Ephesians 1 -- Blown Away By Something New

I read something pretty profound in my commentary this morning pertaining to little verse 3:

 

“The heavenlies describes that place where Jesus Christ is right now and where the believer is seated with Him.  The battles we fight are not with flesh and blood on earth, but with satanic powers in the heavenlies.  The Christian really operates in two spheres:  the human and the divine, the visible and the invisible.  Physically he is on the earth in a human body, but spiritually he is seated with Christ in the heavenly sphere – and it is this heavenly sphere that provides the power and direction for the earthly walk…. This is the basis of his life and power.” 

 

That certainly better helps us understand how we “are free from the law, free from slavery to sin, as well as free from the power of Satan and the world.”

 

It sounds like the battles are really going on “up there”, and we see the shadows of those battles reflected on the walls of our lives down here.  This is going to take some thought and prayer.  My commentary said that Paul was trying to get his Ephesian friends to understand the vastness of the riches they had in Christ at that moment – not someday.

 

Father, let this soak into my brain and into my heart.  Form these thoughts so that I can come to a much better understanding of it all.  Reveal these true riches that I’ve only caught a glimpse of here in this life.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

 

 

 

Gary Ford

Song of Solomon -- A Different Look At God's Best For Us

Max Lucado wrote, “It’s unlike anything in the Bible.  For that reason, it should be read differently than any book in the Bible … Don’t search for hidden codes or submerged messages.  Love letters are to be appreciated, not analyzed … You are opening someone else’s shoebox of letters and reading the correspondence between two people madly in love.  I guess God knew we needed a reminder that romance was His idea.”  I thought about Adam and Eve, discovering all about each other on the first day they were together.  A pure love, undefiled by prior relationships, media, less-than-godly thoughts, etc.  THIS must have been what they felt.    No competition around.  Just them and God.  So I read it that way. 

 

Just as we might think, the words come pouring out:  “Kiss me … the smell of your perfume … your name … where do you ___? (discovering things about each other they don’t know).  Your cheeks … your neck … your eyes … Oh, you are beautiful! … You are so handsome (that’s nice to hear, guys!) … Our bed is the grass … my lover’s left hand is under my head, and his right arm holds me tight (visualize that scene) … My loves is mine, and I am his …. your eyes … your hair …. your teeth … your lips … your mouth … your breasts … my bride … She says:  my lover is healthy and tan … his head … his hair … his eyes … his cheeks … his smell … his lips … his hands … his body … his legs … his mouth is sweet to kiss, and I desire him very much (what guy wouldn’t want to hear all of that!) … I belong to my lover, and he desires only me … I have saved them for you, my lover … love bursts into flames and burns like a hot fire … Hurry, my lover!”

 

God created us male and female, and He created sex and romance and designed it all to fulfill us along with Him and to cement together two people for a lifetime.  He said it was good.  These love letters I think are God’s way of reminding us of this.  All of the “thou shalt not’s” we’ve read elsewhere apply to anything outside of the covenant marriage that He knows is His absolute best for us.  Anything else is only settling for less.

 

Father, thanks for the reminder.  Please keep Satan from whispering that anything else is worth seeking, for it’s not.  It’s only settling.  Help me to want only Your best.

 

Your brother in Christ,

 

Gary Ford

Jeremiah 52 - The End of The Book, AND The Nation

“The Lord was angry with them.  Finally, He threw them out of His presence … In all 4,600 people were taken captive.”

 

God had brought probably 2-3 million Israelites out of Egypt in the Exodus.  He’d helped them take ownership of the Promised Land, and now He’d taken 4,600 to Babylon to live as captives for 70 years.  They were all that were left.  They’d also lost it all.

 

In Matthew 16, people were saying that Jesus was like Jeremiah.  What a compliment to Jeremiah!  My commentary said, “Jeremiah became like Jesus because he shared the fellowship of His sufferings.  In the furnaces of life, Jeremiah was conformed to the image of God’s Son.  Jeremiah may not have realized that this process was going on in his life, and he might have denied it if it were pointed out to him, but the transformation was going on just the same.”

 

It continued, “Both Jesus and Jeremiah recognized that a nation’s greatest problem is not unemployment, inflation, or lack of defense; it’s sin.  The nation that doesn’t deal with sin is wasting time and resources trying to solve national problems, which are only symptoms of the deeper problem, which is sin….  It isn’t enough for a nation to put In God We Trust on its currency, to mention God in its pledge to the flag, or to tip the hat to God by quoting the Bible in political campaign speeches.  It’s righteousness, not religion, that exalts a nation.”

