New Year "answers."

    I am starting the new year with some answers to (anonymous) questions I have received, and I have also added an Email widget on my blog and a comment section on my website for this purpose. If you have a question you want answered, I will do my best to do so as often as I can.

Let’s start with this one;

Question; Why do I always feel like I never can live up to what God desires? I listen to sermons and other teachings and I come away feeling defeated. I have this picture in my mind of standing before God and all my sins will be flashed on a screen for all to see…

    First of all, thank you for your questions. I want you to know that there are many other Christians who don’t understand this and have many other questions as well. In my years of ministry, I have tried to do my best to understand God’s Word from all perspectives and teach it to the best of my ability, allowing the Spirit to lead us all into the truth. I hope this will help in some way.

    As believers, we are going to have times when we fail to live up to God’s standards. We may lie, we may lust, we may be unkind at times, or we may struggle with some strong sinful habit in our life that we seem continually defeated by. This is when we need to KNOW – (have the assurance) that we are forgiven because these failures can lead to an overwhelming guilt, and feelings of despair, and fear of God’s judgment.

    I know because I’ve been in this position and I have experienced those same fears and feelings. I’ve also counseled those who, even after many years of being a Christian, still encounter those fears and feelings of despair and guilt. What I want to share with you and what God wants you to know with absolute confidence today is that those feelings of guilt and those fears are totally unwarranted because... As verse 1 of Romans 8 puts it: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." I want our focus to be on the words “those who are IN Christ Jesus”.

    The Bible gives us many scriptures to go along with this:

(Colossians 1:21-22). “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”

(Romans 5:8) “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”.

    This is grace.  Forgiveness and love are given to us when we do not deserve them. In fact, we still do not deserve it, nor will we ever deserve it. Grace means that God has forgotten about my past sin, so I should too. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2).

    Grace means that forgiveness and reconciliation with God have come, not based on anything we have done, but on who God is. The Bible says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

The first and foremost thing we must understand today is: Grace is the defining element of the Christian faith.

    Now, let’s look at another reason the focus is on the words “in Christ”…

1 Thessalonians 4:16 says; “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (speaking of the Rapture of the church) “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.  Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

2 Corinthians 5:10 says– “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” – This goes along with 1 Corinthians 3:7-9 – “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸ The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. ⁹ For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. ¹⁰ By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care.¹¹ For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, ¹³ their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. ¹⁴ If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.”

    Paul is talking about “deeds” not sin…our deeds are judged as to good or bad,,, the good will be rewarded and the bad will be burned up. There is a quote that says “Only one life, will soon be past, and only those things done for Christ (or with unselfish or right motives) will last.”

Verse 18 – “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. 

Matthew 16:27 – “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.”

Luke 6:23 - “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.”

Ephesians 6:8 “Because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.”

Hebrews 11:6 – “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Revelation 11:18 – “The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small”

Finnally, Revelation 22:12 – “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”

So, you see, judgment for our sins took place at the Cross, If we believe our sins were forgiven, we are IN Christ and are now “whosoevers”…Jesus said “Whosoever believes in me shall be saved!” If this were not true, why would we look forward to heaven?

Hail the incarnate Deity

John 1:1-5 and 14

    The second thing I want us to notice is how verse 1 and verse 14 fit so well together. Bible scholars call it a “couplet”…Verse 1 – “In the beginning was the Word” – Verse 14 – “And the Word was made flesh” - Verse 1 – “and the Word was with God.” – Verse 14 – “and dwelt among us” - Verse 1 – “and the Word was God” – Verse 14 – “Full of grace and truth.” It might be easier to see it all put together; “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh; and the Word was with God, and dwelt among us; and the Word was God, full of grace and truth.”

    Many people embrace Jesus as Savior, but don’t want him to be God. They welcome Jesus as a babe in the manger, but not as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Many sing of his birth and come and adore him at Christmas, but they brazenly reject his authority in their lives the rest of the year. By doing so, we ignore the core truth of the Christmas story, and that is that it is not about his infancy, it’s about his Deity! God in a manger - Emanuel, God with us!

    In Colossians chapter 1 – written by the Apostle Paul – he captures the very essence of the deity of Jesus Christ - “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation”… Have you ever heard someone say “He’s the splitting image of his father?” However, Jesus wasn’t merely a created being who bore the likeness of God, that’s true of all humanity, but again the Greek word used here is “eikon” which means “an exact image, a perfect copy or duplicate”. In verse 19 Paul says “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him”… and again in 2:9 he says “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” He is not only the Son of God, the Savior, He is God!

