Short of the Glory of God

Our Text:

Romans 3 : 23 NKJV
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Romans 3 : 10-18 "As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one..." I have taken my time to quote all the Scriptures wherefrom the Apostle Paul took the statements following his "as it is written,"  from the Psalms,  Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah.

Psalm 14:1-3 NKJV
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good. [2] The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. [3] They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 NKJV
For there is not a just man on earth who does good And does not sin.

Psalm 5:9 NKJV
For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; Their inward part is destruction; Their throat is an open tomb; They flatter with their tongue.

Psalm 140:3 NKJV
They sharpen their tongues like a serpent; The poison of asps is under their lips. Selah

Psalm 10:7 NKJV
His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression; Under his tongue is trouble and iniquity.

Isaiah 59:7-8 NKJV
Their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; Wasting and destruction are in their paths. [8] The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace.

Psalm 36:1-4 NKJV
An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes. [2] For he flatters himself in his own eyes, When he finds out his iniquity and when he hates. [3] The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit; He has ceased to be wise and to do good. [4] He devises wickedness on his bed; He sets himself in a way that is not good; He does not abhor evil.

Beyond any measure of doubt we can all agree that we have sinned against God.  We're born with a sin nature and we also sin. This has to be settled if we are to move forward in this discourse.
There has to be penalty for this situation, and throughout the Old Testament, it could not be settled,  but had to be covered daily with an incredible amount of bloodshed.  No blood however could settle it.

But thanks be God, and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it was settled at Calvary! The question of the penalty was between God and Christ. Christ satisfied the demand of the law, and granted in God’s sight a complete pardon to all mankind, who are willing to accept the provision by faith, for all the sins they have committed: so that they are delivered by their faith, from the penalty they have incurred at once.

But the question of the guilt still being incurred, is another thing altogether; and the child of God, however far he may be advanced, if he is indeed enlightened by the Holy Spirit, must awaken to the consciousness that he has been incurring guilt in the sight of God, not because he has committed what are known among ourselves as definite, acts of sin against the codes of morality and respectability that man puts forward, but because he has incurred guilt in the sight of God: because he comes short of the standard that God puts up, and it may be brought home to his soul that he has committed an act, or spoken a word, or thought a thought, from which guilt will arise in the sight of God.

He must awaken, if his soul is sufficiently enlightened by God, to the consciousness that every thought, word, and deed that proceed from him has, in a deep spiritual sense, brought guilt upon his soul by being short of the glory of God, lacking the perfect holiness of the standard that the Lord Jesus Christ accepted in His person.

Independent of the man, the provision that Christ Jesus made for sinners and for sin, keeps the man, moment by moment, cleansed from this guilt, altogether independent of his feelings or experience; that is the availing power of the blood, for though the man comes short of the glory, and though he cannot walk in this mortal flesh up to the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ’s perfection, and is therefore in that sense, and only in that sense, a sinner, yet he need never have a feeling of depression on account of these unconscious shortcomings, because the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is cleansing him from all sin. Moment by moment as the thing proceeds from the man, springing from the sinful nature that lies deep within him, unconscious he may be of guilt, at the moment, yet incurring guilt, the man finds, by the grace of God, that he is kept cleansed, instant by instant, through the operation of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in God's sight.

As long as we remain in this house of flesh, our offering is tainted and requires the cleansing power in the blood of Jesus to make it acceptable before God, otherwise there will altogether be no need for His blood to continue to work. The work done to justify us at Calvary would have been sufficient, but He continues to work! Hallelujah!

In an earlier post we talked about Isaiah exclaiming that he was a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of people with like ailment.  This is the reason why.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This is also the reason why we should take care in our judgments of others. Do I understand that the adulterer is a sinner? I should understand also that in the eyes of God, outside of the cleansing work of the blood of Jesus Christ, and His continual advocacy on my behalf, I am no better than the thief or the adulterer, or indeed the idolater.

#momomily2015

A Man After God's own Heart

Our Text

1 Samuel 13:14
The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart

2 Samuel 5:10
So David went on and became great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him.

I was in a conversation with a sister today who told me that she had done a lot of bad things in the past. She has since decided for the Lord and isn't looking back. But she wonders about the fulness of the Lord's forgiveness toward her.

When the Lord decided to let King Saul go,  he told him through the prophet because he had disobeyed the Lord, that "But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart." 2 Samuel 13 : 14.

We all know the story of David as a King, all the recorded atrocities he committed and yet in 2 Samuel 5:10 we are told that "So David went on and became great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him."

