Promise

The Ideal Congregation (Pt. 2)

Posted on by Bob Mathews

The ideal congregation hungers and thirsts after righteousness.  Jesus said, “Blessed are they that  hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Mt.5:6).  The security of the blessing pronounced resides in the security of Jesus’ promise that each one so hungering and thirsting shall be filled.  The providential care of our Lord assists in bringing this promise unto fulfillment.  Such is truly a wonderful promise, knowing that if we pursue righteousness as we ought, the Lord has given his word that our spiritual appetite for righteousness will be satisfied.

The righteousness spoken of here involves the divine plan of righteousness that results in a personal verdict of righteousness.  This righteousness is nothing less than that which is in accord with the norm and standard of right, the objective revelation of the word of God.  To hunger and thirst after righteousness suggests a deep-seated craving which compels one to go to great lengths to fulfill its demands.  Invariably, one thus becomes a diligent student of the word (ref. Acts 17:11).  May we be emboldened to trust in the Lord’s promise and thus be motivated to hunger and thirst after righteous- ness as we have never done before!

The ideal congregation desires to be all that one can be, individually and congregationally.  The apostle Peter exhorted first century Christians to “add to your faith virtue; and to virtue  knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity” (2 Pet.1:5-7).  When obeyed, this exhortation assists in developing full maturity in both attitude and daily living.

Fulfilled maturity requires one to seek to live up to his potential.  The parable of the talents (Mt.25:14-30) illustrates the necessity and the value of so doing while demonstrating the danger of personal failure.  The example of the poor widow who gave all her living to the treasury (Mk.12:41-43) deserves our consideration and imitation.  She truly fulfilled her individual potential.  Additionally, we will not be content with past achievements, either individually or as a congregation, if we hope to reach full maturity.  Paul remembered his past while properly relating to his past and the future (Phil.3:13-14).  He pressed on!  As we seek to be all that we can be, let us do so courageously with unyielding and confident faith, being servants of both God the Father and those about us (Romans 6).

These are just a couple more aspects to consider about the ideal congregation. Next week I’ll pose a couple more for all of us to chew on. May God be with us and bless us all on our Christian journey!

Promises of God – He will fight for you!

Posted on by Bob Mathews

“The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14).

In the book of Exodus, there is an amazing situation that comes about when you get to chapter 14. This is a moment, early in the outset of the people of Israel, when they have fled Egypt and headed for the wilderness. Even having been “let go” by Pharaoh (Ex. 13:17), his hardened heart led him to chase after the Israelites with an army. You can probably imagine how terrifying it might be for people who where servants, having nothing, to see the Egyptians rising up and giving chase. However, in that moment of panic God was there for them. He not only protected them with the pillar of cloud (Ex. 14:19), but He also gave them a way to safety (Ex. 14:16).

Just as God fought for the Israelites when they were stuck between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army, God has fought for you through Jesus. He fought and defeated the power of sin in your life. This means  you can do the right thing even when it’s difficult. Even the apostle Paul said that he had a hard time doing the right thing because his selfish desires kept urging him to do something else. Everyone who wants to please God faces this problem. However, Jesus went up against all of your selfishness and temptations. He fought the battle to clear the way for you to do all the right things. The wonderful fact is that He won that fight.

Moses told the Israelites, “You shall hold your peace.” That’s true for you. You can stand firm because Jesus has already won your battle. Does that mean you just hang around, doing nothing? No, you can determine to stay strong, stay close to Him, and keep believing that He’s already won.

You are not alone. God has always been there for you. God has been fighting for you from the beginning. He was willing to give up His Son in that fight for you. He wants to be there for you and give you peace, but He can’t force it upon you. If you want true peace and safety no matter what gets thrown your way, then draw near to God.

Promises of God – His promise to deliver His people

Posted on by Bob Mathews

“So I have come down to delver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:8).

The children of Israel had been delivered from Egypt, but thanks to doubting and unbelief, they wandered in the desert from 40 years. However, there is something we need to remember. Year number 41 came, and they didn’t wander anymore. They entered into the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey God had promised them. Maybe, for whatever reason, it seems you are in a desert period in your life. Maybe you feel like you’ve been stumbling around for 40 years. Don’t worry! Year 41 is on its way.

Look at these examples: Noah and his family were on the ark while it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Day 41 came and the rain stopped. For 40 days Goliath showed up every morning to taunt the people of Israel, but day 41 came and David took him down! Of course, that was with the help of God as we might imagine. There are plenty of examples like this in God’s Word. They may not all have the number 40 attached to them, but we can see people go through struggles or troublesome times all throughout. The key factor that you will notice in all of those instances is that God is there to deliver those that trust in Him.

God has promised to bring you out of your “Egypt” as well. If you will hold on to your faith in Him, He will not let you down. Whatever situation you are going through right now, don’t give up. God is on your side. So, if it seems like trouble has been raining down on you, don’t worry because day 41 is on the way. The rain is going to stop. Whatever giant is in your life, day 41 is coming and that giant will be crushed. We have the power to conquer any obstacle because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has given us that through Him (Rom. 8:37).

