Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Walking In the Light
Fellowship is a word that we simply define as friendship. As Baptists we may define it as eating with one another at a large gathering. The truth is that those are only outward signs of fellowship. 1 John 1: 6 tells us that we can claim to have fellowship without actually doing so. The next verse however tells us how we can have real fellowship, or real community with one another.
1 John 1: 7 But if we walk in the light, as he (God) is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Walking in the light means to live openly and honestly with those around us. According to the Bible we will never have true fellowship without an open honest interface with those in our lives. It goes further to say that this type of relationship is possible with God. Through honest reflection and genuine repentance, salvation is available to us. Thank God he sent his son Jesus so that we could form a REAL relationship and community with him and those who likewise live openly and honestly.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
The Destruction of Nineveh
In the book of Jonah we read about when Jonah went to Nineveh to warn the people of Nineveh that God was
going to destroy them for their wickedness. Remember reading that the people of Nineveh repented and God
spared them of their destruction? They may have repented, but did they stop
their harlotry and sorcery? No, they didn't…and God destroyed them after all.
This destruction came about 100 years after Jonah and was prophesied by Nahum
in the short book of the Bible that bares his name. But why is Nineveh so important? Why was it given two
prophets and two whole books of the Bible?
I always pictured Nineveh as a small or
average sized town, but that is incorrect. Possibly founded by Noah’s grandson,
Nimrod, Nineveh
was vast and technologically advanced.
8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a
mighty one in the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before
the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the
LORD. 10 And the beginning of his
kingdom was Babel ,
and Erech, and Accad , and Calneh, in the land of Shinar . 11 Out of that
land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, 12 And Resen
between Nineveh
and Calah : the
same is a great city.
The Tower of Babel
was built in its region and the people’s use of brickwork is still a testament
to time. The city was the center of the ancient
Sumerian civilization that brought us Cuneiform writing, the first recorded law
codes under Hammurabi, and the Epic of Gilgamesh which included a similar version
of Noah’s flood. Nineveh
became the center of power within the Assyrian Empire. Diodorus Siculus
said that its walls were sixty miles around and one hundred feet high. Three
chariots could be driven abreast around the summit of its walls, which were
defended by fifteen hundred bastions, each of them two hundred feet in height. A virtually indestructible
city, it was the center of the entire region during Jonah and Nahum’s time.
The city’s remains were
found by A. H. Layard in 1845-1854 outside of Mosul ,
Iraq . Some of the
Ziggurat temples still partially stand in this area of the world. These
Ziggurats are thought by some to be the architectural style used in the
building of the Tower
of Babel .
What if the Tower of Babel
was not the fanciful tower described to us as children that reached up into the
clouds to try and reach God’s throne. What if the tower was a taunt to God and
a temple to man? Jewish historian Josephus wrote the following:
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the
grandson of Ham,
the son of Noah-a
bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to
God, as if it
were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own
courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government
into tyranny-seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to
bring them into a constant dependence upon his own power.
He also said he would be revenged on God, if he
should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower
too high for the waters
to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for
destroying their forefathers! (Ant. I: iv: 2)
So Nineveh was likely founded
on rebellion towards God. It was probably the original Babylon . The city could have been the
birthplace of many types of sins against God. Even still, God provided
salvation to the Gentiles of this city if they would repent of the evil they
had honed and perfected for centuries. Through his prophet Jonah, God gave them
a chance to get out the destruction they deserved and they took him up on this
offer. Nineveh
over time reverted back into their old ways however, and Nahum was then given a
prophecy of the city’s utter destruction.
God said that a flood would come on the city:
Nahum 1: 8 But with an overrunning
flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue
his enemies.
1: 10 For while they be folden
together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be
devoured as stubble fully dry.
The city under siege, will open it’s gates because of
a fire:
3: 13 Behold, thy people in the
midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine
enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars.
This invasion would utterly destroy the city not to
return:
How accurate was Nahum’s prophecy?
The following is a historical account of Nineveh ’s destruction:
F. LENORMANT
“But, in the third year, rain fell in such abundance that the waters of
the Tigris inundated part of the city and
overturned one of its walls for a distance of twenty stades. Then the
King, convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of any means of
escape, to avoid falling alive into the enemy's hands constructed in his palace
an immense funeral pyre, placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes,
and then, shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber formed in
the midst of the pile, disappeared in the flames.
