giver (Hebrews 2:18; 4:16), “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (12:2) from start to finish [He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end].
Faith is a compound of knowing, trusting, hoping, and stubbornly persisting in trustful hope against all odds. Faith can do this because the one who has graciously brought us to faith, and whom we now trust, helps us to do it. He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” But hold it: in the midst of our pain, struggle and disappointment, we do not feel it – that he has not forsaken us. Indeed faith is the substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen. Faith has to do, not with feeling, not with sight, but with the trust and confidence in the One who promises and the One who is faithful and completely trustworthy. So in our midst of our struggles, the call is to walk by faith, and not by sight. The kingdom of God is here already, but it is hidden. The kingdom would be seen in all its splendour when the Lord Jesus comes again. In the meantime, we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (13:5-6); for that matter what can the evil one do to me – for He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
“And now, dear children, continue in him so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.”(1 John 2:28)
THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT
It is upon the gift of the Spirit, asked for, received, and bestowed by Christ, that virtually everything in the Christian life depends. The Spirit is the agent of illumination, the author of regeneration, the sanctifier, the author of spiritual gifts, the Christian’s consolation in affliction.
The Spirit is always, under all circumstances, at all times making us holy. He uses every situation – joys, trials, successes, and failures – to conform us to the image of God’s Son.
From the above, we must realise that all that Christians depend upon in their lives is the Holy Spirit; without Him, there is no understanding and reception of truth from the Word of God; without Him there is no regeneration and conversion; without His ministry, there is no sanctification and growth in holiness; without His gifts, the church and God’s people cannot be a light in the darkness and a beacon that shines the way to Life and Truth in Christ.
But one aspect we often forget: even in our afflictions and sufferings, He is our Comforter; and He is using all circumstances (including the pain, the disappointments, the illnesses, and persecutions) to make us holy and to conform us to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. He brings consolation by storing up graces to enable us to cope (Romans 5:3-5).
Even more importantly, the Spirit exercises an ongoing restrain in our lives to prevent us from running headlong into sin. He brings us a gladness to obedience, banishing our sluggishness; through the Word, He enables the believer who is submitted to God’s revelation to find pleasure in obeying the Scripture and the Word, even through times of pain and discouragement.
Above all, the ministry of the Spirit always glorify God according to His word. As the Eternal Spirit, He is to be worshipped, and as the Holy Spirit He reproduces the holiness of Christ, then as the indwelling Spirit He is not to be grieved (Eph. 4:30). To grieve the Holy Spirit is by our lives to disappoint Him who has loved us with an eternal love. He who dwells in us loves our Saviour Jesus; He who dwells in us loves us, because Christ is our Saviour!
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON HOLINESS
Experiencing the power of gospel truth is essential. It is the power of truth in the heart alone that will make us cleave to it in an hour of temptation; unless we find the power of the truths abiding in our hearts, and have a continual experience of their necessity and excellency in our standing before God and our communion with Him, we are nothing the better for our conviction of the truths of the great doctrines of the gospel.
What this means is that we may ‘recite’ the truths of the great doctrines of the gospel; we may argue passionately to spell out the accuracy of these truths; but if we do not find the power of these truths abiding in our hearts, we will abandon these truths in the face of temptation and persecution.
True understanding of God’s revealed truth would take root in the head and mind of believers only through the power of God’s Word and Spirit. Matured believers embodied the unity of thought and modeled the reality of worship, obedience, and care that together amount to what the BIble means by “Knowing God”. Such ones would use exegesis to buttress their exposition of the faith; their exegesis would reflect, and responsibly relate to, their believing state of mind. They would acquaint themselves with the wars of the Word in and with the world, and church history as recording successes and failures in faithfulness to the gospel. The application of truth to life would be their constant concern.
Intellectually and attitude-wise, their wisdom would be the product of all the disciplines of divinity and devotion operating together in their lives. Hence their lives would be Bible-based, Christ-centered, church-related and community-oriented; their religion would be practical, experiential, conscientlous, determined, hopeful, prayerful and hard-working. Everything everywhere in every respect must become a specific instance of holiness to the Lord God.
Through Word and Spirit, by faith, through the open eyes of the heart, the Christian contemplates the living God in the pages of the BIble, knowing that God in His trinity is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and is present as the immediate environment of everyone’s ongoing life.
The Christian therefore prays and obeys, practicing God’s presence as a discipline of the heart and making God’ honour and glory a constant goal.
Holiness emcompasses all athe above.
ADMONITION TO BE CONSTANTLY READY FOR CHRIST’S RETURN
He is to come unexpectedly, as far as the world is concerned, but believers should be ready and watching. (Matt. 25:13; Luke 21: 34,35; Matt. 24:44; 1 Thess. 5:2-4; 1 John 5:2-4 – note the numerous verses supporting this).
The sermon and study in our congregation this week is from the passage Luke 12:35-48, which also covers the coming of the Son of Man:-
Our focus this year is on “the kingdom of God” – as we set our minds on the kingdom of God, Jesus turns to our attitudes to the future. Ahead lies the coming of the Son of Man; the coming is at an unexpected and unknown hour.
What follows the coming of the Lord is judgment (vv. 8-9) and the completion of God’s rule.
Disciples must make themselves ready for it by being diligently employed in God’s service like servants who are always prepared for the return of the Master.
There is a real need for VIGILANCE AND WAKEFULNESS.
There is also the expectation of serious effects and consequences of the coming for those who are not ready and are caught ‘napping’. The servant who behaves irresponsibly will get a shock when the Master comes unexpectedly and his lot is with the unbelievers. His punishment will depend on his knowledge and measure of responsibility based on this knowledge – the heavenly judgment may not be just a simple matter of guilty or not guilty, but there are varying degrees of judgment and reward. Recall the Lord Jesus saying that to those given much, much is required; such ones would receive more punishment for their failures and lack of responsibility; but even those who know less because of ignorance or indolence – such ones may also be punished with ‘less severity’.
The warning and admonition is to God’s people (the church) and in particular to those who are leaders and teachers of the church who may not take God’s admonitions seriously and ignore his warnings and exhortations.
To seek God’s kingdom is to set one’s aim in life on God himself and the accomplishment of his purpose of bringing all life under his rule. If the servant of God left in charge takes advantage of his master’s absence to behave irresponsibly, he will face the consequences when the master comes unexpectedly! It is important that a steward is found to be faithful to his master, in big and small issues, especially if he has been given the responsibility by his master, and has to give an account.
‘POINTERS’ TO THE SECOND COMING
We have noted that there is no way in which we can predict the definite time of the Lord’s second coming and of the end of the present age (Matt. 25:13) – hence the admonition to be vigilant and ‘awake’ as it will be unexpected when the Lord will return. At the same time, Scripture does reveal that there are indications and pointers for believers to be aware of the nearness of His coming:
“When you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door” (Mark 13:29).
The apostle Paul wrote:”But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that the day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day” (1 Thess. 5:4-5).
The man/woman who studies, believes, and loves the Word of God has a guide which not only illumines his personal path, but which also enables him to see world events in true perspective. Such ones almost without exception today believe that trends in the political,social, religious, scientific, and physical realms are all fulfilling the prophetic descriptions of the “last days”, as recorded in the Scriptures. There is therefore the real encouragement to the believer to be “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
The day of Christ’s return is certainly approaching and the reader should certainly prepare himself/herself for that day by receiving Jesus Christ as his/her personal Saviour and then by living as closely as possible in obedience to His Word.
In Luke 12, Jesus said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “It’s going to rain,” and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, “It’s going to be hot,” and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?” (Luke 12:54-56)
The pointers and indications:
A general decline in morality (Luke 17:26; 2 Peter 2:5) – as in the days of Noah;
A widespread decline in religious faith – Jesus said: “When the Son comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). The apostle Paul said: “In the last days, men shall be…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God: having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 31,2,4,5);
Rebellious attitude of most of the younger generation (2 Tim. 3:1-3);
Infiltration of false teachers and leaders into Christian churches (Jude 4,16-19);
Successive world wars (Matt. 24:3,6; Luke 21:10) and conflicts;
Widespread fear and confusion regarding the world’s future (Luke 21:25,26) – “There shall be …upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity…Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth”;
There will be great disturbances in the heavens: Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then there shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:29,30).
Note what was written in 2 Peter 3:10 – 11a: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare..everything will be destroyed in this way…”. Peter might well be describing the earth undergoing a cataclysmic destruction and this may consist of actual atomic disintegration. The word “elements” may actually mean the basic subdivisions of matter, corresponding quite closely to the modern scientific concept of the chemical elements. The overall meaning may well describe a final cataclysm when the earth itself, with its atmosphere, will experience a vast nuclear chain reaction and perish in a tremendous atomic holocaust – God will bring it about (and Christian scientists have agreed that Peter’s description of this destruction can be interpreted as such).
The scientific discovery that matter can be converted into energy is one of the greatest findings of science; and yet this plain forecast of atomic disintegration into “fervent heat” has been in the BIble for 2000 years.
Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away” (Matt 24:35).
“The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17).
Yes, we are called to be watchful, vigilant, for we do not know when the Lord shall return; yet we are not in the dark – we are children of light and children of the day and we should know how not to be indifferent and complacent; instead we must be mindful of the events in this world and realise how near the end is, as prophesied and indicated in Scriptures.
THE IMMINENT LANGUAGE: BE READY, THE LORD MAY COME AT ANY TIME
This seems to run through the New Testament – the imminence of the Lord’s return. The coming is certain; we should hope for it steadily. And since we do not know when, we need to be ready for it every day, starting now. Jesus, in Matthew 24:48 hints at the possibility of a longer wait than anyone bargained for.
The parable speaks of the servant saying, “My master is delayed,” so he begins to become slack and go wild. In 2 Peter 3 the apostle Peter has to minister to those who are discouraged because the Lord has not returned yet.
Putting the above together, we must learn to live packed up and ready to go, and at the same time be plugged soberly into the task of advancing Christ’s kingdom and be ready to stay.
The coming day should be looked upon as an appointment already entered on the Lord Jesus’ calendar: it is this day when He is coming for each of us and should not find us unprepared.
While our life continues, let us work and pray for the advancing of God’s kingdom. Let us make sure that when He comes for us, whether it is soon or late, those are the tasks and work which He finds us engaged in.
We need to live in the light of the coming day (Romans 13:11-14). The apostle Paul points the believers to the significance of the future and Christ’s return. In Romans chapters 5-8, he refers to two realms, using the imagery of night and day, darkness and light – we are approaching the dawn of our glorification, in accordance with God’s promise to make us like Christ (8:28-30) – meanwhile, we are to live as those who belong to the day and not as those who belong to the night. The pattern of behaviour from which we must turn are those which characterise all people in their state of rebellion against God, rebellion that has caused God to ‘give them over’ to their sins (1:24-32). Though we have been saved from final punishment, our sinful nature (our flesh) will continue to have sinful desires (7:25c), but Paul warns us against dwelling o n, or planning how to feed, these sinful desires (Rom.8:12-14) and tells us to clothe ourselves with Christ instead. As we we consecrate our lives to Him, we are going to be part of His glorified family, when we are conformed to His likeness (8:29), no other way of living in the present can be acceptable
Our whole lives, and in particular our relationships, are to be governed by an awareness of the future that God is bringing into being. Our full and final salvation, when our bodies will be resurrected and glorified, should be the factor that constantly motivates us, as we consecrate our lives to God.
By nature we will follow the world, which is preoccupied with the concerns of the present, but we know that a greater reality is approaching, when God’s rule will be fully established. We should therefore bring our lives into line with His rule, seeking to rid ourselves of the sinful behaviour that characterises the world and, indeed, living lives of obedience in response to the gospel of Christ.
It is easy for the church to rest on its laurels, confident of its salvation in the future, but Paul calls us to be alert. Being ready for Christ’s return will involve discipline, hard work and vigilance, but it is vital that we are proactive in this; a sleepy church quickly slips into pagan behaviour. We are to live distinctly and radically, in keeping with our destination!
JOY IN THE FACE OF TRIALS OF MANY KINDS
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4).
James was written to a church under pressure. Christians were suffering economic persecution and oppression and the church was breaking under the pressure. There are two ways the members may respond to economic pressure; either they pull together and help one another, or they can compromise with the world and split apart into bickering and quarrelling factions. To get ahead in this world, the latter choice seems to be the better option for believers who are self-centred and in love with the world (cf 1 John 2:15-17).
In the light of the above, James exhorted Christians not to take the latter path. The trials such as social rejection, economic boycotts, and the like were affecting the believers simply because they were committed Christians, disciples of the Lord Jesus; they were not trials due to foolish choices, and selfish arrogance but basically because they chose to be faithful to the Master.
Although the trials were painful, James exhorted the believers to rejoice, not because the pain is pleasant but because they should have a perspective which looks beyond the present life to eternal reward. The pure joy is in anticipation of God’s future and not present happiness (with the worldly pursuit of pleasure, merry-making, and ‘friends’ who are not necessarily ‘good friends’ but more individuals who are willing to compromise to be accepted by worldly standards).
Together with the right perspectives, there should be convictions which buttress the response and reaction of true faithful believers (and there are many who would give up their convictions to be in the ‘in-group’ with all the superficial applause they desire).
The main reason believers can rejoice in the face of many trials is that this testing of their faith would produce perseverance or patience. Perseverance is an important virtue and part of the fruit of the Spirit, and it is often mentioned by the Lord Jesus (Luke 8:15;21:19) and apostle Paul (Rom. 5:3-4; 8:23; 2Cor.6:4).
And perseverance produces maturity and ‘completeness’, not lacking anything. In other words, it produces a character like God’s – the heavenly Father is perfect (Matt 5:48). The impurities in one’s character would be burned off (just as fire purifies gold and fire tempers the sword).
Fortitude is a compound of courage and endurance; it lasts. Faith fosters fortitude by inducing purity of heart in those who are under pressure and suffering distress. Christians know that a close walk with the Triune God, leaning hard on them and drawing strength from them (though the Spirit) is both what they want and what they need. And this is often achieved and purified through trials.
LUKE 12:49-53: ” I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed. Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
It seems to be a passage and saying that is out of place: Jesus, the Prince of peace, was identifying himself as the Prince of Division; and he was bringing in a gospel that would result, not in peace, but in families being split up over the message; the warnings about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and so on includes a quotation from Micah 7:6, a passage in which the prophet warns of imminent crisis and urges that the only way forward is complete trust in God.
The crisis that Jesus saw as coming has his own fate as the central feature (the ‘baptism’ which he must still undergo); and he is astonished and dismayed that so few of his contemporaries see it at all. Subsequent verses from vs 54 indicate that the people were good at local weather-forecaste, yet they could not look at what was going on around them – they failed to recognise that this was. and is the moment all Israel and God’s people had been waiting for.
Today, if we do not understand the crisis facing Israel in Jesus’ day, and the way in which Jesus responded to it, we would not understand what Jesus himself, and Luke as his interpreter, thought about his own death. If the kingdom of God is to come on earth as it is in heaven, part of the prophetic role of the church is to understand the events of earth and to seek to address them with the message of heaven. And if, like Jesus, we find that we seem to be bringing division, and that we ourselves become caught up in the crisis, so be it.
