Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: Matthew

  • My Love – 4 – a Love Feast

    My Love – 4 – a Love Feast

    “There is a love of God inexplicable, except by our inclusion in His love feast.

    This love of God is to be sought and treasured, though none can earn this highest of all loves. It is the upward call well-known to the world, yet rejected by the worldly.

    John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

    God gave us Jesus Christ! His love is sacrifice for our sins – and we are ALL sinners.

    Agape – (pronounced: ag’-a-pe) The name Agape or “love-feast,” as an expression denoting the brotherly common meals of the early church… 

    Agape is much more than this, common meals and communion being just one visible evidence of God’s love in the community of the church. This “agape love” appears throughout the New Testament, again the evidence of Christ Jesus in the life of Christians as part of the lives of believers:

    • affection, good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love, charity and other Spirit-given practical application of the benefit of Christ in the lives of the body of believers, His church.

    Hear the caution of Jesus, you cautious or straying believer:

    But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

    – John 5:42

    Agape is the word for love Jesus uses here.

    Would you have this be our Lord’s judgment on you unless you repent? Jesus continues:

    How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? – John 5:44

    God is love; but each of us must accept God’s love and be part of the love feast of Christ’s overflowing love for us shared in His Blood of the Cross.

    C.S. Lewis addresses five loves: the first being our ‘liking and loves for the sub-human:’ animals, the beauty of nature, food and the like. The other four are human loves for humans.

    I have reordered Lewis’ treatment of The Four Loves. We have already spoken of friendship (between equal humans) and affection (between humans unequal in their relationship: parent and child). I have left Eros and specifically the love between a man and a woman (man & wife) until last. Lewis concludes his book with this highest and most important of loves: agape. I cannot focus our thought here on this love any better than Lewis.

    “For most of us the true rivalry lies between the self and the human Other, not yet between the human Other and God. It is dangerous to press upon a man the duty of getting beyond earthly love when his real difficulty lies in getting so far.”

    Love one another. A familiar challenge? Yet Lewis states the difficulty of us experiencing this highest love of God when we cannot get beyond loving others as God loves all of us.

    Lewis points to the moral of a story of St. Augustine after grieving over the death of a dear friend.

    “This is what comes, he says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away. Of course this is excellent sense. Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel. Don’t spend too much on a house you may be turned out of.”

    Do you believe, then, in God? Why would you not trust God with the love of your soul? God IS. Christ Jesus IS. Would you not also have your love last for ever?

    Lewis concludes “The Four Loves” as follows (after which I will have a little to add):

    “Perhaps, for many of us, all experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of God ought to be. It is not enough. It is something.

    If we cannot ‘practice the presence of God’ it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep. But for news of the fully waking world you must go to my betters.”

    Love & Charity – Connection between God & feast in His love

    John 15:9-11 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

    Abide in my love.

    10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

    11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

    Jesus commands: Abide in my love (agape).  Learn the application of living in this agape love of God by reading the linked definition and scriptures of ‘abide,’ a word falling from use in our temporal fleshly culture.

    The Greek word for love with which Jesus begins by saying the Father has it for Him and He has is for us is: agapaō. By definition: to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly. 

    WELCOME to the feast of GOD’S LOVE.

    We do NOT deserve an invitation. God loves Jesus. Jesus loves you. (This I know, for the Bible tells us so.) A message of love so simple and profound, yet so clearly unattainable by anyone lacking a trusting and child-like faith in Almighty God, our loving Heavenly Father.

    “IF, you keep Jesus’ Commandments” our Lord says.

    Do you keep and abide and live in the Commandments of Christ Jesus?

    In fact, it is agape love Jesus gives to the lawyer’s of “What is the greatest Commandment?”

    Matthew 22:37-38 And he said to him, “You shall love [agapaō] the Lord your God with all your heart [kardia] and with all your soul[psychē] and with all your mind [dianoia]. This is the great and first commandment.

    God loves. God provides the banquet of love.

    It is by the charity of God that we sinners saved have been invited into the joy and celebration of the love of God in Christ Jesus.

    Let us not forget to extend this love of God in Christ Jesus into our loves for all others in this brief life in the flesh and lasting joy of God’s eternal feast.

    And remembering the words of our Teacher to His learners (disciples) prior to the love feast by which He set His example and remembrance – communion:

    “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love [agapē] for one another.” – John 13:35

    O, the joy of LOVE awaiting us at the banquet table of heaven with our Lord and King, Christ Jesus!

     

  • Woe!

    Woe!

    Micah 7: 5 Put no trust in a neighbor;
    have no confidence in a friend;rings
    guard the doors of your mouth
    from her who lies in your arms

    8 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
    when I fall, I shall rise;
    when I sit in darkness,
    the Lord will be a light to me.
    9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord
    because I have sinned against him,
    until he pleads my cause
    and executes judgment for me.
    He will bring me out to the light;
    I shall look upon his vindication.

    He does not retain his anger forever,
    because he delights in steadfast love.
    19 He will again have compassion on us;
    he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

    Matthew 10

    32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

    Not Peace, but a Sword

    34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

    Matthew 11:17 “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
    we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’

    Woe to this generation as well! For our sin and neglect of the Lord’s household, the family of Christ Jesus, stand in witness against the Blood of the Cross. We betray the Betrothed to whom we have given our vows and solemn promise.

