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Tag: deuteronomy

  • Whose Sons and Daughters?

    Whose Sons and Daughters?

    A Rebellious Son

    Deuteronomy 21:18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

    This is the Law as God has given concerning rebellious sons. (Yes, we have grace and the Law is long forgotten even by the Jews; for like God’s adopted children, His chosen sons and daughters are also a rebellious people.)

    Many rebellious christian parents live in rebellion against Christ.

    How can the son of your seed or the fruit of your womb become faithful to the Lord when their mother flaunts disobedience and their father shrugs off the counsel of the Lord; IF even both father and mother remained joined as one in their home as witness to God’s unfailing love?

    Christ Jesus used the example of children more than once.

    IF we are to call ourselves children of Christ (Christians) and call God our Father, should we not set the example of Christ’s holiness between our Holy God and our children called to holiness?

    • “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did… John 8:39b

    We must follow Him with the faith of a little child as did the Disciples. We must accept the discipline and rebuke of Jesus, growing through scripture and the Spirit in a full knowledge of our Lord and Master (as the Disciples would call Jesus.)

    What a responsibility for parents to be the master (rhabbi) of God’s children given into our care for a brief time.

    Think of your own children (of whatever age) and hear the close relationship of leading between Jesus and those in His care for three years prior to the occasion of this little-noted scripture from this time leading up to His Holy Sacrifice on the Cross for all the children who call Him, “Lord” and Master:

    John 12

    35 So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”

    The Unbelief of the People

    When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.

    John 13:33 

    • Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’

    Jesus has made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and proclaimed to the crowds that the light of God is with them for only a while longer until they will walk in darkness. He and His Disciples break the bread of the Passover Seder together in an upper room in Jerusalem, after Jesus has washed their feet… each of them, including Judas.

    Hear how Jesus loves and addresses them:

    “Little children, Jesus calls these grown men who serve Him as Lord.”

    What does this have to with the role of a Christian dad, a Christian mom?

    We hold this same love and responsibility for the little sheep of our family fold.

    Do your children see the uncompromising righteousness of Christ and His overflowing love through you, beloved Christian parent?

    Are you a parent in the Image of Jesus?

    To be continued…

  • The Fruit of Good Advice

    The Fruit of Good Advice

    Luke 6:36 KJV Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

    Jesus has been giving advice to the multitudes, especially those who will hear His advice, overflowing with proverbs and parables for our daily life.

    Will we choose blessing (‘Happy are you…’)? We call them the beatitudes. OR will we choose curse? Jesus gives the multitudes choices (including repentance) which we must make. In fact (as we just read in Luke 6:27-35) Jesus has told us how we must love even our enemies.

    The Apostle John has emphasized so often the love of God through Christ Jesus, as “our Father” that we may have missed in the verse above this first reference of the Gospel of Luke to calling God our Father, as Christ Jesus has just said to the multitudes after giving out all the good advice of the sermon on the mount.

    Therefore, you be merciful, as your Father God is also merciful.

    Yes, the Beatitudes and parables are a call to blessings from God – a call to do good and not evil – a call to receive God’s blessing and not curse; but Jesus points out that His teaching is more than that. Christ Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man teaches with authority that WE have through Him a relationship of family – a relationship of familiarity (as a son or daughter has of their own father) – a relationship of love (capable of both discipline and mercy). What will you choose?

    Before the Son of Man, the Prophets gave advice to God’s people – good advice AND warning. The people did not often listen (or perhaps they feared and listened for a time and then fell away from the Lord). What then, was the advice from God (through the Prophets)? REPENT! Turn back from your evil ways to the LORD your God. He is a God of mercy IF you will repent of your sin and turn back to His blessings.

    Before the Kings and the Prophets, God led His chosen people, His chosen family, Holy to the Lord; the LORD God had a relationship with His faithful family members (though they were a stiff-necked people). The LORD led His chosen ones out of the slavery and evil of Egypt. The LORD led His family through the Sea of Reeds and through the barren wilderness. The LORD saved them and blessed them and gave His chosen family His Law – He IS a personal Father to His people.

    Yet the people feared the Lord and could not stand in His Holy Presence; therefore the LORD appointed Moses as His Prophet and Aaron as His Priest to stand between His Almighty Holiness and the many sins of His people.

    Repentance and Forgiveness

    “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, 2 and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.

    5 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

    17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.

    And though our Father God had shown great mercy to His people and great patience for the generations who opposed His righteous rule over His own family, the people fed by the hand of the Lord in the wilderness often chose curse and not blessing. His stiff-necked self-serving children refused to worship the Lord our God and Father.

