Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: moses

  • A Personal God – Jesus

    A Personal God – Jesus

    Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. – Isaiah 26:4 ESV

    … and he would have given you living water.” – John 4:10b

    “I and the Father are one.” – John 10:30

    Setting aside for a moment your personal preferences for worshiping God; whether ritualistic routine, overflowing emotion, singing, shouting, standing, sitting, hands held up, heads bowed low, knees on the floor or feet off the ground; on the scriptural presumption that Jesus and God are one, let us examine two things:

    The Person of Jesus and His personal mission for each of us.

    Before Christ became God in Person on this earth as the Son of Man, some worshiped God and some worshiped worship. Some worshiped the Law, some worshiped family and forefathers above the Living God. Though Moses stood in the Presence of the Living God, the people worshiped God only in the fear and emotion of the moment.

    Exodus 20:

    18 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” 21 The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

    22 And the Lord said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven.

    Followers feared Moses only when he reflected the glory of God, yet would not obey the commands given to Moses by the God they feared.

    The Prophets spoke God’s word and demonstrated the truth of God’s refining exhortations. Generation after generation, God’s worshipers assumed a posture of disobedience and self-righteousness; for by their witness they forgot the fear of God. By their witness they failed to please the LORD with the same love and compassion the LORD had shown them from generation to generation.

    The worshipers of God would not listen to Moses. The worshipers of God would not listen to the Prophets.

    Therefore, God intervened in time in the Person of Christ Jesus to redeem a sinful world from the futility of death and the inevitability of judgment.

    Jesus Christ lived in Perfect righteousness on the earth. NO man of any religion on the earth has lived in the righteousness of Christ. Men of every era have lived agendas of purpose for the earthly agendas of man; not the will of God for a Heavenly Kingdom.

    Jesus did not come into the world for worship of holy mothers or ancient fathers. Jesus did not come into the world to win a war by peaceful protest or by sword. Jesus did not come into the world to work miracles to impress or heal men who will die.

    The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…

    1 Timothy 1:15a

    Jesus became the sacrifice to God for the redemption of sin – sins you and I have committed in God’s Holy presence.

    The gospels testify to the glory of Christ Jesus, the Word of His instruction and the Life of His own witness.

    Our God is a Personal God and He IS present in the Person of Jesus Christ.

    By the perfect and sinless example of Jesus Christ we have assurance of forgiveness for our many sins and eternal life for our soul, which does long for the embrace of God through the love of His perfection.

    Fear the God Who IS. Give thanks to the One who has formed your flesh and summons your soul.

    Jesus Christ was witnessed by the Apostles, including Paul who was blinded by His presence. Jesus Christ was witnessed by disciples who believed (as well as those who refused to follow Him).

    The Apostles stood and sat and ate in the presence of the Person of Jesus from day to day and after the resurrection of His crucified body. They are witness to the Person of God in Him.

    And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” – Mark 4:41

    Acts 9 (excerpt) … and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. 4 And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. 8 Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

    God and Jesus pursue sinners personally – sinners like you and me.

    Jesus taught us how to live as a perfect son (which I am not) and how to approach God as a perfect father (which I am not). We are neither perfect son nor father, perfect daughter nor mother; yet because Christ Jesus has taken our sin from us, He presents us to God the Father as blameless to do the will of our Father and Lord, as He would have done ‘on earth, as it is in Heaven.’

    Our Personal God and Father has sent Himself in His only Son, Christ Jesus, to us; as example for a personal obedience to His will on earth in this day and until the day He has appointed for our finished work, the witness of His love, to complete His purpose for our mortal life.

    In Christ Jesus, our Lord, my soul stands before God and man as witness to hope eternal and witness to eternal life daily.

    In you, our Lord has placed an eternal voice and temporal call to a personal relationship of love to fulfill His purpose for your mortal life on this earth.

    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?

    Will you listen to God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord?

    To be continued, God willing

  • But if…

    But if…

    “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. – Deuteronomy 30:17-18a NLT

     God’s love for us is unconditional; yet God’s blessing is conditional – dependent on our obedience to His command.

    God speaks: in Person, through Christ, through scripture, through the Spirit — God shows us his will. We are free to choose. What will it be?

    God makes a covenant, God confirms a promise, God confers a blessing and what does it imply?

    Will the LORD not surely do what He has said?

    Yet we have a part to do. We have an action in the agreement. We have a choice.

    We sometimes pray for blessing, while we often live for curse. For we act knowingly against the will of God and the promise of our own mouth. We stand before heaven and earth making our vow, giving our word and pledging our allegiance before the Living and loving God and human witnesses. Then we sin and would hide from heaven and earth and witnesses the sins of our disobedience.

