The Royal Order of Edifiers: Part One
Are you ever discouraged and it just feels like no one cares? Then along comes someone to encourage you. Good, isn’t it? Has it ever occurred to you it is you who can build up someone.
Jesus Christ said, “In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
In a world that tears people down Jesus builds them up.
If Jesus is your Savior let Him control you as your Master. If He is your Master, model Him. Scripture says, “It is enough that a servant should be as his master.”
Acts 10: 38 gives a succinct summary of the life of Christ: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good…”
There is your prototype, your template for life. Pattern your life after Him. “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (I John 2:6).
Jesus seized opportunities to build people up. Jesus was an edifier. In the word edification the root word for edifice can be heard. An edifice is a building. The process of edifying is the mission of building up. As believers that is one of our most important roles.
He edified little children by telling His disciples to let the little children come to Him.
He edified the woman caught in adultery by saying, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
He edified Peter, who denied Him. After the resurrection when they encountered each other Christ asked one question three times, “Do you love Me?” Peter’s affirmation resulted in Christ edifying him by giving him an assignment, “Go feed my sheep.”
On the road to Damascus Saul was stricken blind and the voice of Christ was heard to give him instructions to go into Damascus where someone would tell him what to do. Christ sent Ananias to him who put his hand on him and said, “Brother Saul….” In that simple statement Paul was edified.
Even on the eve of His execution He comprehended the mood of His disciples and said to them, “Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1).
It is said most people we meet are in need of encouragement. That means your opportunities are abundant. Remember the last time you encouraged a down and out person. Doing so made you feel good, didn’t it? Even if you consider yourself in need of encouragement you were doubtless encouraged by being the person encouraging another. So go out there and have yourself a good day by encouraging others. Remember Jesus said, “As much as you have done it to the least of these you have done it unto me.”
Revive Us, Oh Lord
We do well to pray as we sing: “America! America! God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!”
Much of the godly luster has rubbed off of America.
Instruments of measurement need calibrating.
Glasses need to be updated.
Rifles need sighting-in.
Clocks need to be synchronized.
Likewise, lives and nations need spiritual renewal.
America is in crisis need of rejuvenating. Rarely has despotism been given a green light. Our moral life has decayed. Spiritually we are bankrupt.
One in every five Americans needs a psychiatrist.
There are 25,000 suicides annually. Ten times that number try.
We recently experienced a 77% increase in juvenile crime.
We are a living demonstration that self-governance without self-discipline won’t work.
While struggling to revive our core values don’t give up on America.
America needs revival. This, however, is not the only time revival has been needed.
In the early 1790’s when our young nation was emerging, they took a poll at Harvard and could not find one single believer.
They took one at Princeton and found two believers. They found only five students who were not members of the “Filthy Speech Movement” of the day.
When the Chaplain of Yale opened his Bible in chapel, decks of cards that had been inserted by students into a cut-out in the pages fell out.
At Dartmouth, students conducted a mock communion service.
These schools were all started as Christian institutions. Consider their decline and destitution. It is now said, “The road to hell is paved with Ivy League diplomas.
The nation’s public moral fiber was eroded. With a population of 5,000,000 we had over 300,000 alcoholics. A great whiskey rebellion was so destructive that President Washington had to call out the national guard.
Immorality and illegitimacy were rampant.
The churches were so decadent that Chief Justice John Marshall wrote Bishop Madison of Virginia saying, “The churches are too far gone to be redeemed.”
Time and time again throughout history God has shown His model of spirituality. His model may either be embraced for our good or rejected at our peril.
The low road of sin to disaster can be left by an individual or nation at any moment for the high road of obedience and blessing. May we live to see it.
The Matchless Mystery: Part Two
This is a rerun on a vital topic deserving of being repeated. Occasionally we need to take a deep dive in considering a complex spiritual issue. Following is certainly one. Try this, what is eternity, that is, there being no time. We live in a parentheses called “time.” We are so sensitive to it we count seconds. When thinking of spending eternity in heaven or hell we question won’t that get boring?
We ask what age we will be in heaven? We are so preoccupied with growing old that we think the aging process will be a part of the afterlife. No it won’t. Remember we are considering eternity where there is no time, hence no age.
Three things were created simultaneously: time, matter, and space.
John 1: 1 states, “In the beginning was the Word…” Theological scholar Hershel Hobbs says the Greek literally states, “Before time began to begin was the Word….” Sounds confusing but there was a time when there was no time.
Want to go deeper? There was a time when there was no space.
Now the third creation, matter. There was a time when there was nothing, no matter. According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today — including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies — was created at the very first moment of time. They agree, there was an occasion when there was no time. Remember, it was created.
Before these three were created the Trinity existed in eternity. There will be an occasion when this will be true once more.
Following are three examples illustrative of relative facts. Consider a weight, a clock, and a ruler. They aren’t always the same.
A one pound object here on earth weighs one pound because of the gravitational pull on it. On the moon that same object weighs three ounces. Could it withstand the heat on the surface of the sun it would weigh 28 pounds.
The ruler represents mass. Mass, that is the size and density of an object also varies depending on speed. Driving at 50 miles an hour your car is three ten-millionths of an inch shorter. Traveling at 90% of the speed of light it would be half its length.
