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Tag: job

Job is first of the books of wisdom in the Bible and thought to be the oldest text included in the Bible.

Ashes of Ash Wednesday + a Preparation of Repentance

Ash Wednesday

We pause momentarily today [AD 2022] from consideration of God’s love to prepare for the season of Christ’s Blood of Sacrifice.

Consider your own unrighteousness to receive any grace.

Bow down in the dust of your crumbling bones; cover with ashes your sin-consumed flesh.

Will the LORD not have mercy on me, a sinner?

Who will pay any ransom for your many sins? Who has redeemed the faithful who fall short of righteousness? Who only can cleanse the soul of sin and the heart of continual iniquity?

Jeremiah 6:26

O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth,
and roll in ashes;
make mourning as for an only son,
most bitter lamentation,
for suddenly the destroyer
will come upon us.

Mark 1

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 3:3

Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

2 Peter 2:

But false prophets also arose among the people… And many will follow their sensuality… And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell… if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment…

Repentance Of Sinners: v.12

But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed… They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you…

Peter is warning the church here of those CLAIM to be christians, but actually are wed to Satan the master of their sin.

Is this not a timely loud caution for our contemporary church?

14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray…

20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

Remember in ashes and dust, the turning of Judas from Jesus Christ, our only Lord and Savior.

The ashes of Ash Wednesday traditionally come from the burnt palms of the prior Palm Sunday, a day with the crowds shout, HOSANNA! The KING, our LORD Jesus approaches the gate.

Yet how quickly we turn on HIM, when we see the CROSS we must also bear to follow Jesus.

In this season of preparation for Easter, less than 40 days until the dark celebration of our own sin for which our Lord suffered and died on Good Friday, let us repent in dust and ashes before the Lord our God. Let us bow down to Christ Jesus, who suffered all for our sins that we might be redeemed by His grace to the Light of Eternal Life.

Hebrews 3

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

Are you prepared to meet the LORD your GOD Face to face?

Are you prepared to face Jesus should today bring your last breath of life before eternal Life or prior to Christ’s triumphant return and Judgment?

Like Job, do you repent in dust and ashes before God?

Like Peter, do you come before Jesus Christ confessing, I am a sinful man?

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord in these troubling times?

Mark 8: 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?

38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Yes, false Prophets will come, but the time is not yet.

No man knows the day or the hour. Some claim tolerance with darkness and Jesus.

He is NOT Christ to them. They twist truth into lies with self-serving sinful false prophesy!

Some proclaim loudly choruses of peace, while they proclaim God’s lands for the destruction of evil.

Our United leaders of this world excel as the Chamberlains of peace, rather than admit evil’s destruction of the truth and the truth of evil’s destruction.

Some sing loudly a Hallelujah Chorus to Jesus, while they lead astray softly in the sin of their hidden ways.

Are you a secretive christian, tolerant of those who hate Christ and the Cross?

REPENT in dust and ashes! For in these last days the signs are many and the Day and hour you do not know.

Prepare and wash your soul in the Blood of Christ Jesus, in preparation for the Good Friday of the Cross and our only hope and joy, the Resurrection and Victory of the love of God celebrated in 40 days (God willing) on Easter.

Revelation 7

A Great Multitude from Every Nation

⁹After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, ¹⁰and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

¹³Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” ¹⁴I said to him, “Sir, you know.”

And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

¹⁶They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation 11

The Seventh Trumpet

¹⁵Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”

HALLELUJAH! CHRIST OUR LORD IS! JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN. HE WILL RETURN ON THE CLOUDS IN VICTORY OVER ALL SIN. HE WILL PUNISH ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.

Repent, therefore, and worship Christ Jesus our Lord. Bow down only to Christ in the dust of your flesh and the ashes of your sinfulness. Christ Jesus IS and will judge you and me and all.

Remember you are dust and into dust you will return.

February 18, 2015
Christ’s Corporate Community – a Christmas Question

Isaiah 7

13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?

14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

Will you weary my God also? It is the question of the Prophet. It is the question of the fervent preacher of the Lord’s convicting word. It is the question of Jesus to the ‘church crowd.’

Mark 7: 6 He [Jesus] answered and said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:

‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
7 And in vain they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men…

9 He said to them, “All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition….

… And many such things you do.”

14 When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear Me, everyone, and understand: 15 There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. 16 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!”

The fervent preacher asks a church part-full of those who prefer to have their ears tickled with familiar music and familiar ‘worship,’ “WHY do we hold to our Christian ‘traditions?’”

The challenge of of the prophet Isaiah would be, ‘Does that which makes us feel good weary our Lord God?’

Isaiah and Jesus were not preaching to the gentiles here, but to those who claim to follow God.

The fervent question of the preacher is not for the unchurched or occasional visitor, but a challenge to each of us who attend church to listen to teaching from the Bible.

Answer this, dear brother, dear sister in Christ: WHY do our churches hold to such things for an hour (on most Sundays) and pour defilement from unclean lips the rest of the week?

Have we become so familiar with Jesus Christ that we do not even know Him?

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive…” we witness as audience of our annual Christmas pageants. Our “Christian” traditions (like those against which Jesus later warned the Pharisees) have renewed our warm-fuzzy feelings about Christmas. Yes, Christmas is about BABY jesus.

(‘We say, ‘Merry christmas,’ not ‘happy holidays.’ Everybody knows I’m a good christian who knows what Christmas is all about. I even buy presents for some of my family and sing christmas songs. ‘ I usually go to church on Christmas eve, too.)

But will you weary my God, also?

“Fear not,” say the angels in the Christmas pageant, so we do not even fear the LORD GOD!