We may not know or understand the timing, but we can know that He will deliver us out of our “Egypt,” our struggles.

Promises of God – Nothing is too hard for Him!

Posted on by Bob Mathews

“And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old?’ Is anything to difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”” – Genesis 18:13, 14

When difficulties beset us, we tend to try and work our way out of them (on our own) until a situation comes along that we can’t handle or is too hard and we just give up and lose hope. Sarah is an example of this. They were promised a child and when that promise wasn’t being fulfilled quick enough she tried to take matter into her own hands by offering her maid Hagar as a way to obtain that child (Gen. 16:1-2). She couldn’t wait for the promise from God, putting trust in Him, and wanted to trust in what she could do.

To add a little more context, this promise was given when Abraham and Sarah, his wife, were both well on in years. Abraham was about 100 and Sarah about 90. Past the point of childbearing as is mentioned in Genesis 18:11. So, this would come across as a ridiculous promise to any normal person, which is what led to Sarah’s laughter.

Like Sarah, we look at what we understand about how the world works and go off of that knowledge. Sarah knew children were out of the question for her body at that age and all of us would agree that to be true. We are not here to deny how the world works. What we have to do is push past those things to the one who made the world! God created all things and governs all things. Just because something doesn’t work regularly for us, doesn’t mean that God can not dictate a change in that normal process.

Though some things in life seem too difficult for us, nothing is too hard for God. Sometimes He does His most amazing work when all hope seems gone. He gives hope when all seems hopeless. He fills us with peace when we’re in the middle of chaos. He saves the souls of people who deserve death. He makes the impossible possible. Think about the hard times; the last second, the darkest hour, the deepest hole. They are “mission impossible” for us. Trust Him with your hard times. Every one of them is “mission possible” for Him.

God has never promised that there wouldn’t be difficulties in our lives. However, He will be there for us, helping us through if we let Him. Sometimes we sing a song called Trust and Obey. In the song we sing, “trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” God has promised and proven time and time again that nothing is too hard for Him! He now offers true happiness to all through His Son if we are willing to trust and obey.

Promises of God – A Promise that ALL will be Blessed

Posted on by Bob Mathews

Genesis 12:1-3 says, “1Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you: 2And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

God had a plan for a man named Abram. God knew that Abram would believe Him, and that Abram would live out his faith through his actions. Because of His plan, God promised Abram that the world would be blessed because of him. God blessed the world through Abram in two ways.

First, Abraham (the name God gave Abram) became the prime example for everyone who would ever put their faith in God. His descendants were honored and proud to be called the “children of Abraham” (maybe too much so). However, Paul said that anyone who has Abraham’s kind of faith is a child of Abraham. “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

Second, is the greatest blessing God gave through Abraham. Jesus is what God was really getting at with the promise. Jesus was a descendent of Abraham. God redeemed all of the sin in our lives through Jesus, a descendant of the man whose greatest claim to fame was the simple fact that “he believed in the Lord” (Gen. 15:6).

Why is such a blessing needed? Romans 3:23 states the reason very simply and directly. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We all have done things that go against what God teaches. This sin separates us from Him. The blessing through Abraham is one that gives us all a chance to get back into a right relationship with God.

This promise was given to Abraham and through him to us, but as was said earlier, it was all part of God’s plan from the beginning because He knew we were going to need it. Ephesians 1:3-7 says, “3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He (God) chose us in Him (Jesus) before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.”

Through Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, God has given us the ability to come back to Him, to be His children. He made a promise and kept it so that each of us could be blessed, even at the cost of His own Son. Now it is our turn to choose whether to believe and follow Him like Abraham did or to continue living our lives however we want and remain lost to God. What side of the promise do you want to be on?

Promises of God – A Promise set with a Rainbow

Posted on by Bob Mathews

Genesis 9:9-16 says, “9Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; 10and with every living creature that is with you; of all birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. 11I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12God said, “This is a sign of the covenant which I am making between Me an you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; 13I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. 14It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

16When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

People had become sinful beyond what you might believe, and God’s heart was broken. He couldn’t put up with it any longer. So, before the rainbow appeared God did something massive. He brought a worldwide flood to wipe out the evil and corruption that had taken hold of all He created. Almost every person and animal on earth was lost. Only the people and animals on Noah’s ark were saved. When they got off the ark, you may imagine their thinking. Will this ever happen again? Or maybe, will we live through it again if it does? God calmed them down by promising that He would never destroy the world by flood again. To help all the people remember, He gave us something we can see. He put the rainbow in the sky as a sign of that promise.

Did God need the rainbow so He could remember what He’d said? No, the rainbow was for Noah and his family. It was for all his descendants who would live after him (9:9). Today, it’s for you. It lets you know that God keeps His promises. After all these years, God still remembers the promise He made to that group of people on the ark. When He made that promise, He knew that as long as the sunlight hits the raindrops, people can see the rainbow and know that He remembers His promise.

Even greater for us is the understanding that God remembers all His promises, whether they come with a rainbow or not.