Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: mercy

  • 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…

     

  • Ayin

    Ayin

    Psalm 119

    English Standard Version (ESV)  Another brief review:

    • Zayin: Remember your word to your servant
    • Heth: The Lord is my portion
    • Teth: You have dealt well with your servant
    • Yodh: Your hands have made and fashioned me
    • Kaph: My soul longs for your salvation
    • Lamedh: Forever, O Lord, your word
      is firmly fixed in the heavens.
    • Mem: Oh how I love your law!
    • Nun: Your word is a lamp to my feet
      and a light to my path.

    Continuing now from v.121

    Ayin

    121 I have done what is just and right;
    do not leave me to my oppressors.

    The KJV, once again is more to the point:  I have done judgment and justice:

    Is man supposed to judge?

    Yes. And we must judge rightly, as God judges, executing justice and showing mercy.

    Isaiah speaks of justice more than any Prophet. Hear what he says of the One to come:

    Isaiah 62:2 The nations shall see your righteousness,
    and all the kings your glory,
    and you shall be called by a new name
    that the mouth of the LORD will give.

    Here the Psalmist pledges loyalty to do good and asks God’s protection.

    122 Give your servant a pledge of good;
    let not the insolent oppress me.

    Malachi [4:1] says of these:

    “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

    123 My eyes long for your salvation
    and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise.
    124 Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love,
    and teach me your statutes.

    Again, the KJV states it a little differently.

    Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy.

    Have you considered how God’s steadfast and unfailing love for us is so often demonstrated by His mercy? Should we not also have mercy on our fellow sinners?

    125 I am your servant; give me understanding,
    that I may know your testimonies!
    126 It is time for the Lord to act,
    for your law has been broken.

    These testimonies are the witness of God’s several written laws. It is a call to justice. The laws have been broken and the offense is against the righteous. What will the Lord God do?

    127 Therefore I love your commandments
    above gold, above fine gold.
    128 Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right;
    I hate every false way.

    I esteem the precepts of God. God’s laws are right, pleasing and agreeable; therefore I hate what is NOT right.

    Is it OK to hate? Yes. The Psalmist hates lies, deception, disappointment, falsehood, deceit, fraud, and anything wrong in the eyes of the Lord.

    Should we?

     

  • ANGRY Children of a Loving God – Part 2

    ANGRY Children of a Loving God – Part 2

    Here’s part of another story of Jesus  (familiar by a different heading).

    PARABLE OF THE ANGRY BROTHER

    Luke 15: Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons…  So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons…

    … the older son was in the fields working. … he heard music and dancing in the house, 26 and he asked one of the servants what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’

    28 “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in.

    His father came out and begged him, 29 but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30 Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’

    31 “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”

    Have you ever considered, good brother (sister) in Christ, how we have no right to ever be ANGRY children of a loving Father?  We understand the love-hate relationships here.  Brothers, Samaritans, spouses, bosses, and friends –

    ”ANY relationship of nearness in love also risks the resentment of hate.

    We want justice to be weighed in our favor, yet mercy has already blessed us so abundantly.

    No Christian can begrudge our Heavenly Father for having more grace for another, when without His grace we would fall well short of the price of redemption paid for our own sins on the cross.

    The complexities of our love-hate relationships require communication between the persons of that relationship.

    So how do we apply the love of our Loving God to the love-hate relationships of our close-knit lives?  And what happens when we become ANGRY children who will not let go of our hatred?

    Once again, some answers are common to both believer and unbeliever; yet the real solutions are weighed on the sensitive scales of scripture, balanced by the Son of our grace.

    +

    • I once knew a man whose daughter died young.  He neglected his son and his wife and himself.  He was an ANGRY child of a merciful Father – a God who had other plans.
    • I once knew a man whose boss fired him. His wife wanted to take her anger and turn it on him.  The man would have not been welcomed back to his former career.  God had other plans.
    • I once knew a man who lost his house. His wife wanted to have a new house like the one he had lost.  God had other plans.
    • I once knew a woman who gave in to her sin.  She loved the darkness and hated the light.  She was an ANGRY child, disobedient to a loving God.  She had hated her life and loved only her SELF.

    WHAT does each of these love-hate relationships have in common?

    1. OUR relationship to a loving God, AND
    2. OUR relationships of other loved ones.

    Does any scripture come to mind here?

    Do we so soon forget the summary of the Law pointed out by Jesus?

    Love God. Love one another.

    – Pretty straight-forward, yet NOT so easy to do.

    Why?  Again an often overlooked obvious answer:

    ANY relationship involves another person.

    [To be continued…]

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