Colossians 1

Devotion on Colossians 1 from 2009

Monday, December 14, 2009

Colossians 1

It is such a great blessing that there are those servants who have brought to us a true Word from the Lord by the will of God. That word is full of the grace and peace of God which has been won for us at great cost by Jesus Christ. God uses that word as a call to our souls, doing a spiritual work that enlivens the faith of the Lord’s people and their love for Him and for all those who belong to Him. 

This Word that comes by the will of God through His messengers excites our imagination concerning the life to come as we consider the hope that is laid up for us in the present heaven. The story of heaven is a part of the good news, the truth that we have heard and believed. This good news bears fruit wherever it is proclaimed and believed. For this work of fruitfulness to grow in the best way, the message of Christ that is preached must not only be spoken, it must be understood. Specifically, the power of the word is most clear as those who receive it understand that all the blessings that are for us have come to us as a gift of God. To see this more and more clearly is to understand the grace of God in truth.

The church that receives the message of grace, hearing of the death of Jesus Christ and the life that He has given to us at such great cost, would naturally desire to speak to others of this good news. The ears can work without the engagement of the soul. What is necessary for the fruitfulness of the gospel is a spiritual work. Without a powerful work of God upon our souls, we cannot have the kind of endurance and patience with joy that is appropriate for those who have been delivered out of the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. If we have heard about the inheritance that is ours through Jesus, if we know what it is to have our sins definitively forgiven, if we are aware that we were once enslaved in a world of evil but have now been purchased back, redeemed, by the blood of Lamb of God, it makes no sense for us to be lacking in enthusiasm for this great state of affairs. We should be filled with joy and have the message of our salvation on our lips regularly. 

When we look at our lives honestly we see that the love of many has grown cold. How can we recover the warmth of the kind of faith that grows? We need to meditate on the wonder of God, and particularly the glory of the one who has given Himself for our blessing, Jesus Christ. He is the icon of God, the visible manifestation of the invisible God, and is the source of all creation. There is nothing that was made that was not made through Him. This includes not only the wide array of beautiful and orderly organisms and elements in the natural world all around us on earth; we are told that the Son of God also created all things in heaven. All things were not only created through Him, but also all things were created for Him. He is the end of all things and He is before all things, in the same eternal realms as the Father and the Spirit. He is above all unseen authorities, including all angelic hosts, and all things hold together in Him.

Now that Jesus Christ has purchased a people through His blood, He has taken His place as the head of that body that the Scriptures call the church. This is especially good news for us, since in Him we have seen our resurrection destiny. He is the firstborn from the dead, and will have complete preeminence forever over everyone and everything in the world of glorious life.

Jesus Christ is obviously not some lesser god. All the fullness of God dwells in Him, and through the cross He has accomplished what is necessary to reunite heaven and earth that was severed through the sin of mankind. If we can grasp today the wonder of what is being accomplished in Jesus Christ, how can we not bow down before Him as Lord? How can we not thank the Son of God who has given us peace through the blood of His own cross?

Do you want to have an appropriate message that would be worth sharing with others? Think of this Jesus Christ. Think of His cross, the ugliness and beauty of it, the hate that it represents and the love that it displays, the apparent weakness of it and the overwhelming power of it. Think of where you would be without this Jesus and the cross, and what kind of hope you would have when your mortal life comes to an end. 

You were not close to God, but far away. You were holy, but evil. You were not full of some good purpose for living, but were fighting against God. But now, because of Jesus Christ, you are reconciled to God, you are counted as holy and blameless in Christ, and even your suffering has great meaning. Above all, this great divine Son of God is in you, and He Himself is your confident assurance of all the glory of heavenly life. Your best days are yet to come. You can safely rejoice in Christ, and you can rightly share the message of this good news with others. This is a struggle that is worthy of your heart and your life.

John 6

Here's a devotion on John 6 I originally posted in 2009. Have a great day :)

Monday, April 27, 2009

John 6

By this time in the ministry of Jesus there were great crowds following Him, particularly because He was performing signs of the coming resurrection age, when a new life beyond the life of decay and mortality that we are so used to now will be here upon the earth. That life can be known now through the preaching of the kingdom, and will be known even more when we are in heaven. The crowds did not connect the signs that Jesus was doing to the new heavens and the new earth promised by the prophets, nor did they connect the signs to the Messiah as the key figure in bringing about the resurrection world to come. They certainly did not see the connection between the role of Jesus as the Passover Sin-Bearer and the coming of the fullness of God’s promises. What they did see is that people were being fixed now, and they wanted that. So many people wanted those blessings, and so many were following Him, that there was nothing approaching an adequate supply of food to meet everyone’s needs. Jesus cared about this, and though He knew what He would do to solve this problem, He put the question to His disciples, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat.”