    Don’t ever buy into the myth and the lie that says God made everything, wound it up like some kind of toy, and then went away leaving everything to work out on its own in a natural sense. Far from deserting his creation, God has always been a part of His creation. He has always been involved with and concerned about His creation. He had a plan from the very beginning that would involve him stepping into the realm of time, and walking this journey we call life with us. His plan included everything from birth to death, and while he was here he gave us the most encouraging words we could ever hear – He said “I am the Lord thy God, and  “Lo, I am with you always”…”Never will I leave you nor forsake you”. (Matthew 28:20)

    When you hear the Christmas story, “Do you hear what I hear?”… When you see the nativity scene, “Do you see what I see?”… When you look into the manger, “Do you know what I know?” “Veiled in flesh the God-head see, Hail the incarnate deity…Pleased as man with men to dwell Jesus our Immanuel.”

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

From our house to yours,

Rev Fred and Judy Flatten

Veiled in flesh.

    In the great Christmas Hymn “Hark The Herald” we find the words; “Veiled in flesh the God-head see Hail the incarnate deity…Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.” This is where we find ourselves this morning, looking once again into the manger of Bethlehem at the baby Jesus, and trying to understand something that we truly can’t comprehend… and that is the fact that this child was indeed God.

    In J.B. Phillip’s New Testament Christianity, a senior angel is showing a very young angel around the splendors of the universe. They view the whirling galaxies and blazing suns, and then flit across the infinite distances of space until at last they enter one particular galaxy of 500 billion stars.

    As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel points to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of all he had seen.

    “I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger. “Well, it looks very small and rather insignificant to me,” said the little angel. “What’s special about that one?” To the little angel, earth did not seem so impressive. He listened in stunned disbelief as the senior angel told him that this planet, small and insignificant, was the renowned Visited Planet.

    “Do you mean that our great and glorious God…went down in person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?” The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that God stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?”

    “I do, said the senior angel, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping, crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him.” The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

    That God became man is probably just as perplexing to angels as it is to us  but that is exactly what we are confronted with in John 1:1 -

    So Jesus is the Word here. But John goes on to say that that “Word was with God and the Word was God.” The literal Greek – I have found – he declares, "God was the Word."  For some people, that is where a problem arises. For you see, the Word is distinct from the Father. They are two separate Persons. And a lot of people have a hard time with that. For this introduces us to the mystery of the trinity, three persons, one God. Some might object and say “Wait a minute”, 1+1+1 doesn’t equal 1 but 3. Ah yes, that is true…But 1x1x1=1 and such is the mystery of the trinity.

    “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

    Logos is the Greek word that we translate – “word”. So, to say Jesus was the “word” means that Jesus was God’s way of expressing to us, and declaring to us, and showing us, HIMSELF.

    There are a couple of interesting things that I would like to point out about our scripture for today. One is that in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 1, we are given the genealogy of Jesus; tracing his ancestry back through Joseph – “the father of…the father of…and so on. In the Book of Luke, we have a little different version. My study note for this says “From Abraham to David, the genealogies are almost the same, but from David on they are different. Some scholars suggest that this is because Matthew traces the legal descent of the house of David using heirs to the throne, while Luke traces or emphasizes the line of Mary.” But John, gives the genealogy of Jesus in its real form; “In the beginning was the Word” - He has always existed. When he became flesh, it was eternity entering the realm of time. One author put it this way; “He who eternally existed, came to earth and began to be what he never had been, then he died and rose again to continue to be what he eternally was”! … “I tell you the truth” said Jesus, “before Abraham was born, I am!”  Jesus was at the Father’s side in unbroken fellowship since before time began.

    This, the Bible tells us was our intended purpose and has now become our destination; unbroken fellowship with the Creator. However, sin interrupted that fellowship and separated us from God. Jesus stepped into time in order to reconcile that relationship, and made it possible once again for us to complete that which we were created for! … Are you still with me?

More next week…

Do you know what I know?

“Do You Know What I Know?”

    “Do You Know What I Know?”

       The Christmas story really begins with one Old Testament prophecy after another of a promised Savior; a coming King; the Messiah; who would redeem his people and reconcile them unto God the Father. The centerpiece, so to speak, of all these prophecies is Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” and 9:6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” These were written nearly 600 years before Jesus birth. That would be like someone giving a prophecy in the year 1415 that would we would see fulfilled today!  In fact, there was a prophecy, a promise given even longer ago that that; thirty some years after Jesus birth that could very well be fulfilled right now, today, at any given moment; and that is Christ’s return!  “Do you know what I know?”

