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Tag: Matthew

  • Reflections: Jerusalem – a city of Kings

    Reflections: Jerusalem – a city of Kings

    talkofJesus.com

    [ Lament over Jerusalem ]

    “O Jerusalem,Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! – words of Christ Jesus – Mathew 23:37

    mosque and temple21 Chronicles 2:

    A Genealogy of David

    These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, 2 Dan, Joseph, Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.

    3 The sons of Judah: Er, Onan and Shelah; these three Bath-shua the Canaanite bore to him.

    Now Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death.

    4 His daughter-in-law Tamar also bore him Perez and Zerah. Judah had five sons in all.

    1 Chronicles 3 

    Descendants of David

    These are the sons of David who were born to him in Hebron: the firstborn, Amnon, by Ahinoam the Jezreelite; the second, Daniel, by Abigail the Carmelite, 2 the third, Absalom, whose mother was Maacah, the daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur; the fourth, Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith; 3 the fifth, Shephatiah, by Abital; the sixth, Ithream, by his wife Eglah; 4 six were born to him in Hebron, where he reigned for seven years and six months.

    And he reigned thirty-three years in Jerusalem.

    5 These were born to him in Jerusalem: Shimea, Shobab, Nathan and Solomon, four by Bath-shua, the daughter of Ammiel;

    6 then Ibhar, Elishama, Eliphelet, 7 Nogah, Nepheg, Japhia,8 Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet, nine. 9 All these were David’s sons, besides the sons of the concubines, and Tamar was their sister.

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    Jews and Christians take joy in speaking of Abraham, faithful sojourner and father of nations. Jews and Christians speak well of Jacob, who God renamed Israel, and his favored wife Rachel. Jews and Christians proclaim the might and right of the heart of young David as he slew Goliath the Philistine [*Palestinian] by faith, while Saul was indecisive after he disobeyed the LORD.

    Jews and Christians and the nations proclaim the wisdom and wealth of young Solomon, who asked the LORD for wisdom and received abundant blessing throughout His reign over a United Kingdom of Israel, feared and respected by the enemies of the LORD.

    Yet Jews and Christians fail to warn the generations of the failures of compromise, failures of a price paid by David for alliances with kings and wives of other faiths.

    Even more so, Solomon failed in wisdom as his years progressed: wives and concubines believing in everything but God! Sons and daughters believing in anything but God!

    Generations of Kings and compromise for plans not from God and a future of generations who knew nothing of the God of Israel or the Law of the Promise.

    WE THE PEOPLE depose the LORD our God.

    Will we not reap the harvest of lawyers, Judges, Priests and Kings of unrighteousness?

    Roger Harned – talkofJesus.com

    How history fails to recall the failures of sin so evident from century to century; civilization to loss of civility; a time of promise to a time of judgment.

    Jerusalem is a city captured, conquered, destroyed, deserted, re-inhabited, rebuilt, destroyed again, conquered again, rebuilt once more  time and time again throughout the ages.

    Jerusalem is the city of the Temple: built (by Solomon), destroyed, rebuilt (by Ezra and Nehemiah), destroyed again, rebuilt by its captors (Rome) on the ruins by the King who did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. (Herod, if you fail to understand the politics of Jesus’ Jerusalem of the first century.)

    Kings of the United Kingdom (c 1025-925 BC)
    King Relationship to
    Previous King    		 God’s
    Judgment
    Saul none did evil
    Ishbosheth* son (unknown)
    David none did right
    Solomon
    (AKA Jedidiah)    		 son did right in youth,
    evil in old age
    * The kingdom was divided during Ishbosheth’s reign;
    David was king over the tribe of Judah.

    Israel first became divided.

    Two countries: only Judah with Jerusalem as the place for its King.

    As Prophets warned: Israel fell first. (The area north of Judah was later was known as Samaria.)

    Yet true Prophets of the LORD also warned Judah of her faithlessness and whoredom. Judah and Jerusalem fell under the rule of Kings who did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD.

