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ONLY Scripture – Sola Scriptura

The HOLY BIBLE IS: The written word of God from scripture.

lord. What does it mean?

Jesus is Lord.

What does that mean?

Is this a Kingly title… like, “Sir Jesus, most exalted ruler” of someone or some land or maybe even some angels? Is that what you mean by, Jesus is lord?

I say this tongue-in-cheek, but the question of the title ‘lord’ probably yields a not much better answer in most of our freedom-loving minds.

Lord: a broad definition from the Oxford dictionary

Origin Old English hlāford, from hlāfweard ‘bread-keeper’, from a Germanic base (see loaf1, ward)

Last on the Oxford list: Our Lord
10 Used as a title for God or Jesus Christ:

IF a man holds all your bread, he literally lords it over you – you are servant of the lord over the bread of your existence.

Think about wars and war lords (in the middle ages, the Islamic wars & Crusades); even now war-torn parts of Africa, Asia, Arab lands, the Middle East; poor European and Russian wilderness regions; poor areas of Mexico, Central and South America; many islands worldwide – lords of violence enslave and murder their unwilling victims.

Think about the dependence of the poor on the rule of an over-lord, cruel men commanded by evil and cruel men who control the bread, the rice, the trade, the labor, the sex traffic, the drug traffic, the oil…

Are there not lords of evil throughout the earth?

It is no wonder that Jesus Christ stated categorically:

“No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.” – Luke 16:13

It is a matter of life and death to be dependent on a lord. Indeed we are a slave to whatever or whoever feeds us when we have nowhere else to go or no one else upon whom we can rely.

The large master-slave story of the Old Testament is found in Exodus. Joseph was sold by his brothers (lords of the eleven tribes of Israel) into slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh later became lord and ruler over all the tribes of Israel.

The LORD, Jehovah,The Existing One, sent Moses to Pharaoh to demand: Let my people go.

The LORD will rule His people and He will only give them into the hand of another for His refining purpose.

Consider that in reference to God saving Israel from their Master, Pharaoh; and that the lord over the bread of our very existence is ruler over our lives; Jesus boldly proclaimed:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” – John 6:51

Lord is used in other contexts of authority throughout the Bible. Sarah calls Abraham her husband, ‘my lord,’ for example. And Jesus points to His authority when He taught, “For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

Jesus had asked the traditional religious ‘authorities: “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son?” – Luke 20:41-47

The word “Lord” is used 7836 times in the King James Bible.

Authority must have some importance in the lives of the followers of God.

Simply stated: He IS God and we are not.

In these freedom-loving, self-serving last days, let christians recall the chilling (or should I say rather: the fiery, damning) words of Jesus:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” – Matthew 7:21

¹⁹Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Let your ears hear, unfruitful christian, the damning caution of the one you call, ‘lord.’

Yes, we are free from the Law, from earthly rulers, even Bishops and over-lords. We have the grace of Jesus Christ and forgiveness of the Cross.

We need no intercessor (with exclusive access to the Holy Spirit) to intervene for us as Priest, father or mother of Perfect Son of Man. We need pray through no dead saint, alive in the Spirit. We are free from all of that.

Yet by the authority of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the saints (that is, you and me, beloved faithful brother, obedient sister in the Lord) have a relationship of love, a fellowship of grace and mercy with the LORD of all mercy, Lord of all the Heavens and the earth; Judge of all men, ruler of all creation!

Are we not, fellow men and women of dust, sinful in our every leaning away from our loving Heavenly Father, the command and example of the Living Son of God the Father, and the merciful leading of the Holy Spirit to the overflowing streams of Living Water – are we not perishing ashes of fools destined for the fires of destruction?

Who IS your LORD?

Is there not a price to pay for taking up the Cross of Christ Jesus?

Christians were persecuted in Rome, in Syria, in Greece, in Asia in the first century for proclaiming Jesus Christ as LORD. Are the days not coming, even this day for some believers, to suffer once more for boldly bowing down ONLY to Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Savior?

Romans 10:

… if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John:

19:16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

He Was and IS and Is to come, the LORD!

Jesus IS LORD!

What does it mean to you?

What must you do now (while it is yet today)?

February 25, 2015
My Love – 6 – If I have not love

‘I’m not happy.’

‘I met someone’

IF you claim to be a follower of the Bridegroom of the church, Jesus Christ and things don’t go quite your way, would you tell Jesus to ‘get out’?

Would you look for someone better, who might make you happy in this world?

(Did God really say, “Don’t eat of the fruit of that tree?”)

IF you are unfaithful to Christ’s love, would it not be adultery?

Though you claim to be a follower of Jesus, so had Judas!

This is the unfortunate false witness of some with a cross in front of their home, ‘christianity’ claimed before ‘friends’ as religion, their stamp of approval before the world. These claim many things by the ‘Blood of Jesus,’ yet their more bold witness of worldly sins again crucifies hope in His body and true Bride, the church.

Some have heard the following, even at weddings, known as the ‘love chapter.’

IF Jesus Christ is your love, listen then to true love, you adulterers of Christ!

1 Corinthians 13

The Way of Love

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

I have heard in churches the noisy gongs of ‘single moms,’ divorced grandmas and others clanging the noise of their own ‘higher’ worship, ‘tongues of angels,’ God’s messengers; as if we should follow these women, rather than Christ Jesus as Lord. Will they who are not bowed down to their husband or any man in Christ not lead the faith astray with their babel?

