Tag: repent

  • Lord, Lord

    Lord, Lord

    “My lord, King…”

    “My lord of the land where I live, lord of the house you own that I rent…”

    “My lord, protector of the lands and neighborhood against the enemies which would destroy me and my family and take everything we have…”

    “My lord, boss, administrator over my work and lord over my wages and payment…”

    “Oh, Lord,” we exclaim of God or Christ; but it is a concept with with we have much difficulty.

    “Oh, my God!” “Good Lord!” Once references to our helplessness in relation to Deity, now exclamation of our helplessness of self.

    “OMG” – small god; BIG MY!

    Will you bow down to our merciful Father in Heaven, Jesus asks?

    Will a wife lord it over her husband?

    Will a child lord it over its mother?

    What do you mean when you call Christ Jesus your “Lord?”

    Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?

    My grandparents were poor and could only afford a small house on a riverbank. I remember it well from my boyhood. We would walk in the side door off the gravel drive and up three steps to the right to enter the kitchen of the small house where my mom grew up. To the left several steps descended into the unfinished basement where the furnace and coal bin were located. Beneath the kitchen window in the back was a small river bank that descended in two levels to a plateau on level to the basement floor then another drop to the river (unless it was flooded). Their house was built on a riverbank of firm clay.

    Yet many years in the spring the river would flood the entire neighborhood on the bend in the river. My grandparents would put the furniture up on cement blocks and wait for the water to recede. The house still stands after many years (in the neighborhood pictured above.)

    Jesus speaks of two houses built on places of less and of more stability and again gives us a picture for consideration of our faith.

    47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like:

    48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

    fallen house49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

    “Do you mean to say that Jesus is still calling the multitudes to repentance?

    OMG! (or should I say, Oh, my Lord?)”

     

  • The Fruit of Good Advice – 2

    The Fruit of Good Advice – 2

    A Tree and Its Fruit

    Luke 6:43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit.

    picking thistleripe fig on branchFor figs are not gathered from thornbushes,

    concord grapes
    bramble bushnor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 

    It’s a picture proverb, really; a comparison or two fruits to the source of their growth. It’s a picture of inconsistency, hypocrisy (if you will) as He has just related in verses 39-42.

    You are both hungry and thirsty. You see a luscious and juicy fig on a tree in an orchard or you walk through a vineyard on a hillside with grapes juicy and ripe for the picking. Your timing is just right. The figs are ready to be picked. The grapes are ripe and ready for the wine-press. God has blessed you. God has fed you.

    But what does Jesus tell the multitudes whom He has just fed with His authoritative good advice?

    45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

    Look at the tree and you will see the fruit. Look at the thistle and the bramble and you will have NO fruit.

    Where is the source of the good fruit – the source of blessing?

    It is from God our Father.

    Therefore, IF you are part of those who hear, YOU will have good fruit and blessing. Yet IF you are just one of the multitude who bears no fruit, YOU will have curse.

    Is His message still repent?

    Of course. We have a merciful Father. Therefore bear the fruit of repentance.

    Speak good and not evil from your heart.

    Are you known by your fruit for Christ Jesus?

    Consider the consequence for failing to repent and return to the Lord.

     

  • 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…