When Christian teachers and preachers have become too cosy and comfortable, and the selections of Bible readings for services omit passages that speak of judgment, of warnings, and the stern demands of God’s holiness, it is time to wake people up with a ‘crash’ (like Jesus telling them that he was not bringing peace but division). And the mission and task of the Son of Man has to do with such a crisis and wake-up call.
In the OT, fire and water were used as symbols of judgment. Water devoured the people of Noah’s day; fire destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus was making it clear that a time of divine judgment would occur.
Jesus declared that he has come to bring fire on the earth, and then the unexpected words, ‘I have a baptism to undergo’. Baptism here is linked to the fire of God’s judgment, which Jesus himself would have to experience (see also Mark 1038) . Jesus was not only bringing God’s judgment, he would also be its victim (the cross). One outcome of Jesus’ work and the preaching of the kingdom would be division. Yes, he would bring about reconciliation and peace with God for those who turned to him, but his message would cause division. The apostle Paul wrote, ‘the cross is a stumbling block for the Jew and foolishness to the non-Jew’ (1 Cor. 1:33). Even families would be divided by it.
Christians attribute victory to the cross. Non-believers queried: had he not been rejected by his own nation, betrayed, denied and deserted by his own disciples, and executed by authority of the Roman leaders. It appears to be a total defeat, they said.
Yet what looked like the defeat of goodness by evil, is also, and more certainly the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, he was himself overcoming. Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, he was himself crushing the serpent’s head (as predicted in Genesis 3:15). The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which he rules the world.
Jesus resisted the temptation to avoid the cross, and instead became obedient to it; that, when provoked by insults and tortures, he absolutely refused to retaliate, thus overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21); and that, when the combined forces of Jerusalem and Rome were arrayed God, to hate his enemies or to imitate the world’s use of power. By his obedience, love and meekness, he won a decisive moral victory over the powers of darkness. This was his victory. The devil could gain no hold on him, and was obliged to concede defeat.
The cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated.The church must not make the mistake of emphasising the theme of triumph that we forget the themes of atonement and revelation. In any balanced understanding of the cross, we shall confess Christ as saviour (atoning for our sins), as teacher (disclosing the character of God) and as victor (overcoming the powers of evil)
I quote the late John Stott in his sharing why he became a Christian:
“The crucified one is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us, dying in our place in order that we might be forgiven. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question-mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stame another mark, the cross, which symbolises divine suffering.
As followers of Jesus, if Jesus be God and died for me, how much am I willing to suffer for him, and even die for him? If following him means ‘no peace’ but division, so be it; if following him means mockings, misunderstanding, even from loved ones, so be it….like Paul, we like to say, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain”.
ANTI-CHRIST – ‘THE BEAST’ AND THE ‘MAN OF SIN’
Scriptures reveal that in the last days, there will arise a world system under the final Anti-Christ, known as ‘the Beast’ (Rev. 13:7), and the ‘man of sin’ (2 Thess. 2:3). This system will seek to exercise international control. “Power was given him over all kindreds, tongues, and nations” (Rev. 13:7). Similarly, it is atheistic and man-deifying. “He shall magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of god…But in his estate shall he honor the God of forces: (Dan. 11:36,38). In fact, the system will quickly become an enforced eumenical humanistic religion, with worship of the representative Man at its head. :As many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed” (Rev. 13:15).
The government of Anti-Christ will exercise absolute economic controls. “No man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or, the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Rev. 13:17). At the same time, the great merchants of the earth are waxed rich” (RAev. 18:3) through their financial interests in the monstrous system.
Is such a scenario possible? Even today, many systems are designed to concentrate political and financial power in the hands of an elite group of conspirators. The common people will have (in the times of Anti-Christ) degenerated into not only a service acquiescence in the anti-Christian dictatorship, but also into a morass of godless immorality. “And the rest of the men repented not of the works of their hands… of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts (Rev. 9:20,21).
The world is now being rapidly prepared for this last attempt to destroy God and HIs truth from the face of the earth. “Then shall the Wicked One be revealed…whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders…because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And in this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie:That they might all be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:8-12).
The above is from the Word of God. We are not speculating when Anti-Christ will appear, or who AntiChrist will be. But enough is written to tell us that such a scenario is not only likely and possible (when viewed from the past) but it is truly in line with the revelation of Scripture.
God’s people should not be caught off-guard or be surprised when such a scenario becomes a reality in these last days. Those who read their Bible would be in a better position to interpret world events in the light of God’s revelation. Jesus himself, in Matthew 24 speaks of a great tribulation, and only those who endure shall be saved.
Brethren – awake, be vigilant, and walk closely with the Lord, in dependence on Him and HIs enabling!
LUKE 13:1-9
It is sometimes thought that unusual suffering and death were the result of God’s punishment for unrepented sin. In the context of Luke 13, as Jesus was speaking about God’s impending judgment, some, who were present and listening, asked him about an atrocity committed by Pilate; apparently, he had mingled the blood of some Galileans with their sacrifices (13:1). What was perhaps in their minds was the question, “Are these Galileans worse sinners than all the other Galileans such that they had to undergo such suffering and atrocity?
Perhaps, today, we may also ask a similar question, “Does it mean that those who suffer unusual sufferings and death are those punished by God for serious or unrepented sin?
We are aware that even very Godly Christians were burnt at the stake in the past; some were killed in lions’ dens; some were tortured, sawn into two, and some lost homes, were imprisoned and lost loved ones in very stressful situations. Today, there are many who died during earthquakes, pandemics, wars, illnesses; and among them are also godly believers.
Note the response of Jesus:
“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish…” (Luke 13:2-3).
His reply interestingly did not address whether the Galileans who died in such an atrocious manner were more guilty sinners than others. Instead, Jesus’ reply is that we are all guilty before God and justly deserve death. “Be warned”, He said, “men and women are out of step with their maker – and so is planet Earth. Earthquakes and floods, every conflict and war is testimony to that. LIfe is unpredictable and temporary; we need to wake up to this and turn back to God while we have time – yes there will be a day where there will be a world without pain, suffering, and death – but it will have to be a world without sin.
To ignore what Jesus said is to be heading towards a fate even more tragic than that of those Galileans, for we will be exposing ourselves to the second death (Luke 12:4-5). If we wake up to the critical times in which we live (as we observe the happenings in the world and the chaos and unrest), we will turn to God and ask for his grace to live our lives in harmony with him.
In other words, we may not have all the answers to pain and suffering in this world – God sees it fit to reveal all that is necessary for us to know in order to enter into the kingdom of God – certain knowledge is beyond us because we are finite and God, who is infinite, chooses not to reveal such knowledge (termed a ‘mystery’ when we come to understanding all the answers in this life).
Instead of being ‘troubled’ in knowing these answers, the Lord Jesus is exhorting us to focus on eternity and what would be our position in eternity in the eyes of God. Will we perish, or will we enter into glory? Jesus told the 12 He sent to share the good news not to rejoice that the demons listen to them, but to rejoice that their names were written in heaven.
When we come before God, this is what ultimately matters – it is not your unanswered questions; it is not your desire to know all that it is to be known – it is only this: Your name written in the Book of Life!
ENTER THROUGH THE NARROW DOOR
Someone asked him (Jesus) , “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”
He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to enter. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, “Sir, open the door for us.” ‘But he will answer, “I don’t know you or where you come from.” Then you will say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will reply, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!” (Luke 13:23-27 NIV).
A parallel passage is found in Matthew 7:-
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt. 7:13-14 NIV)
In verses 21-23, we read the familiar passage that is similar to the vv.26-27 of Luke 13 when the people insisted that they knew the Lord Jesus and the Lord told them to go away, for He did not know them and they were those considered as evildoers and have the devil as their master. In Luke 13, Jesus added the following: “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out (vs. 28).In a subsequent passage in Matthew 7, Jesus spoke of the wise and foolish builders – one group built the house upon a firm foundation (rock) while the other built it on a weak foundation (sand) and when the storm came, the former house did not fall, while the latter house collapsed in the storm (Matt. 7:24-29).
The context from Luke 13 and Matthew 7: The Jews asked Jesus whether only a few would be saved; Jesus did not answer them directly. Instead, Jesus told them to enter the narrow door (narrow gate); in Luke 13, the Lord told them that many will try to enter and will not be able to, and there will come a time when the door is closed and no one can enter. Also, the reference to Abraham, the kingdom of God, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth seems to indicate that the many who could not enter would end up in hell, whereas the unlikely Gentiles would enter the kingdom of God even though they were not physical descendants of the Patriarch and they were not first given the Law of Moses.
In Matthew 7, the contrast was made between the narrow gate and the wide gate and broad road – and the latter would have many entering through it but the end is destruction; whilst the small and narrow gate leads to life and only a few will find it.
A few conclusions can be drawn from Luke 13 and Matthew 7:
Although the Lord did not specifically answer the question regarding only a few would be saved?;he seems to indicate by the terms ‘narrow and small door’ and ‘wide and broad gate and road respectively’ that many tend to enter the wide gate and walk the broad road whereas few will enter the small and narrow gate. The ‘easy wide entrance’ and the easy broad road entered by many lead to destruction, although it appears popular and promising. The narrow entrance leads to life although it appears unpromising and rather restrictive. Jesus claims to be the door (the way, the truth, and the life); he said he is the good shepherd and the gate for the sheep to enter into safety and security, far from the danger of wolves and irresponsible shepherds. But Jesus also lays the conditions for those who wish to follow him (self-denial, taking up the cross,and following him and his example of servanthood, sacrificial love, and preparedness for suffering). In that sense, he, the door and gate, is narrow and the entrance is small. Many prefer the wide gate, the broad road and way; but only Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and only the narrow door leads to life.
The Jews who were interacting with Jesus were presumptuous; they thought that since they were descendants of Abraham, the way into the kingdom of God was a given thing and theirs for the taking. The shocking result for them – Jesus did not know them and there was no relationship with them; they were termed evildoers (the reference to their behaviour and manner of life), and the door or gate has been shut against them. It was disaster and destruction at the end of their journey.
Whereas the Gentiles who responded in faith to the Lord’s call to enter the narrow door and narrow gate although there were demands they had to meet in faith and the entrance did not appear inviting would find life at the end of the journey.
The wide gate is easy to enter, and it is easy to follow the crowd; the narrow door and narrow gate means it is not easy to enter and one has to ‘squeeze’ in, as it were, to enter, before it is closed.The call ‘strive to enters’ does not refer to ‘works’ in order to enter God’s kingdom; it is a call to to take seriously the invitation of the Lord Jesus, to weigh soberly the need to acknowledge our need for forgiveness, and to be humble enough to ask the Lord to receive us, on the basis of his mercy and grace. If we are willing to do this, it means the willingness to commit ourselves to the Lord God without our own conditions, and the preparedness not to be influenced by the crowd and the world and take the easy way, but also a deceptive way and the way to death and destruction.
The mention of gate and road seems to suggest that it is not just entering the gate or door; it also means continuing to travel along the narrow road and not be swayed to another direction and to end up in the broad road because the narrow road has many ‘obstructions’ and difficulties in travelling (indicates the need for discipleship and not turning back or turning aside).
The Lord’s use of the images of door, gate, road, narrow, wide, broad – they are certainly picturesque ways of communicating important truths regarding ‘entering into the kingdom of God’. Let us not miss what he intends to communicate.
THE REVEALING OF EVENTS AND SCENARIOS IN THE LAST DAYS
The Bible is God’s revelation to His people; and the Lord God has revealed all that is necessary and needful for men and women to turn to Him in His salvation plan. There is however much that He has chosen not to reveal, in His wisdom. The Bible does not claim to reveal all knowledge of science, various fields of human knowledge, etc. – rather, it centres on God and who He is and His desire to bring fallen men and women back to the fold and ‘recreate’ a new humanity, in the new heavens and new earth. The new humanity would comprise people who are transformed into the image of Christ, the Son of God, the One who has ushered in the new era with the completion of His mission on earth and is now ascended to the right hand of the Father. He continues HIs mission in His people (believers) through the Holy Spirit, bringing in the elect home, and preparing them and creation for the consummation of history and the consummation of the kingdom of God.
The last book in the Bible is the book of Revelation – written by apostle John, on the island of Patmos, and in this book (which is a combination of epistle, events current in John’s time, and apocalyptic writings [with symbols with allusion to the Old Testament and also a looking to future events culminating in the second coming of Christ and the consummation of history] ).
The book begins with the personal message of the risen ascended Lord Jesus to John, the only surviving apostle, and John was told to record and write all that was revealed to him. The people of God, in John’s time were going through much persecution and suffering; it was timely that the Lord Jesus revealed himself to John as God, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, and the final judgment, he said, is drawing near and he will be the final judge (Revelation Chapter 1).
Revelation reminds believers to endure and to persevere; not all believers and churches will be faithful in these last days and many will succumb to immorality, compromise, lukewarm responses and the goats will be distinguished from the sheep. It is therefore noteworthy to read Christ’s message to the seven churches in Asia Minor (the number ‘seven’ is often used in Scripture to denote completion; hence we will note the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls – all revealed subsequently in the book). Although the messages of Christ were to the seven churches at that time, the messages are relevant to all churches in the last days – the call is to be faithful, not to succumb to false teaching and false teachers; to endure, even in the face of imprisonment and death, and to be totally committed to God and not to compromise the gospel.
Subsequent to these letters to the seven churches, we see John transported to the presence of God the Father, the Lamb, and the Spirit – and there John saw the total spiritual reality – God the Father was sitting on the throne, in control and ruling over all, surrounded by angelic beings, and there was unending praise and worship of the Triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in the courts of heaven, although on earth, there was chaos, evil, suffering, pain and persecution.
At this juncture, we will be considering the seals in chapters 6 and 7 which directly deal with the answers to the question regarding the relationship of the BIble with current world events and happenings.
We must qualify that since Revelation is apocalyptic in nature, and it deals with events in John’s time, allusions to Old Testament events, and also a looking to the future, we may not be completely accurate in interpreting what was written. Nonetheless, there is enough revealed in the Scripture (New Testament and Old Testament) to give a significant understanding of the book, in particular to current events as well as forthcoming events in the days to come.
The seals describe the panorama of the judgments that will precede the coming of the kingdom of God. Note that only the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ) was worthy to open the seals, for he is the One who was slain and had purchased for God with his blood men and women from every tribe and tongue and people and nation; and he has made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.
The conviction of these judgments with the breaking of the seals is rooted in the teaching of the Old Testament prophets concerning the day of the Lord (see Is. 13,34; Jer. 4-7; Ezk. 7,25; Am. 5:128-29; Zp. 1-3). John has elaborated and schematised them in a unique manner, but the direction of the Messianic woes into seven sets of seven may well be inspired by the doom prophecy of L. 26, where it is stated four times, ” I will punish you for your sins seven times over” (18,21,24,28). The discourses on the end times in the gospels (Mt.24, Mk.13; Lk 21) contains the seven judgments enumerated in Revelation 6, but the form of the opening four judgments reflect the vision of four chariots and horses in Zechariah(cf. Zc. 1:7-17), adapted by John to convey his message.