²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

I have heard prophesy given in the church. Is it from God? Why then did the church not record the very prediction of God given? Is the prophesy confirmed and witnessed to the glory of our Lord, Christ Jesus? Yes, sometimes; but believer beware of the wolves in our midst.

Have you not endured some claiming such superior knowledge and understanding of mysteries who would teach us of their ‘faith to remove mountains’ in their Sunday school class or church small group?

Did you experience the embrace of Christ’s love in their Pharisaical instruction? Did you hear love for you in their teaching or prophesy?

I, too, have received prophesy and spoken it. The revelation of the Lord is a terrible and awesome thing!

Some prophesy has not yet come to pass. For all I know, I may have been given some spirit of deception to accomplish the Lord’s overpowering purpose. Yet in these last days we must fear the Lord, always listening for the approaching trumpet of truth over the blaring cries of some claiming ‘understanding.’

Read your Bible and pray for revelation by the Spirit of Truth in scripture.

³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

‘And though I bestow,‘ states the King James; bestow, an interesting word more related to charity as we understand it – charity, agape love of God, used in application throughout these verses of the love chapter.

Bestow: to feed by putting a bit or crumb (of food) into the mouth; of infants, young animals etc.; to feed, nourish to give a thing; to feed someone, feed out to

Feed on God’s word in scripture. Nourish your spirit in prayer.

Does this not also bring to mind the love a father and a mother, given to their child, their teen, their grown adult children, even their spouse given in marriage into your own family? Is this not also the gift of adoption given by our Heavenly Father through Christ to gentile believers (like most of us)?

Are we not all poor and needy, dependent on our Father’s forgiving gracious love?

Though I give to the poor, but have not love…

Is that our charity of witness?

Now that I have shared the seriousness of God’s love for us, allow me to share the more familiar actions of love often and appropriately shared at weddings:

⁴Love is patient and kind;

love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant ⁵

or rude.

Are you patient to your spouse, to whom you are joined to each other and God by your vows?

Is your husband (or wife) patient with you – patient for you?

Is your love for your beloved partner until death – kind?

Are you, dear father, and you, dear mother, kind to your son – kind to your daughter – kind to each and all of your children (obedient and faithful, or rebellious and hateful)? Are you kind to your adopted child, your step-child, your child (even an adult child) given into your nurture by God to raise and guide in the Lord, Christ Jesus?

Is your love patient and kind even to your prodigal teen?

Is your love for your spouse, your children, your brothers and sisters in Christ ALWAYS patient and kind? Lord help us, impatient and unkind sinners!

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Are you just another ‘spoiled child’ of God in your relationships with others in your daily life?

⁷Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Lord: Convict us and forgive us, for the sake of your Son, our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Help me – help us to love you more and more; help us, miserable saved sinners, to love those you love with your overflowing agape love.

⁸Love never ends.

To be continued…

February 16, 2015
My Love – 5 – Sex

The lure of eros…

as a bird rushes into a snare;
    he does not know that it will cost him his life.

– Proverbs 7:23b

When a Man Loves a Woman

Then the LORD God said,

“It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper who is just right for him.”

Genesis 2:18 NLT

23 Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. – Genesis 2 ESV

Eros: sexual love of a man for a woman and of a woman for a man; often misleading us into sin, though God intends this most intimate love exclusively for a man and his wife to join them together as one.

By sexual intercourse we become one in the flesh and in the spirit with another human being. It is a great and wonderful mystery.

Genesis 4: Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.” And again, she bore his brother Abel… 25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.”

In the beginning, a husband and wife and children.

Do you recall that the controversy between Cain and his brother was over worship of God? Two kinds of love both dependent on the love of God.

It’s all relational and Genesis continues with these themes of interconnected types of love which all affect our relationship not only to God, not only between a husband and wife, and not only between parents and sons and daughters; but all relationships within families and beyond the love and boundaries of family.

These intimate relationships all become quickly complex. (Just take the love of Jacob for Rachel, for example.) At the middle of many intimate controversies we will often find eros, the sexual attraction between a man and a woman.

We remain united in spirit to one we have engaged and known in the flesh. It is an unknowable mystery. The awesome connection of sex becomes even too weighty for our own hearts when we stray outside of God’s will.

Yet Love Is a Many Splendored Thing within the boundaries, commitment and vows of marriage.

Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth. – Proverbs 5:18

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love. 5:19b

He who finds a wife finds a good thing
and obtains favor from the LORD. Proverbs 18:22

Man adam, and woman taken from man and given to man by God that they might be one. A godly wife for a godly husband to bear godly children, to keep boundaries of godly families… from this we have strayed far in these last days.

Eros is a sensual soft linen of the marriage bed, perfumed with the nectars of passion between a man and a woman in love.

How lightly does the world of the flesh misrepresent this beautiful love given to us by God.

The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.

The Bride Confesses Her Love

She

²Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
For your love is better than wine;
³    your anointing oils are fragrant;
your name is oil poured out;
    therefore virgins love you.
⁴Draw me after you; let us run.
    The king has brought me into his chambers.

Solomon and His Bride Delight in Each Other

He

⁸If you do not know,
    O most beautiful among women,
…

⁹I compare you, my love,
    to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots.
¹⁰Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
    your neck with strings of jewels.

Do you not know how the stallion and the mare mate in passion?

The love song of Solomon for his bride becomes as sensual as any erotica or story of sexual love you will ever read. I commend it to you, lovers betrothed, husband and wife. God has intended our love for good and for our pleasure.

Song of Solomon – read by Max McLean

February 14, 2015