Job 3:20-26

"Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death." 

Revelation 20:14 (NIV) 

Job 3:20-26

This headline caught my eye on the editorial page this morning: “This is the year we choose death over indignity.” I didn’t bother reading the article, because I was sure that I would read an article congratulating Canadians on being ‘progressive’ or ‘sophisticated’ enough to believe that every person should have the ‘right’ to end their own life. The headline was enough for me! My father died this June and his last days on earth were filled with pain and the desire to die that Job expressed. His last 48 hours in particular stripped any dignity from him that he had left.

I feel that I have a glimpse of understanding of the ability of pain and disease to strip away our dignity - a glimpse only - but for sure I have been very close to it, not only with my father, but with other family members and church family. I don’t want to argue using the strong case contained in the Word for submitting to God’s timetable for a person’s death - as a matter of fact - I don’t want to argue about it at all, I just want to point out to myself and whoever reads this post, that there is no dignity in death - in any death - in any type of death. Job voices that he thinks being stillborn is better than going through misery before death, yet talk to a mother about the death of her stillborn. We read of Moses death at 120 years, still strong and vital, wouldn’t that be a death with dignity? Moses didn’t think so, for he was being humbled before his people for his pride.

There is no dignity in death. It is a terrible terrible state of affairs that we live under, this sentence of death and we are powerless to stop it, or to somehow make it more dignified (really!) by cutting short the pain that our bodies suffer as we fight to live. This is one of the most amazing truth about God’s Only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that He willing surrendered to indignity for you and me! Not just the indignity of death, but also of suffering a humiliating shameful, painful death! He did this willingly for you and me, that we might have true Life in His Name, and that one Day - one glorious Day - we will stand at His side and watch Him destroy death forever!

Come Lord Jesus Come!

"Come Thou Long Expected Jesus", Chris Tomlin, via YouTube

Proverbs 31:10-31

"To the woman he said,...“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Genesis 3:16 (NIV)
Proverbs 31:10-31

A husband and wife living together in unity can be summarized with this exhortation: “Grab each other's hand and go through it together!”

Adam and Eve were one flesh; they were united in thought and deed. Some friends of mine give Adam a hard time. They think Adam should have told his wife not to eat the fruit, and yet I see the account in Genesis 3 as proof of their unity. Adam didn’t rule over Eve, but he was beside her. She decided to eat, so he ate. He decided to hide so they both hid. The curse God spoke to the man and his wife, is carried out in every marriage that has ever been! The curse is a curse of DISUNITY, the wife wants to rule the relationship, but the man rules with an iron fist.

I don’t enjoy reading this curse but I love to read the account of the Wife of Noble Character in Proverbs 31. What strikes me when I read this passage is the confidence and trust that the husband has in his wife and that the wife has in her husband. Nowhere in this passage do you get a hint that the husband is ruling the wife, nor do you get a hint that the wife is trying to rule the husband. You get a sense that they are in unity together, blessing each other’s efforts and filling their own God given roles. And it is beautiful. Marriage as it can be through the power of the LORD!

Proverbs tells us twice that it is, “better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.” (21:9 & 25:24), yet in the chapter 31 passage, her husband has full confidence in her and praises her. I heard a preacher say that this passage is impossible! He pointed out that the passage starts with: A wife of noble character who can find? and told us that women need to recognize that this is an ideal description not reality. I think his motives were good; he doesn’t want ladies reading this passage and operating under guilt - but I find that approach discouraging. What I would ask is this: Men, have you found the wife of noble character? That is, have you recognized the wife that the LORD brought to you is the woman of Proverbs 31? Do you see her with the eyes of God? Will you give her your confidence and stop ruling over her? Will you praise her and say out loud in her hearing: “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all"?

Let us be those who grab our spouse’s hand and go through whatever it is that is facing us - TOGETHER - with full confidence in each other!

Proverbs 31:10-31

"The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down." 

   Proverbs 14:1 (NIV) 

Proverbs 31:10-31

Feminists scoff at the idea of holding the position of being a wife in high regard, for they deliberately ignore that when God created humans, He created them male and female and He made them man and wife. Marriage, defined as a man and a woman in a life-long covenantal relationship, is the highest and holiest relationship known to humans. It is the primary relationship and all other relationships - even civil society - are built upon marriage.

The importance of marriage can be compared to the cells that make up all matter. These cells are made up of various members and yet they operate as a unit and together with other cells, they form complex organisms and structures. God brought the woman to the man and they became one flesh; perfectly united - two individual parts, but together they are one. All of humanity is based and built upon the relationship of marriage.

This verse in Proverbs teaches that in marriage the wife holds the power to the unity of the relationship: “she can build her house, or she can tear it down”. When a woman decides before God to be the woman that He wants, calls and empowers her to be, she builds her house. I don’t know if you have seen the sign, “Welcome to the nut house” but whenever I see it above a door of a house, I chuckle. The truth is that there is no such thing as a perfect house; every family has dysfunction. BUT there is such a thing as a WISE wife, a WISE mother and she has power that the husband and father doesn’t have. She has the power to either build or tear down her own house, with her own hands.

If you are a wife or a mother, may God bless you as you seek to build up your family in wisdom. If you are a husband or a child may you rise and call your wife or mother “blessed”. Not only do these ladies hold the power over their own families, how they build their families determines the strength of our society!