Although the opening of the seals brings judgment, these are but the precursors of the final judgment of God. The scroll containing the seals represents God’s covenant to give humanity the kingdom of salvation.
As we share on the seals and what they represent, notice, especially, how what they reveal correspond very closely with current world events. In Revelation, there is increasing intensity of the judgment as we move from seal to trumpet to bowl, and so what is revealed by the seals is not just a series of static events but there is an increasing intensity in the severity of what is described.
THE FIRST SEAL (Rev. 6:1-2)
The first horseman was riding on a white horse conquering. Many interpret the conquering white horseman as Christ and link the passage with the vision of the returning Lord Jesus. The only element in common is the white horse, a symbol of victory; others hold that the rider represents the triumph of the gospel. Nevertheless, in view of the evident similarity of the four horsemen, it seems more natural to interpret all four horsemen as symbolising judgments. The rider appears to signify an overwhelmingly powerful military force.
THE SECOND SEAL (6:3-4)
The rider on the fiery red horse also denotes a warring power; the language used suggests that the first rider represents an army invading other countries; the second a general confusion of strife, including hostilities between countries, and perhaps even civil war (…to make men slay each other). Note the double reference to war in Mark 13:7-8 and parallels.
THE THIRD SEAL 6:5-6)
Here we see a rider on a black horse -denoting famine.The balance in his hand suggests scarcity of food; the prices quoted are prohibitive. Common food prices become so high that the common man cannot afford them and thus famine and starvation arise.
THE FOURTH SEAL (6:7-8)
The fourth rider is named Death, but it is likely to refer to a special kind of death, namely pestilence. Ezekiel tells of God’s four sore acts of judgment: sword, famine, evil beasts and pestilence (Eze. 421). That Hades was following close behind is a reminder that death does not end life’s story; judgment awaits sinners (cf. Hebrews 9:27-28).
THE FIFTH SEAL( 6:9-11)
The souls of the martyrs were under the altar because they had been, as it were, sacrificed (cf. Phil.2:17; 2 Tim.4:6). The testimony of the martyrs had maintained the testimony of Jesus; the blood of martyrs had laid the foundation of the church (God’s kingdom). The number of martyrs in this generation is far more than the total in the history of the church. Today, many of the brethren are undergoing persecution, imprisonment and even death. We need to uphold them in prayer.
THESIXTH SEAL (6:12-27)
The description of the cosmic signs at the end of the age is drawn from a number of OT passages that speak of the day of the Lord (for a great earthquake as sign of the end (cf. Ezk. 38:19-20, for the sun turning black like sackcloth and the moon blood red see Is. 13:10, Ezk 327-87; Joel 210; 315, for the falling stars and the rolling up of the sky like a scroll see Is. 34:4, for the hiding in the rocks see Is. 210, and for prayer to the mountains see Ho. 10:8). These signs are indications not that the end is drawing near but that it has arrived. They originally were pictorial expressions of the terror of the universe before the majesty of the Creator as he steps forth in judgement and deliverance (see Hab. 3:6-11) and so served to magnify the awesomeness of the Lord in his theophany.The last day reveals the identity of him who has ultimate authority over the universe and the irresistible judgment is the triumph of the kingdom of grace and glory!
Remember that the events depicted in the seals are not stagnant; the intensity of the severity would unfold. God has allowed all these to take place; just as He brought the flood in the days of Noah; fire in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; the Lord God would bring increasing severity of judgment on fallen humanity. He would use evil to destroy evil; He would use evil to bring about good; and He would allow history to take its course until the consummation and end of history. Christ has overcome the world; the war is over; but the battles continue. Revelation reveals the ferocity of the anger of the evil one; he knows that his time is limited and he would seek to destroy God’s people with his deceptions, false miracles, and spiritual warfare. We have a formidable enemy; but He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
As you read this, you may not be mistaken if you feel you are reading the daily newspaper and looking at the current news. Brethren, be vigilant, persevere and endure, for the end is near. Victory is ours in Christ Jesus!
GOD CONDESCENDS TO SPEAK TO US IN OUR WORDS
God first condescends to reach us when God, in Christ, became man (God incarnate); then He condescends himself to speak to us in our words (in the BIble) – the author is God the Spirit and He is also the interpreter and the One who illumines the Word for our understanding and application.
God has accompanied his redemptive acts with explanatory words – statements about himself and his purpose, warnings, commands, predictions, promises – and obedience consists of responding specifically to those divine words revealed in Scriptures. Christ and the prophets, and the apostles all spoke God’s words to men, and what they said are in line with what was written in the Old Testaments – they appealed to Old Testament statements as providing a valid base for inferences about God and conclusions put forward as truths revealed and propounded as a body of doctrinal affirmations.
We have stated: what God speaks, the Bible speaks. There are consequences in rejecting what the Bible reveals, chief is that it is tantamount to rejecting the words of God Himself.
In the OT, the prophets of God often prefaced their message with the words,
“thus says the Lord God”, and if the person receiving the word [from the prophet] arrogantly rejects what was spoken, he can expect judgment from the Lord God himself. It is not just rejecting the words written but it is equivalent to rejecting God himself. So whatever is expressly set down in Scripture is to be regarded as revealed truth from God and must be regarded as such in the same manner as how the people of God responded to the prophets of old who declared, ‘Thus says the Lord’.
If this were to be the case, there is no excuse to reject truths propounded in the Scripture, if proper interpretation and proper dependence on God’s Spirit is upheld.
The Christian is not afraid of facts for he knows that all facts are God’s facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God’s truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith. He is called to love God with all his mind and part of what this means is that, when confronted by those who, on professedly rational grounds, take exceptions to historic Christianity and Christian doctrines, he must set himself not merely to deplore or denounce them, but to out-think them. It is not his business to argue men into faith, for that cannot be done; but it is his business to demonstrate the intellectual adequacy of the biblical truth and the comparative inadequacy of its rivals, and to show the invalidity of the criticisms that are brought against it. This he sets to do, not from any motive of intellectualism, but for the glory of God and his gospel. Similarly, the Christian ought to defend the truth of God’s Word when this is challenged by quarters which may appear benign, but in reality, can undermine the comprehensive revelation of God’s Word. A confident intellectualism expressive of robust faith in God, whose Word is truth, is part of the historic evangelical tradition.
If Christians today fall short of this (i.e. fail to uphold God’s truth from Scripture and are hesitant to defend God’s truth from Scripture), they are false to their own principles and heritage (and can expect the admonition from the Lord God).
Believers must acknowledge that when the Lord Jesus declared that He did not come to bring peace on earth but division, He is referring ultimately to the division between God and the devil; on the cross, Jesus destroyed death and the works of the evil one – as the second Adam, the Lord Jesus came to deliver humanity from the kingdom of darkness and to bring men and women back to God and to be ‘born again’ into the kingdom of God and be adopted as children of God in God’s new humanity (“You shall be my people and I shall be your God”, thus declared the Lord God).
It is important to recognise that when there is disagreement in the accuracy of the sharing of the truth of God’s Word, it is not a matter of disagreement between two parties; it is a matter of coming to a conclusion on what God really said and what truly constitutes God’s truth. Distortion of God’s truth or even half-truth is no truth at all in God’s sight. Hence the seriousness of being teachers of the Word of God and preachers of God’s Word; such ones will incur greater judgment for leading God’s people astray.
God has chosen to speak His truth to us in our words. It is imperative that we take time and care to receive and understand His communication and revelation; this is part and parcel of being faithful stewards and servants of the Master – when He comes again, will we hear “Well done, you good and faithful servants” or would we face His wrath and displeasure?
MANNER OF LIFE WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL – WE ARE NEVER BEYOND HOPE
In Philippians 1:27, apostle Paul exhorted the believers to live lives worthy of the gospel of Christ and to stand firm together. This call is especially relevant to Christians and the church in the last days when the spiritual pressure by the enemy and the influence of the world and our indwelling sin would seek to cause us to compromise and to dishonour the Lord God in our manner of life.
During such a time, “the love of many will grow cold” as stated by the Lord Jesus, and many would turn back from the faith; hence the Lord told us to “Enter by the narrow door/gate and walk along the narrow road”, for many would choose the wide gate and the broad road (to destruction). During such times, apostasy would be rife; fear, the love of self, the desire to preserve our lives and the unwillingness to pay the cost of being faithful to God will be prominently displayed.
When we fail during such times, does it mean that we are beyond hope. The story of Samson in the OT, often told to Sunday School children, offers the lesson that real strength is related closely to real dependence on God. We are all familiar with the story of Samson; after he was captured and blinded (betrayed by Delilah and his weakness/lust), in Judges 16, Samson was brought before the Philistines, their leaders, and a multitude of about 3,000. They were honouring their God Dagon, and making sport of Samson who had lost his physical strength and prowess.
In vs. 28 of Judges 16, we hear Samson’s prayer to God:
“O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God.” And God answered him and he was able to fulfil his mission to defeat the enemy of God’s people for the last time.
God in his mercy may have to deal with us eventually, as he dealt with Samson. The strength of Samson seemed gone forever; his usefulness seemed gone as well. In the goodness of God, Samson recovered just enough strength for the final act of his life.
God may have to weaken us and bring us down at the point when we thought we were strong in order that we may become truly strong in real dependence on Him. Samson, in the past, thought that his strength would always deliver him from the enemy; he also depended on his wits to fool the enemy, including Delilah, until the point that he ‘collapsed’ and revealed the source of his strength.
For us today in the last days, what do we depend on to persevere for the Lord – our wealth, our position and status (including spiritual standing in the community and church), our knowledge, our intellectual understanding of theology….??
But these would not ‘uphold us’ in times of great pressure and danger; remember Peter, who was one of the twelve with Jesus, denying the Master 3 times and even cursed to distance himself from the Lord Jesus.
When we come to a situation when our lives reached the point when it seem nothing good can come from them anymore, God, in HIs mercy, may work to bring us out of this mess, as He did for Samson.
But we need to come to the point when we truly recognise that our strength depends on our dependence on God. Also, we need to know that God is very merciful and gracious; He uses flawed people and if we turn to Him in our struggles and weakness, He continues to respond in love in spite of our flaws. No matter how conscious we are of our own limitations, shortcomings, and sins, we may look to God to make use of us again – and He will, in His great mercy.
What is essential is that we must get and keep our lives in a shape that will glorify Him. It means fighting our sins, disciplining our thoughts, changing our attitudes, and critiquing our desires in a way that Samson did not try to do. Let us trust God who uses flawed human material for His glory, and by faith let us seek strength to serve God in good works and attitudes that are at this moment we feel are beyond us. We need to continue to make REPENTANCE a way of life; FAITH in our object Jesus who changes not, and is always faithful to His people and would always fulfil His promises; and continue to experience His GRACE to bring us home even though we are in a fallen world, surrounded by the prince of this world with his minions and hate.
LOOKING AT WORLD EVENTS “THROUGH THE EYES OF THE BIBLE”
Recall the sharing of Revelation 6, focusing on the scroll in the heavenly Father’s hand; and only the Lamb of God was worthy to take the scroll and unravel the seals, for the slain Lamb of God has become our Redeemer – the Son of God has become man, for us and our salvation, and has died on the cross to save us from eternal judgment. Jesus’ sacrifice guaranteed and assured the glory, holiness and true happiness of the redeemed! It is no wonder that He alone was worthy to receive the scroll from the Father’s hand and to remove the seals.
The scroll basically reveals God’s salvation plan, his judgment of, and wrath against all that is evil. As shared before, Revelation is the last book in the Bible; it is apocalyptic (with many symbols and signs), it is also an epistle (beginning with Christ’s letters to the seven churches); it has many allusions to the Old Testament – but enough is given to enable Christians (with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the author and illuminator of the BIble) to understand the major aspects of God’s communication and the drift of the whole book. Note also the warning to read carefully this book and not to add on, or subtract from, what is already written by John (as he received the revelation from the Lord Jesus Himself).
In the seals, we noted the events in the last days, revealing war between nations, death from famine, pestilence, death, the persecution of believers (with many martyrs), cosmic upheavals with huge earthquakes, events that even affect the sun, moon, and stars -pictorial expressions of the terror of the universe before the majesty of the Creator.
We need to note the increasing intensity of the judgment of God as we move from seal to trumpet to bowl in the book of Revelation. Note also the reference to ‘a fourth of the earth killed with the sword and famine and pestilence’ (6:8); a third of mankind was killed by plages, by fire and smoke and sulfur ..'(9:18); ‘every island fled away and the mountains were not found. And huge hailstones about one hundred pounds each, came down from heaven upon me and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, and it was very severe (16:20-21). Despite the judgments and wrath of God, mankind did not repent of the works of their hands and continued to blaspheme God. In Revelation 8 and 9, we read”the burning up of one third of the earth, the trees and the grass, the turning of one third of the sea into blood with one third of the sea creatures dying and one third of the ships destroyed. It also affected one third of drinking water, the sun, the moon, the stars and one third of the day was without light. The use of one third was to indicate that, although it is a huge number, it was still a partial judgment and the warning was given to the people of the world to repent before it is too late to do so.
What is reasonably clear is that God’s judgment would be released against mankind on an increasing great and large scale in the last days, giving mankind the opportunity to repent and turn back to Him, but Revelation emphasises that mankind, instead of repenting, becomes more rebellious and blasphemes God.
Note also that the plagues and wrath of God were effected on those who bore the mark of the beast, namely those who were unrepentant and were stubbornly against God in rebellion and disobedience (recall the beast, referring to Anti-christ). These were the ones who ‘worship’ the false trinity (the devil, antichrist, and the false prophet) and persistently rejected God and rebelled against Him.
We must also note that Satan and his forces use persecution and violence against God’s people; he also employs deception and deceit to cause the people of the world to go astray (and those affected include believers who commit apostasy and turn away from the faith due to the enemy’s influence).
The book of Revelation manifests the battle between good and evil, and between the triune God and the false trinity’
Notice the repeated calls for God’s people to endure and to persevere (12:11). This verse (12:11) demonstrates the need for the messengers of the gospel to reflect the truth and the reality of the message in their lives. It does not just mean the sharing of the gospel by our mouths but also the demonstration of the gospel by our lives.
There will be many who suffer for the Lord God in the persecution and testing; the willingness of the believers to be loyal to God even to the point of death is a great testimony to the reality of the true and living God and His plan of salvation.
Non-believers and even many so-called believers often feel that life on earth is the key to happiness. To them, death takes away the joy of life. The earth is the only realm of existence for them and death is the ultimate tragedy. For true believers, however, death is not the end but the beginning of eternal joy with God. Take note that the martyrs were seen underneath the altar in Revelation, and they were very much alive in the heavenly realm and they cried out to God for His justice and for the lives of the brethren who were still on earth. But God told them to rest until the full and complete number of martyrs is reached.
