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  • An Acceptable Sacrifice

    An Acceptable Sacrifice

    Psalm 50

    The Acceptable Sacrifice

    A Psalm of Asaph.

    1 The mighty one, God the Lord,
        speaks and summons the earth
        from the rising of the sun to its setting.
    2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
        God shines forth.

    3 Our God comes and does not keep silence,
        before him is a devouring fire,
        and a mighty tempest all around him.
    4 He calls to the heavens above
        and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
    5 “Gather to me my faithful ones,
        who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”
    6 The heavens declare his righteousness,
        for God himself is judge. Selah

    7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak,
        O Israel, I will testify against you.
        I am God, your God.
    8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
        your burnt offerings are continually before me.

    John 10: 17-18 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 

    No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

    I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

    Though Israel understood the power of the Lord to deliver them from Egypt and potentially from Rome, they did not understand the power of the King of the Jews to deliver them from sin.

    “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

    triumphal-entryMark 11:

    8 And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. 9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting,“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”

    11 And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

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    The LORD does not establish His Kingdom on earth (as it is in heaven) in the same sinful ways as man!

    Psalm 50: 

    16 But to the wicked God says:
        “What right have you to recite my statutes
        or take my covenant on your lips?
    17 For you hate discipline,
        and you cast my words behind you.
    18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him,
        and you keep company with adulterers.

    19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil,
        and your tongue frames deceit.
    20 You sit and speak against your brother;
        you slander your own mother’s son.
    21 These things you have done, and I have been silent;
        you thought that I was one like yourself.
    But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

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     Mark 11:

    Jesus Cleanses the Temple

    15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them,

    “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

    18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. 19 And when evening came they went out of the city.

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    Psalm 51: 

    13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
        and sinners will return to you.
    14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
        O God of my salvation,
        and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness…

    17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
        a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

    Psalm 68:

    19 Blessed be the Lord,
        who daily bears us up;
        God is our salvation. Selah
    20 Our God is a God of salvation,
        and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death…

    24 Your procession is seen, O God,
        the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary—

    Psalm 69:

    9 For zeal for your house has consumed me,
        and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

    19 You know my reproach,
        and my shame and my dishonor;
        my foes are all known to you.
    20 Reproaches have broken my heart,
        so that I am in despair.
    I looked for pity, but there was none,
        and for comforters, but I found none.
    21 They gave me poison for food,
        and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.

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    To be continued…

  • Running from God – 3 – Elijah

    Running from God – 3 – Elijah

    Are you loyal to God?

    A fair question.

    Deuteronomy 6:5 KJV And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

    You shall love the Lord your God with ALL.

    Jesus even adds some definition for us of the well-recited Hebrew in the familiar Greek.

    Mark 12:30 ESV And you shall love [agapaō] the Lord [kyrios {Note the meaning & implication of calling God, ‘Lord‘}] your God with all your heart and with all your soul [ psychē] and with all your mind [dianoia] and with all your strength.’

    I don’t want to get into the subtlety of this (a whole other sermon), but note that ‘psychē‘ is the Greek word for ‘soul,‘ not ‘mind,’ as you might imagine from all the false teaching of the world and those opposed to God. Jesus and Moses both taught that GOD is to be worshiped personally with ALL of our grateful being.

    Peter had stood on the Mount of Transfiguration and witnessed Jesus and Moses and Elijah together! So how could this man deny three times that he knew the Christ, Jesus, his friend being beaten for our sins?

    As I cautioned earlier, let’s not to hold Peter to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. Elijah also had run.

    1 Kings 17 

    elijahs journeysElijah Predicts a Drought

    17 Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”

    …  5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan.

    [So far, so good; like Peter when he wanted to build shines for worship. (But then, of course, Jesus told Peter not to build shrines.)]

    6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.7 And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

    It was Elijah’s familiar faith to which Jesus pointed when He taught us:

    Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! – Luke 12:24

    God feeds the ravens; the ravens fed Elijah; therefore have faith: God can even send ravens to feed us.

    The drama and the drought progress.

    1 Kings 18

    After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year…  Now the famine was severe in Samaria.

    The King and God’s people are indicted through Elijah of turning their backs on God.

    Are our national and world leaders – is the 21st c. church so different in our ineffectiveness?

     17 When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”

    18 And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. 19 Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

    A contest! It would be like saying: Bring in all the Oprahs and Choprahs and Hawkings and Dalis; bring in all your priests who worship ancestors and cows and earth; bring in all your princes of oil and casinos and sports; bring in all your stars of Hollywood and Bollywood and worldwide web brothels!

    Need I suggest more to add up to more than these 850 prophets of false worship in these last days? You know the sects of prophets of angels of destruction and men of reproduction. You know well the crowds opposed to the rule of the Living God!

    A contest here: Almighty GOD and his one Prophet Elijah vs. 850 prophets of idols the people loved.

    To be continued…

  • Christ’s Corporate Community – a Christmas Question

    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…