Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: timothy

  • 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

  • PK’s, EK’s, DK’s: Our kids; God’s kids

    PK’s, EK’s, DK’s: Our kids; God’s kids

    The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.  – 1 Timothy 1:5 NLT

    If you haven’t guessed, our focus is on ‘Preacher’s Kid’s, Elder’s Kids and Deacon’s kids and the focus of scripture is Paul’s letter to Timothy, Paul’s son in the faith and pastor of a church. So as to not get entangled in particular setting and certain persons, here it is in part.

    1 Timothy 1

    Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope…

    To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

    To begin, note Paul’s greeting to this preacher’s kid (of a sort). Note Paul’s endearment of Timothy as not only his colleague in the faith who happens to be the pastor of an important church, but his public building up to the congregation (or gathering of his church) of Timothy as: “my true child in the faith.” Although Timothy was not a biological child of Paul, certainly the church would acknowledge him as a disciple of the Apostle, just as in an earlier time the Prophet Elisha would have been known as a disciple of the Prophet Elijah.

    The church would be watching this ‘preacher’s kid’ to see how he would get about when the preacher was no longer present. He would soon be as a Joshua after Moses in leading the church through the difficult territory of the place of faith after the Apostles were martyred for Christ Jesus.

    Paul continues:

    I urged you… to … remain … so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,  nor to devote themselves to myths… rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

    5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

    Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion,  desiring to be teachers … without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

    Paul, by this introduction to the church, sets up a structure of leadership and accountability for the leaders chosen by the church. We have many names for these (in our different traditions): Pastor, Reverend, Rector, Father, Bishop, Brother, Elder, Deacon, Minister. 

    Although Paul, Peter, James, leader of the church of Jerusalem in the first century and John, only surviving Apostle to the churches who though not martyred was persecuted, tortured and exiled – although the Preachers of the early church entrusted the Gospel into the hearts of faithful disciples of their teaching; these prescribed neither hierarchy nor anarchy of committee for the direction of the church.

    Rather, the Apostles and early leaders of the church agreed in the Spirit to continue in preaching Christ crucified, died, resurrected in the body and present in the Spirit for continuation of the Gospel to all the ends of the earth. It is never: Peter’s church or Paul’s church, Apollos’ teachings or John’s churches, John Mark’s writings or Timothy’s preaching.

    For no leader or over-seer is of ANY importance in the light of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.

    The church is no longer – in the sense of the Jews being the chosen family of God through Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David (and oh, did I mention Jacob, who God renamed: Israel?) – the congregation or gathering of the believers of God to worship is no longer a family in the sense of genealogy and ancestry; but a holy family in the true relational sense of being part of the household of God the Father and a brother of the Son of God, King and heir of the Throne of Glory, of which He IS a part, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

    Neither is the church to regard a holy family of Jesus in the worship of earthly ancestry. Worship the LORD only in the light of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, who together with the Father and the HOLY Spirit is glorified. No angel, no departed saint and no ancestry of example of faith is worthy of the worship deserved ONLY by God Incarnate, in the Person of Christ Jesus.

    In a true sense of our family connected by the grace of Christ Jesus and the gospel of our certain hope by faith in the resurrection and our own eternal life, we are children living in witness of the Living God, a preaching member of the Royal Household of our Heavenly King, Christ Jesus, who IS and will return to this temporal earth once more in victory over sin and death.

     To be continued… (Saturday, 28 June, 2014, God-willing)

     

  • Remember the Widows

    Remember the Widows

    1 Timothy 5:5  She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day…

    In only a century since the millennia of the Bible, relationships of the family have been overturned. All older than sixteen require automobiles and all older than sixty-six need to be put away in a senior center. The sixteen-year old and the sixty-six year old work side-by-side; one to get ahead and the other to get by.

    As no honor is given to marriage, as no honor is given to the husband and as no honor is given to the grandparents; no consideration is given to the relationships relished by our aging widows and widowers of our churches.

    1 Timothy 5:1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers,2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. 3 Honor widows who are truly widows.

    Christ Jesus would gently remind the church of those among us who live in poverty of relationship with the family, including the family of God, the church.

    Exodus 22:22 “You must not exploit a widow or an orphan.

    Why not?

    What is God’s will? Has social security not taken care of our widows and widowers? Do they not have pensions of their own saved to keep them in their old age?

    Have we not taken care of the orphans and children of the divorced and divorced ‘single moms’ through welfare of our government?

    Is this the attitude of the world?

    OR should this be the attitude of ‘Christ followers’, the church?

    Again, the several Biblical examples of widows and orphans are not directed only to the fatherless, but to those in need.

    To be continued…