WHEN LEAST EXPECTED

MATTHEW 24:42-44 NEW LIVING TRANSLATION

“So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this: If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.”

       Jesus is speaking here in the Gospel of Matthew regarding his return.  It will not be a drawn out affair, but rather swift and sudden.  Just as a bolt of lightning is there and then gone, so the Son of Man will return.  It shall be in an instant, in a blink of an eye ⁽¹⁾.  The Lord gives an illustration that anyone either from Bible times or from our time could understand.  If you knew someone was coming to rob your home you would prepare for it so that the thief’s efforts would be thwarted.  If you had no idea when the robbery would take place you would probably not believe it could happen to you and go about your way. According to www.howmanyarethere.net, there are 6,000 home break ins nationwide each DAY!  And people never think it’s going to be them.

       Jesus says something rather thought provoking.  He uses the phrase “when least expected”.  Since we cannot know when He will return, we can’t possibly make ourselves ready at the last second, because we don’t know when the last second is. Do you realize that means we could be anywhere during the course of our day when He returns for us?  It stands to reason that we should make ourselves ready and keep ourselves ready for the time Christ returns.  We do that by filling ourselves with His word and living it out each day.  We do that by imitating Jesus in our daily lives.  We do that by putting self aside in favor of others.

       James Joyce once wrote: “Time is, time was and time shall be no more.”⁽²⁾ We watch time religiously so as not to be late; however, time has no meaning to God the way it does to us. Scripture clearly tells us that to the Lord a thousand years are the same as a day and vice versa (2 Peter 3:8).  We go about planning anything and everything so our lives are time managed. That’s all well and good, but are we ready to meet the Lord in the clouds?  Some day time will have no meaning to us.  Do what you must do today, but make yourself ready as well.  Until next time, walk with the King and be a blessing!

Resource:  The Life Application Study Bible; published by Tyndale House.

⁽¹⁾ 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 “But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed.”

⁽²⁾ James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish modernist avant-garde novelist and poet. The quote is taken from his book The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

HAVING A TEACHABLE SPIRIT

Romans 15:4 New Living Translation

“Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.”

      A teachable spirit; it’s necessary if a person wants to learn anything at all. A person has to be willing to listen intently and not just hear what is being told to them. There is a big difference between listening and hearing. You can listen to someone all day long and not hear a thing they are saying. The Bible was written to teach us. It is meant to encourage us and build up our faith and trust in God. If we have a teachable spirit we will gather many nuggets of truth from its pages. If you believe it to be God’s infallable Word, then that which lies between the covers is sacred and holy and therefore, worthy of being read and adhered to.

     We are not in some crazy game. We are at war with an enemy who already knows the fate that awaits him. His lone desire is to drag as many down with him as possible. We’re making it easy for him. We’re not paying attention. We’re doing as we please and not allowing ourselves to be taught. If we weren’t at war, why would God have wasted space on his pages to speak of spiritual armor in Ephesians 6? We must learn our lessons well and be prepared to stand our ground when the enemy comes prowling ⁽¹⁾.

      We have nothing to fear for we are the children of God. We do however need to be attentive to our surroundings and allow ourselves to be taught by our Lord and Savior. The knowledge is there for the taking.  Until next time, walk with the King and be a blessing!

Note:  “The knowledge of the Scriptures affects our attitude toward the present and the future. The more we know about what God has done in years past, the greater the confidence we have about what he will do in the days ahead. We need to diligently read our Bibles so we may have confidence that God’s will is best for us.” (From The Life Application Study Bible re: Romans 15:4)

⁽¹⁾ 1 Peter 5:8 New Living Translation

“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

FAITH REPLACES THE LAW

Galatians 3:24-25

“The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.” 

      The Galatians had fallen back into living by the Law of Moses and not by the faith they had originally embraced. Paul is not overly pleased with them. In the beginning of chapter three he first calls them “foolish”, then asks them who had “bewitched” them into clinging once again to the Law over faith. Paul likens living under the Law as being held in custody of a guardian. This was necessary until faith in Christ was introduced to man.

     Justification came in the form of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born, lived among men and died a criminal’s death as a substitute for sinful men. That death cleansed us of our sins, not just covered them as the Old Testament blood sacrifices did each year. Christ’s death cleansed us once for all time. Do we still sin? Yes! Is forgiveness still available to the contrite heart? Yes!! Are we living under the Mosaic Law? No, we are not. Christ’s death freed us from the Law forever. This is seen in the renting or tearing of the veil or curtain that separates the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place in the Jewish Temple (Matthew 27:51). That represented our open access to God. No longer were we required to go through a High Priest, but rather could approach God ourselves due to the death of Christ on Calvary’s cross. We are now able to have a personal relationship with Almighty God directly, where once a go-between was necessary. This fact may mean more to a Jew who receives Christ as their Messiah, then a gentile who never had the Law to live by, however, we can still better understand this gift of freedom by making ourselves aware of what the Jews were required to do previously. Many Jews still live by the Mosaic Law to this day, not realizing that their Messiah had come.