 

Father, first I ask You to conform me to the image of Your Son in the furnaces of life I find myself in.  Help me to react as He would.  It’s been tough lately.  And Father, please help our nation, one heart at a time, to come back to You, for that is our only hope to save it.  Cause our leaders to step up and not think about their re-election, but instead to do the right thing to get us back on track both fiscally and spiritually.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

 

Gary Ford

 

Jeremiah 50-51 Be Careful About Being God's Tool

It sure seems that, after all God had said about Judah and what awaited the nation as it was taken to Babylon to be punished, God was then going to rip the heart out of Babylon for being evil enough to have been used by Him to punish His own people for their apostasy.  Where Jerusalem would be destroyed and later rebuilt, Babylon would remain a ruin forever.

 

God said, “Babylon, I set a trap for you, and you were caught before you knew it!”  Ten times god said of Babylon, “I use you…”  Babylon wasn’t supreme.  It was a puppet used by the Lord to chasten His people.  Everything that God had told Jeremiah to say was written on a scroll and sent to Babylon to be read to King Zedekiah and all the Israelites in captivity, so that they’d know what would later befall their captors.  Then it was to be thrown into the Euphrates River, weighted by a stone.  Wouldn’t that be awesome to find on a fishing trip today!

 

Father, we ought to understand from this that we cannot become evil and fight You and expect to win.  You are sovereign, and any people who work against You are doomed from the start.  Their stubborn pride will be their ruin.  Please don’t let that be America’s ruin, Father.

Jeremiah 47-49 Messages of Doom, But Some Hope

“The time has come to destroy all of the Philistines …  Moab is destroyed…. The people of Moab thought they were greater than the Lord… The nation of Moab will be destroyed … The time will come when I will make Rabbah, the capital city of the Ammonites … become a hill covered with ruins … You are like an unfaithful child who believes his treasures will save him … I will bring disaster on the people of Esau … I will strip Edom bare … Edom will be no more … I will bring you down … Edom will be destroyed like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah … I will set fire to the walls of Damascus and it will completely burn the strong cities … Kedar and Hazor will be an empty desert forever … I will bring disaster to Elam and show them how angry I am…”

 

God had planned so much terror and disaster for people in the middle east.  Their own apostasy was the cause.  My commentary said, “God sees what the nations do, and He rewards them justly … God never gave the law of Moses to any of the nations that Jeremiah addressed, but He still held them accountable for the sins they committed against Him and against humanity.  Because of the witness of creation around them and conscience within them, they were without excuse.”

 

I couldn’t help but also notice this though:  “But in days to come, I will make good things happen again in Moab … But the time will come when I will make good things happen to the Ammonites again … But I will make good things happen to Elam again in the future,” says the Lord.

 

God was making promises of judgment.  But He also, in a few cases, made promises to restore after judgment.  I hope He has that in mind for us.  The last thing I’d want to hear Him say is, “America will be no more.”

 

Father, turn us around as a nation.  Cause us to see what we’ve done in the name of political correctness.  Show us the way back to You.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Jeremiah 45-46 It's Coming

Egypt had taken sides against God in the past and had paid dearly for it with the ten plagues.  Discovering the power of Yahweh, they did not, however, come to worship Him.  Instead, they kept up their idol worship and now God had a message for them through Jeremiah:

 

“Get ready for war, because the battle is all around you … The King’s name is the Lord All-Powerful.  Egypt’s army’s time of destruction is coming … The people of Egypt will be ashamed.  They will be handed over to the enemy … I will punish Egypt, her kings, her gods, and the people who depend on the king.  I will hand these people over to their enemies, who want to kill them.  I will give them to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and his officers.  But in the future, Egypt will live in peace as it once did.”

 

There was also a message to Israel in there:  “People Jacob, my servants, don’t be afraid; don’t be frightened, Israel.  I will surely save you from those faraway places … The people of Jacob will have peace and safety again and no one will make them afraid … Do not be afraid, because I am with you.  I will completely destroy the many different nations where I scattered you.  But I will not completely destroy you.  I will punish you fairly, but I will not let you escape your punishment.”

 

Even the people of God cannot escape punishment for their sins.  Their guilt may be forgiven, but the consequences of sin must play out. 