The man whom God sent Samuel to find and anoint had not changed in the eyes of God, or stated differently, God did not change His mind about him. In 1 Peter 1: 18-20 we understand that we WERE redeemed with the precious blood of Christ who was foreordained before the foundation of the world...And in Revelation 13 : 8 we find "...the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

God did not change His mind about David. He remained "a man after His own heart." He doesn't change His mind about us. The blood of redemption was shed before we were born.
In Psalm 139: 18, the psalmist said "When I awake, I am still with You."  I am still with You because You didn't leave me while I slept, You did not change Your mind about me.

Luke 7:(37-)43
Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself saying ,"This man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner."  And Jesus answered and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you."
So he said, "Teacher, say it."

"There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?"
Simon answered and said,  "I suppose the one whom he forgave more."

So while thinking about the magnitude of your sins, remember that no sin is so great that the blood of Jesus can't wash, save the sin against the Holy Spirit.  Besides, one of the reasons, perhaps the major reason for our impenitence towards God and our taking the work Jesus did for us so lightly is because we do not see the darkness of our sin in stark relief against the light of the love of God through Christ for us.

So to the lady who said she had done so many bad things,  I answer with Simon to the question of Jesus "I suppose the one whom he forgave more." That is the one who will love Him more.

Now to those who think they haven't done much requiring forgiveness,  I say "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Neither the one who owed 500 nor the one who owed 50 could pay. None of us have anything with which to pay, because the payment required is beyond us. So if anyone thinks they don't owe much, they should please remember that they have nothing with which to pay.

It is when the understanding of having nothing wherewith to pay becomes a truth in our consciousness, when we reach the fact of our utter bankruptcy, when we give up the effort to compound with God, and are obliged to take our places before Him as mere beggars, sinners quite undone, that mercy becomes actually ours. Only then can we appropriate for ourselves the forgiveness provided by Jesus in His shed blood and death.

#momomily2014

All Dead in Trespasses

Our Text :

Isaiah 6:5
So I said: "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts."

A beloved sister asked this question the other day "what did Isaiah see that made him cry out that he was a man of unclean lips?" That question prompted this posting.

Isaiah was a prophet of God in the midst of God's chosen people, appointed by God to steer the erring people back to the Almighty Jehovah. Prophets show up amongst the people when they are in error and need to be reminded of their covenant with God, need to be reminded of who God is, need to be reminded of His ways. They show up when the people cry to God on account of the unbearable conditions they're in, usually as a result of erring from "The Way, the Truth, and the Life."

We have no record in the Bible or in extant materials that Isaiah was immoral, unscrupulous, unethical, or any such thing. He was not a thief or an adulterer. He was not an extortioner or given to lasciviousness. We know nothing of Him that would impugn his integrity.

Yet he cried. "I am a man of unclean lips!" We wouldn't place Isaiah beside the thief who on the cross jeered at Jesus Christ and told him to save himself if indeed He was the Christ. We would think Isaiah too good for that, we would say they do not belong in the same class by any means. We would call Isaiah holy and the thief we would call unworthy.

In the days of Jesus Christ distinction of class was very marked. The Pharisee went as far as to think to educate God Himself on this matter for he said "God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even a this publican. " (Luke 18:11)
Jesus Christ was accused of fraternizing with unworthy people,  "... and they say, 'look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' But wisdom is justified by her children."

Let's not be too quick to turn up our noses at them, that we wouldn't do that, because we would and indeed, we do! We form class distinctions everyday, all day long. We think we're too good to be with certain kinds of people, or we think we're not good enough. We classify and separate ourselves by education and/or wealth.

Even within the church we do that. I have heard people tell me they cannot fellowship at certain churches because they cannot dress to meet the standard required there. I have been told that I wouldn't fit in well at certain places if I don't dress a certain way. We want to be seen with popular or famous people, with intellectuals or people with certain titles. We won't show respect to someone unless they have a title, and so on and so forth.

And so we will not place Isaiah with a common thief, but he himself it was who cried "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;" Not only did he see himself like that, he recognized that he lived in a community of same kind, unworthy people. He did not think himself better than them.

We are warned in Romans 12 : 3 thus "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."

Outside of the redeeming, saving, atoning work of Christ, we are all "dead in trespasses and sins."
All of us, preacher and commoner, royalty and plebeian, we are all dead until quickened by God. The Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 2 : 1 "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins." In Colossians 2 : 13, he said "And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses."

Oh that we would cry like Isaiah, so that like was done to and for him, an angel of God will bring from the altar, a live coal, and will touch our lips so that we will have assurance that our iniquity is taken away, and our sin purged. See Isaiah 6 : 6-7.

#momomily2014

After You Have Suffered a While. ..

Our Text:
1 Peter 5 : 10
"But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you."

In Genesis 26 we find the story of Isaac when famine hit the land in which he dwelt.  He decided to leave and go to Egypt as his father Abraham had done before him.  The Lord told him not to go, but to remain in the land until He had fulfilled the promises He made to his father Abraham.