       A relationship with God, which may have seemed impossible, was made possible by a single death. God dwelling within us in the form of His Holy Spirit, made possible by a single act of love. Christ’s death on a wooden cross shall stand for all time as the most selfless act of love and mercy known to man and yet millions reject that act each day. There is no other hope of redemption. Without forgiveness, sin goes unpaid and all hope vanishes. Living for God gives life, freedom and hope for all our tomorrows.  Until next time, walk with the King and be a blessing!

Note: NLT – The New Living Translation.

ARE WE A CHRISTIAN NATION?

PROVERBS 14:34 NLT

“Godliness makes a nation great, but sin is a disgrace to any people.”

       The children of God continually vacillated between serving God and serving self.  The mistake of seeking a King like the other surrounding nations⁽¹⁾ opened the door to a roller coaster ride of obedience and disobedience based on the spiritual disposition of a particular king, which caused a lot of God’s judgment to fall upon them over the years.  Had they kept God as their King they could have avoided much of the heartache they experienced.

       Is the United States a Christian Nation? In spite of what revisionist historians have been attempting to do, this country was founded on the Bible and God’s guidance. Statistically speaking, while 78% consider themselves Christians, only a little more than 1/3^rd of America’s population (39%) consider themselves ‘born-again’⁽²⁾. 

       There is a big difference between saying you’re a Christian and living like one.  A lot of sinning is going on in this great country of ours and people are doing their best to make it seem as though it’s okay.  When Solomon speaks of godliness, he is speaking of obedience to God’s word.  He is referring to living with a spirit of forgiveness, mercy and grace.  These are the by-products of love.  Is our country a disgraced nation because of the greatness of sin that exists?  That is for God to determine, however, if we use the scriptures as our guidebook, I believe it is safe to say I wouldn’t want to be a sinner standing before God on the last day. There are those who ridicule believers in Christ and/or are trying to eradicate any thought of God in our nation.  They are not content to simply not believe as we do, they consider us dangerous and are looking for ways to stop us from representing Christ within our collective spheres of influence. There are also those live life under the faulty premise that God isn’t really going to cast anyone into outer darkness away from His presence for all eternity.  God’s not like that, right?  On the contrary, God is a loving, merciful, forgiving God until He has determined that no one else will listen and repent from their sinful ways, then comes the judgment of man.

       Every chance has been given to man to confess their sin and receive the free gift of God’s forgiveness thru Christ’s blood.  Some will simply never listen.  This is a supremely great nation and there are many God loving, God fearing people living here who do not live in sin.  While we all slip up and sin at times, that is not what living in sin is.  It’s sinning as a way of life without conviction of any wrongdoing.  This is unacceptable in the eyes of God.  We must continue to show this world what it truly means to be a follower of Christ.  Until next time, walk with the King and be a blessing!

NOTE: NLT is the New Life Translation.

⁽¹⁾ 1 Samuel 8:4-21

⁽²⁾ http://christianity.about.com/od/denominations/p/christiantoday.htm

THE HUMAN HEART

Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NLT)

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”

       The Prophet Jeremiah was called by God to urge His people to turn from their sinful ways and come back to Him.  In the Old Testament, the heart⁽¹⁾ is a lot more than simply where our emotions reside.  It also represents the foundation of our character, which includes our mind and our will.  Man’s life is filled with daily choices that need to be made.  We can choose to continue in sin as the Jewish people had done at this time in history or we can choose to serve God. We will not stop sinning until we realize the importance of who God is to us and also what Christ did for us. 

       The human heart will naturally gravitate toward sinful behavior. The heart of man has been so inclined since birth. It’s the depraved nature of the human heart that requires renewal.  God searches the deepest recesses of our hearts and knows not only what we do, but also why we do it.  Nothing is hidden from God.  There will come a day when all will be rewarded exactly as they deserve based on their words and deeds.  Their intentions will have played out in their lives and there will be nowhere to hide and no way to conceal the full intent of what they had said or done.  We as Christians must take our relationship with our Creator seriously, determining to live according to His will and not our own. 

       Let me clarify something, we are not to obey God’s standards to get a reward.  We are to obey God’s will for us because that is what we are called and expected to do.  Christ didn’t voluntarily allow His own blood to be shed for no good reason.  The reason was to buy us back from the sinful existence we had been mired in. One drop of His precious blood cleansed us of all our sins.  Was this so we could go forward from forgiveness living as we choose?  I dare say ‘no’.  We have been called to be Christ’s representatives on this earth.  This can only be accomplished if we sell out to God each day. Until next time, walk with the King and be a blessing!

Resources: 

The Reformation Study Bible; published and distributed by Ligonier Ministries; general editor, RC Sproul.

The Life Application Study Bible; published by Tyndale House.

⁽¹⁾ Proverbs 4:23 New Living Translation (NLT) “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”