So complete was the destruction that the excavations of modern explorers
on the site of Nineveh
have not yet found one single wall slab earlier than the capture of the city by
Arbaces and Balazu. All we possess of the first Nineveh is one broken statue. History has no
other example of so complete a destruction.”
I do not know how anyone could be more accurate than
Nahum’s prophecy from God. May we never take the word of God lightly, nor take
his mercy for granted.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Doubt in Darkness
Doubt is sure to find its
way into our lives. We are only human and our minds can be darkened. We can
feel far away from God. It may seem like he sometimes hides himself from us.
For the most part, doubt it is an attack from Satan on a Christian’s faith and his/her
sureness of God’s sovereignty, mercy, and comfort.
The only use for doubt
that I have found is that it sometimes spurs us to ask questions of God in
order to receive his answers. But we must wait for his answers and be ready to
accept them.
In Hosea, God says
that the people of Israel
have a love for him like the morning dew that quickly disappears. The same can
be said for us Christians, I am sure. God tells his people in Hosea chapter 6
to hold on and be sure in him.
Hosea 6: 3 Let us know; let us
press on to know the LORD;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”
God tells us that we may not receive his comforts
or his answers right away. The emphasis on “pressing on to know the LORD” tells
us that it may be hard to do so. At 4
AM it may be so dark that the coming light seems impossible and a
complete 180 degrees from the current situation. We know from experience
however, that there is sure to be a morning sunrise.
The
spring rains mentioned in this scripture are also referred to as the latter
rains elsewhere in the Bible. The growing seasons are a little different in the
heat of Palestine
than we are used to. Seeds were sown in the fall during the former rains. The
latter (or spring) rains came right before the harvesting of the grains and
corn. This rain gave the plants their fruitfulness and was a big determining
factor in a bountiful harvest. This is also mentioned similarly in:
Joel 2: 23 “Be glad, O children of
Zion ,
and rejoice in the LORD your God,
for he has given the early rain for your
vindication;
he has poured down for you abundant rain,
the early and the latter rain, as before.
Like plants, we need hard times of drought in order
to spread out our roots and send our roots deeper. We need to seek out life
giving water in everyway that we can. Then it makes it all the better when the
spring rains come in our life and God pours him self out to us. We then cherish
it, and it fills a deeper part of us.
So if we continue to seek him in times of spiritual
drought when we almost want to give up, God will quench our need like the
spring rains. He will overcome the darkness as sure as the dawn.
Friday, August 9, 2013
A Serpent Lifted Up Like Christ?
Not
long after God had freed the Hebrew peoples from Egypt and guided them towards their
promised land they began to complain. After God provided for them water and
food they were content for a while and once again began to complain. They
started to curse God and his “worthless food.” God had enough of their sin and
sent poisonous snakes on them. Many died and were sick. They recognized their
sin and quickly went to Moses to repent and ask God’s mercy to remove the snakes.
So Moses prayed.
Numbers 21: 8 And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery
serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it,
shall live.” 9 So Moses made a
bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look
at the bronze serpent and live.
So
why would God tell Moses to make an image of a serpent for the people to look
upon? John gives us a clue in his gospel when he recorded these words from
Jesus:
John 3: 14 And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
The
serpent that Moses made was a foreshadowing of Christ. The serpents sent were
the punishment for their sin, and the Hebrew children were required to look
upon the image of their punishment to be released from it. This probably
required a great deal of trouble for a person dying of snakebite. It may have
also seemed silly to them, as it would seem silly to us. “All we have to do is
go and look at some snake?” It probably required a bit of faith to get up and come
to where the serpent was lifted up, and believe that it would heal them. Is
this the type of belief that Jesus meant in this verse and the next verse?
John 3:
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Something
as simple as believing in Christ’s death in our place may seem silly to us at
first. It may seem too simple, and too easy. Jesus has made it simple for us.
He did all the work. He became our image of God’s punishment and wrath on
sinful mankind. He took on the punishment that we deserve for our sin and
rebellion against God. He is the one that was lifted up on the cross. He was
lifted up from the grave and to our Father. He will be lifted up as King of all
King’s. If we repent of our sins and look on him who is lifted up then we can
be made right with God and our sin will be forgiven. We can escape our sentence
of eternal death and be given life eternally through him.
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