In verse 8, the Bible tells us that "... When he had been there a long time..." things didn't get better, they looked like they might get worse in fact because he had a run in with the King concerning his wife, Rebekah.

So the picture is very dismal. He had a family to care for, there was famine in the land which didn't appear to be ready to ease any time soon. The men were interested in his wife and that could have provided his family with a much needed break from starvation. Now before anyone gets all riled up and indignant, let's remember what's going on in Nigeria at this time. Men are prostituting their wives for contracts so as to have money to feed the family, mothers are prostituting themselves and their daughters for the same reason!  Or it could have gotten him killed,  let's remember Uriah,  Bathsheba's husband.

Neither scenario played out here because the Lord Himself intervened and Abimelech warned the men of the kingdom off Isaac's  wife, so we don't know how far Isaac would have carried the deception.

And so they stayed in the land and continued to suffer with the rest of the people. This wasn't a hardship peculiar to Isaac and his family.  The entire Kingdom was under the curse of famine. Also let us consider that the people for whom he was responsible were not very understanding. Children don't understand with the parents that they have to stay hungry because there's no food or money for food.  These people in Isaac's family must have wondered why he wouldn't go down to Egypt like his father before him did,  why he would subject them to such hardships by making them stay in want.

Now when Peter wrote this letter, he wasn't writing to an individual but to the churches, particularly the leaders and elders of the churches. In 1 Peter 5 : 1, he said "And now, a word to you who are elders in the churches. I, too, am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ. And I, too, will share in His glory when He is revealed to the whole world. As a fellow elder, I appeal to you:" (NLT)

So to the elders of the churches it was that he said "after you have suffered a while. .."  Leaders will have to suffer a lot at the hands of the sheep as Jesus our master suffered at our hands.  They will not always understand and/or cooperate.  They will complain,  criticize, and murmur like the children of Israel did with Moses.  It comes with the territory and leaders have to rise above these things and continue to shepherd the flock to glory.

Continuing with our account of Isaac's experience in Genesis 26, in verse 12 we find that God indeed perfected, established, strengthened, and settled him "after he had suffered a while." In Genesis 26:13, we find that "the man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous."

But Isaac's challenges did not end because that wasn't the pinnacle of God's plan for him,  Abimelech's servants closed up the wells Abraham, his father had dug.  Please notice that while he was suffering they didn't touch his wells but once he became prosperous, they began to torment him and his family.

Then he was exiled from his home by the King himself.  He moved to Gerar Valley and this time the inhabitants didn't close up the wells but claimed them from him. He named the one "argument" And the next one "hostility." We will discuss these names in a later posting.

He dug up a third well over which there was no contest and he named it "Rehoboth" because the Lord had made room for him. From here he moved on to Beersheba.

Please try to imagine how long you can survive without water,  and maybe we will understand the importance of, and significance of closing up the wells against Isaac and his family.

Note: Isaac was very wealthy but notice that he remained humble. He did not fight back when Abimelech's servants closed up his wells, neither did he fight the shepherds at Gerar.

When the Lord begins to perform His oath to us, let us remember how humble we were in our low circumstances and not change when we are prosperous. In 1 Peter 5 : 5  we are told that "... God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

May His peace remain with us all who are in Christ Jesus. Amen.

#momomily2013 

Resistance

The practice of Christianity is a practice of resistance, the Apostle James  enjoins that we should resist the devil and he will flee from us in James 4:7.

Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 5:8-9 admonished us to "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world."

The Lord Jesus in Matthew 5:39 said "But I tell you not to resist an evil person." In 1 Corinthians 10:3-4, we are told "though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,"

We are clearly to recognize and resist our adversary, the devil.  We will discuss the Corinthian verses quoted above in a later blog.

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the word 'resist' as
"to fight against something, to try to stop or prevent something;
To remain strong against the force or effect of something, to not be affected or harmed by something; To prevent yourself from doing something that you want to do."
"To exert force in opposition, to exert oneself so as to counteract or defeat, or to withstand the force of effect of something or someone."
Synonyms of the word include 'defy,  oppose, repel, withstand.'

So we are to oppose and repel and withstand the devil,  we are to push against him and remain strong against the force of his suggestions.  We can do this because the Holy Spirit will quicken us if we yield to His government. 
John 6:63 "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."
Romans 8:11 "But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you,  He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you."
Ephesians 2:1-2a "And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,..."

You He has quickened or given life from the source to resist, so that you no longer function under the dictates of the 'spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:' Ephesians 2:2b.

This is why we are told that the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence from the days of John the Baptizer and the violent take it by force in Matthew 11:12. “Everyone storms his way into the kingdom,” may clarify what Jesus actually meant, that the kingdom was being entered by desperate persons.