Now the mind boggler that hints of a state of there being no time. The star Sirius is nine light years away. If traveling there and back you could travel at 99.99999% of the speed of light the following would occur. Your friends on earth would be 18 years older and you would be only 12 hours older.
To conclude by saying we can’t understand this is a bummer. It should not be because no such state where there is no time, space, or matter with which to compare it exists. Even the wisest physicists can’t explain it, yet they believe it. Knowing we live on the vortex of such a state which we enter at the moment of death makes it wise to decide in what state we want to spend eternity.
If the state God was in before He created the heavens and earth was good enough for Him, I want to spend eternity in it with Him.
Jesus stepped through the veil between heaven and earth, died an atoning death on the cross, and rose again to open the portal into heaven to all who by faith believe in His redemptive work and submit to Him as Savior and Lord might spend eternity with Him.
The Matchless Mystery: Part One
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1: 1).
Who doesn’t like a good mystery? There is no single verse in the Bible consisting of more mystery than John 1: 1. It even surpasses Genesis 1: 1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
This pulls back the curtain and reveals the production: “the heavens and the earth.” The earth is comparable. The heavens are incomparable. The vastness of the created universe is beyond human understanding.
An even more incomparable factor regards how or rather who created all of this.
To explain this the English Bible utilizes a known title with a glorious meaning. That word is “the Word,” which translates the word “Logos.”
In the Jewish mind the phrase “the word of God” was used to refer to God Himself.
In Greek thought the logos was the “Ultimate Reason” that controlled all things. To them the logos brought the orderly world into existence.
Hence, these two cultures formed a glossary interpreting who was meant by Logos. It was God. They didn’t equivocate about how the heavens and earth came into existence. To them it simply was the act of the ever not so simple God. God created the heavens and earth.
Pause now and clear your mind before the beginning of act two of this mystery.
This happened “in the beginning.” A modern English version renders the verse, “Before time began to begin the Word was.” Another, “When the beginning began, the Word was already there.” The idea is that the Word existed before creation which included time, space, and matter.
Here is a classical part of the mystery. Once there was nothing, nothing, not even space before the heavens were created. There was no time and no matter. There was nothing, just our timeless God. That is an intriguing part of the mystery of the beginning. This was just the beginning of the beginning.
Fast forward once more. The Logos, in the person of Jesus Christ, slipped into an even more remarkable role and stepped on stage, planet earth. His was an even more remarkable role. He came to seek and to save the highest form of His creation, human beings, who had spoiled His creation physically and even more incredibly, spiritually.
These compounded principles just hint at the nature of our incomprehensible, eternal, and all powerful God. Just think He loves you. You are so important. He did this just for you. That is the matchless mystery.
The God of Angel Armies: Part Four
The “God of the Angel Armies” is referred to in Haggai 2: 7. The theme is given contemporary life in the popular song by Chris Tomlin in which are these lines: “The one who reigns forever He is a friend of mine, The God of angel armies Is always by my side.”
This God, the God of the Angel Armies, has engaged in many military conflicts. Secular history omits some of the most inspiring accounts of action in military conflicts. Following is an account of such a conflict in which He was the determinant of the outcome.
FEBRUARY 23, 1991, DATELINE, SAUDI ARABIA – IRAQ – KUWAIT,
The ground battle of Operation Desert Storm broke.
We, the people, prayed in our churches, homes, and, YES, even our schools.
The American press had virtually intimidated the public with reports of the superior battle-hardened Iraqi army, their Russian-made tanks, their impenetrable bunkers, their formidable Republican Guard, and their frightening chemical and biological warfare capabilities.
We, the people, prayed — no, we pleaded with God.
30,000 body bags were shipped to the region.
The mother of all battles was threatened. We, the people, prayed.
Unexplainably, Saddam Hussein acted out of character and released all hostages which he had threatened to use as human shields. Pressure was taken off our president. We, the people, prayed.
Before the battle, General Schwarzkopf described “the nightmare scenario” as getting hung up in the Iraqi trenches “and then having the enemy artillery rain chemical weapons down on troops.”
After the battle, large caches of chemical weapons were found unused. Why? Prevailing winds at this time of the year along the Persian Gulf are from the northeast and northwest. Vice Admiral Stanley Arthur, Commander of the U.S. Naval forces in the Gulf, said, “Right after the land campaign kicked off, the wind started going a little squirrely. We started picking up some southerly winds which would have put it right back in his face. I’m fairly sure the poor [Iraqi] folks who were sitting in the field looked at the prospect of the stuff [chemical weapons] flowing right back on them” and decided against using them.
General Schwarzkopf commented, “I say thank God they didn’t” [use them]. (MDJ 3/1/91, p. 4A) God confounded and perplexed the enemy.
When our pilots went in to do aerial reconnaissance for the 24th Infantry Division, they had to reconfirm their reports. They kept coming back saying there is nothing out there but sand. Mysteriously, the Iraqi army had left unprotected an ideal corridor for their swift advance deep into Iraq. They had been confounded.
Remember, the word “confound” means to confuse and cause disorder, to put to shame and ruin.
One young Son of America said it best, “I am thankful I know who my Commander-in-Chief is.”
It is this God who said, “For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13: 5). Dare we cower in the face of our own needs with the God-of-the-Angel-Armies always by our side.