Tag Archives: Salvation

Day 131: Our Heavenly Father

Jeremiah 31:7-14

For Yahweh says,
“Sing with gladness for Jacob,
and shout for the chief of the nations.
Publish, praise, and say,
‘Yahweh, save your people,
the remnant of Israel!’
Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth,
along with the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her who travails with child together.
They will return as a great company.
They will come with weeping.
I will lead them with petitions.
I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters,
in a straight way in which they won’t stumble;
for I am a father to Israel.
Ephraim is my firstborn.

“Hear Yahweh’s word, you nations,
and declare it in the distant islands. Say,
‘He who scattered Israel will gather him,
and keep him, as a shepherd does his flock.’
For Yahweh has ransomed Jacob,
and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he.
They will come and sing in the height of Zion,
and will flow to the goodness of Yahweh,
to the grain, to the new wine, to the oil,
and to the young of the flock and of the herd.
Their soul will be as a watered garden.
They will not sorrow any more at all.
Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance;
the young men and the old together;
for I will turn their mourning into joy,
and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.
I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness,
and my people will be satisfied with my goodness,” says Yahweh.

Modern secular culture has to ignore many obvious human needs in order to maintain its composure and one of those things is mankind’s need for hope. From an evolutionary perspective, mankind doesn’t really have a basis for hope because they believe that mankind was produced by accident. There’s no reason to believe that mankind’s existence at the top of the food chain will remain. The same accidents that produced man could also produce something else in the future. There’s no reason to think that some other thing won’t become more fit for survival in the future. This kind of nonsense is not found in the Bible, of course. Instead, what we find are things like we read here.

The truth of the matter is that God is the Creator and His decisions are all that is required to make things happen. We have been reading about the fact that God intended to make terrible things happen to Israel because they had chosen to walk away from Him, but at the same time, He said things like this. He makes it clear to Israel that He intends to bring them back in the future. Not only will He bring them back, they are to enjoy prosperity, peace and joy. Even before He sends them into captivity, He makes this clear. This message inserts something precious into their minds. Whenever they consider the horrible situation that God forced them into, they will also have the memory that this same God will force them back into their own land and “they will not sorrow any more at all.” That’s what I call: hope technology. God wasn’t intending to simply torment His people. He intended to save them.

Not only is mankind not the product of a series of accidents, they were created by a Father. Israel is a glorious example to Gentiles like us. A father doesn’t torture His children. His intent in punishing them is to make them thrive as he removes error from their lives and sets them up for the future. What we see in this example is God saying: “I am a father to Israel.” He then goes on to explain their final end. Israel’s Father has dedicated Himself to their success and that’s exactly what they will have. As Christians we have this same Father. When Jesus taught us to pray by saying: “Our father who is in heaven…”, He said that we should start by remembering this fact. We go through a lot of problems in our lives too, but we can count on the fact that our Father is dedicated to our success just like He shows us with Israel.

Day 114: God’s Grace and Our Dedication to Sin

Jeremiah 26:1-9

In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from Yahweh: “Yahweh says: ‘Stand in the court of Yahweh’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in Yahweh’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them. Don’t omit a word. It may be they will listen, and every man turn from his evil way; that I may relent from the evil which I intend to do to them because of the evil of their doings.’ You shall tell them, “Yahweh says: ‘If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you, to listen to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I send to you, even rising up early and sending them, but you have not listened; then I will make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.” ’ ”

The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in Yahweh’s house. When Jeremiah had finished speaking all that Yahweh had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You shall surely die! Why have you prophesied in Yahweh’s name, saying, ‘This house will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, without inhabitant?’ ” All the people were crowded around Jeremiah in Yahweh’s house.

It’s pretty clear that Jesus thought quite a bit about passages of the Bible like this one. He even said to beware when all men think well of you because they did that to the false prophets. Jesus made it clear that real prophets get in trouble, and we get a great illustration of that right here.

Here we read that God made it very clear to Jeremiah that he was to go into the temple area and speak exactly what he was told to speak by God. It is very obvious that Jeremiah didn’t have a choice here other than to go against God and not do what He said. He was between a rock and a hard place. God puts us in these positions sometimes. I believe He’s trying to get us to see who is really worthy of being feared. Should our society be what scares us or should disobeying God scare us? Thankfully, Jeremiah demonstrated the appropriate action here. God is the one to fear and that’s the One Jeremiah chose, but God also allowed the people to retaliate against him.