As we pray for the brethren and the world today, in the light of Revelation, do not be dismayed as we see more and more Christians suffering and dying for their faith; do not be disappointed when we see non-believers (including our close friends, relatives and family members) hardening their hearts and even blaspheming God in the face of His judgments and wrath released on the earth in the last days. Do not conclude that God is not in control; in fact, this would happen as communicated by God to John to record all these down in the book of Revelation. Also, as we see war, famine, pestilence, the exercise of power by evil and evil individuals (which include antichrist) – do not be alarmed – it is as God reveals in the Bible. World events should be correlated with the revelation of Scripture – God is absolutely in control and ultimately, evil would be destroyed and annihilated. God’s people would be vindicated and glorified with Him!
God is interested in the salvation of the world. It will not be effected by physical warfare; but by preaching of the gospel in the wod and life of His people and by the testimony of true disciples who will not deny the Master but remains loyal and true even to the point of death. The Lord Jesus is our supreme example. He effected the greatest victory over the evil one and death at the cross, followed by His resurrection and ascension. He desires HIs salvation plan for the world to be worked out through His people who follow in HIs path of denying the self, taking up a cross and following Him with the gospel of truth in word and life.
God’s warning, judgement, and wrath may turn some back to Him in repentance but the majority will turn back to God because of the preaching of the gospel, the transformation of lives of believers and their impactful testimony to the world that Jesus indeed is the way, the truth and the life and there is no other way back to God.
The blowing of the seventh trumpet brought about the final judgment. There no longer remains any room for repentance and the final judgment is irreversible!!
God has a mission for His church: to carry on the work of the Lord Jesus, with the same spirit of denying the self, carrying the cross and reaching out to a lost world. It is God’s intention and desire to save the world through the sacrifice of the Son and through the living witness of His people (via the power of the Holy Spirit). As believers, do we realise our call?
C.S Lewis, the author of the books on Narnia, wrote in “Mere Christianity”:
“There must be a real giving up of the self…Give up yourself, and you will find our real self. Lose your life and you will save it.Submit to death, death to your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death to your whole body in the end: submit every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair ,rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find HIm and with HIm everything thrown in”.
We must take note of the importance of obedience to God and patient endurance in the midst of opposition despite having little strength. It is not so much the resources and abilities the people of God have to depend upon, but it is the patient and complete reliance and dependence on God that really matters in spiritual ministry and spiritual warfare. God can us what little we have if we surrender it to Him for HIs use and He can provide the enabling and the opportunities for us to be truly faithful in His service.
THE BENEFITS AFFLICTION AND SUFFERING CAN CONFER ON THE SOUL
As we look at world events in the “eyes of the BIble” in relation to the last days, we would notice that Christians must be prepared to suffer for the sake of God and the gospel. Afflictions and sufferings are difficult to endure; but are there benefits that can be conferred on our souls during such times?
Affliction is in fact one of God’s ‘medicines’. By it God teaches us lessons which can be learned in no other way; just like physical medicine, it may be ‘bitter and hard to swallow’ but the end result of partaking it can be positive and healing. By it, God often draws us away from sin and the negative influence of the world, which otherwise may cause us to perish everlastingly.
Health is a great blessing, but sanctified illness is a greater. Worldly comfort and well-being are what all naturally desire, but losses and crosses are far better for us, if they lead us to Christ. Like the psalmist said, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (Psalm 119:71).
Let us beware of murmuring and grumbling in the time of trouble; let us be clear that there is a meaning, a message or lesson from God, in every sorrow that falls upon us. There are no lessons so useful as those learned in the school of affliction.
“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).
We are not referring to affliction and suffering that come about from our foolishness and wrong-doing; but if they come because of our faithfulness and our status as God’s children in a fallen world ruled by Satan, then God, who is loving and who allows them, would see to it that they would benefit our souls if we go through them in a way that pleases and honours the Lord Almighty.
As shared, in the last days, we can expect afflictions. The Bible tells us that through much tribulation, we shall enter the kingdom of God; the apostle Paul, in Philippians 1:29 wrote: “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him”.
The resurrection morning will prove, that many of the losses of God’s people were in fact eternal gains.
THE PROBLEM OF LOSING OUR GRIP ON THE BIBLICAL GOSPEL
Christianity is in a state of perplexity and unsettlement; there is evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with things as they are and of uncertainty of what lies ahead. The problems are complex; but if we examine closely what is the root of the matter, we shall find that the perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip of the biblical gospel. The biblical gospel, over the years, has been substituted with a substitute product; which has some similarities in points of detail, but is a different thing altogether, if examined as a whole.
The ‘substitute gospel’ does not answer the ends for which the original authentic gospel once proved itself to be so mighty. Why, we may ask?
The answer lies in the character and content of this substitute gospel. It fails to make man God-centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this is not what it tries to do. In fact, it seeks exclusively to be “helpful” to man – it is concerned to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction to those who hear this gospel – it has little concern to glorify God.
The original authentic gospel’s first concern is to give glory to God; it is a proclamation of divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a call and summons to bow down in humility before God and worship Him, on whom man depends for all good, bothe in nature and in grace.
The chief aim of the original gospel is to teach men to worship God; the concern of the new substitute gospel is to focus on making men and women feel better by offering them all the help God gives (irrespective of whether they have repented, and whether they have cried for mercy from Him to be forgiven and to be accepted back into the kingdom of God). The authentic gospel’s subject is God and His ways with men (including His grace, love, and the willingness to sacrifice for them even when they were enemies of God).
The substitute product brings about many perplexities and problems; those who claim to be believers resulting from accepting this gospel continue to live lives that are even worse than non-believers’, claiming ‘false promises from God’, manifesting arrogance and ungodliness in the midst of quoting Scriptures, and uttering prayers (that cause ‘nauseous reactions’, knowing that they are utterances from ungodly and unholy lips that stumble many).
Such ones even claim to act on behalf of God when it is clear to many that what comes out of the mouths does not come from hearts that are sanctified and that which seek to glorify the almighty God. What is even worse is that such ones often have false assurances about their faith and their lives (thinking that they are pleasing to God).
The true original gospel, when received by faith and repentance, results in regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and God’s love is poured into the hearts through the Holy Spirit – an abundant witness to the saving love of God, given in all believers’ hearts by the Spirit results in assurance – assurance of being Christ’s; assurance of being an heir of glory; assurance of being beyond the stage in which one had to fear judgment of sin; assurance of being accepted, and assurance of being eternally an object of God’s favour and generosity!
Today, we can see manifestations of the result of the substitute product in many quarters – in churches, in christian organisations, in political parties, even among leaders of biblical institutions and among leaders of countries and nations – this calls for Christians and churches to be prayerful and to be dependent on God to share the authentic gospel for which our Lord Jesus died for, and for which He sacrificed Himself for “the joy that is set before HIm” until He could say on the cross “It is finished”.
FAITH AND REPENTANCE IN THE ‘ORIGINAL GOSPEL’
In the last sharing, we noted the difference between the original authentic gospel and the substitute one. Essentially the substitute centres on man and his needs – his prosperity, his health, his happiness etc.; the authentic gospel centres instead on the worship of God, the glory of God, the holiness, love and justice of God.
In the presentation of the original authentic gospel, ‘saving faith’ and ‘repentance’ need to be presented as the condition and the instrument of justification; of course both follow from regeneration and are aspects of conversion (which is essentially the work of the Holy Spirit).
Repentance not only constantly follows faith but is also born of faith; although repentance can and should be distinguished from faith, these two should never be separated. “The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith and the repentance that is unto life is a believing repentance.
Faith is faith in Christ for salvation from sin; but if faith is directed to salvation from sin, there must be hatred of sin and the desire to be saved from it. Such hatred of sin involves repentance….Again, if we remember that repentance is turning from sin unto God, the turning to God implies faith in the mercy of God as revealed in Christ. It is impossible to disentangle faith and repentance. Saving faith is permeated with repentance and repentance is permeated with faith.” (John Murray)
Today’s sermon from Luke 13 focused on the subject of Repentance. I take the liberty to share some of my own understanding of this subject; and I am of the opinion that a comprehensive understanding and application of ‘Repentance’ is so very important and essential in the outworking of our Christian lives.
We tend to think of ‘repentance’ in negative terms – an emotional crisis consisting of sorrow for sin and fear of punishment, involving regret, remorse, and much introspection. But repentance in fact would mean a change of mind or heart, attitude, way of thinking, disposition, character, or moral consciousness. It involves much more than sorrow for sin (though this is included), more than just intellectual change. It involves a change in the entire person, and in his or outlook in life. One can say that it is a change of thinking, feeling, and willing. Repentance not only means a change of conduct but deals primarily with the springs of our action, and with the source of our motives – it is a call to men’s minds to be patterned after God’s mind, in order that their conduct may be in keeping with His will.
THE CONCEPT OF REPENTANCE
Repentance is a unitary experience – it can be divided into parts for the purpose of discussion though they should never be separated.
Intellectual aspect
True repentance involves, first, a knowledge of the holiness and majesty of God. On the other scale, repentance must include a recognition of our own sin and guilt, as a transgression of God’s law and a violation of HIs will for our lives. There must be a understanding of the mercy of God and of His readiness to forgive, since apart from such an understanding, knowledge of sin would only lead to fear and despair.
Emotional aspect
There must be a heartfelt sorrow for sin itself, not just for the results of sin – Paul refers to this as “godly sorrow” (contrasted with worldly sorrow that is seen as regret and remorse about the end consequences of sin and the disillusionment that follows – which brings death)..
The roots of Godly sorrow must lie in love forGod; we are sorry that we have sinned because we love God and are grieved to have displeased Him. The deepest sorrow for sin, therefore, is felt at the foot of the cross.
A volitional aspect
There must be an inward turning from sin and a seeking of forgiveness, but also a change of purpose and motivation. The inward change must reveal itself outwardly. We must turn back to God in grateful obedience; we must bring forth the fruits of repentance – i.e. repentance must issue in a changed life.
True repentance, according to the Lord Jesus, involves nothing less than total commitment. This is seen in the following passages: Matt. 10:37-39;Matt. 16:24; Luke14;33). Interestingly, these are characteristics of true disciples- those who love Jesus above others, including loved ones, and including their own lives – these are those who are willing to give up everything for the Master . Another way of describing true repentance is to call it :the dying-away of the old self, and the coming-to-life of the new. The dying away of the old self is described as follow: “It is to be genuinely sorry for sin, to hate it more and more, and to run away from it.” (it begins with a conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit prior to regeneration and conversion; hence without regeneration, accompanied by faith, the conditions for conversions are not met).
Repentance is a work of God – or, rather as a work which God enables human beings to do. Sinners must repent, to be sure, But God must enable them to do so.
Repentance must continue throughout Life
Repentance, described as the dying of the old self and the coming to life of the new self, is referring to an activity that does not end until our lives are over. We must distinguish between an initial repentance at the beginning of the Christian life and a repentance which continues throughout that life; repentance should ot be thought as a single step in the process of salvation but in one sense, we must think of repentance as an aspect of the entire process. The Christian life in its totality is a life of repentance.
THE ‘CROSS’ TO BE PRESENTED IN THE AUTHENTIC GOSPEL
We have distinguished the authentic original gospel from the substitute gospel – the original focusing on the worship and glory of God in Christ Jesus; the substitute focusing on man and his needs, offering him prosperity, happiness, good health etc. We noted also that ‘faith’ and ‘repentance’ are conditions that lead the hearers to come to God in humility to receive His gift of salvation, His mercy and grace.
The other important communication in presenting the authentic gospel is the need to communicate the ‘cross’ (but we realise that regeneration and conversion finally depend on the ministry of the Holy Spirit), but the approach and communication in presentation of the gospel must include the communication (in dependent on the Spirit) the conditions, appreciation, and applications of all the above/
The cross is the place where God’s justice and love meet. God retains the integrity of his justice; God pours out the fullness of his love. In the cross, God shows himself to be just and the one who justifies sinners whose faith rests in his Son. The death of God’s own Son is the only adequate gauge of what God thinks of my sin; the death of God’s own Son is the only basis on which I may be forgiven that sin. The cross is the triumph of justice and love.
We can then understand why both John the Baptist and Jesus declared the need of repentance for those who desire to enter the kingdom of God. We will then appreciate why Jesus told the Jews that unless they repent, they shall all perish (for the fallen humanity is heading towards condemnation and hell unless someone can rescue it) – and that someone must be human and sinless to die for humanity as well as powerful enough to overcome sin, death and the evil one and his works, and triumph
(and only one qualifies – the God-man – fully God and fully man – the Messiah, the Son of God, God-incarnate).
It was because the Father loved the world that he sent his Son (John 3:16. It is therefore God himself who demonstrates his love for us in this fact: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8; the Son became our Substitute and he drank the cup of wrath meant for us, thus securing propitiation). It was God himself who presented his Son “as a sacrifice of atonement” (Rom. 3:25)
The death of God’s own Son is the only adequate gauge of what God thinks of my sin; the death of God’s own Son is the only basis on which I must be forgiven that sin. The cross is indeed the triumph of justice and love!
How then can we present the authentic gospel without bringing in the “Cross”?
REVELATION 12:11: “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much so as to shrink from death” (TNIV).
In Revelation 12, the apostle John is speaking of the church. We are in that time of suffering and struggle; the time will be cut short for the sake of the elect, but there will be persecution and opposition and antagonism from the beast until the consummation takes place (see also Maatthew 24:21-25).
In highly symbolic language, the devil was shown to have been defeated in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection and he has been thrown out of heaven. Subsequent to this, the defeated devil was full of wrath and demonstrated his rage against the people of God. The devil knows that his time is short (vv10 and 12) and he knows also that the fear he is able to induce is limited and his success is limited. In verses 14-16, the ongoing conflict between Satan and the church is described (and this constitutes the present Evil Age).
Of course, there are many facets in the evil age that speaks of the ongoing presence of God manifested in creation; it is possible to identify the goodness of God and the many manifestations of the streams of common grace in the arts and sciences; and there are many things that we humans can enjoy. However, it is essentially an age in which the conflict between the devil and the church will be intensified until the second coming of the Lord Jesus.
The devil has been portrayed as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8) and in this respect we see him unleashing his arsenal so as to cause the deaths of a multitude of believers. However, he also is portrayed as an angel of light, deceiving the very elect, if that were possible (2 Cor. 11:14). In this presentation, he may be sending out false teaching that very subtly undermines the truth. Of course, he will not come right out and reveal a series of false teachings; he is an expert in deception. And deception makes use of distorted truths; he may even commend the gospel (a false,distorted substitute) and make believers think that it is a good thing; he also may introduce something that supposedly can help you to apply the gospel to your life just a little better, and believers may not even know that it comes from him.
You probably recall the temptation scenes in the desert when Jesus was tempted by him – remember that the devil can quote Scriptures; he can offer apparently better ways to do God’s will, but only if you worship him. The Lord Jesus defeated him, and the devil departed for another opportune time to ‘attack’.
To believers, he may add, in addition to believing the gospel, you need various extra techniques in counselling to help those from an abusive background, and if we adopt his temptation, he would throw in many ‘worldly methods and techniques’ which put him in a better position to manipulate the Christians, but all these subtly apart from the revelation and teaching of Scriptures.
Of course, he will constantly tempt us to multiply things, and multiply things, and multiply things until the gospel is made essentially irrelevant because it becomes that which is merely assumed. The gospel is no longer at the forefront of our thinking and not something looked on as a priority in our lives and in the life of the church.
We are reminded by apostle Paul in Galatians, that the gospel is more than justification. Justification declares our standing before God; but the gospel is also the wonderful news of what God has done by pouring out his Spirit, causing us to be regenerated and then transformed. The principle Jesus announced – “By their fruits you should know them” – remains true in Paul’s vision of the Christian life.
It is not merely a manner of believing the right things. Genuine faith leads to the bearing of good fruit. The gospel is the announcement of the powerful thing that God has done. The gospel transforms us and separates us from the present evil age. It makes us different.
Now we come to Revelation 12:11: this tells us how Christians overcome the devil; they conquered the devil by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
‘By the blood of the lamb’ speaks of ‘on the ground of Christ’s atoning death’. Our pleas before the accusations of the devil is the ‘blood of the Lamb’ – this is what silences the accusations. The cross stands at the heart of everything.
“Overcome by the word of their testimony’ does not mean that they give their testimonies frequently. It means the word of their witness, that is, they bear witness to the gospel. John is telling us that the hosts of darkness are pushed back by Christians bearing witness – giving testimony to who God is and what he has done in Christ Jesus. We will be defeated if we simply remain silent. If we never share the gospel with anybody else, we ourselves are defeated; we are not pushing back the frontiers of darkness.
Thirdly, Satan is overcome when we do not shrink back, even from death itself. We are called to die daily.This is what it means to follow a Saviour who went to the cross. We are to learn afresh to take up our crosses and follow him (Phil. 1:29; Acts 5:41; John 15:10). This is how we live to the glory of our Saviour in this present evil age.
PARTAKERS OF GOD’S KINGDOM AND THE AGE TO COME
The Bible as a whole tells a single, straightforward story: God the Creator is at the center throughout; his covenant, his kingdom, and its coming king are the themes unfolded by the historical narratives, while the realities of redemption from sin and of godly living become steadily clearer.
Jesus Christ, as fulfiller of Old Testament prophecies, hopes, promises, and dreams, links the two Testaments together in an unbreakable bond. In the Gospels, the Epistles, and the books of Acts and Revelation, readers are now faced with God’s final world to the world before Christ comes again.
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that can be invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one (age) to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” (Ephesians 1:18-23 TNIV)
As the church observes Lent, Good Friday, and Easter, let us be reminded that although such observances help us to remember, with gratitude and worship, what God has done for us in His Son Jesus, we are now historically, as believers, in a context as partakers of God’s kingdom, and of the Age to come, members of the body of Christ and God’s family, the church of God.
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18-23 expressed the hope that Christians and God’s people of His kingdom may increasingly know the hope of their calling, the riches of their glorious inheritance in Christ, the power of the mighty strength of God who raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, in the present age and the age to come.
What Christians and the church have is incomparable: whether it be the rich inheritance, the great majestic power of God in Christ, the head of the body, and the tremendous hope of the age to come. But in the present context, in the last days, how is God’s people faring?
Does the church manifest the greatness of God’s power; does she look forward to the glorious hope and inheritance in Christ; does she appreciate and understand her role as partakers of God’s kingdom and of the age to come??
The New Testament says that it is already the last hour. We are already in the last days; it also indicates that Christians are squeezed between the ‘already’ of what has arrived and the ‘not yet’ of what is still to come. For example, we already have the forgiveness of our sins, but we do not yet have the consummation which Christ’s death and resurrection have secured. We already grow in sanctification, but we have not yet been glorified.
Already it is the last hour of this age which is decaying and will pass away. But it has not yet passed away, and the new heavens and the new earth have not yet dawned.
Living in the tension of the already and not yet, the Bible shows how Christians can go sadly astray by getting this balance wrong.
For one thing, some believers are led to believe in “over-realised eschatology”. They think they have more of the blessings from the future now than they actually do.
Or one can suffer from having an “under-realised eschatology”, that is, some believers really do not appreciate what they have in their possession in Christ.
The New Testament witnesses to both sorts of errors: we see this in 1 Corinthians 4:8-11 – the Corinthians sound not a little like some contemporary health, wealth, and prosperity gospel people, do they not?
“After all”, some surely said, “you are the child of the king; does not your dad want you to have everything?” Well, yes, we could say that – but he also wants you to be disciplined. He also wants you to learn something of suffering like his Son, before everything is opened up in the new heavens and the new earth.
Over-realised eschatology leads to a kind of triumphalism that seems to think that everything that we are going to get in the future we can get right now. Healing, transformed personalities that approach sinless perfection, perfect love, perfect marriages, perfect wealth, perfect satisfaction, perfect contentment – it is all yours right now! Name it; claim it! After all, Christ has secured it.
On the other hand, if we have an under-realised eschatology, we will fail to appreciate what we actually have in Christ Jesus now. We not only have the forgiveness of sins and the joy of being once and for all declared just before God because of what Christ has done, but also we have ongoing cleansing from sin! What a blessed relief that is for God’s people day by day. He has poured his Spirit upon us, so that we begin to love what we did not love and hate what we did not hate. Our personalities are changed, our goals are changed, our values are changed, and our direction is changed. All of this is because the gospel is the power of God for salvation to those who believe (Rom. 1:16). It is not merely some declaration of a status and that is all. It is also power (and that is what Paul prayed for believers).
This power works itself out in transformed relationships in the community of the saints. So many blessings come to us from God! We must appreciate them, live in the light of them, and grow in them in anticipation of the final transformation that still lies ahead. So part of Christian maturity turns on grasping exactly what it means to be partakers of the age to come.
We are now at a turning point in history; something has taken place in Christ that has fulfilled an antecedent prophecy – Christ has ushered in a new age; he has brought in a new kingdom, a new humanity! And that took place when he fulfilled his mission on the cross – hence the centrality of the cross! God has planned it all along, though it was hidden in some ways, but now unpaced, revealed, and disclosed in Christ Jesus, at the turning point of the ages. Christ has come, and we see how his plans laid out in eternity past, before the creation of the world, have come to pass in one short weekend in Jerusalem (when Good Friday and Easter took place). Rising from the dead, ascending to the right hand of the Majesty on high, this Son pours out his Spirit. Thus the entire triune God is working out our salvation.
The gospel is the power of God for salvation. But what kind of power? – the same miraculous power that raised Jesus from the dead. The power that transformed Christ and brought him back is the power already at work in us, which will then transform us with resurrection bodies on the last day.
Paul has heard about the faith and love of the Ephesians – their faith in Christ and their love for one another. Now he prays that their eyes might be opened up and enabled to see, so that they may know the hope to which God has called them – and us. We cannot be mature Christians unless we are future oriented, that is eternity oriented. Do we live with an eternal perspective? And this perspective should include reaching out to many of the elect who have not responded to the gospel and to bring them back to the fold, in Christian love. Are we just ‘boxed in’ on earth, with the desire to have all that the world offers (and much of this is in the guise of the temptation of the enemy)?
In one sense, we should not plan for the next thirty, forty or more years ahead, but we should plan for eternity, with our spiritual eyes fixed on the hope in which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints (Eph. 1:18).
We are living in the last days, perhaps in the last hour. As God’s people, as God’s church, what are we preoccupied with? Are we chasing after the next bigger wage packet; are we planning for the next glorious holiday; are our eyes fixed on the stock market, the next big thing (the next phone, the next home, the next car etc.)??
We may ‘attend church’ faithfully, even give faithfully, serve all we can, study the Bible intensely – but in the depths of our hearts and inner beings, what is it that gripped us; is it the glory of God, the honour of God? Or like the Corinthians, are we caught up with our own status and ambition (even apparently spiritual ones)?
When the Lord Jesus comes again, will He find faith? Will He be pleased with His people or will He be ashamed of us?
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
In previous sharings, we have noted that both John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus pronounced the need for repentance because the kingdom of God is at hand. From the Gospels and the from the writings of the apostles (eg. Rom. 14:17), what seems to be the most widely accepted understanding of the kingdom of God is that its primary meaning is the rule or reign of God. The kingdom of God is to be understood as the reign of God dynamically active in human history through Jesus Christ, the purpose of which is the redemption of God’s people from sin and from demonic powers, and the final establishment of the new heavens and the new earth.
The kingdom of God includes both a positive and a negative aspect. It means redemption for those who accept it and enter into it by faith, but judgement for those who reject it. Jesus makes it abundantly clear in his teachings, particularly in his parables.
The primary purpose of the kingdom of God is the salvation, in the full sense of the word, of those who enter into it – for “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him”(John 3:17). But those who reject and defy the kingdom will receive the greater judgement: “Every one who falls on the stone (the cornerstone, which is Jesus Christ) will be broken to pieces, but when it falls on anyone it will crush him”: (Luke 20:18).
The kingdom of God is both present and future.
Some of Jesus’ parables imply that the kingdom is already present. The parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price (Matt. 13: 44-46) teach that a man should now sell all that he has in order to enter into the kingdom. The parables of the Tower-builder and the King Going to War (Luke 14:28-33) teach the importance of counting the cost before entering the kingdom, again implying that the kingdom is present now.
Jesus also taught that there was a sense in which the kingdom of God was still future. In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus describes entrance into the kingdom as something still future, and ties it in with a future day of judgement. Future tenses are used which clearly speaks of a future kingdom isd Matthew 8:11-12. Many of Jesus’ parables teach a future consummation of the kingdom. The Parable of the Marriage Feast points to a future time of blessedness for those who accept the invitation but to a place of punishment in outer darkness for those who fail to comply with all the requirements (Matt. 22:1-14). The Parable of the Tares with its explanation (Matt. 13:24-30,36-43) speaks of the “close of the age” when evildoers shall be thrown into the furnace of fire and when the righteous “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” In the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (Matt. 25:1-13), we learn about the tarrying of the bridegroom, about a cry at midnight, and about some who went in with the bridegroom to the marriage feast and others for whom the door was permanently shut. The Parable ends with a typical “eschatological” warning: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” *(v. 13). And the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30) speaks about a man who went on a journey and was gone a long time, about a final settling of accounts, and about some who were invited to enter into their master’s joy and another who was cast into the outer darkness.
From the teachings of Jesus that have been cited it is clear that the kingdom of God was both present and future. One who believes in Jesus Christ, therefore, is in the kingdom of God at the present time, enjoying its blessings and sharing its responsibilities. At the same time, he realises that the kingdom is present now only in a provisional and incomplete state, and therefore he looks forward to its final consummation at the end of the age. Because the kingdom is both present and future, we may say that the kingdom is now hidden to all except those who have faith in Christ, but that some day it shall be totally revealed,so that even its enemies will finally have to recognise its presence and bow before its rule.
The kingdom in its present state, therefore, is an object of faith, not of sight. But when the final phase of the kingdom is ushered in by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, every knee shall Father” (Phil. 2:11).
The church must live with a sense of urgency, realising that the end of history as we know it may be very near, but at the same time it must continue to plan and work for a future on this present earth which may last a long time. The church is caught up in the tension between the present age and the age to come.
This situation creates a tension – indeed acute conflict: for the church is the focal point of the conflict between good and evil, God and Satan, until the end of the age. The church can never be at rest or take her ease but must always be the church in struggle and conflict, ofter persecuted, but sure of the ultimate victory.
We belong to the kingdom of God not as a human achievement but as a privilege bestowed on us by God. We may note further that the kingdom of God demands from us repentance and faith. Only God can cause one to be born again; and yet the point at which the gospel message impinges on the hearer is the summons to believe (John 3:16).
The kingdom of God, as a matter of fact, demands nothing less than total commitment (Matt. 6:33). No one should seek to enter the kingdom unless he has thoroughly counted the cost (Luke 14:26-32; Matt. 5:29,30).
The kingdom of God also implies cosmic redemption; not just the salvation of a chosen group of people, but a complete renewal of the entire cosmos, culminating in the new heaven and the new earth (Eph. 1:9-10; Col. 1:19-20; Rom. 8:19-21).
Being a citizen of the kingdom, therefore, means that we should see all of life and all reality in the light of the goal of the redemption of the cosmos.
GOD’S PLAN TO RESTORE THE COSMOS (INCLUDING MANKIND)
As the church observes “Good Friday” and “Easter” this weekend, we need to go beyond remembering God’s goodness, mercy and grace in sending His Son to be the Substitute, and Saviour of fallen mankind; we need to worship the Triune God and to see His gracious plan, purpose and pleasure to restore the cosmos to perfection (including His Kingdom) through the mediation of the God-man Jesus Christ.
All the decisive events in God’s plan except the last have now been played out on the stage of world history. By God’s appointment each man’s or woman’s destiny depends on how he/she stands related to the two representative men, Adam and Christ. What God planned was to exercise His kingship over His rebel world by bringing in His kingdom – in this kingdom, Jesus Christ should be God’s vice-regent, and trusting and obeying Christ should be the appointed way of returning from sin to God’s service.
God, having achieved world redemption according to His plan through Christ’s death, raised him to life and set him on the throne of the universe, where now he reigns, furthering his kingdom by sending the Spirit to draw men to HImself and by strengthening them for faithful obedience in the face of mounting opposition till the day dawns for his return to judge all men and finally to renew all things. This is the message of ‘Good Friday’ and ‘Easter’ – the goal of God’s action is to glorify HImself by restoring and perfecting His disordered cosmos, and the gospel call is to abandon rebellion, acknowledge Christ’s lordship, thankfully accept the free gift of forgiveness and new life, in the kingdom, enlist on the victory side, be faithful in God’s strength, and hope to the end for Christ’s coming triumph.
Jesus Christ crucified, risen, reigning – and now in the power of his atonement, calling, drawing, welcoming, pardoning, renewing, strengthening, preserving, and bringing joy – remains the heart of the Christian message, the focus of Christian worship, and the fountain of Christian life. Other things may change; this does not. If the church and God’s people, in the midst of many activities and observances, loses this focus on the heart of the Christian message, then our attention has been compromised or even lost, and the church has become only an institution without Christ as Lord (Rom. 10:9).
Even our thinking about spiritual gifts becomes shallow. We go on to think of spiritual gifts in terms either of what we call ‘giftedness’ (human ability to do things skillfully and well) or of supernatural novelty as such (power to speak in tongues, to heal, to receive messages straight from God to give to others, or whatever). We have not formed the habit of defining gifts in terms of Christ, the head of the body, and his present work from heaven in our midst. In this we are unscriptural. The apostle Paul makes it clear that spiritual gifts are given in Christ; they are enrichment received from Christ (1 Cor. 1:4,7). It is vital that we should see this, or we shall be confusing natural with spiritual gifts, to the end of our days.
For Paul, it is only through Christ, in Christ, by learning Christ, and by responding to Christ that anyone is ever edified. Edification is precisely a matter of growing in the depth and fullness of one’s understanding of Christ and all else in relation to him, and in the quality of one’s personal relationship with him, and it is not anything else (no one is ultimately a good preacher, a great teacher, a wonderful spiritual leader, etc in God’s service, apart from Christ and one’s understanding and relationship with Him).
Christianity from the start has been based on the biblical conviction that in and through words spoken to and by prophets and apostles, and supremely by Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God has spoken, in the precise sense of using language to tell people things.
God’s word of direct self-disclosure to individuals in history – to those in the Old Testament and New Testament – was directly authoritative for their own belief and behaviour. God having spoken to them, they were bound to believe what He had told them, knowing it to be true (because God is a God of truth), and bound also to do all that God had told them to do.
Their authority was not just that of deep human religious insight. Primarily and fundamentally, their authority was that of the God whose truth they were relaying in the verbal form to which He himself had led them. Verbal inspiration conferred direct divine authority on the words God’s messengers spoke, requiring their hearers to receive what they heard as from God Himself. The same authority belongs to what they wrote, in the books that now constitute our canonical Scriptures (the Bible).
Christianity is built on truth – on the content of a divine revelation. Christianity announces salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, in and through whom that revelation comes to completion; but faith in Jesus Christ is possible only where the truth concerning him is known. Men come to faith through receiving the ‘word of God’ – God has made provision for the communication of this saving truth in the New Testament – entrusted to the apostles, and through them to the whole church. If this truth is rejected or perverted, faith is overthrown (2 Tim. 2:18) and men come under the power of a lie (2 Thess. 2:10-12) with terrible consequences.
One’s eternal welfare may depend on what one believes; but the apostles were sure that it was so. Theology error was to them a grim reality, as was the spiritual shipwreck which comes in its wake. The observances and remembrance of the crucifixion and resurrection of the God-man must result in belief, conviction, reconciliation with God, redemption and ‘entrance’ into the kingdom of God; and being part of God’s wonderful gracious restoration of the cosmos, resulting in being ushered finally into the new heaven and new earth. Otherwise, it is just a religious activity and mere sentimentalism which does no eternal good to anyone. Let us ensure we are not among the tares; let us persevere as born-again ‘children of God’ and ensure growth in holiness (with the practice of lifelong active repentance, the fruit of faith springing from a renewed heart).
THE FINAL GOAL AND END OF OUR SALVATION AND SANCTIFICATION
The Bible indicates that the glory of God is the final end of our salvation and sanctification. After having written in Ephesians 1:4-5 that God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world and that he has predestined us to be adopted as his children, the Apostle Paul adds, “to the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6) – a thought that is repeated in verses 12 and 14 (“for the praise of his glory” and “to the praise of this glory”) Elsewhere Paul prays that the love of his fellow Christians may abound more and more, so that they may be pure and blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness, “to the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:9-11).
Why did God raise us up with Christ (following his crucifixion and resurrection) and seat us with him in the heavenly realms? “In order that in the coming ages he (God) might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). In other words, all the amazing blessings of our salvation, including our sanctification, have as their final goal the praise of the glory of God. Nothing in all of history will reveal the fullness of God’s perfections as brilliantly as with the completed glorification of his people (bearing in mind that God started off with a rebellious fallen sinful people, with no hope of goodness and spiritual renewal).
In the Book of Revelationthe Apostle John pulls aside the curtain of mystery and gives us a glimpse into heaven. He hears voices – the voices of the redeemed – singing, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever” (Rev. 513). The ultimate goal of all of God’s wondrous works, including the salvation and sanctification of his people, is that he shall be given praise, honour, and glory forevermore
The proximate goal of sanctification is the perfection of God’s people. This perfection will be the final stage in the history of the image of God, for in the life to come God’s people will perfectly image him and Christ who is “the exact representation of his being” (Heb.1:3). Paul says in 1Corinthians 15:49. “Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” This “man from heaven” is obviously Jesus Christ, whose glorified image we shall fully bear and reveal in the resurrection.
John says something similar in 1John 3:2. Though it has not yet been made known, John affirms, what we who are God’s children will be in the future, “we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” The goal of our sanctification, as here described, is perfect and total likeness to Christ, and therefore to God. This total likeness will not entail the loss of personal identity, since we shall retain our individuality; it will, however, mean a completely sinless existence (see Eph. 5:27; Heb.12:23: Rev. 22:14-15).
God’s purpose for us,in other words, is not just future happiness or a guaranteed entrance into heaven but perfect likeness to Christ and therefore to himself. God could not, in fact, have designed a higher destiny for his people than that they should be completely like his only Son in whom he delights.
The future perfection of God’s people will be a sharing of the final glorification of Christ. We are not only heirs of God. Paul tells us in Romans 8:17, but fellow heirs with Christ, “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him ” (RSV). We must never think of Christ apart from his people, nor of Christ’s people apart from him. So it will be in the life to come, the glorification of Christ’s people will occur together with the final glorification of Christ (Col. 3:4). When our sanctification will have been completed, we shall be wholly like Christ in his glorification. Then we shall not only see him face to face, but shall totally and undividedly live to the praise of the glory of his grace,world without end.
As we observe ‘Good Friday’ and ‘Easter’, we must see clearly the final goal and end of God’s salvation plan for his people. It is a glorious destiny he has in mind for his people – but the cross is necessary for the Son of God, followed by his resurrection and ascension, and finally his glorification with his people. If we have become God’s people, realise the wondrous grace, love, and mercy of God to choose us, corrupted, fallen creatures and to make us ‘beautiful’ and glorious like His Son in the final goal. All the sufferings, all the struggles, all the conflicts – it is more than worthed it – for there is no greater goal and destiny God has prepared for us!
CHRIST, THE CONQUERING LAMB OF GOD
Christ, the conquering lamb of God, occupies center stage throughout Holy Scripture from Genesis to the Revelation, indeed, from eternity to eternity. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning, the center, and the end of God’s eternal will and all his ways and works.
Our Lord’s work at Calvary is ‘the most solemn spectacle in all history, a spectacle unparalleled, unique, unrepeated, and unrepeatable’ John Murray. Murray continued: “Beholding it, we are spectators of a wonder the praise and glory of which eternity will not exhaust. It is the Lord of Glory, the Son of God incarnate, the God-man, drinking the cup given him by the eternal Father, the cup of woe and of indescribable agony. We almost hesitate to say so. But it must be said. It is God in our nature forsaken of God…There is no reproduction or parallel in the experience of archangels or of the greatest saint. The faintest parallel would crush the holiest of men and the mightiest of the angelic host.” (John Murray, Redemption – Accomplished and Applied, 77-8.)
The Lamb work of Christ is central not only to the Christian faith but also to its gospel proclamation because of who he was who died on the cross and what it was he accomplished there. The Church affirms that the one who died there as God’s Lamb was the eternal Son of God, the Lord of glory, the Word who became flesh, the majesty of whose person and the might of whose power out-rivals the pomp and circumstance of all the petty kings and Caesars of this world. In its best moments the Church has gloried in nothing but his Lamb work (Gal. 5:14) and has resolved to know nothing among the nations except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1Cor. 2:2). It has done so because it recognises, as the Apostle declared, that the Lamb work of Christ crucified is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). Only the Lamb work of Christ crucified expiates sin, propitiates the divine wrath, removes God’s alienation toward sinners, redeems sinners from the curse of the Law and the guilt and power and sin, and brings Satan’s kingdom to its knees. And only faith in that work makes these salvific benefits the sinner’s possessions.
John Calvin rightly affirmed all this when he wrote:
“…our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him.’ If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects that he might learn to feel our pain. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom, if untroubled expectation of judgement, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from his fountain, and from no other.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.16,19.).
Jesus is the ‘Lamb glorified’ in the book of Revelation: As the object of the worship offered by the hosts of heaven and earth, chapts. 4-5, as the unveiler of the destinies of the ages, chapts. 5-6, as one enthroned,before whom and to whom the redeemed render the praise of their salvation, 7:9; as the controller of the book of life, 13:8; as the Lord of the hosts on mount Zion, 14e:1; as the victor over the hosts of Antiachrist, 17:14; as the spouse of the glorified Church, 19:7; as the temple and light of the new Jerusalem, 21:22; as the sharer in the throne of God, 221, – Christ is called the Lamb. Nowhere in the occurrence of the name is there evident allusion to the figure of meekness and gentleness in suffering. He is featured as the Lamb glorified and this is the dominant depiction of Christ in Revelation – the conquering, enthroned, glorified Son of God.
THE CONTENT, CREDIBILITY, AND COMMUNICATION OF THE GOSPEL
In our local congregation, we have been studying Luke’s Gospel through a series of sermons as well as in small groups’ Bible study.
Many of us know that Luke’s is one of the three synoptic Gospels (the three being Matthew, Mark and Luke) and John is the fourth Gospel.
Luke’s Gospel is part of a two-volume work, known as Luke/Acts; Luke was the friend, co-worker and travel companion of Paul. The two-volume work is notable for its contemporary historical, geographical and sociological content – Luke is clear from the outset that he is recording ‘eyewitness’ material (Luke 1:2). His frequent mention of contemporary political figures, specific names and places, cultural habits and even meteorological details, provide his work of Luke/Acts with an undeniable ring of historical authenticity. Luke is concerned to defend more than the historical credibility of the gospel; his account also provides his reader with a theological and a socio-political defence of his work’s credibility.
At the outset, both Luke and Acts are packed with numerous Old Testament references and allusions; Luke is presenting an account of the things that have been accomplished – that is, things that have been fulfilled of Old Testament promise. He is in fact providing theological credibility for the work of Jesus and also interpretative clarity – Jesus is accomplishing and fulfilling the long-cherished promises of God. Jesus’ arrival as the long awaited Messiah is not unexpected; his saving work is the fulfillment of God’s long-promised redemption plan. What is happening has been spoken of by God Himself and through His prophets, over thousands of years. Hence the reader can have real confidence in the account of the Gospel.
Jesus himself made it plain in Luke 24 that it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into glory (24:26).
Luke also provides a thoroughgoing defence of the gospel against the accusation of the Jewish establishment (Acts 24:5) – Christianity is socially and politically not dangerous – those who oppose it claiming it is so are in fact unreasonable. Throughout Luke’s Gospel the Pharisees (who were the religious leaders of that time) are presented in their true light – an un unreasonable enemies of the God of Abraham.
Luke wants the readers to know that the gospel is historically, theologically and socio-politically credible.
In both Luke’s Gospel and Acts, it is made plain that the fulfilment that Jesus has accomplished is to be proclaimed to all nations; in fact, the gospel must be communicated and proclaimed with confidence to the ends of the earth.
THE CONTENT OF LUKE’S GOSPEL
The Gospel opens with declarations of Jesus’ identity and mission and closes with Jesus’ own summary of His ongoing work. The book of Acts opens with Jesus commissioning His disciples to witness ‘to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8), and closes with Apostle Paul in Rome taking the news of salvation to the Gentiles (Acts 28:28). Luke presents Jesus as the divine Saviour who has come to offer salvation to all people from every nation. Luke takes great pains to spell out the present nature of the salvation that Jesus came to bring. At its heart is the forgiveness of sin for the individual believer; as Jesus the Lord is received by faith (1:76;5:24; 7:50;8:48l19:10:24-47). This clarification of what it means to be saved by Jesus is repeated throughout Acts. It is evident especially in the key gospel-defining sermons of Peter and Paul (2:36; 10:36; 13:38-39). The believer is saved by grace through faith in Christ (Luke 7:50). Salvation is not only for life now (6:20-49), it is also the ultimate and final salvation from all the effects of the Fall. Jesus is summoning His disciples to an ultimate salvation which will rescue them from this fallen world, with its sin, disease, and death.
To recapitulate, Luke, in his Gospel, was concerned for the accuracy of the content of what he was writing; the credibility of the gospel and what the gospel entails; also he was concerned that the gospel must be communicated and declared, knowing how important and central this is, in the heart of God.
Historically, theologically, socio-politically, we can have confidence in the gospel. Jesus did enter into humanity as the God-man; he did die on the cross to destroy death and the work of the devil; he took our sins upon himself, died on our behalf, was buried, and he rose again and was resurrected, and ascended to the right hand of God (all these prophesied by the prophets in accordance to God’s revelation and promises and all fulfilled without any reservation). His mission is to face suffering, rejection, death and resurrection.
Subsequent to his resurrection,He offers salvation and forgiveness to all those who repent and believe; as well as adoption as children of the living God with citizenship in the kingdom of God and an inheritance and future in the new heaven and new earth.
But Jesus’ mission is also a model to his followers who are called to be true disciples. Disciples are to follow Him in his denial of himself; Jesus did not go HIs own way, but God’s. He sought not His own glory, but His Father’s. He did not pursue His own agenda or good but the agenda and food of God. To take up his cross is not a picture simply of bearing a few small hardships; the cross was an instrument of torture and death. The disciple therefore is to consider himself or herself dead to self. This kind of cross-shaped discipleship is not an optional extra – it is for everyone who appreciates the cost of true discipleship.
Jesus commands the true disciple to ‘lose his life for His sake’. To lose life, then, is to place life in His hands and to live wholeheartedly and unreservedly for Him. ‘To save his life’ is, for a disciple, to cling on to his or her own agenda apart from Jesus. The Son of Man went to His death ato carry God’s judgement on the sin and selfish ambition of man. That which the world cherishes is that which God hates. The true disciple will understand this and thus seek, with His help, to put to death everything that God hates and for which Christ died. The key to active putting to death of sin lies in a clear grasp of the cross of Christ.
Jesus’ disciples are to stand with, by, and for the Word of God in the Bible – even in the face of unpopularity and persecution. Note that all these characteristics of true discipleship are written in Luke’s Gospel, especially in Luke 9:23-27. In spite of the costly nature of true discipleship, Christ’s disciples should take heart from the fact that Jesus’ death and resurrection have established God’s eternal kingdom and also the renewal of the cosmos as well as displayed the glory and honour of the Triune God in transforming wretched creatures like you and me in fallen humanity into people who are moulded into the image of the Lord Jesus Himself! True discipleship is never possible without spiritual sight and understanding. Genuine discipleship means humble service in the footsteps of the Master. Sight comes from miraculous intervention from the Scriptures as they are explained; those who belong to a faithless and twisted generation are kept from seeing Jesus.
There is no question regarding the content, credibility of the gospel, historically, theologically, socio-politically. What is required is faith and repentance, coming to the Lord with humility and openness; then the Holy Spirit may be pleased to open our eyes of faith and allow us to see clearly the spiritual truth in the gospel. We all, in the first Adam, in fallen humanity, desperately need the rescue Jesus has come to bring; just as we cannot follow Him in the way He desires without first being rescued by Him, neither can we serve Him rightly without first being rescued by Him at the cross. We are, by nature, blind and we need to be given sight. We are faithless and perverse and we need salvation. We are self-serving and vainly ambitious, and we need Jesus to humble us and teach us. In one sense, it is hard to receive the gospel; it is difficult to be told that we need rescue, and that we are doomed to be condemned forever; but Jesus, in HIs death on the cross, shows us that He is among us as the one who serves; He, although very God Himself, was born in a manger, worked as a carpenter; was mocked, beaten, stripped naked and crucified on the cross for us – He was willing to go through all these so that we need not die eternally – He died so that we may live. Are we too proud to receive the good news of the gospel because it requires us to humble ourselves, when God Himself ’emptied himself’, became a man, lived a humble life of service and sacrificed Himself, so that we may live? For those who have entered the kingdom of God by faith and with repentance, do we still cling to the ways of the devil and the world and refuse to give up our small ambition? Do we truly appreciate what God has done for us in Christ?