Part of the correct answer to that question would be the inability of the disciples to do this task. They could not provide bread for thousands, but this is only part of the correct answer. The other part of the correct answer is that Jesus could do this, and that His performance of this miraculous feeding, providing bread from heaven, would be another confirming sign of His identity. As the Messiah would bring the Word of life to millions through the use of His disciples, He used them that day to give bread to thousands. He then instructed them to gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost. The baskets of fragments they gathered was a public display of the extent of this miracle, but His direction to gather the fragments may have had another point. The use of the imagery and vocabulary of lost bread and perishing people mentioned later in this chapter, makes us suspect that there was something more here in this surprising command after this sign of resurrection fullness. God does not like things to be permanently out of place (See Luke 15). Someone saved through the blood of Christ must not remain scattered abroad as if lost or perishing. Such a person should be gathered into God’s kingdom.

The people saw the sign that Jesus did, even though He was working through His disciples. They concluded that He was the great Prophet that they were expecting, and they determined that He should be King, and that they could make that happen their way. Therefore, He went away by Himself, which created the occasion for another miracle, this one seen only by His disciples, who were travelling by night on stormy seas. As He walked upon the rough waters with a memorable display of His sovereignty, He spoke amazing words of self-identification often translated, “It is I.” Our Lord used the words here that God used for His own name in the Old Testament, “I-AM.” Given the fact that He was walking on the water and that they quickly arrived at their destination once He came on board, it seems clear that Jesus was providing the reassurance to His disciples that would be a comfort to them through their proclamation of the Bread of Life to a world that often rejected Him and them. I-AM is with us.

The people were determined to find Him because they wanted more bread. They kept on speaking about bread, and He kept on speaking about Himself. They knew what they wanted, and God knew who they needed. They needed His Son, the Bread that came down from heaven. They did not believe this, and He knew it. He also knew two facts of salvation that are still just as true today as they were back then.1. Everyone who looks on the Son, and believes in Him, will have eternal life, raised up gloriously by Jesus on the day of His return. 2. No one can come to Jesus, unless the Father draws him. The point of this second fact is not that we should be passive or resigned about our eternal state. We are to believe in the one that the Father has sent and labor to have Him, for He is the bread from heaven, the only One with the Father’s seal of approval.

There were many who did not like the idea that Jesus was saying that He came down from heaven and Jesus knew it, but He did not back away from this important truth at all. He is the preexistent, eternal Son of God, and He holds the key to resurrection life. Those who are being drawn to Him by the Father will eventually vigorously desire Him. He spoke of them eating His flesh and drinking His blood, which then further offended those who were rejecting His Word. He said that those who want eternal life must feed on Him, and many of the larger group of His disciples were so offended by this that they no longer followed Him. The twelve remained with Him, though even one of them would eventually betray Him.

Jesus was using the imagery of eating His flesh, because He is the peace offering and the Passover Lamb. These were sacrificial offerings that the people of Israel were permitted to consume. Jesus is our peace and our rescue from certain judgment. The profit for us is not in His physical flesh, it is in His Word, which is Spirit and life to the one who will eagerly desire it and receive it. Something like this is surely happening when we rightly partake of the Lord’s Supper, which had not yet been instituted when the events of John 6 took place. Today we receive the Word from heaven gladly. There is no other place for us to go. We listen eagerly to the Word of God, knowing that this Word is alive and powerful. We long for Him, and we receive Him, for He is the bread who came down from heaven to give us life.

Joshua 6

Jericho was a city in Canaan with a king and with mighty men of valor. But God gave Jericho into the hand of Joshua and the people of Israel, and the conquest of Canaan began.

The Lord was the leader of this campaign. He was not second-guessing Himself about the events described in this chapter and in the rest of this book. Hundreds of years ago He had announced that He would give this land to Abraham.

On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” (Genesis 15:18-21)

God knew the timing of this conquest, and He had His reasons. As He told Abraham, “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” It is a pleasure to follow a Leader who has such confidence and such perfect moral judgment. He is not plagued by doubts. His purposes shall be established.

We need to trust Him. We need to believe in the wisdom of His goals, and we need to follow His voice. He knows where He is going, and He knows the best way to get there.

Only the Lord could have come up with His specific plan for the defeat of Jericho. His plan was not according to the wisdom of men. It could easily be critiqued, but to be God's critic is never wise.