This is a hard one for me too. Why would God tell us to do something knowing that we are going to get in trouble? I’m pretty sure that many who hear what I’m saying have an answer because many of you have gone through trouble for your obedience to God. It’s amazing how many people look back and thank God for bringing them through it. Still, I don’t believe it’s something that we choose to have happen to ourselves.

Another thing that strikes me here is the severely irrational behavior of the people. They all decided to kill Jeremiah for saying: “This house will be like Shiloh…” but that’s not what He said! He said that if they refuse to repent, that these things would happen. By attacking Jeremiah, they act as if it is impossible for them to repent and save the temple from destruction! Their behavior demonstrates their dedication to sin and that’s all it does. To add to their sins, they decided to attack God’s messenger. God said here that all He was trying to do was to warn the people so that they would repent and He could stop His plan to destroy them, but instead of repenting, they added a few nails to their coffins.

This is the state of mankind. By nature, we are irrationally and hopelessly dedicated to our sin. We attack the messengers when God attempts to save us. It is only through the intervention of God by His grace that we ever have a chance to see the light. Thank God He chose to break through to us and cause us to reverse our path because we would have surely killed all His messengers and died without God.

Day 109: The Remnant

Jeremiah 24:1-10

Yahweh showed me, and behold, two baskets of figs were set before Yahweh’s temple, after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first-ripe; and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.

Then Yahweh asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”

I said, “Figs. The good figs are very good, and the bad are very bad, so bad that can’t be eaten.”

Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Yahweh, the God of Israel says: ‘Like these good figs, so I will regard the captives of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for good. For I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them again to this land. I will build them, and not pull them down. I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh. They will be my people, and I will be their God; for they will return to me with their whole heart.

“ ‘As the bad figs, which can’t be eaten, they are so bad,’ surely Yahweh says, ‘So I will give up Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the remnant of Jerusalem, who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. I will even give them up to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth for evil, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I will drive them. I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them, until they are consumed from off the land that I gave to them and to their fathers.’ ”

If you have been following along on my journey through the Old Testament, you may remember that several times, I have commented about the fact that there were Israelis who left Israel to go live in foreign lands. I usually mentioned that this was wrong. God told the people that they were to trust Him and occupy the land that He had given them to occupy. When they went out to foreign countries, they would also be influenced by their idolatry and bad behavior. They would also be subject to their pagan governments. We also saw how God protected those who remained in the land and eventually helped them to prosper again. What we have here is a significant departure from the past. God was now telling the people that they should leave. Is this an inconsistency? Well, we know that it isn’t because God is never inconsistent. When I think that there’s an inconsistency with God, it’s only a matter of time until God shows me the glaring inconsistency in my interpretation of His word and actions.

It turns out that this situation illustrates God’s constancy. God always expects us to listen to His word and obey without trying to lean on our own understanding. We may think that God wants us to never do something, but when He tells us to do it, then we must change our minds and not assume God is wrong. It’s obedience and faith in God’s word that should guide us, not our understanding of how things work. In this case, as in all other cases, when the people failed to obey God’s word, they were to be punished. God had told them to surrender to Babylon and here we read the difference between those who would end up in Babylon and those who would stay in Judah.

Those who were taken captive to Babylon were going to be given a heart for God and those who stayed were to suffer intensely until they were completely destroyed. Up to this point, Jeremiah has been describing the horrible judgment of God against Jerusalem and Judah. Now we get to see a little glimpse of His plan of salvation for Israel and ultimately for the world. God was going to preserve for Himself a group of His people in Babylon. I call this a remnant. This is a pattern we see in all of God’s judgments. Remember, God decided to destroy the world with a flood, but He protected Noah and his family. Ahab and Jezebel tried to destroy all of God’s prophets and Elijah thought that he was the only one left, but God had protected a remnant of His people even under those conditions. Here we see the pattern again. God had reserved for Himself a remnant of the Jewish people who were to return to Jerusalem in the future. God had not given up on Israel and He had not given up on His plan to save mankind.

Day 108
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Day 110

Day 94: Repentance is Critical

Jeremiah 21:1-7

The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, when king Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur the son of Malchijah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest, saying, “Please inquire of Yahweh for us; for Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon makes war against us. Perhaps Yahweh will deal with us according to all his wondrous works, that he may withdraw from us.”

Then Jeremiah said to them, “Tell Zedekiah: ‘Yahweh, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, with which you fight against the king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans who besiege you outside the walls; and I will gather them into the middle of this city. I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation. I will strike the inhabitants of this city, both man and animal. They will die of a great pestilence. Afterward,” says Yahweh, “I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, his servants, and the people, even those who are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those who seek their life. He will strike them with the edge of the sword. He will not spare them, have pity, or have mercy.” ’

There are some today who don’t believe that God requires that people repent before they become a Christian. I believe that this passage is an illustration of the fact that God does require repentance before He gives mercy. Let me remind you that by repentance I mean a change of mind, specifically about being a sinner and accepting God’s view of your bad behavior.

In this passage, the king of Judah sent men to Jeremiah to ask him to ask God for His help against the coming attack from Babylon. Many kings in the past had requested help from God and received it in times like these, but this time, God’s message was terrifying. Jeremiah told them that God Himself intended to fight against Jerusalem! This reminds me that when we fear man more that God, we make one of the biggest mistakes possible. God is the one we should be fearing and the fact that God brings it up by His actions demonstrates the problem of repentance.

Judah was asking for God’s help when they hadn’t even confessed and turned from their sins. They were using God as a way to get out of trouble while still living the way that they wanted to and God’s response to this was to not only deny their request for mercy, but to demonstrate His great anger against them. He was not only going to bring the sword of Babylon against them, He was going to add disease to it and require that some of them be taken as slaves back to Babylon. No mercy was to be given at all.

The God of Israel is still the same today. When you read about the Gospel in the New Testament, you often read the words, “repent” and “believe” together. Becoming a Christian isn’t simply the addition of new things to your life. It’s also the removal of the old things. If a person’s heart is not brought to the place where they understand that they have sinned and need a savior, they don’t have a proper understanding of the Gospel and they can’t be saved. Salvation is turning from old beliefs, to new ones. It’s not a simple request that God stop being mad and start being nice. As we see here, that doesn’t work.

Day 93
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Day 95

Day 71: From Despair to Hope

Jeremiah 14:19-22

Have you utterly rejected Judah?
Has your soul loathed Zion?
Why have you struck us, and there is no healing for us?
We looked for peace, but no good came;
and for a time of healing, and behold, dismay!
We acknowledge, Yahweh, our wickedness,
and the iniquity of our fathers;
for we have sinned against you.
Do not abhor us, for your name’s sake.
Do not disgrace the throne of your glory.
Remember, and don’t break your covenant with us.
Are there any among the vanities of the nations that can cause rain?
Or can the sky give showers?
Aren’t you he, Yahweh our God?
Therefore we will wait for you;
for you have made all these things.

Right after God’s command that Jeremiah not ask for the good of Israel, we have this prayer. I assume that this prayer was not a violation of God’s request. It doesn’t ask God to keep them from their punishment. Instead, it recognizes both the sins of the current generation of Israelis as well as their relatives. This is an honest confession of sin. The prayer also expresses the concern that God may have rejected His own people. It expresses the fear that there may never be any healing of Israel this time.

Just as in many of the Psalms, this prayer starts out with doubt, and ends in confidence. That confidence appears to be coming from two things. First, there is a reminder of the fact that God had made a covenant with Israel. When God says something, it will always be true and God said that He would bless Israel forever. He said that He would punish them for a while, and return to them and heal them again. When we have God’s word on a matter, it is settled and that is why the Bible is so important to us today as well. The other thing that this prayer mentions is the fact that there is only one God who can save. Looking for salvation from anything or anyone else would be a waste.

In the end we read that the only right thing to do is to wait for God’s salvation. God is the only one who can help and He said that He would. That means that all we have to do is wait for Him to do it. That’s what faith in God is like. It’s when we get to the point where we hear God’s promise to help in His word and then wait expectantly for it. This prayer shows us that even if we aren’t feeling very faithful in our trials, an honest prayer along with God’s word, can bring us back to a place of hope.

Day 70
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Day 72

The Most Important Message

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For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
– The Bible (John 3:16)

God’s Message to Us

The Bible is not a normal book. It claims to contain a message that God wants man to know, and there is no reason to not believe what it says. It tells us that God created the universe, and when He did, He made it to be a perfect place. There was no death or suffering. All of the good things we see in nature and more existed at that time. On the new earth, God placed all kinds of the creatures as well as the first two humans. He made a garden for them to live in, but He also gave them a test. He put a tree in the middle of that garden and commanded them to never to eat from it.

Satan’s Story

God also created angels, and at one point, some of them rebelled against God. The leader of the rebellion was the most beautiful creation that God ever made named Lucifer. Not long after man was created, Lucifer, now called Satan, decided to see if he could convince man to go against God too.

Satan took on the form of a snake, and tempted Eve to eat from the forbidden tree by causing her to doubt God and think independently of Him. God had warned Adam and Eve that if they ever did choose to eat from the forbidden tree, they would die. Satan was successful in tricking Eve into eating from the tree. Even though Adam wasn’t tricked, when Eve ate it and gave it to him, he decided to go along with her and eat it too. The perfect world that God had created was then cursed by God because of what Adam and Eve did. That’s why things are so bad for us today.

Man’s Fall and Future Hope

God had put man in charge of the earth, but man decided to disobey God and as a result, God kept His word and brought death into it, but instead of killing Adam and Eve immediately, God killed an animal and gave Adam and Eve clothes and allowed them to die slowly. He said that even though Adam and Eve would get old and die, He was going to save mankind and heal the whole earth someday through one of their descendants. Adam and Eve believed and started having kids!

Our Separation from God

The Bible goes on to tell us that as the population of mankind grew, they began to sin so badly that God was disgusted and decided to destroyed the whole world with a flood, but, keeping His promise, He reserved one good man and his family alive to repopulate the earth. Even after that, their descendants kept disobeying God to such a degree that God forced them to separate from each other by confusing their languages. This divided the world into different cultures. The resulting genetic separation is probably what caused such widely different looking humans. In all of this, God was still following through on His promise to Adam and Eve, but the child who was to save mankind had not yet been born.

God’s Plan to Save Us Could Not Be Stopped

Satan, however, was doing whatever he could to stop God’s plan from happening. He may have thought he defeated God when Adam and Eve sinned, but God had a plan and went right around him. He may have thought he won when God decided to destroy the world with a flood, but God saved Noah. He may have even thought that he won when he made Noah’s descendants go against Him, but God still worked it out.

Then the Bible follows the history of Israel. God decided to pick out three men: Abraham, his son Isaac and his son Jacob. Out of these men, God literally generated a new country that He named after Jacob, whom He had renamed Israel. He also chose a piece of real estate in a land called Canaan, destroyed the existing evil descendants of Noah who lived there and put Israel’s descendants in their place, but Satan could see what was happening and got right to work. By his scheming, he tempted Israel to become just as evil, if not worse, than the Canaanites were before them. Once again, God punished them, but once again, God went right around the problem.

God’s Plan is Revealed

Unexpectedly, after Israel had been occupied by the oppressive government of Rome, God sent an angel named Gabriel to a poor Israeli girl named Mary, telling her that she was going to have the promised child. Gabriel explained to her that this was not to be a typical child, but would actually be God Himself, and to prove it, she would get pregnant without the help of a man. That’s exactly what happened, and she gave birth to Jesus. To spread the word, thousands of God’s Angels were sent to announce the coming to the most unlikely segment of Roman society, Jewish shepherds! God was aware of what they were capable of, however. They went and told everyone what they saw and didn’t rest until they found this promised child. God knew what He was doing. Satan, however, got the leader of the time to kill all of the Jewish children in the region, but God gave Mary’s husband, Joseph a dream, and they immediately left to Egypt, once again escaping Satan’s attempt to stop God’s plan.

What Jesus Did for Us

You can imagine the life that Jesus must have lived after that. He would do something, but Satan would try to kill it, only to have Jesus go right around it. The Book of John in the Bible is important reading at this point. It tells you some of the details of this time in history. The fight to secure the salvation of the human race was coming to a critical moment.

Jesus lived in a way that made every other human look bad. He followed God’s commands, the ones that He gave to Israel’s children when He formed their nation. Unlike all the rest of them, He didn’t fail and on top of that, He pointed out the failures of others. Jesus wasn’t trying to just make people feel bad, He just knew that a person who doesn’t want to be saved, can’t be saved. If you are happy with the fact that you are sinning and don’t care that you are going to be punished for it, you won’t be willing to accept your way out of punishment. God had given man free will up to this point and He continues to do that now. If you don’t admit that you do things that God hates, you won’t be thinking clear enough to accept your salvation!