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. God with us!

God is ‘with us’ in Jesus Christ. He was born a man (like you and me) and lived and lives yet! Jesus IS God with us.

Jesus exuded love. God is love. God so loved the world… (etc. etc.)

Yet are you so familiar with Jesus that you will not humbly bow down to Him as your Lord?

If the President of the US, or Prime Minister or King of a country were, in this moment of time, literally in the room with you; would you not at least show some humility and respect to their position and office?

Would you not at least show a superstar or sporting hero acknowledgement of their greatness of accomplishment by comparison to your own, though for a time they appeared as a mortal person ‘with us’ in your very company?

If Jesus had shown up in your gathering (for something else) today as ‘God with us, Immanuel,’ would you not listen to what He asked you in Person and consider your answer as if the words of your mouth have eternal consequence?

If Jesus were in the room, will you weary my God also?

Why do we not apply the lessons Jesus so often taught us in the Gospels?

Why do we weary the body of Christ, His church, by our hardheartedness toward one other?

Are we any better than Ahaz, to whom the Lord sent Isaiah? Are we any better than the Pharisees, to whom the Father sent the Son?

Consider our ‘traditions’ of Christmas, how by them even christians may have forgotten Christ.

Isaiah’s continued prophesy would be unfamiliar to us, yet perhaps time is near for Christians and the world to consider it.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

Butter and Honey

We must understand the meaning of the Prophet. It is not butter for bread to which Isaiah refers, but rather, curdled milk, the acid of which is grateful in the heat of the East.

Isaiah has used a metaphor from the sermon of Zophar on the wicked man, preaching to the righteous man, Job, with the Messiah of God being the antithesis of all things evil.

Job 20:17 He will not see the streams,
The rivers flowing with honey and cream.

Isaiah refers to the sweetness of Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, whom we would know as a humble man like us. Though Israel was the land of milk and honey; though the sweetness of Jesus’ heart spoke kindly of the lost souls of His beloved sheep of the remnant and we of pastures of the Nations – though Jesus is our sweet Redeemer, He IS God Immanuel: Jesus IS Lord, KING over the Kingdom of all creation.

May we have the acid of gratefulness for Immanuel, the refining fire of our souls.

Another note of research on this passage from the Prophet Isaiah points out that honey is abundant in Palestine. ‘ Physicians directed that the first food given to a child should be honey, the next milk [BARNABAS, Epistle]. HORSLEY takes this as implying the real humanity of the Immanuel Jesus Christ, about to be fed as other infants ( Luk 2:52 ). Isa 7:22 shows that besides the fitness of milk and honey for children, a state of distress of the inhabitants is also implied, when, by reason of the invaders, milk and honey, things produced spontaneously, shall be the only abundant articles of food [MAURER].

Did our Lord not eat the sweetness of scripture? Did our Lord Immanuel not refuse and rebuke evil in every instance? Did our Lord Christ Immanuel not instruct us to choose good, do good, speak good and witness the good known only in His Name?

If all is taken from us, do we not have the butter and honey of Christ’s righteousness?

If a man take all our earthly goods, if a man take our mortal life; do we not have in Christ Jesus, life eternal?

Will Christ Jesus Emmanuel not judge all the earth with fire? Will the Lord not bring forth the Kingdom of Heaven and the reward of righteousness for those who obey the Word of the Lord?

to be continued…

December 7, 2014
A Personal God

Have you encountered God face to face?

“Who, me – a mere mortal?” you ask. Have I met God face to face, like meeting you or another man?

Of course not! No man can meet the Living God, Creator of all things, Creator of all men; can we?

The Bible points us to a few instances of a very few exceptional men who did meet God. Here is one reference: The Living God calls for a meeting with the Prophet Isaiah. Though Isaiah was a righteous man – a man of God who would represent the LORD to the people of Judah, listen to his reaction to this personal encounter with God.

Isaiah 6

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

You may recall an interesting encounter between a righteous man, Job and God. The argument of God to Job (and to man) goes on for pages before Job can attempt an answer to further bring his complaint to God. However, listen to the introduction and caution of Job’s friend, Elihu, prior to Job 38.

Job 37: 23 The Almighty—we cannot find him;
he is great in power;
justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate.
24 Therefore men fear him;
he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.”

Job 38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

We are so smug and full of ourselves – even Christians! Did you know that the earth currently has over six billion people? (I didn’t until just moments ago.) Yet how many of these souls have no knowledge of the Living God; and only fear of death and suffering in this life?

How we have forgotten in our own self-righteousness the helpless and the hopeless of our world. How we have been blind to those of our city. How we have abandoned our own lost friends. How we have left loved ones to their own lives without a personal human love – a love as if given by a personal loving Savior.

How we have approached our God irreverently, as if He were a mere man, without the power and glory to create and to destroy the flesh, blood and living creatures He has made – you and me and all the world.

“Lord, take me out of here now.”

“NO.” I have created you for a purpose.

Do you not see the suffering of sin?

Were you not sent as a healing balm of redemption to suffering souls languishing in hopelessness?

I AM a Personal God, says the LORD! I am with you always. Go and do what I have commanded.

Among the hundred billion or so souls who God has created in His own image to walk a few measured years upon this earth, only one is made to do the work and the ministry to others that you must do. Only one: you.

We have One God, Who IS and was and will be the Living One, Creator of all things, Judge of all men. And the Person of God the LORD wants to have a personal relationship with you. God wants to talk to you.

God has something He has sent your soul here to do in the flesh. The Person of God has a mission just for you.

Will you do it?

To be continued, God willing

October 6, 2014