Persons with intense interest and deep need press their way into the kingdom. The Amplified Version puts it thus: "Until John came, there were the Law and the Prophets; since then the Good News (the Gospel) of the Kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone strives violently to go in (would force his own way rather than God's way into it).

You have to be desperate for God, you can't just be mildly interested in Him, you couldn't push against the devil or press into the Kingdom of God with a mere curious interest in God and the things of His Kingdom.

So if our default mode is to go with the kingdom of this world,  we have to practice resistance against that which we're naturally inclined to and press upward to the divine way.  May the Holy Spirit help us all.  Amen.

#momomily2014

The Syrian Raid

Our Text:
2 Kings 5 : 2 "And the Syrians had gone out on raids, and had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel.  She waited on Naaman's wife. "

Here was a young Hebrew girl who had been captured when Syria under the command of Naaman raided the land of Israel.  She was snatched from her home, her mother, her siblings.  She was taken out of her culture and everything familiar and under the oppression of slavery, brought to this strange country with a strange language and strange gods.

A Hebrew girl who had been raised to believe in one God whose name is Jehovah.  She had been taught the history of her people, about all their sufferings and how the Almighty hand of Jehovah God had always been with them because they were His chosen people.

And now here she was a slave in this foreign land.  We don't know what was done to her between the time of capture and the time or circumstances under which she was delivered to Naaman's wife, and I am certain that even if we can sympathize with this little girl,  we couldn't possibly empathize with her because we've never been slaves, we really don't know what it means, but we do know that it is absolutely unpleasant. None of us would wish it on our daughters.

So she's a captive in Naaman's house. She's performing her duties as unto the Lord under a very broken heart.  Her faith in the God of Israel remains strong so we know she didn't assimilate into the Syrian culture (In Psalm 137:4, the captives from Israel upon being required to sing a song of Zion mourned,  saying "how shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land.").  The Bible in Proverbs 22:6 admonishes us to "train up a child in the way he should go,  and when he is old he will not depart from it."

We know all this because in verse 3 she said to Naaman's wife, "If only my master were with the Prophet who is in Samaria! For he would heal him of his leprosy." She clearly believes in the God of Israel 'so she would be established, and in His Prophets so she would prosper!'

In spite of how grossly she'd been wronged, in spite of the fact that she was a slave far from home,  she didn't take all that as occasion to keep her mouth shut when she knew the solution to her master's problem, the only one problem he had. She still reached out to her captors to help them.

How many of us can emulate this Hebrew girl?  Let us search ourselves and learn to take on the Spirit of Christ as this young lady did. And may the Lord in His mercy help us in Jesus' name,  Amen.

#momomily2014

Add-On

Our Text:
Matthew 6:33 "But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

For the most part, we follow all the requisite steps.  We accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord,  we make a public confession of our new faith and declare that we are born again,  we expect that old things have passed away and all things have become new.  We join a local church body and some of us become workers in the church.  And so we think we're now part of the commonwealth of Israel.

We read, or hear that we should pray without ceasing, pray with all kinds of prayers, present our supplications with thanksgiving. So we sing praise songs and then pour forth our requests, after all,  He said 'we have not because we ask not' so we ask.  We ask for the things that we need and we know that since the earth and everything in it belongs to Him,  all the gold and silver, and even the cattle on a thousand Hills,  He will grant us our requests.

We also know that He honors His words above His names,  and He said 'Ask, and it will be given to you; ' so we ask and expect to receive that for which we ask. In Isaiah 65:24, the Lord through the prophet said "And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. " So we ask and keep on asking but we don't get,  we examine the steps to see what we missed and we didn't miss anything, or so we think.

Here's the hard part,  I've checked all our examples in the Bible of requests being made and I think we might be asking wrong.  Solomon, the man of whom it is said that none before or after him has been so materially wealthy,  didn't ask for money,  he asked for wisdom to lead God's people aright. Jabez was going to war to acquire more land for his people so he prayed that the Lord would bless him, enlarge his territory, and grant him success, for the people.
The disciples asked the Lord to teach them how to pray,  how they may do the things He did.  My search has been by no means exhaustive but I believe we ask wrong.

Our text in Matthew enjoins us to seek, to make the primary object of our search, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. He went on to tell us that all these things which we worry about, God knows we need and that they will be added to us.

But we pursue after and seek the add-ons,  we want to get the 'lagniappe' the small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of purchase, and yes, Jesus said we should come to Him and buy without money,  then He'll give us the add-on, but instead we only want the add-on and somehow think we can wear Him down into changing His standard by our persistent asking.  We throw tantrums and try to blackmail Him into giving us the free gift that comes with the purchase without making the purchase. We don't want what he's selling because it's relationship with him and we only want His hand for our earthly needs.

Let us seek first His Kingdom and righteousness and HE WILL add these material things to us if we trust Him.

#momomily2014