    My child, don’t reject the LORD’s discipline,
    and don’t be upset when he corrects you. –     Proverbs 3:11 NLT 

    The call of God to His children through Moses, through the Proverbs of His Kings and through the personal teaching of our personal Savior Christ Jesus, the only Son of God is a call to the Perfect love of the Holy Father of all creation. Jesus calls us to relationship through His Authority and love.

    So in concluding His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus in effect asks us (by referring to our Father’s mercy): will you listen to your Father?

    It is with both the Authority and love of the Father that Jesus taught those on the hillsides and in the towns to REPENT.

    An IF NOT, what therefore?

    Certainly hell and damnation; but Jesus has more to say on our free choice of curse over blessing given through His mercy.

    To be continued…

     

  • Esau I Hated

    Esau I Hated

    Malachi 1:2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord.

    But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord.

    “Yet I have loved Jacob 3 but Esau I have hated.

    We pray to God: ‘Give me a blessing.’ ‘I cannot do this alone?’ ‘Please help me, Lord.’ We acknowledge God as our Father and as our Lord. The Lord, our Father in heaven then blesses us. He provides a loving mate. He provide godly guidance for our misguided children. He heals a dreaded disease. He provides job after job and puts food on our table. He places us in the congregation of Christians who care for our needs and for our soul. Again, and again, the Lord brings us blessing and not curse when we are not in the low place and do not even pray for blessing.

    And what is our thanks? What is our offering to the Lord? Do we cleave to our beloved husband (or wife)? Do we stand as example of Jesus in our instruction of our children? Do we give thanks to the Lord for healing our body? Do we witness at work of the Lord’s unfailing love? Do we thank Him for the food on our table as if without Him we could not be fed? Do we thank Him that someone does not have to feed us for our inability of health to hold even a spoon? Do we joyfully worship with our loving brothers and sisters in Christ on the Lord’s day? Do we gently guide our children to the house of the Lord?

    We fall back into our sins. We slide back toward the pit. We revel in the ways of the world and witness against Christ as our Lord. We witness against God our Father. We offer the sacrifice of our tithes and offerings to the gods of chance, the gods of addiction and the gods of our evil desires. We bow down and worship the gods of sin!

    But you say, “How have you loved us?”

    Do you understand as you trespass the blessing of the Cross that you sell forever His blessing and grace and love?

    Don’t you know that we are ALL lawbreakers? Don’t you remember what you were before you were adopted into the family of faith, the Household of God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord?

    God is NOT your Father and Christ Jesus is NOT your Lord (for no one will lord it over you) IF you witness against the love and sacrifice and blood of the Cross.

    You reject the Lord. Why, at the Day of your judgment, should the Lord not reject YOU?

    Some of us reject a God that could hate Esau… a God who would hate us. (I spoke to this earlier.) We think of Esau as just a man who lived long ago. We think of Israel as only a land and not a people chosen once by God who rejected God continually and rejected Christ Jesus forever.

    Paul, the Apostle to the gentiles, was once a man of Jacob, chosen by God over Esau.  He hated Christ Jesus, the Messiah of Promise and Blessing of the gentiles. God so loved the world; yet Saul of Tarsus hated the church.

    What if Saul of Tarsus had not finally bowed down to Christ Jesus as Lord? Would he not also be judged with Esau?

    Abram was changed to Abraham. Jacob was changed to Israel. Saul of Tarsus was changed to Paul the Apostle.

    Has God changed you for all eternity by the Cross of Christ Jesus?

    Or do you ask for God’s blessing, then quickly turn from the Lord?

    The books of the Bible, which we so carelessly neglect along with the armor of our salvation, point us so diligently toward salvation (being saved from our great curse of sin and death). Over and over the books of the Bible instruct us in that which we ought to have instructed our children and heeded in our own lives.

    GOD IS a Person. God our Father may hate, but most certainly God our Father does love those who truly love Him.

    Genesis 4: And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

    10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

    Does the Blood of the Cross not cry out against you when you offer to your sin that which is the Lord’s?

    13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden…

    Deuteronomy 11: 26 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.

     Joshua 8:30-35 

    Joshua Renews the Covenant

    30 At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, 31 just as Moses the servant of the Lord…

    34 And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. 35 There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.

    The Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath

    7 And I heard the altar saying,

    “Yes, Lord God the Almighty,
    true and just are your judgments!”

    15 (“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”) 16 And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

    James 5:16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

    3 John 1:2 Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.

    Colossians 1:3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you…

    Pray also for me, that the blessings of God our Father, the Son Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will continue through His work in me, and that His own Blessings to my life may be renewed in His Spirit, obedience, faithfulness and love.