    Do NOT condone divorce, but call the adulteress to repent and sin no more.

    Division Among the People

    John 7: 40 When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” 41 Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee?

    +

    Why are our faithless families, our faithless children, our faithless spouses not drawn to repentance? Why does the prodigal not desire to return to the Father’s house?

    It is because the Father’s love and Christ’s redemption do NOT overflow from the hesitant hearts of the church.

    Do not shun the faithful, but the faithless.

    Acts:4:31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

    Acts 4:32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

    33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

     +

    ALL, not ‘some,’ were filled with the Holy Spirit.

    Those who believed were of ‘one heart and soul.’ The Church was not divided in witness: some for Christ, yet others against by their witness.

    Believers were of one heart, filled with the spirit, filled to overflowing with the love of Christ Jesus. This is the witness of Christ to the world: that Christ Jesus is love, that Christians have the love of Christ for each other, even for those not of the church.

    WE, the church, are (or should be) the new and redeemed family of God.

    A New Commandment

    John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

    35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

    +

    Are you, beloved of Christ, a disciple desiring to follow the commandment of the One you claim as ‘Lord?’

    Woe! to the church. Woe! to those who witness by divorce against the Bridegroom of faithfulness. Woe! to this generation of hardened hearts, who have forgotten the love of our Lord for his family.

    Woe! to those who claim the worship of cheap grace and the discordant noise of emotion from hearts easily deceived and broken but for a moment.

    2 Peter 1

    To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

    2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

    … make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,

    and virtue with knowledge,

    6 and knowledge with self-control,

    and self-control with steadfastness,

    and steadfastness with godliness,

    7 and godliness with brotherly affection,

    and brotherly affection with love.

    8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing,

    they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

    9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

     +

    Woe! to those who shun the faithful, condone the unfaithful and forget the love of Christ Jesus.

  • Put away your revelries

    Put away your revelries

    and cleanse your whitewashed walls;

    for the church is a soiled bride

    and christians no witness of waiting,

    no longer virgin and spotless,

    uncovered in view of the world

    naked before the eyes of the LORD.

    Ezekiel 16

    7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

    8 “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine.

    15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be.

    23 “And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! declares the Lord God), 24 you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square. 25 At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring.

    32 Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. 34 So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

    35 “Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord: 36 Thus says the Lord God, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, 37 therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. 38 And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy. 39 And I will give you into their hands, and they shall throw down your vaulted chamber and break down your lofty places. They shall strip you of your clothes and take your beautiful jewels and leave you naked and bare.

    52 Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have intervened on behalf of your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

    59 “For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, 60 yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant…

    62 I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, 63 that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.”

    in-sicknessNumbers 30:13 Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.

     Matthew 19

    6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

    “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

     Jeremiah 3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

    WHY do you celebrate? Why do you claim your fellowship is with Christ?

    Is the LORD not angered by your licentiousness? Is the LORD not jealous for the love of the Bride of His promise?

    Woe to you, churches! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.

    Why do you celebrate year’s end? Why do you call communion worship? Are these not an abomination of hidden sin?

    Is your adultery not against the cleansing Blood of the Bridegroom of righteousness? Where is your account of Christ’s righteousness? Where is your evidence of Christ’s love?

    Run. Run to hide from the wrath of the Bridegroom; for He will return to find you faithless!

     Ephesians 5:  31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

    Beloved church, Bride of Christ Jesus, are we not whitewashed tombs? Are we not divorcing one another? Are we not unrepentant of our sin which we witness boldly before our worldly neighbors?

    How then will we win others to Jesus Christ, if we can not even hold our own sisters and brothers in the Lord to His Holy standard?

    Do we not impugn the Blood of Jesus sacrificed for the sins we commit over and again in witness against the Bridegroom of the Church?

    For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

    Why then, do we, Christ’s Church, act no differently than the world of unbelievers?

    Joel 1

    2 Hear this, you elders;
    give ear, all inhabitants of the land!

    5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep,
    and wail, all you drinkers of wine,
    because of the sweet wine,
    for it is cut off from your mouth.

    8 Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth
    for the bridegroom of her youth.

    13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;
    wail, O ministers of the altar.
    Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,
    O ministers of my God!
    Because grain offering and drink offering
    are withheld from the house of your God.
    14 Consecrate a fast;
    call a solemn assembly.
    Gather the elders
    and all the inhabitants of the land
    to the house of the Lord your God,
    and cry out to the Lord.
    15 Alas for the day!
    For the day of the Lord is near,
    and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

    Joel 2: 12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
    with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
    13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
    Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
    and he relents over disaster.

    Was your Baptism in Christ permanent change?

    or just one more bath for the sin of your filthiness?

    Is your word and your vow truth before God

    or a lie for the world?

    Put away your revelries, dear believer, IF in truth you worship the Lord your God and look to the coming of the Bridegroom of the Church, Christ Jesus, as your Lord.

    For the time is near when the Lord will say, ‘Well done,’ or for the adulterous Bride, “I never knew you.”