Isaiah 65:17-25

 "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, 

and the lion will eat straw like the ox, 

and dust will be the serpent's food. 

They will neither harm nor destroy

on my holy mountain, says the LORD." 

Isaiah 65:25 (NIV) 

Isaiah 65:17-25

Last week the newspapers shouted: “The pope teaches that dogs will be in heaven!” No matter if he is right or wrong or if the newspapers are making stuff up again to sell copies, it got me thinking about this passage in Isaiah which describes the new heaven and new earth, and feeling very SORRY for the lowly snake.

The similarities between Genesis 1 & 2 and Revelation 21 & 22 are marvelous and teach us the truth that God’s original design will be restored in the new earth, albeit with some changes. According to Isaiah 65 one of those changes will be the status of the lowly snake. POOR SNAKE! We are not told in the creation account what the snake looked like, nor how it moved, but part of God’s curse on this animal for being used by Satan was that it would crawl on its belly and eat dust! Things are better for the wolf, the lamb and the lion (dogs aren’t mentioned in this passage) on the new earth, but the POOR SNAKE is still eating dust! What a marvelous place the new earth will be – where death is no longer, where we who are His are holy in every way, and where God’s creatures who because of the curse became predators, are fulfilling once again the peaceful purposes for which He created them!

Come long expected Jesus, Come!

"Come Thou Long Expected Jesus", Chris Tomlin, via YouTube 

Psalm 55

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

Romans 15:13 (NIV) 

This verses teaches that the benefit of trusting God is being filled with joy and peace, which causes us to overflow with hope.

It has been well said that the entire message of the Bible can be summed up as “Trust God”. If Eve had only trusted that God’s intentions were good (Gen. 3), she would have laughed at Satan! If Moses had only trusted God (Num. 20:12), he would have been able to set foot in the promised land! Our Lord Jesus set Himself apart from all other humans because He trusted in God (Heb. 2:13).

But what about us - do we trust God this day?

Trusting in God - in His provision for our sin and in His Holy Word, is a dominant theme of the Psalms, and David especially recorded fighting the spiritual battles of trust versus fear, trust versus anxiety, trust versus doubts. Am I filled with joy and peace today? Do I overflow with hope in my situation? If the answer is YES, then praise God for I trust in Him. If the answer is a flat NO, then friend decide right now to fight the spiritual battle that David records for us in Psalm 55. If the answer is PARTIALLY, then friend, consider this: do you want partial Peace? Partial Joy? Partial Hope? I don’t want partial peace and joy and hope, I want to be filled to overflowing with Joy and Peace and Hope in every area and every situation of my life. I want to TRUST God!

"Trust in Jesus", Third Day, via YouTube

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Psalm 128

"Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in obedience to him." 

Psalm 128:1 (NIV) 

 

What a blessing it is to be a child of God! To enjoy the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and the blessedness of being in Christ is the greatest blessing that any person could ever hope to receive for God during their life. May we always remember and give praise and thanks to God for the love He lavished on us that we are called His children. 

This psalm follows in correct order behind the psalm that taught us to place the LORD God in leadership over all our activities - especially our families. It spells out the benefits that God promises to those who place Him and His kingdom first. If I read this psalm and others like it every day and ignored many other sections of the Bible, I would in short order fall into the trap of becoming a prosperity preacher and yet I cannot ignore the rest of the Word. So when I read this psalm, my soul is filled with thankfulness, that God’s face does shine on His children from heaven, that God’s hands are busy in the wombs of godly women all around the world, throughout all ages, and He causes children to be a blessing to their parents, and more than that, He even prolongs the lives of His men and women so that they may see and bless their grandchildren. 

I will not use this psalm to demand from God, but I will use this psalm to give Him the thanks He deserves for all good things come from Him! What could be more good, than a man and a woman, joined in love, surrounded by their children and their grandchildren with their hearts filled with thankfulness to our great God who gave us each other, who gives us food, and strength and love, and life and happiness. Blessed! Blessed! Truly we are Blessed! Praise His Holy Name for the blessing of family!

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Psalm 127

"Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him." 

Psalm 127:3 (NIV) 

How much time do we spend with our families? How early do we get up? How late do we stay up? How much toil in our lives are related to our families? This psalm makes it clear that family life is the one activity where we are clearly God’s helper. It is God who decides who our mom and dads are. It is God who gives children to parents.

Many of us think that it is our job to raise our kids to be the spouse they should be, or the child they should be, or the sibling they should be, and that we need to persuade God to help us - YET - this psalm and all of Scripture, teach that God Himself brings us our spouses (Matt 19:6), that He gives us our children, which means that He chooses our parents, and that He places the lonely into families (Ps 68:6). This is God’s work and He expects us to help Him. We are called by God to be our brother’s keeper. It all started in the Garden of Eden where God brought Eve to Adam and it continues to this day all around the world.

Family is the building block of all human society - not by accident, but because God’s work, is family work. Humans strive to build villages, kingdoms and communities, but God builds families. He is building a family right now - a spiritual family where He is our Heavenly Father through his beloved Son, Jesus, and we are His children, reborn in His Spirit. He is also building millions of families all around the world, husbands and wives, children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters – FAMILIES.

Friend, if these things I have written are true - if our families are God’s work, and we are but helpers - then have we asked Him for guidance recently in our family life? Have we rested in Him in our toil and hours of work we pour into our family? Have we committed our family relationships to Him, and placed His wishes for our families above our own desires?

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