 

Father, all too often we as Christians presume upon Your grace.  We sin and then ask for forgiveness, knowing You’ve promised to give it if we repent in our hearts.  Yet every sin effectively nails another nail into Your Son on the cross.  Help us to realize the incredible cost of our sin on our Savior.  Help us to love Him enough that we won’t want to see Him hurt by our actions and thoughts again.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Jeremiah 37-44 The Last 30 Minutes Of The Movie

Wow!  That’s what it felt like reading this today.  I couldn’t stop, because I wanted to ride it out.

 

King Zedekiah begged Jeremiah to pray to God for them.  God simply answered that it was time to get ready.  It was gonna happen.

 

Jeremiah was imprisoned in a dungeon, then the courtyard of the guards, then lowered into a deep, muddy well.  But a man interceded for him with the king and at least got him removed from the well.  The king them secretly met with him to ask what would happen.  God told Jeremiah to tell him that he must obey God and surrender to Nebuchadnezzar in order to live.  Zedekiah said what we all often say:  “I’m afraid!”  And he let his fear override his trust in the Lord.  Rather than surrendering, he tried to leave the city under the cover of darkness.  The result of his disobedience was that he watched his sons being killed and was then blinded so that the last image he’d remember would be their death.  He was taken in chains to Babylon.  Look what his fear cost him!

 

The local commander of the Babylonian force was tasked with finding Jeremiah and giving him whatever he needed.  This was not collaboration.  This was God using an enemy to take care of His faithful servant.  Jeremiah chose to remain in Judah amidst the destruction, rather than living a life of luxury in Babylon.  He moved in with the appointed governor, who was likely seen as an enemy collaborator by the guerilla forces still roaming the countryside.  It wasn’t long before the governor was assassinated, along with many others.  The soldiers who did it then asked Jeremiah to pray to God for them and ask where they should go and what they should do.  They devoutly promised to do it. 

 

The message God sent made it clear that God already knew that they too would disobey Him:  “If you stay in Judah, I will build you up…. Don’t be afraid … I am with you … If you make up your mind to go and live in Egypt you will die there in war, from hunger or from terrible diseases… I will show My anger against you when you go to Egypt … You will never see Judah again … DON’T GO TO EGYPT!  Be sure you understand this;  I warn you today that you are making a mistake that will cause your deaths … So today I have told you but you have not obeyed the Lord your God … So now be sure you understand this:  You want to go to live in Egypt, but you will die there by war, hunger, or terrible diseases.”

 

Stubborn and hard hearted, they headed to Egypt anyway, even making Jeremiah go with them!  When they arrived, God gave Jeremiah another action sermon:  “Take some large stones.  Bury them in the clay in the brick pavement in front of the king of Egypt’s palace.  Do this while the Jews are watching you … Say: ‘I will soon send for My servant, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.  I will set his throne over these stones I have buried … He will come here and attack Egypt.  He will bring death to those who are supposed to die.’”

 

It wouldn’t do them any good to try to sneak back to Judah, for God wasn’t going to allow delayed obedience either.

 

The questions God had for them should shake us to the core as well:

 

“WHY are you doing such great harm to yourselves? … WHY do you WANT to make Me angry? … You will destroy yourselves … You are still too proud.  You have not learned to respect Me or to follow My teachings.”

 

It was all now too late.  The last ones who’d escaped destruction had blown their chance to re-form the nation.  God said, “I am determined to bring disasters on you … I have sworn by My great name … I am watching over them, not to take care of them, but to hurt them.  The Jews who live in Egypt will die from swords or hunger until they are all destroyed.”

 

God may have established them as His chosen people, but they had spat in His face, cursed Him, and overrun His mercy and grace.  He was giving them what they deserved.

 

Father God, on this Thanksgiving Day, I am so thankful that You planted us and built us up here in America.  For 236 years You have watched over us and blessed us as a nation and the world because of us.  Yet now it seems that Your people have become a minority here.  The majority seem to want nothing to do with You.  They do not trust You.  It’s never been this way before.  Like Zedekiah, I’m afraid.  I know that we are not yet to the point Israel and Judah had reached.  There is still a faithful remnant.  And You are still God.  Soften hearts and wake up souls, Father.  Cause people to fear You and to understand what their apostasy is doing to our land.  As in the past, where apostasy brought drought and famine, we see drought gripping our nation even now.  Please bring spiritual revival.  Please make sure we have something to be thankful for next year.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford