Saturday, December 4, 2010

Save Now, Send Now

Psalm 118:25

It is unknown who wrote this particular Psalm, but its usage is well documented. This is a Messianic Psalm, meaning that it prophesies of the Messiah, whom we believe to be Jesus. On the 8th Day of the Feast of Tabernacles, which Jews call Sukkot, there would be a sacrificial pouring out of water called a “water libation” at the Temple. The high priest would draw the water from the pool of Siloam and carry it back to the outer courtyard of the temple in a golden pitcher. When the high priest would pour out the water, the people would waive their palm branches and sing this verse from the 118th Psalm.

The first phrase of the verse, “Save now” is “Hosanna” in Hebrew and it means “savior or helper”. This is the phrase that the crowd cried out as Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final days of His life, casting palm branches at the feet of the donkey that He rode upon (John 12:13).
The last phrase begins with “send now” and both are framed with “beseech thee” and the all-caps version of “LORD”. “Beseech” denotes supplication while the word LORD is the English spelling of the Hebrew word for “covenant God”. Those who sing this song on the final day of the Feast are seeking God to send a Savior and they are appealing to Covenant to receive Him.

Jesus is in the outer courtyard of the temple when the high priest poured the water from the golden vessel over the altar on the 8th day of the Feast. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink’” (John 7:37). Waiting for the moment of peak attention to be upon the pouring of the water, Jesus has stolen the attention of the crowd away, aiming the song that is being sung in His direction. He is the Savior that they long for; He is the answer to their supplication; He is their Covenant God!

Notice the two things that the Hebrews were asking for; which Jesus proclaims that He is: salvation and prosperity. Their request is for Hosanna to save them and for the Covenant God to send them prosperity. Jesus answers this request when He offers living water springing up within us (John 7:38). There is no divorcing the concept that BOTH salvation and prosperity are found in the living water of the Holy Spirit.

Some shy away from any reference to prosperity from the pulpit, and believe me I used to be one of those people. I grew weary of hearing the “prosperity gospel”; but that is before I realized that there is NO SUCH THING as the prosperity gospel, any more than there is a “healing gospel” or a “faith gospel”. There is only the gospel of Jesus Christ, which provides prosperity and healing and comes by faith. Man taints all good things with his own philosophies, so do not allow God’s goodness to be lessened by bad teaching.

See your Jesus as having provided both salvation and prosperity at the cross. Just as you know that you are righteous even though you do not always see righteousness come out of your life; know that you are prosperous in Christ, though you do not always see that prosperity. Stand on what His Word says about you and see it, not in you and your abilities, but in His finished work.

Friday, December 3, 2010

How to Pay God Back

Psalm 116:12, 13

In light of all that Jesus has done for us through His sacrificial death on the cross, shouldn’t we owe Him something? We are so loved of God that He would put all of our sins and sicknesses into His own Son and then kill Him so that we might be saved. With that love in our hearts, surely we should spend our lives paying Him back?

Believer, never forget this; what Christ paid for at the cross costs WAY TOO MUCH for you to even begin paying Him back. No moral code that you adhere to will pay back His perfect morality. No system of regimental prayer and study will compensate Him for His complete relationship with His Father’s face and voice. No financial gift could ever compare to the royal diadem that He laid aside to live on this earth in human flesh. In short, there is not enough morality, or righteousness or money in the world to give back to God what He has so freely given to us.

The great Apostle Paul knew that he was a debtor, but not to God: “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise” (Romans 1:14). He did not see his debt as being God-ward but rather man-ward. Due to the finished work in us, we owe it to everyone that we come in contact with to show them the great “gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16).

By our human nature, we desire to work for all good things in our life. This instinct does not die easily, and many times as believers under the covenant of grace, we realize that while we cannot save ourselves, we surely should have some role to play in living our lives as a sort of “pay-back”. In fact, I recently spotted a bumper sticker that said, “He died for you, the least you could do is live for Him”. This sticker epitomized the condition of man, “work for that which is free; and payback all that is given”.

The only time that Paul uses the word “debt” in any of his writings is found in Romans 4:4. The verse follows Paul’s declaration of Abraham being counted righteous by believing God. “Now to him that works is the reward not counted of grace, but of debt”. In other words, what you work for (either to get or to pay-back) makes God a debtor to you.

When the Psalmist was faced with this age-old predicament of paying God back for all of His goodness, he stumbled upon the most perfect of solutions. Due to God’s nature as a giver and as one who truly loves us unconditionally, David saw what he could do that would bring the maximum amount of honor to God. Just after he asks the question, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me?”, he concludes:

“I will take the cup of salvation…” (Psalms 116:13). Wow! David’s answer as to how to pay God back was to TAKE MORE! God is so gracious and loving and ready to bless us with all good things, that the only way to re-pay Him for this goodness is to honor that grace and favor by resting in it. Take of all that the cross paid for you, for our taking honors His giving.

Alexander the Great once passed a beggar on the side of the road. The beggar sought alms and Alexander told the man in charge of the money to give the beggar a gold coin. As they rode away, one of Alexander’s advisors leaned towards him and asked, “Why did you give that beggar a gold coin when a copper coin would have sufficed?” Alexander answered, “Copper coins suit the beggar’s need but gold coins suit Alexander’s giving”. Honor your great God by taking all that He has paid for. Hallelujah!

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Too Proud To Beg

Psalm 109:10

Who would beg, the prince or the pauper? The answer is obvious, for the prince has no reason to beg. He has all and is all, while the pauper has nothing and is a nobody by social standards. Due to your faith in Christ and His finished work would you consider yourself more a prince or a pauper? If you think it too haughty to consider to yourself a prince, so you choose pauper by default, you are not showing forth humility; but rather you are doing serious insult to the finished work of Jesus Christ.

When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, he went from “supplanter” to “prince with God” (Genesis 32:28), though Jacob had done no princely act. This coronation was an act of God’s abundant grace, independent from Jacob’s righteousness. Solomon called his lover (the church) a “prince’s daughter” (Song of Solomon 7:1) and Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). John told us that “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Now, ask yourself again, are you closer to a prince or a pauper?

Many believers may say that they are a prince with God, but they act more like a pauper on the street. We beg God for things, pleading and crying aloud, making a show of our effort of supplication. The impression that must fall on the minds of the unbelievers around us is that our God is very hesitant to do good things for His people, and that it is difficult to get His attention. We pray this way many times because we honestly think that God is far away and that we must prove to Him how badly that we want things before He even stops to listen. This attitude paints God as distant, cold and unwilling.

David’s 109th Psalm speaks of wicked people who have fought against him “without a cause” (Psalm 109:3). As an individual living under the Old Covenant, he petitions God to judge and condemn the man (verse 7). These verses are worthy of commentary on the subject of how God has judged and condemned all of our sins in the body of Jesus, but for purposes of this devotion, look closely at the wording of verse 10:

“Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek also out of their desolate places”. Notice that I dropped the italicized words “their bread” because they are not in the original Hebrew. Children without a father are “continually vagabonds” and they “beg”. That which they seek, they seek out of “desolate places”. You and I have a Father, so what cause do we have to ever “beg”?

When we beg, we are coming from a place of desolation, where we think that God does not want to bless us. Some Christians say that this is a humble place, where saints realize how useless that they are and they lower themselves in the presence of a holy God to show that they are unworthy. This is to pray and act like the cross never happened! You are not an unredeemed, unregenerate sinner, so stop acting like it! You are a joint-heir with Christ and you have been made as one of His sons (Galatians 4:5).

The word “plead” occurs 39 times in the Old Testament but never once in the New Testament. Under the Old Covenant, men had to plead with God, for there was an ever-present consciousness of sin due to the fact that the blood of bulls and goats could not take them away (Hebrews 10:4). Now that we rest under a better covenant, we have a mediator who does our petitioning for us. We no longer need to plead with God, for Jesus does all of our pleading for us. We are not fatherless children. We are not paupers. We have been given power to become the sons of God! (John 1:12)

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Then Came Amalek

Exodus 17:8-13

This passage chronicles the only fight that Israel had between Egypt and Sinai. Once they go under the Covenant of Law they are found fighting constantly, but here, while still under the Abrahamic Covenant of promise, they have one fight that defines the position of the believer under God’s grace and favor.

Israel arrives at Rephidim, which is “resting places” in Hebrew, showing us the place of rest that we have in Christ. Immediately, Amalek comes to fight with Israel in the resting place, which makes sense due to the fact that Amalek comes from the Hebrew root word “amal” meaning “worrisome labor; pain”.

The chief fight for the believer is not against Satan or the forces of the darkness of this world, but it is against “worrisome labor”. In a nutshell, our battle is to enter into the “resting place” while everything around us tells us to worry and work. The Apostle Paul knew this when he instructed the believer to “labor therefore to enter into that rest” (Hebrews 4:11). This is the token statement in the entire New Covenant where Paul tells the believer to labor for anything. Isn’t it interesting that our one labor is to stop laboring?

Moses sends Joshua into the valley to confront the Amalekites while he goes to the top of the mountain to stand with the rod of God. Moses understood the symbolism of the rod, as it had been held up to part the waters of the Red Sea, signifying God’s arm of strength. With the arm of God fighting for Israel, Moses knew that they could not lose. As long as the covenant keeper was lifted up, there would be victory then, and if we hold up covenant now, the victory is ours through the covenant that Jesus made with His Father at Calvary.

No matter how much we know about covenant and grace and God’s goodness and kindness, as we labor to enter into rest, our own works will most likely become involved. Moses’ hands began to grow heavy (Exodus 17:12) as a sign of our own works growing more and more wearisome. Though we know the answers, sometimes we falter and fail in their application. We need something more to help us than our own knowledge and intelligence.

“There remains therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:9, 10). This is not to insinuate that you will not cease from your works until you enter into His rest, but rather that you will not enter into His rest UNTIL you cease from your own works. When the hands grow heavy, it is time to sit down, just as Moses did. Look at what he sits on, and who helps him:

“But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up His hands” (Exodus 17:12). Moses sits upon a stone, which is the solid rock of Christ, which Jesus said if we build our house upon, it will stand during the storm (Matthew 7:25). Aaron and Hur are a type of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, holding up our hands. In this position, the believer is off of their own feet and being supported completely by the finished work of Jesus. Only here will we see victory in our valleys, when we are resting on the mountain.

One final note: the word “steady” which describes how Moses’ hands remained until the going down of the sun is the same word in Hebrew as “faith”. Let your faith rest on the perfect, finished work of Jesus until the setting of your sun, when you meet Him in glory.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

When God Crossed His Hands

Genesis 48:8-20

The time had come for the old patriarch Jacob to die, which meant that the time of the blessing upon his children and grand-children was to begin. Now 147 years old, his eye-sight almost gone, and the sickness upon him that will end his life, Jacob begins the process of doling out words of blessing and wisdom by starting with the sons of Joseph. This picture, nearly 4000 years old is a type and shadow of what Jesus would do for all of us on a dark day at Calvary.

The Israeli way was for a man to lay his hands upon his children and pass a blessing down to them. He could lay his left hand upon any and all of his children and prophesy on them promises and goodness, but his right hand was placed on one son alone. This blessing was normally reserved for the firstborn son, as he was to be the legal heir of the family fortune and the father’s name. Jacob had disturbed this trend when he had cheated his older brother Esau out of the blessing as a young man. So powerful was the right-hand blessing that once given, it was considered irreversible (Genesis 27:35).

Joseph marches his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, toward his father so that they may receive blessing. Since Manasseh is the oldest, Joseph desires for him to receive the best of his father’s blessings so he guides him towards Jacob’s right hand. When the boys arrive in front of Jacob, the text says that he guided his hands “wittingly” (Genesis 48:14), meaning that he placed them on purpose. He crossed his arms, laying his right hand on the youngest boy, Ephraim.

Joseph saw the apparent mistake of his father, and thinking that it was done due to Jacob’s inability to see properly, he grabs his father’s hands and tries to uncross them (48:17, 18). Jacob is well aware of what he has done and he explains to Joseph that while the eldest son will be great, the younger one will be greater. This entire scenario is our redemption in shadow.

Israel is God’s firstborn (Exodus 4:22), while the church of Jesus Christ, compiled predominately of Gentiles is the second choice of the gospel (Acts 13:46). Israel rejected the gospel message, so God turned His love and favor towards all that will accept His Son Jesus. Jesus prophesied that the first will be last and the last will be first (Matthew 19:30), meaning that Israel was first called but will be the last saved, while the Gentiles were the last called but the first saved.

The firstborn son was the deserving son by all legal rights and privileges while the last children were considered blessed just to be involved. At Calvary, Jesus Christ saw both the firstborn and the last and crossed His hands for us, offering salvation and redemption to the less deserving, younger born, Gentile world. Because God crossed His hands at the cross, you and I rest beneath the right-hand, best blessings of God.

You can hold your head high today, not because you are the best but because Jesus crossed His hands for you. Due to that crossing (and that “cross”), you are greatly blessed, highly favored and deeply loved.

Monday, November 29, 2010

When God Gives a Gift

Romans 11:29

Have you ever heard anyone say, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away”? This quote is out of context from the book of Job, where Job says, “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away” (Job 1:21). Since God gives the reader a front row seat into the heavenlies in the preceding verses of that chapter, you and I know that it was not the Lord that took away from Job at all; it was the devil (Job 1:12). However, man has tried to explain why things come and go so God gets the blame.