As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as His people, do we live the resurrected life or do we still cling to that which God hates and withdraw from loving what God loves??
THE FINAL BATTLE
The Lord Jesus’ mission at Calvary and his subsequent resurrection (remembered by many congregations in the last weekend) is the most solemn spectacle in all history, one that is unparalleled, unique, unrepeated, and unrepeatable. All the decisive events in God’s plan of salvation except the last have now been played out on the stage of world history (this includes the fulfilment of the Lord’s mission in bringing in the kingdom of God, and this must be communicated and proclaimed to the ends of the earth).
And that brings us to the last book in the Bible – the book of Revelation.
“The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel this servant John, who testifies to everything he saw – that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near” (Rev. 1:1-3). It is clear that the first few verses in Revelation affirm the fact that we are in the “last days” and “the time is near”, and “what must soon take place” is revealed in this book.
God, having achieved world redemption according to His plan through Christ’s death, raised him to life and set him on the throne of the universe, where now he reigns, furthering his kingdom by sending the Spirit to draw men to Himself and by strengthening them for faithful obedience in the face of mounting opposition (by the devil and his minions, manipulating humans to oppose God’s kingdom and His people) until the day dawns for the return of the Lord Jesus to judge all men and finally to renew all things (including the creation, the new heaven and the new earth, and the cosmos).
The Old Testament ended with God’s people waiting anxiously for the arrival of the Messiah; the New Testament ends with the book of Revelation (with the calling to His people to be faithful, steadfast, and always abounding in the work of the Lord God) with His people waiting for the second coming of the Lord Jesus and the end of this age.
The book of Revelation reminds us that although circumstances in these last days point to the preponderance of evil and the rise of ungodliness and worldliness (even among those who claim to be believers), God is transcendent, sovereign, and sitting on the throne. Jesus has won the war although the battles and skirmishes still are going on and the devil is aware that his days are numbered and he is lashing out to cause as much damage as possible.
Revelation reminds us to look at the total spiritual reality and not just at the visible circumstances in our lives and in the events of the world.
Nothing will more accurately reveal whether we are genuine followers of the Lord Jesus than when we are faced with crises in our lives. It may be an illness; it may be disappointment in work and career; it may be tragedy in the lives of our family or loved ones; it may be misunderstandings and accusations from fellow-believers; it may even be spiritual attacks from the evil one or even tests from our Lord. The message of Revelation is to expect sufferings and persecutions as God’s people; and in the midst of such times, we are not just to grit our teeth and endure but that we are to reign with Christ in the midst of tribulation. Our hope is in God and the sacrifice of Jesus for our eternal salvation demands nothing less. God has given us His all and Jesus has died for unworthy sinners like us; we have been adopted to be children of the living God and to share in all the glorious inheritance in Christ; we have a living glorious hope to finally reign with the Lord and to partake of His glory in the new heaven and new earth. In the meantime, we are to endure and to persevere and to finish the race, just as our Lord Jesus persevered until “it is finished” at the cross.
Revelation removes the curtain to help us behold what is happening in the heavenlies and the spiritual battles taking place in the invisible realm. In our weakness, our strength is in God; in our sufferings, let us look forward to what God is preparing us for – HIs eternal glory; and as ‘we die daily’, God is ministering ‘life’ to us unto eternal life in all its fullness.
As stated, the evil one knows that his days are numbered, and he would go all out to cause damage to God’s people and God’s kingdom; and this would be prominent in the last days as revealed in Revelation.
The devil disturbs the church as much by error as by evil. When he cannot entice Christian people into sin, he deceives them with false doctrine, false agenda (that makes them think that they are doing God’s will). One major effective approach he adopts is to turn believers from the true gospel to false doctrines by false teachers (and this continues today). And these false teachers trouble the church of God by changing the gospel – one cannot touch the gospel and leave the church untouched, because the church is created and lives by the gospel. Indeed, the church’s greatest troublemakers (even now) are not those outside who oppose, ridicule and persecute it but those inside who try to change the gospel.
Note: the true gospel is the gospel of grace; of God’s free and unmerited favour. Whenever teachers start exalting humanity, implying that we can contribute anything to our salvation by our own morality, religion, philosophy, or respectability, the gospel of grace is being corrupted. The true gospel is the New Testament gospel. The norm by which all systems and opinions are to be tested is the gospel that the apostles preached and that is now recorded in the New Testament. Anyone who rejects the apostolic gospel is to be rejected (even those who propound teachings on the pulpit or in Bible Study groups and present a false gospel (for eg. a gospel which does not include ‘suffering’ and ‘persecution’ or a gospel devoid of total commitment and discipleship). Note that it is not a matter of personal opinion but it is the defence of the truth and the true gospel. There is only one gospel, the apostolic faith, a recognisable body of doctrines taught by the apostles of Jesus Christ and preserved for us in the New Testament. If there is only one gospel in the New Testament, there is only one gospel for the church (leaders, elders, pastors, missionaries and members please take note). In the book of Galatians, we see the kind of open, head-on collision between Paul and Peter, the kind the church would seed at any price to avoid today. But Paul acted as he did out of a deep concern for the very principle that Peter lacked. Paul perceived that Peter and the others were not “walking straight” (Galatians 2:11-21, vs. 14 in particular) according to the truth of the gospel. Paul is determined to defend and uphold the gospel at all costs, even at the expense of publicly humiliating a brother apostle.
Many are the vocal pressure groups in the contemporary church. We must not be stampeded into submission to them out of fear. If they oppose the truth of the gospel, we must not hesitate to oppose them. When the issue before us is trivial, we must be as pliable as possible. But when the truth of the gospel is at stake, we must stand our ground.
Christianity will not allow us to sit on the fence or live in a haze; it urges us to be definite and decisive, to choose between a religion of human achievement and a religion of divine achievement. True Christian liberty expresses itself in self-control, loving service of our neighbour, and obedience to the law of God. How is this possible? The answer is by the Holy Spirit. He alone can keep us truly free, truly free in the Lord. The conflict between the Spirit and the sinful nature is a specifically Christian conflict. There is such a moral conflict in non-Christian people, but it is fiercer in Christians because they possess two natures – flesh and spirit – in irreconcilable antagonism. And when these two clash; we can be sure that the devil is working, but God is also working. While our old nature itself is secret and invisible, its works, the words and deeds in which it erupts, are public and evident. By contrast, the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit is a cluster of Christian graces, which portray a Christian’s attitude to God, to other people, and to self. True Christian relationships are governed not by rivalry but by service. Two vital questions: Is the essence of our Christian religion outward or inward? And is it human or divine – fundamentally a matter of what we do for God or of what He has done for us?
THE TRINITY, COMMUNION WITH GOD, AND CHRISTIAN UNITY
At the beginning of the Christian life stands baptism, the consecration of the individual to God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Every Christian is marked by special relationships with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Christian initiation brings us, first of all, into a personal family relationship with God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth, who instituted the saving plan to redeem the world through his Son. We receive the courage to call upon him as our Father and to see ourselves as sons and daughters.
By baptis, we are immersed in the death of Jesus and are raised again to newness of life. Apostle Paul can therefore write to the Colossians: “When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead”(Col. 2:12; cf. Rom. 63-4). Paul makes it clear that all the baptized are incorporated into Christ and thus are made members of his body.
Christians live in Christ and Christ lives in them. The church is the body of Christ, an extension of his individual, physical body. All baptised Christians are one in the body of Christ, which is the church – they are properly regarded as brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Through faith and baptism (not just the physical rite), Christians enter into relations not only with the Father and the Son, but also with the Third Divine Person, the Holy Spirit. We are made into dwelling places of God by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:22) – the Holy Spirit dwells within us (1:14) – we are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19). Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, all three divine persons dwell intimately within those justified by grace (note: all three divine persons dwell within – hence the need to understand and appreciate the TRINITY).
We should see the gifts of the Spirit as the operations of the Father and the administrations of the Lord (1 Cor. 12:4-26). Under different aspects, therefore, believers can attribute the gifts to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The outward directed actions of the Triune God are from all three persons, who work together. The three persons are inseparable in their dwelling, just as they are in their working, but they are usually indicated by one through created symbols, not in their own substance. Indwelling is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, who is somehow “the companionship of the Father and the Son.” He is the bond of peace and unity (Rom. 8; 14:17; Gal. 522) – note at the end of 2 Corinthians, Paul writes: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of god, and the (fellowship or communion) of the Holy Spirit be with all of you (13:13-14).
Christians are alienated from one another because some or all of us are insufficiently united to the Triune God!
Understanding the Trinity, we must appreciate that the Father cannot be sent. The Son can be sent, but only by the Father (John 8:42).The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son (John 15:26; Acts 2:33). The Son can do nothing except what the Father tells him to do (John 5:19-20; 8:28); the Holy Spirit cannot say anything except what the Father and the Son tell him to say (John 16:13).
If the church is to be an icon of the Trinity, it must reflect the three divine persons. In its mission the church must obey the Father, who sends it. In its structures and offices the church must represent the Son, its founder. And in its life the church must embody the Holy Spirit, who animates it from within.
The church’s visible aspect, with its personal hierarchical structures, shows forth the first mission, that of the Son. And in the interiority the church shows forth the second mission by being the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, who bestows his gifts and establishes the sense of interpersonal fellowship or communion. Under both aspects, the church is a sign and instrument of unity – unity among human beings of all races and nations, and between them and the Triune God. The model for the church as well as for individuals is the perfect communion among the divine persons under the kingship of the Father.
Christians who believe in, and are baptised in the name of the Triune God – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – are conjoined in a deep supernatural union. But they still fall short of the full visible unity that Christ wills for his Church. By turning to God’s help, to overcome the obstacles and make the church on earth prefigure more perfectly the everlasting communion of the saints in heaven (which is a reflection of the perfect communion, harmony, and unity of the three divine persons in the Trinity).
The classic doctrine of the Trinity ascribes creation to the Father, redemption to the Son, and new creation to the Spirit, on the basis that all three are invariably together in all the divine doings – the Father communicating grace as salvation’s loving originator, the Son communicating it as salvation’s loving achiever, and the Spirit communicating it as salvation’s loving imparter.
Communion with God is a subject of knowledge of God through Word and Spirit, according to the teaching of apostle Paul. By faith, through the open eyes of the heart, the Christian contemplates the living God in the pages of the BIble, knowing the God in his trinity is the same yesterday, today, and forever; and is present as the immediate environment of everyone’s ongoing life. The Christian therefore prays and obeys, practicing God’s presence as a discipline of the heart and making God’s honour and glory a constant goal.
THE CONSEQUENCE OF REJECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD
In our local congregation, we have been studying the Gospel of Luke, in our sermons, as well as in the Bible study in our small groups. At the moment, we are looking at Luke 13, and in particular Luke 13:10-17.
In interpreting a text, we are reminded that we need to look at a text in its context; in this respect, it is helpful to examine what is before this particular text, and what comes after; and also where the text ‘sits’ in relation to the whole book.
We know that Luke took pains to record ‘eyewitness’ material, the historical, political, cultural, and even meteorological details in the writing of this Gospel, and there is the concern to present the historial, theological credibility of what he wrote finally in the content.
In Luke 13, we are in the travel narratives – Jesus was travelling towards Jerusalem – he knew what awaited him in Jerusalem and he sought to prepare the disciples to know what was coming. Also, at this point, there was increasing opposition to him from the Jewish religious authorities, and there were indications they were preparing to even kill him. Jesus came as the long awaited Messiah to save God’s people, and his burden was especially heavy as he noted the negative and rebellious response of the Jews towards his mission.
Luke 13 began with the raising of two incidents – the first the slaining of the Galileans by Pilate as they brought sacrifices; and the second the incident of the tower at Siloam falling down and killing eighteen. For both events, the question was asked whether those killed were worse sinners than others? In both cases Jesus’ reply is the same: “No, but unless you repent you will likewise perish.”
The reply did not engage the question directly, but Jesus argues that everyone is culpable and needs to repent. Furthermore, it makes the point that the timing of death is not the major concern; rather, everyone should come to grips with death’s inevitability and what death represents: the presence of sin. Repentance will not prevent death, but it can alter its consequence. So it is important that each person be assured that repentance has taken place, or else real, eternal punishment will consume that person.
Then Jesus shares a parable that compares Israel to an unfruitful fig tree in a vineyard. For three years, it had failed to produce fruit, which means that the tree was six years old, because normally it took three years for a tree to gain sufficient maturity to bear fruit. The master now wants to cut the worthless tree down because it only takes up space and uses the ground’s resources for no purpose. The vinedresser appeals for one more year to see whether the tree will bear fruit. Jesus’ point is that the nation’s record involves a consistent failure to bring forth what God desired. The time allowed before God performs judgment is running out. God is long-ssuffering, but people have to respond before it is too late.
We now come to the text of Luke 13:10-17: Jesus has just told a parable that gives the nation of Israel one more chance. Here, on a sabbath day, in a synagogue, Jesus healed a woman who had suffered for eighteen years from a spirit-induced condition of being bent over. Jesus initiates the healing and declares her healed. Here in fact is an opportunity for change in the response of the Jews.
The reaction of the synagogue leader is to complain that there are six days to work this healing, and why do it on a Sabbath? Jesus responds by calling the leader a hypocrite, noting that if an animal such as an ox or donkey is in distress on the Sabbath, one rescues it or leads it to water. On a day like the Sabbath set aside to honour God, is it not appropriate that a daughter of Abraham be freed from Satan’s binding power? The healing by Jesus is a sign that “the kingdom of God has come upon them” but the Jews (including their religious leaders) fail to understand and recognise the ‘signs’ and miss an opportunity to acknowledge the Son of God and to repent.
What comes after this incident is significant in bringing in the lesson that is needful. Someone in the crowd asked, “Will the saved be few?” Jesus compares entry into salvation and the kingdom of God to striving to walk through a narrow door that many will seek to enter and fail to do so. It takes a concentrated effort to enter. It takes listening and responding to coming to know him. He warns the crowd that many will stand outside the shut door asking to come in, but it will be too late. Their request to open the door is refused, as Jesus explains to them that he does not know when they are from. Entry is not automatic. The rejected will claim to have had table fellowship with Jesus and to have seen him teach. But again the overture is refused – the Lord repeats that he does not know them, tells them to depart, and calls them workers of unrighteousness. It will be a sad day, with weeping and gnashing of teeth (a reference often to the crying and groaning in hell) – it is a warning that the prophets and patriarchs like Abraham will be there in the kingdom but they who repeatedly failed to respond to the Lord will all be cast out.