Without really understanding what they were doing, the Romans and the Jewish leadership conspired to kill Jesus. I really think that Satan thought he did it this time. Not only did Jesus die, He was tortured to death by God’s own special people, along with the leadership of the Roman government. Once again, however, this was all part of God’s plan.

God Wins

Jesus did die and for three days He was put in a tomb in Israel, but on the third day, He resurrected Himself and walked out of His tomb, never to return. When you look back at the Bible, you discover that God had planned this from the very beginning. The concepts were symbolically placed in the history of the Bible. Israel had prophets that predicted it, and Jesus himself even predicted it. Jesus, by his obedience to God beat death itself by coming back from the dead.

The Bible says that it was God’s plan to win back all of mankind by taking the punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin Himself. He did that as Jesus. If you are willing to admit that you are part of the problems we have on earth and simply believe that Jesus has already paid the price to keep you from punishment, you will not suffer that punishment.

What Jesus Saves Us From

That brings up the issue of punishment. What is the punishment that Jesus was saving people from? For that I need to quote something that Jesus hasn’t said yet. You heard that right. The Bible speaks of things that haven’t happened yet. There are things in it that are still happening. Jesus is still getting around Satan and Satan is still trying to stop Him. You and I are now in the middle of this. This is what Jesus will say in the future:

He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He said, “Write, for these words of God are faithful and true.” He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes, I will give him these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son. But for the cowardly, unbelieving, sinners, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
– The Bible (Revelation 21:5-8)

That lake of fire that burns is what we call Hell. That’s God’s jail and it’s permanent. The death we usually talk about today is just the first one. After that, those who haven’t accepted Jesus will have to go to court and then it will be too late to change. This is why this message is so important.

Your Choice

If you will believe in Jesus now, before you die, you will be saved from the second death. The section of the Bible called “The Book of Revelation” that I just quoted from, also tells us that we aren’t at the end yet. When the end comes, God will change the whole earth, transforming it from what it is today. This world will contain only the good things again and none of the bad things. God will destroy all of the bad things. If we don’t accept God’s way for a human to become good, we will have to be destroyed with the rest of the bad from the old world. So, please take this seriously and choose to depend on Jesus now because you don’t know when you will die.

If you have chosen to trust in Jesus’ payment for your sin by his death, I encourage you to do these four things:

1) Tell God right now. Pray to Him by just talking and telling Him you accept what He has done for you. He is everywhere and can hear you.

2) Tell someone else that you believe. Start by just telling them, but I encourage you to make it “official” by getting baptized. Have another Christian perform this ceremony in order to show others that you have accepted this.

3) Read the Bible and pray as often as you can. God has provided us everything we need to grow as Christians in the Bible and Satan is here and he will be after you now. God’s message is like a weapon against Satan. Just like we need to believe the Bible about being saved from Hell, we need to believe it about everything God has said. Satan will try to stop that in order to keep you from influencing other people, so we need to stay focused on the truth. Get an e-copy of the Bible’s book of John right here.

4) Get together with other Christians on a regular basis. The Bible says that we were meant for each other. Although there are many troubles, even between Christians sometimes, a whole life of joy awaits us as we experience God’s love together. We will not accomplish God’s work alone.

If you trust in Jesus in this way, you are a Christian. You have nothing to worry about because God has forgiven you and you will be with me and all of the other Christians on the New Earth someday. Thank you for listening to this message.

Day 29: Judgment and Salvation

John 3:17-20 : “For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.”

Although the world deserved to be judged, God was not trying to judge the world by sending Jesus. His intent was for us to accept His method of salvation by believing in His Son. It is easy for us to imagine an angry God that is eager to find fault, but this is not at all what the Bible says. God did not intend for man to not accept His salvation.

Jesus didn’t need to judge the world, because God already had according to this passage. Each person who continues to not believe in Jesus, is already under God’s judgment because he doesn’t believe in God’s Son. We start out not believing and we are already judged because of it.

John explains the reasoning behind this judgment. We don’t believe Jesus because we are aware that we are bad. Jesus is the light as I mentioned when we studied the first chapter. Jesus’ life exposes us to what we are doing wrong just like light exposes us. When God breaks through to us and cleans us up, we are able to start doing what is right and when we do what is right, we want to be seen so others can see God’s work in us.

When you do well because of God it brings glory to Him and that is something we want others to see, then they will have a chance to see the light and be influenced by God too:

1 Corinthians 10:31-33 : Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no occasions for stumbling, either to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the assembly of God; even as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved.

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Day 30