Believer, remember this, and don’t ever forget it: Whatever God gives, HE CAN NEVER take away! The reason that God’s gifts are eternal is that God gives gifts with no strings attached. In other words, He never changes His mind about what He has given. In this, as well as many other areas, He is completely unlike us.

We might give a gift to someone and then ask for it back for one reason or the other, or perhaps we give a gift and are then unsatisfied with how the recipient is using it. We may have too much integrity to ask for the gift back, but we will make sure that they know how unhappy that we are with what they are doing with the gift that we went to such great lengths to give them.

In my early days of ministry, I heard teachings on this passage from Romans regarding two things in Christianity: the call to ministry and the gifts of the Spirit. That teaching said that if God called you to preach there were two things that you should be sure of: you had to do it or you went to hell and that you were always going to be called, no matter what. I have since learned that the blood of Jesus is the pre-requisite for heaven, not obedience to the field of ministry and if you are called, you won’t have to worry about ever wanting out because God calls us according to our will and good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).

The gifts of the Spirit are also a part of that verse’s interpretation, as they are given by God with no strings attached. Actually, Paul says in the next chapter that these gifts are given to us “according to the grace that is given to us” (Romans 12:6). Note the direct link between the gifts and the grace. That is awesome, but there is more!

When Paul says, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance”, he is pointed in his use of “gifts” as a plural word and “calling” as a singular word. The gifts vary in that they include not only the gifts of the Spirit but any and all things that God gives us free of charge, such as grace. The calling deals with the call of the Spirit upon men’s hearts, inviting them to come to Jesus. “Repentance” speaks of changing one’s mind; thus when God gives you any gift or calls you to Him, He never changes His mind about selecting you.

What is the ultimate gift that God has given to every single person that believes? Paul answered this for us back in chapter 5: “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17). Notice that because of the death of Jesus, God’s righteousness is a gift to us through our faith. If God gives righteousness as a gift and then promises that He will never change His mind about giving us a gift, can God see you as anything less than righteous for eternity? You ponder the answer to that one and let the Holy Spirit glorify the beauty of Jesus today!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

No Mixture

Romans 11:6

Though it needs no paraphrasing (it is that simple), I will add my own little twist to this amazing verse:

“If we are saved by grace, then there are no more works involved in it, because if there are works then grace isn’t really grace. But if we are saved by works, then there is no room for grace (free favor), because if there is any grace then all of our works don’t really work”.

Can this be plainer? It is incredible that this verse is in the Bible, the New Covenant at that, and it is preached on and commented on so little. When I see it, I am incredulous that we are not making a much bigger deal out of the absolute necessity that works and grace stay forever separate.

What man calls “balance” God calls “mixture”, which is why there is no way to strike a balance between law and grace. Some hear of God’s grace and they counter it with, “Yes, God’s grace is good but you need to use God’s Law to show people how to live”. They are saying that too much grace is bad for you. Let’s see what God’s word says:

“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17) – This means that truth will always fall on the side of grace and Jesus is truth (John 14:6). For this cause, grace is not a doctrine but a person; and His name is Jesus! Too preach too much grace is to preach too much Jesus.

“The strength of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56) – Sin gains both strength and momentum when the Law is applied. This is why God gave the Law, so that man would see his inability beneath such a heavy load of sin. Do you want a sin revival? Insert the Law (Romans 7:9).

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11, 12) – Grace has “appeared” and it is currently “teaching us”. Grace appears in the form of Jesus and Jesus is constantly teaching us. Notice that grace teaches you how to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and it even teaches you how to live righteously. Opponents of grace say that you will never learn these things without the Law. The Apostle Paul said otherwise.

“No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish” (Luke 5:37). The New Wine is the Holy Spirit of the New Covenant, which can never be housed in the wineskin of the Law under the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant cannot house the power of the Spirit which is why you live by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil under the Law, but you have your senses exercised to DISCERN (not just to know) both good and evil under the New Covenant (Hebrews 5:14).

Finally, notice Jesus’ message to the church at Laodicea:

“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16) – Lukewarm water is made by combining hot with cold. Jesus would rather you either embrace the warmth of grace or the coldness of the Law, but to try and marry the two is spiritual confusion and adultery. Let’s put works in their rightful place, which is to show others that we are already saved, not to show God that we are good enough to save (James 2:18).