Even today, in the New Testament era, God has a goal for the church, and He has revealed a plan for the achievement of that goal. We need to trust and obey. The gates of hell shall not prevail against us.

We blow the trumpet of good news everywhere today. We preach Christ, the cross, the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, and the coming of the new heavens and the new earth with the return of our victorious Lord. To some, it is an aroma of life. They are the Rahabs who have the gift of faith. The Lord will not forget His promise to them. “If you acknowledge Me before men, I will acknowledge you before my Father in heaven.” But to others, the preaching of the gospel is an aroma of death.

It is not our place to judge the Lord. It is enough for us to remember that we came from a city of destruction, and that He has gathered us and our households into His loving arms.

When we fight against the Lord, we only try to rebuild the city of destruction. Jesus, who died for us, is the Way. His goals are the right goals. His methods are the right methods.

Psalm 113

What does it mean for you and I to praise the Lord?

This is the third psalm in a row to begin with the simple words, “Praise the Lord!” But what does it mean?

Isn't it just calling us together for worship? But it cannot be just a simple going through the motions of liturgy. We want to praise Someone who we would know to be there with us. We can only praise the Lord in person if He shows up. We are desperate for Him to answer our first prayer of worship, an “invocation.”

We know that God is everywhere, but when we invoke His presence we are simply asking Him to make Himself known again in our midst. That's the way that we want to praise the Lord. We want Him to show up, and then we want to show up in Spirit and in truth. This is worth asking for. We want to serve Him with worship. We want to glorify His Name. He wants that too. We should have no doubt that if we ask, we will receive.

God is not bound by just one special place and time. His Name will be praised forever, and there is no place so dead that He cannot bring life there.

They get this right in heaven. They praise the Lord there. They know that He is with them, and they gladly come before Him without delay, excuse or challenge. He is the Lord of heavenly worship. He can grant us the desire of our hearts too today when we say, “Thy kingdom come.”

He is not stuck in the muck of sickness and sadness. He is seated on His throne. And yet He is very near to all who call upon Him in truth.

He can relate to our poverty. His Son became poor, securing our rich inheritance. He knows what it is to be thrown out by people and left on the ash heap. He was despised and rejected by men. He can make us sit with heavenly princes when we have lost all hope. He knows what it is to be utterly alone. How else can we understand His deep words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” But He will never forsake us. He will give us a mother's joy again. Praise the Lord of the resurrection!

“Be with us today, Lord. We call upon Your Name.”

Psalm 112

All of my righteousness comes from Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one Man who had the true fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. This fear is the reverent awe of a holy worshiper of God who stands ready to hear and obey God's Word. Jesus greatly delighted in His Father's commandments, and fulfilled them all.

“His offspring will be mighty in the land.” I am counted as a son of God through faith in Him. He has gone to that Jerusalem above, the land of heaven, where all His children are blessed. They are called the generation of the upright in Him.

This great King, Jesus, has title to all the great blessings of heaven. The wealth and riches of earth are fleeting. They come and they go. But the riches of heaven come from righteousness, and His perfect righteousness endures forever.

He dwells in a realm of perfect light. That light dawns every day over my remaining darkness. He sends His gracious and merciful Holy Spirit to the church, and moves us toward the fullest blessings of His great kingdom. He is generous and just in all that He does.

The stability of heaven comes to us through Him. During His days here below, He trusted His Father through every affliction. His heart was steadfast in His great mission, which He fully accomplished on the cross. Now He has become the Source of the good news that we proclaim to the world.

Whatever battle still remains for us here below, He will win the victory for us. He will not be content until the fullness of His heavenly kingdom covers the earth.

I am poor now, but He distributes His blessings freely to the needy. He counts me as His friend.

My desire is for Him, and for the life that He has won. That life will last forever, but the desire of the wicked will perish.

Psalm 111

Teach me, O Lord, how to praise You!

The command of God to praise Him makes perfect sense. His people in the church should worship Him. All those who have been credited with the righteousness of Christ should thank Him continually with dedicated hearts. There is no good excuse to withdraw our full devotion from God.

The greatness of God compared to us is obvious, and there can be no doubt that we should thank Him and praise Him. If we find our hearts lagging behind, there is some help for us. We can begin to contemplate the Lord's great works using this acrostic poem, where every line starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

God's works can be studied. These works are everywhere, both around us and in us. They show forth His splendor and His majesty to those who want to delight in Him.

Everything that God has done, He has accomplished in perfect righteousness. There are no moral short-cuts with Him, and no compromise of His character. Especially His saving love through the gift of His Son is very worthy of our meditation. His righteousness endures forever through the cross of Christ. On the cross, the perfect justice of God and the perfect mercy of God embrace, and our sins are forever atoned for.