The question is not “Will the saved be few?” but “Will it include you?” Abrahamic descent does not mean salvation (Luke 3:8; Rom. 9:4-6).
For us today, who claim to be Christians and claim to be faithful in attending church, listening to sermons, praying and even reading and studying the BIble – are we not in the same boat as the Jews who claimed to have breakfast with Jesus and also listen to his teachings? Will we be among those who are saved?
Or are we among those whom the Lord would reject and refuse to open the door into the kingdom of God? Our presence in church, our outward show of religiosity (often hypocritical like the Synagogue leader), our response as a church like the physical nation of Israel which claimed to be God’s people and those who were among the first to be chosen – will all these qualify us entry into the kingdom of God?? Or would we end up as a community like the fig tree which does not bear fruit despite the patience longsuffering, and grace of God (the vinedresser), and be chopped down?? Do not miss the warning from the study of Luke 13!! Do not assume that our entry into God’s kingdom is automatic and is all done!
JESUS’ LAMENT AND HEARTFELT CRY FOR A STUBBORN PEOPLE
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34-35).
Still looking at Luke 13, we notice that Jerusalem and the people of Israel (particularly those rebellious and presumptuous) were very much in Jesus’ thoughts; he knew he would die there. Later on we read that as Jesus entered Jerusalem he wept over it (19:41). His lament now and his tears later indicate his heartfelt cry for a people who refused to listen. They had had their chance and they had missed it. One day God will close the door against people, but he will do so with tears in his eyes and grief in his heart.
An important lesson for us today: Men and women do not perish because of God; they only have themselves to blame. Jesus offers us joy, but we casually turn our backs to his offer; he weeps with sadness, but we harden our hearts and continue to be indifferent; he gives us his promise but we confidently carry on and ignore his promise…
Ponder: Will Jesus weep tears for us on judgment day??
God made humans to be able to make choices; but that also means we have to take responsibility for our choices.
Israel as a nation was given a priority in one sense to respond to the Messiah, as the Messiah came from the descendants of Abraham; and Israel was then to reach out to other nations with the salvation plan of God. But alas! Israel failed miserably to be God’s people; she became presumptuous, spiritually blind and proud. God in Christ incarnate came to the nation; the nation rejected him, and subsequently killed him.
Christ completed his mission to institute a new era and age and to offer God’s salvation plan to all those who would respond in faith and repentance (from all nations). Those who responded would form part of God’s new humanity in Christ. In our previous sharing, we are warned not to take God’s grace for granted and God’s offer of salvation before it is too late and the door is closed.
But as a church, a challenge is implied. – we are to consider the need of those who have not heard;; are we concerned enough to pray for friends who do not understand who Jesus is and the eternal implications of that for them? We need to share the Gospel (the good news) not just with our words, but with our deeds and lives!
THE NECESSITY OF FAITHFUL DISCIPLESHIP IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD
We have been looking at the “Kingdom of God”. We saw how Jesus and John the Baptist proclaimed the need for repentance for “the kingdom of God is at hand”; we noted that Jesus, the Messiah, and God incarnate, came to inaugurate a new era which focused on the kingdom of God, not just on earth, but culmination in the new heavens and new earth; and this he did when he fulfilled his mission the heavenly Father sent him to accomplish.
In our presentation of the gospel, often,Christ appears not as the center of attention and himself the key to life’s meaning, but as a figure, a smudgy one at best, brought in to answer some egocentric questions of our own, like how we may find peace of conscience, peace of heart and mind under pressure?, happiness? joy? power for living?
Note: The necessity of faithful discipleship to Jesus, and the demands of it, are not stressed, and so the cost of following Jesus is not counted. As a result, our evangelism reaps crops of still unconverted individuals who think they can call Jesus in and make use of him as Saviour and helper, while declining to have him as Lord. Unfortunately, these individuals become deadwood in our churches, if they do not drift away entirely.
Such evangelism brings in many who are misled by the one-sidedness of our message, thinking that Christ can be relied upon to shield those who are his from all major trouble. Unfortunately, again, such ones experience traumatic upsets – traumatic because what they expected do not come to pass. The nurture that leaves Christians with false expectations of that kind and with no resources save the stiff upper lip for coping when trouble strikes, is defective to the point of cruelty. The cracking up the benefits and minimising the burdens of the Christian, in our gospel message, which is featured in our salesmanlike man-centeredness of much of our evangelism, is one root cause of this false expectation.
It is to be noted that when Jesus appeared on the scene, he said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”. And that certainly does not speak of the absence of suffering, ‘death to self” and the readiness for persecution and pain.
In his parables, when Jesus spoke on being disciples in the kingdom of God, he revealed that he was not so much interested in numbers but rather more in disciples; hence there was the call to count the cost (Luke 14:25-33); to be willing to submit to his teaching and discipline, to put him first even above loved ones, family members, and even life itself.
In the parable of five foolish women and their friends in Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus tells how ten young women were invited to a marriage feast. Five were wise and five were foolish. The wise ones prepared for the possible delay of the bridegroom – the rest of the parable showed how those who were unprepared had to depart for more oil and while they were gone, the door was shut.
When they returned they cried for the door to be opened for them, but the bridegroom siad, “I don’t know you” (notice the similarity of this statement with that in Matthew 7:23 which was made by the Lord Jesus to false disciples).
In many respects the five wise and five foolish women were the same. Each of them had received an invitation; there may be many who did not receive invitations like those told by Jesus about a wedding banquet where many disregarded the invitations with all sorts of excuses (see also Luke, chapter 14:20-23). The women however had received the invitation and had responded joyfully but the outcome was so different for the wise and the foolish.
There are people in the church who have heard the invitation of Christ, have responded somewhat, and may even be said to have affection for Jesus, but who are yet not ready to meet Him (Luke14:15-23). They may appear to be ‘good church people’ but they are not born again – they have not entered the kingdom of God. They might have some form of affection for the bridegroom but were not inwardly prepared. When the bridegroom arrived, they were not ready.
They are those who do not have that inward change which alone entitles them to enter the kingdom of God (notice the similarity with the fig tree that does not bear fruit after many years in Luke 13).
Outwardly, the women were alike; the crucial and determining difference was within. Read what was written by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the ‘prince of preachers’:
“A great change has to be wrought in you, far beyond any power of yours to accomplish, before you can go in with Christ to the marriage. You must, first of all, be renewed in your nature, or you will not be ready. You must be washed from your sins, or you will not be ready. You must be justified in Christ’s righteousness, and you must put on his wedding dress, or else you will not be ready. You must be reconciled to God, you must be made like to God, or you will not be ready. Or, to come to the parable before us, you must have a lamp, and the lamp must be fed with heavenly oil, and it must continue to burn brightly, or else you will not be ready. No child of darkness can go into that place of light. You must be brought out of nature’s darkness into God’s marvelous light, or else you will never be ready to go in with Christ to the marriage, and to be forever with him.”
Now read what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11:17-24:
“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say to them, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted that they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. God, sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off, And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!” (TNIV).
We know that the church of God comprises saints from the Old Testament and those from the New Testament (which include the Gentiles). The church, in this composition, is in fact the kingdom of God. “He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Galatians 3:14).
“Understand, then that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abrahm. “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith”(Gal. 3:7-9). So in the olive tree we see how the Jews and Gentiles were made partakers of the olive tree by faith. It is not the physical descendants of Abraham who are partakers of the kingdom of God but those who are spiritual descendants of Abraham by faith (both from the Jews and the Gentiles from OT and NT).
Notice the warning to all those grafted in the olive tree (the natural and the wild branches) they are to continue in the kindness of God and not to dwell in unbelief.
Upholding the WORD and the CHURCH’S TESTIMONY in these last days
We are aware from Scriptures that the devil knows his time is limited and he is going all out to cause as much damage and pain to God’s people and the church. We know also that the attacks from him are not just from the outside of the church in terms of persecution, physical and spiritual calamities; but the damage from within the church can be even more disastrous. From within the church, the devil applies deception, distortions of truth, and in particular the distortion and compromise of the Gospel; together with this, he encourages activities (even spiritual ones) to distract God’s people from the wholesome truth and revelation of Scriptures as well as deemphasizing the task and testimony of the church in upholding the Gospel.
The teaching of the written Scriptures is the Word which God spoke and speaks to his church, and is finally authoritative for faith and life. To learn the mind of God, one must consult his written Word. What Scripture says, God says.
The BIble is inspired in the sense of being word for word God-given. It is a record and explanation of divine revelation which is both complete (sufficient) and comprehensible (perspicuous) – that is to say, it contains all that the church needs to know in this world for its guidance in the way of salvation and service, and it contains the principles for its own interpretation within itself.
Furthermore, the Holy Spirit, who caused it to be written, has been given to the church to cause believers to recognise it as the divine Word that it is, and to enable them to interpret it rightly and understand its meaning. He who was the Author is also its Witness and Expositor.
Christians must therefore seek to be helped and taught by the Spirit when they study Scripture, and must regard all their understanding of it, no less than the book itself, as the gift of God.The Spirit must be acknowledged as the infallible Interpreter of God’s infallible Word.
The Bible, therefore, does not need to be supplemented and interpreted by tradition, or revised and corrected by reason. Instead, it demands to sit in judgment on the dictates of both, for the words of men must be tried by the Word of God. The church collectively, and the Christian individually, can and does err, and the inerrant Scripture must ever be allowed to speak and correct them.
So we must realise that when we preach and teach the Word, it is a very heavy responsibility – we cannot afford to use our own reasoning and our traditions to communicate the truth and application of the Word – we need to be very prayerful and also open to the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit. In this respect, we must be willing to examine the text properly and interpret correctly, as enabled by the Holy Spirit – this means the openness to the views of various brethren who may be more mature and astute in the handling of the Word of God. It is in the context of the whole church, with the various spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit exercised by various ones that the church can be edified and led on the right path laid up by the Lord God. Understanding and interpretation of Scriptures is not the exclusive role of only certain individuals in the body of Christ – it is in prayerful outworking in the study and reception of God’s Word that the church can be kept from being manipulated by the evil one and led astray in its role and testimony as a beacon of light and truth from God. We must acknowledge that we have a formidable enemy; he can manipulate people, situations and circumstances to achieve his goal – we must not be unaware of his schemes.
We noted also that Simon Peter, who denied Christ three times, and was also publicly corrected by Paul regarding a very important issue in churchlife, was, in some ways, everybody’s favourite apostle; many of us can identify with his failures, his impulsiveness, and feel encouraged that even someone like Peter can be received back to the fold by the Lord Jesus.
But we need to be honest with ourselves and with God if we desire to repent and to correct our failures and shortcomings in our service unto God. We need to ask whether we can say like Peter, “Lord…you know that I love you” (John 21:15-17,NIV). No doubt, when we fail, we can tell the Lord that we let him down and we have made a terrible and awful mistake, but in the depths of our hearts, do we still love Him and can we say that we desire, more than anything, to love Him more and more and better?
Becoming honest, realistic, and responsive to the Son of God was the path of Simon Peter’s progress – this is the track and path for Jesus’ true disciples – this is the way you and I must go! May the Lord lead us individually, and collectively, this way, and may we be willing and humble to follow.
More than ever, the church must uphold and defend the WORD, and also more than ever, in the last days, the testimony and witness of God’s church is critical.
ARE WE TRULY LISTENING TO GOD’S WARNING AND EXHORTATION?
When Jesus was brought before Pilate prior to his crucifixion, there was a brief exchange between him and Pilate:
“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate (John 18:33). Jesus replied, “Is that your idea,” “or did others talk to you about me?”
“Am I a Jew?” PIlate replied, “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate….but he did not stay for the reply but went out to the Jews…Obviously, Pilate was not interested in what ‘truth’ is; neither was he willing to seek the truth with all his heart.
This conversation between our Lord Jesus and Pilate is interesting: Notice that it reveals that Jesus did affirm that he was a king but his kingdom is not of this world – it is in fact the kingdom of God which he came to inaugurate – and this inauguration requires him to suffer and die, and it is not by battles and fight that this kingdom would come about.
Interestingly, Jesus also reveals that his kingdom is founded upon TRUTH and those who are on the side of truth would listen to him (recall Jesus saying ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life, No one comes to the Father (God the Father) except through me.” (John 14:6)
We noted that Pilate was not really interested in the ‘Truth’ and he did not bother to find out diligently what is ‘Truth’; if he were, he might have come to the way, the truth and the life in God (and this reflects the reality in the lives of many individuals when they are faced with Jesus and His claims). In the OT, God reveals that various ones would find Him if they seek Him with all their hearts; unfortunately, many prefer to seek the idols of wealth, prosperity, status, etc. instead of the true God of the universe. Even the Jews and their leader preferred to cling to their position and status rather than to stand with the TRUTH.
In that light, Pilate had a real opportunity to find the truth and to enter the kingdom of God, but he missed it completely. He was afraid when he noted the claims of Jesus (which were unusual and impressive), and he was also fearful of the crowds which were clamouring for the crucifixion of Jesus. Concerned for his own status and governmental position, Pilate put himself first rather than the truth and justice required of those in a ruling position. Are we truly listening to God – his warning and exhortation??
In the OT, when Noah was asked to build an ark (a huge boat) so that he and his family could escape God’s judgment through the flood, Noah complied. However, those around him were laughing and jeering at him – fancy building a huge boat in the middle of the desert – where is the flood, where is the rain? When the rain came and the flood arose, they desperately were knocking to come in, into the ark, to no avail. It was God who sought to destroy them because He saw that the wickedness of the then ‘world’ was extreme and evil was present everywhere.
When God rained ‘fire and fury’ on Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot was told to escape by running away from the city with his family. Lot spoke to his sons-in law and they thought Lot was joking (somewhat like people of the world today when they hear from the Bible that God is going to destroy the world, this time not with the flood, but with fire).
Even Lot’s wife, in the midst of fleeing from the city with the family, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. The ‘looking back’ on her part perhaps indicates that her heart was still with the city and the possessions she left behind. Apparently, those things were more important to her than her life and the exhortation and warning from God (this speaks of so-called believers who harbour and pursue material possessions more than God and HIs ways – and such ones may end up like Lot’s wife).
Are we truly listening to God’s warning and exhortation? If you are not a follower of Jesus, think of Pilate and his response to Jesus ,and also the people in Noah’s time (who were laughing at Noah); also remember the sons-in-law of Lot and their response, thinking that it was all a joke.
If you claim to be a Christian and a believer, recall the response of Lot’s wife. What takes first place in your hearts? What is the most important value and conviction in your life?? Is it God and His kingdom, or is it the many idols offered by the fallen world and the evil one?
In the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness, Satan told Jesus to worship him and he would give Jesus the world. Jesus refused to comply, and he declared that we must worship God, and God alone. But some so-called believers are prepared to receive from the evil one just a tiny fraction of the world and compromise their worship of God at the same time. How foolish!!
Scriptures tell us that “everything in the world – the cravings of sinful people, the lust of their eyes and their boasting about what they have and do – comes not from the Father (God) but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:15-17 TNIV)
ARE YOU TRULY LISTENING??