    We may even say (on Sunday occasion): Jesus is Lord.

    Yet is Jesus YOUR Lord?

    When will we repent and return to the Lord our God? It would seem by some of our witness on many occasions that we are no different than our Chosen forefathers.

     

    Deuteronomy 30

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Repentance and Forgiveness

    30 “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…

    11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off…

    14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

    15 “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.

    If you obey… by loving the Lord your God…, then… the Lord your God will bless you…

    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.

    You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.

    19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

    Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

    God charges Moses, as the Lord has charged His leaders – His Kings and His Priests, His Prophets and His angels:

    This is the will and word of the LORD.

    Will you not do it? For IF you do, I will bless you.

    BUT IF you refuse to obey, I must curse and not bless the one I would love.

    Moses once more sets before us the blessing and curse:

    Follow the LORD or perish without blessing.

    We know how soon God’s own chosen ones did turn against the Lord even after many reminders of blessing and cautions of consequence.

    Years later… 

     1 Samuel 1:3 Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord…

    1 Samuel 2:12 Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord.

    27 And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him,

    “Thus says the Lord, ‘Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh?

    The Lord speaks here of Levi as Eli’s ancestral father of the house of the priests of the Lord.

    28 Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel…

    30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed…

    31 Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house… 34 And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day… ”

    Then Samuel faithfully spoke the word of the Lord to Israel as had Moses generations before.

    Hear his witness as Priest  anointed in place of his Eli’s two evil sons. Samuel would anoint Israel’s Kings; Saul here and David later.

    1 Samuel 12

    6 And Samuel said to the people, “The Lord is witness, who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt.

    7 Now therefore stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that he performed for you and for your fathers. 8 When Jacob went into Egypt, and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place.

    9 But they forgot the Lord their God…  11 And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety. 12 And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the Lord your God was your king.

    13 And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the Lord has set a king over you. 14 If you will fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.

    15 But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king.

    Now both Priest and King are representatives of God’s chosen people before the LORD.

    20 And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. 21 And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. 22 For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.

     Two generations (& 3 Kings) later

    1 Kings 9

    The Lord Appears to Solomon

    6 But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,

    7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ 9 Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.’”

    To be continued

  • The Glory of Christ Jesus – 3

    The Glory of Christ Jesus – 3

    doxa – glory: splendour, brightness, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace, majesty, the kingly majesty which belongs to him as supreme ruler, majesty in the sense of the absolute perfection of the deity, the absolutely perfect inward or personal excellency of Christ, a most glorious condition, most exalted state,!

    Can ANY description by a man illuminate the glory of Christ Jesus?

    On a mountaintop [photo above] three Apostles witnessed the glory of Christ Jesus like no other witnesses in the history of all mankind.

    Luke 9:28-36

    Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

    Do not overlook (as I have before) that Jesus was taking His friends to a place to pray with Him to the Living God. Gethsemane was not the only place or time Jesus prayed with His Disciples.

    Peter, James and John, who were nearest of Jesus’ Disciples on nearly every occasion in the three years of His earthly ministry, witnessed an amazing Presence which assured them (like no other) the the True identity and Image of the Son of God: the Messiah.

    29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white.

    30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

    Imagine the awe of witnessing a conversation of your nearest and dearest friend with two of the most glorious servants of God in all history; two men who also had not set foot on this creation for many centuries past.

    Moses had saved God’s chosen people and given us God’s Law. Elijah had shown the Power of the Living God over lifeless idols, lifeless flesh and an often lifeless disobedient people chosen by the Living God.

    Yet like in Gethsemane, Jesus prayed with the Father for hours beyond the endurance of the weaker flesh of Peter and John to endure without sleep. (I must also confess this great weakness to endure long in prayer.)

    32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

    33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.

    What would be your reaction be to such glory of holiness on this mountain?

    What would be your reaction to this vision of glory?

    Worship! Peter, James and John wanted to immediately create a place of worship; a place like the Tabernacle of Moses or the Temple of Solomon where the Very Presence of the Living God had come down to be witnessed by man.

    Yet the awe of their glory of the Presence of God became even more filled with the overflowing glory of God the Father in the Presence of Christ Jesus.

    34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.

    35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!”

    GLORY! to GOD in the HIGHEST!

    PRAISE to the Father

    and to the Son

    and to the Holy Spirit!

    36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.

    …

    How they must have worshiped Jesus! How impactful this superlative moment of glory in the lives of mortal men; yet the three mortal witnesses: Peter, James and John, undoubtedly received a command from Jesus to withhold their witness for a time, that His glory might be accomplished in Jerusalem on the Cross and from victory over sin and death in the Resurrection.

    And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.