The Lord has made His works to be remembered forever. His acts of creation are presented for us in the Scriptures with elegant simplicity. His mysterious providence in the history of Israel are recorded for us. They continue on to the present hour. His saving plan for all the peoples of the earth through the Son of God, the King of the Jews, is a frequent, though veiled, theme throughout the Old Testament. But now this great work of God has been made manifest through the coming of His Son, and through His cross and resurrection. Now the good news of God's salvation is being published all over the world.

The Lord is gracious and merciful! This is not a mere assertion. The story of His covenant love is fully recorded for us in the Scriptures. But we also know it in our lives. Will there be food on the table today? Will the Lord's Supper be celebrated in the worship of His people again this Sunday? The Lord provides food for those who approach Him in reverent submission. He is preparing a banquet feast for His children in the heavenly assembly. He is faithful all over the world where people call upon His Name through the One Mediator between God and man.

His statutes are great, though we have not perfectly obeyed them. But now a new Law of heavenly compassion and righteousness has come in person. Now we have seen the fullness of divine love in the cross, and the way of life is clear for us. We must follow Him. He has granted us His Holy Spirit, so that we can walk as Jesus walked with faithfulness and uprightness. Even when we fail, there is strong encouragement for all who repent and believe. We are forgiven and cleansed.

He has purchased us back from sin, death, and hell. We have been brought out of the worst house of bondage by the blood of the Lamb. It is time to draw near to Him in sincere devotion. Now we have been moved to a better understanding, not just in our minds, but in our hearts. We will worship the Lord forever through the Son of God, who is the Alpha and the Omega, and every letter in between.

Psalm 110

The great I-AM, Jehovah, Yahweh, the LORD, says a Word to some other great being, called in Psalm 110:1, David's Adonai, or “Lord.”

The first LORD is the word “I-AM.” Jews did not feel it right to even say His Name. In reverence, whenever they came to that great Name in the public reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, they would say a different word, “Adonai.” When this passage was read in Hebrew, the reader would say, “The ADONAI said to my Adonai.” When the Hebrew Bible was translated into the Greek version that was commonly used in the days of Jesus and the apostles, the word for “Lord,” “kurios,” was used twice. “KURIOS says to my kurios,” or in English, “The LORD says to my lord.”

The identity of the first “LORD” who is speaking to David's “Lord” is undisputed. He is the great “I-AM,” the Lord God Almighty. But who is the One that He speaks to? To whom does He say, “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool?”

This great Messiah King was called “My Son” in Psalm 2:7, “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, 'You are my Son.'” It was everyone's understanding from the promise of God to David that there would be a “Christ” who would be David's descendant or “Son.” How could the Christ be both David's Son and David's Lord?

Now we know.

Jesus was the descendant of David according to His human nature, but in His divine nature, He was the eternal Son of God. This Christ was the One that the Father spoke to in Psalm 110. This One who came after David was also above David. He was David's Son and David's Lord.

The Father said to the Son, “Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”

Jesus is now exalted in the heavens at the right hand of the Father. We must not resist Him.

Jesus rules from Zion above. He rules over the earth in the midst of those who oppose Him. His power is expressed in the service of a willing people who come to Him. They come to Him not to pursue their own agendas, but to joyfully give themselves to suffering love. This love was expressed perfectly in the cross. This is the life of love for God and others that the Lord calls us to live today. When we are His willing people, following Him in the love of the cross, His power is made manifest in the midst of the world.

Jesus has the holy garments of His great priesthood, and we, who follow Him, have been dressed in His righteousness. Every day He can fill us with the freshness of heaven so that we will serve Him in the power of a new life.

The great I-AM is completely and permanently committed to this: His Son will be a perfectly holy Priest forever, according to the example shown centuries before in Genesis 14 in the King-Priest Melchizedek, the King of Salem. (See Hebrews 7 for more on Jesus and Melchizedek.)

We who follow Jesus as willing servants find our identity in Him. He is our great High Priest, and we are priests to God in Him. We are not our own. We are ready to follow His will. He lives in us, and we live through Him.

Together, the Priest-King and His Kingdom of servants will be victorious in the battle of love and justice. He fought the good fight in the fullness of the Spirit. We also “drink from the brook by the way,” and we lift up our heads in wonder that the power of God would be expressed through our weakness.

This is the Christian life. There is no other way for us but this one. In our connection to Him, His kingdom comes. May His will be done through you today on earth as it is in heaven.