    Kings of Judah (c 925-586 BC) Kings of Israel (c 925-721 BC)
    King Relationship to
    Previous King    		 God’s
    Judgment    		 King Relationship to
    Previous King    		 God’s
    Judgment
    Rehoboam son did evil Jeroboam servant did evil
    Abijam
    (AKA Abijah)    		 son did evil
    Asa son did right
    Nadab son did evil
    Baasha none did evil
    Elah son did evil
    Zimri captain did evil
    Omri captain did evil
    Ahab son did evil
    Jehoshaphat son did right
    Ahaziah son did evil
    Jehoram
    (AKA Joram)    		 son of Ahab did evil
    Jehoram
    (AKA Joram)    		 son did evil
    Ahaziah
    (AKA Azariah
    or Jehoahaz)    		 son did evil
    Athaliah mother did evil Jehu captain mixed
    Joash
    (AKA Jehoash)    		 son of Ahaziah did right in youth,
    evil in old age
    Jehoahaz son did evil
    Joash
    (AKA Jehoash)    		 son did evil
    Amaziah son did right in youth,
    evil in old age
    Jeroboam II son did evil
    Uzziah
    (AKA Azariah)    		 son did right
    Zachariah son did evil
    Shallum none did evil
    (surmised)
    Menahem none did evil
    Pekahiah son did evil
    Pekah captain did evil
    Jotham son did right
    Ahaz son did evil
    Hoshea none did evil
    Hezekiah son did right
    Assyrian captivity
    Manasseh son did evil
    Amon son did evil
    Josiah son did right
    Jehoahaz
    (AKA Shallum)    		 son did evil
    Jehoiakim
    (AKA Eliakim)    		 son of Josiah did evil
    Jehoiachin
    (AKA Coniah
    or Jeconiah)    		 son did evil
    Zedekiah
    (AKA Mattaniah)    		 son of Josiah did evil
    Babylonian captivity

    Source: http://www.vtaide.com/gleanings/Kings-of-Israel/kings.html

    To be continued…

  • Running from God

    Running from God

    Are you running from God? I have.

    Do you run after Satan? I have.

    Do you walk with Jesus and then run away some other direction?

    I have. Even the most faithful followers of God and closest Disciples of Jesus have turned tail and run from the adversity we imagined is on the road ahead.

    The seeker-friendly easy-grace gospel would easily fill our mega-churches will non-believers, like the brother in Jesus’ parable who said he would do the will of his father, but then did not do it, as opposed to the brother (or sister, if you are) who says, “NO. I can NOT do that,” yet later repents to do the will of the Father.

    [If you are unfamiliar with this parable Jesus taught in Jerusalem during the events of Holy Week, read Matthew 21.]

    No doubt in this Lenten season of preparation of consideration of the Cross, you will remember later incidents during Holy Week of twelve apostles who ran and hid: an apostle and friend entrusted with the treasury of the whole group showing ‘faithfulness’ by complaint of the wasting of the oil of love and anointing poured forth generously on our Lord by a repentant woman. We all remember a bold proclamation that, “I will never deny you,” from a rock of leadership; the ironic tragedy of all of Jesus’ friends sleeping in Gethsemane and running away in helplessness from the authorities of the Law.

    We are too harsh on Peter and the others, as if we ourselves do not tend to run away every Monday (or even Sunday the minute the sermon finally finishes).

    God has always used reluctant, yet zealous believers. Take Saul of Tarsus (Paul), for instance.

    And who cannot recall a voyage of God’s Prophet, running in the direction away from Nineveh (in modern day Iraq) to a ship crossing the Mediterranean, before falling into the depths of helplessness in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the sea?

    Most of God’s Prophets suffered as God warned Israel and Judah of the destruction to come because of the evil done by the people with God’s Name.

    Is it appropriate witness of GOD for the people of His Name to always do evil?

    Is it right for a witness claiming the Name of Christ (a christian) to show unbelievers evil? Are we not commanded to bear fruit of Christ’s overflowing love, His unfailing faithfulness to the redeemed?

    “I will repay,” says the LORD.

    Therefore, do not fear. For what can a mere man (even an evil woman) bring upon you that does not pale by comparison to the wrath of the vengeance of the Living God?

    What terrible judgment must await the one who has dismissed the Blood of the Cross and run toward the pit of perdition.

    To be continued…

     

  • 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!