    At Christmas time we tend to focus on the infancy of Christ, and it is the story of his birth, but the greater truth is his Deity. Even more astonishing than the Christ child born in the manger of Bethlehem, is the fact that this promised baby was the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth! He, in fact was almighty God in the flesh! John calls him the “Word.”  “In the beginning

was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God!” (John 1:1Is it) any wonder then, that his coming would dramatically and forever alter human history?

    More than a baby…More than a man…More than a teacher or preacher… More than a prophet or a great leader of men…and my question for you concerning Jesus today is “Do you know what I know?”

    “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” (John 1:4) Some other translations read “The light shines in the dark, but the dark has never extinguished it.” Oh, they have tried to extinguish the light for centuries, ever since Jesus was born. In the story, King Herod tries by ordering all male Jewish children under the age of two years to be killed… That was the beginning. Today, they have taken prayer out of schools, the Ten Commandments off the walls, and even tried to take “under God” out of our pledge of allegiance and “In God we trust” off our money! “The darkness has never extinguished the light”, and they never will!  Isaiah said “of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end” which looks beyond the first Christmas to a time in the still prophetic future, when Christ shall reign over all the earth and “every knee will bow and every heart confess.” The kingdoms and nations, and governments will all be subject to the rule of Christ the King!  Zechariah 14:9 – “The Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day there will be one Lord and his name shall be the only name!”

    So, you see, the Christmas story goes far deeper, and far beyond just seeing and hearing, it is something we must know!  Though born a babe in a lowly manger, he was and is the “Alpha and the Omega” the beginning and the end. He knows and sees the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning!

    He who is timeless, chose to step into time and live as we live, and die as we die, in order that he might be – as scripture says - “the perfecter of our faith”.

    There is no greater purpose of Christmas than for us to truly understand and know this one who lay in the manger of Bethlehem - Who he was, why he came, why he died, and why he will come again… “Do you know what I know?”

"Do you see what I see?"

    Today’s part of the story tells us about a man named Simeon, whom, it seems had waited his whole lifetime for Christ to be born. Scripture says that it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Savior. Take a hard, long, look at that statement…How many people die every year…every day…every minute in our world who never “see” the Savior?

    Even though Simeon was an old man, he never lost hope. Every moment of every day he was expecting the coming of the Lord. What expectations do we have this morning? Do we wake up every day thinking this might be the day; this might be the time when Jesus comes again? 

    Simeon had his priorities right. He had to personally receive the Christ child into his arms, into his heart and into his life. The Bible says there is no other way! I have heard some men say “Well, my wife is the religious one, not me.”…Well, I’m sorry to say that your wife is going to heaven alone!  After picking up the child in his arms, Simeon said “now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” After death there is no repentance, there are no sermons, there will be no altar calls, the opportunity to see God’s salvation in the Christ child is here and now! “Today is the day of salvation.” Do you see what I see?

    So here’s Simeon, holding the Christ child, blessing the baby Jesus, who would in turn bless the whole world. Now, I want to draw attention to one phrase about Simeon. The NIV says he was “waiting.” The English word doesn’t really do the phrase justice. The NLT says Simeon “eagerly expected” the Messiah. The Living Bible says he was “constantly expecting” the Messiah. The Phillips Bible says Simeon was “living in eager expectation of the salvation of Israel” and the Jerusalem Bible says Simeon “looked forward” to Jesus’ comforting His people.

    The phrase in Greek carries a lot of meaning. The word literally means “waiting forward.” Simeon was waiting forward for the Messiah. Both words are important. It’s not about standing around and doing nothing – like a waiting room. Simeon was actively listening, watching, hoping, and praying. He was not at the water cooler with his hands in his pockets, just standing around, hoping that something spiritual would happen to him. No, Simeon was waiting forward, constantly looking ahead, looking forward to the day when Jesus – the Christ child – would come.

    It’s the same word given for us in Luke 12:35-37. Jesus tells us to be like servants who are waiting. The servants were ready and waiting. They were looking forward to being with the master. And Jesus says that we should be the same. Part of walking in the Spirit is “waiting forward” for God to move in, around, and through us. Keeping our eyes open and ears sensitive to what God might have in store for us. After all, we believe that Jesus is coming back…don’t we?  2 Peter 3:10 asks the question “then what kind of people should we be?” Verses 11-12 give us the answer- “we ought to live holy and godly lives as we “look forward” to the day of God, and speed it’s coming.” That’s the same word in the Greek meaning “waiting forward”. We need to be patient and vigilant. We need to keep waiting, but not forgetting what we are waiting for.

    When Simeon looked at the Christ child, he saw the Savior he had been waiting for! The one he was expecting to come!  When you look into the manger, do you see what I see?