THE GOD MAN

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”  Almah - virgin: a lass (as veiled or private): - damsel, maid, virgin; Immanuel - with us (is) God

Luke 1:34-35 “Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

Isaiah 9:6-7 “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.” 

Rom 1:2-4  "(Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)  Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”.

Psalm 40:6-8 “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” (For Messiah to come he must have need of a body)

Hebrews 10:5-7 “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.

These scriptures are conclusive… “The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” came into this world through the agency of a virgin, thus literally becoming The Son of God and The son of man.  In the quotation from the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us that the resurrection of Christ proves the point. 

THE LIGHT OF LIFE

The shutters of pride and arrogance have darkened the soul of the unregenerate man.  The Word of God is the light of the world and the Spirit of God is the wind that rattles the shutters.  When the wind blows the soul is given a glimmer of light.  If that soul prefers the things that the ungodly do in the dark, it will lock the shutters so as to remain undisturbed by the light.  If that soul is attracted by and turns to the light, the bolts are drawn and the lock thrown away and the soul set free. 

       

The shutters of pride and arrogance remain; to swing open or closed depending on the soul’s willingness to have its deepest secrets revealed.  The light of God does not flood the soul until those shutters are removed, and they are not fully removed until the soul is willing to face its most secret thoughts and hidden intents.

The soul will have illumination only by willingly allowing the wind of the Spirit to blow unhindered.

Those who believe in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and who allow the word of God to cut them asunder to the dividing of the soul and the spirit for the purpose of revealing the deepest and most hidden secrets of the heart, will be filled with all the fulness of God.

Ephesians 3:19.  “…And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”              

CONFESSION OF SIN

  

In 1 John 1:9 we have a conditional promise:  The condition - “If we confess our sin”; the promise - “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. 

As this letter of John’s is a pastoral letter written to believers, the promise contained in this verse is a promise of restoration not salvation.  The unbeliever is exhorted to “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ” for forgiveness of sin and subsequent salvation Acts 13:38, 16:31, but believers are told to confess their sins for forgiveness and cleansing.

In Galatians 5:16-18 we are told that our old nature is at enmity with the Spirit and that we should live or walk in the Spirit so that we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.  Verse 18 concludes the passage with: But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law (we live out from under the Law).  The opposite of this must also be true; if we live according to our old nature we are trying to live by fulfilling the law and in doing so, are subject to the Laws judgement, Galatians. 3:10. 

We cannot live to the Law’s standards and when we try to do so we sin.  We are then judged and condemned by the Law and are, as it were, separated from God.  Not an eternal separation, because that has been overcome by the new birth, but our fellowship with the Father is broken (1John 1:6-7).  When we confess our sins it is an act of faith and repentance, an acknowledgement of our need of the Saviour, and on the basis of that faith God is justified in forgiving us those sins and restoring us to fellowship with himself. 

Faith is and always has been the way to a right standing with God.  It cannot be by works because our works will always be imperfect and therefore wrong, but our faith is righteous simply because it is a right assessment of the situation.  We can do nothing and must rely on God’s righteousness and his grace.

Confession of sin is of paramount importance to the Christian because we all sin (1 John 1:8), our sins separate us from God (1 John 1:6), and we are restored to fellowship only when we confess them (1 John 1:9).

REDEMPTION

 The word redeem in the English has three meanings: To buy back, to compensate for, and to release.

To buy back could indicate a normal business transaction; but the thrust of the meaning is the return of property back to its original owner by means of an appropriate payment.  Recover by payment.  

To compensate means to offset a wrong by means of a counteraction, or pay back a debt by an acceptable payment.

To release is to set free from some form of obligation or confinement.

To redeem therefore, is to recover property which was given as security or forfeited as a penalty, and to release it for its original owners use.

W.E. Vines’ expository dictionary of New Testament words shows that the English word ‘redeem’ is used in place of the Greek words:

1.     Exagorazo, which is a strengthened form of agorazo ‘to buy’.   The prefix ex or out, gives the meaning to buy out, and especially of purchasing a slave with a view to his freedom.  In the middle voice it is used in Ephesians 5:16 and Colossians 4:5 for redeeming, or buying the time.

2.     Lutro`o, or to release on receipt of a ransom.  It is used in the middle voice and it signifies to release by paying a ransom.  To redeem in the natural sense of deliverance (Luke 24:21).

Lutrosis and Apolutrosis are extensions to lutro`o and depict the completed action; e.g. redeemed and redemption.

 

The English words redeem, redeemed and redemption are therefore more than adequate to convey the truth of God’s great work on man’s behalf.  We have been redeemed from the penalty of sin so that we might be to the praise of our Creator’s glory.

Biblical usage:

      

Colossians 1:4.  “In whom we have redemption through his blood, [even] the forgiveness of sins:”

1 Peter 1:18-19.  “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, [as] silver and gold, from your vain conversation [received] by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ (of Messiah), as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:”

Galatians 3:13.  “Christ (Messiah) hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, CURSED [IS] EVERY ONE THAT HANGETH ON A TREE:”

Note:            

Christ is from the Greek word Christos meaning ‘anointed’.                  

Messiah is the English transliteration of the Hebrew word for ‘anointed’.

Messiah and Christ are therefore Hebrew and Greek equivalents

A literal rendering of the name and title of our Lord would be, the Lord [Jehovah] Jesus [Yeshua or Joshua i.e. saviour] Christ [Anointed]: The Lord Jesus Christ or Jehovah, the Anointed Saviour.

The Law is perfect and good and has its foundation in God’s righteousness.  God cannot accept or embrace anything less than His righteousness, for to do so would adulterate it and it would cease to be perfect.  The Law becomes a curse, only to those without righteousness equivalent to Gods and is the negative result of God maintaining His righteousness.  God maintains His righteousness by not allowing it to be compromised and separates those creatures without it, from Himself.  This is the curse. God’s righteousness is absolutely perfect, and in point of absolute truth there is no other righteousness, therefore the Scriptures say: “There is none righteous, no not one…”  (Romans 3:10; Psalm 14:1-3).  God’s righteousness cannot be compromised and all unrighteousness must be excluded. The wages or the results of unrighteousness, (the Bible describes this as sin) is separation from God and death. 

It was by the action of the man Adam that sin and subsequently death entered into the world, so that death passed upon all men (Romans 5:12).  Death passed to us directly from Adam, therefore was ours from our very conception, a fact that David recognised when he wrote Psalm 51. “…in sin did my mother conceive me.” 

It is interesting to note that David, a sinner, was of the seed of Jesse while Jesus of Nazareth, who was without sin (John 8:46; 2Corinthians 5:21) was the seed of a woman and that woman was a virgin.  From this we can confidently state that sin and death pass to sons and daughters, not from the woman but from the man.  Mary was born a sinner for she had a human father, but she did not pass that nature onto her children.  Her first born, Jesus, was conceived by the Holy Spirit and so was free from the Adamic nature because He was literally The Son of God and not the son of Joseph.

Because the rest of us are born sinners, we are spiritually dead from the moment of birth and no amount of keeping the law can overcome that.  We are dead in trespass and sin and separated from God from birth.  We need to be born of God’s Spirit, we need to be born again (John 3:3-6). 

(Children, who die before they are able to understand the gospel of Christ, are automatically saved. An example of this is found in 2Samuel 12:23).

This nature from Adam is a barrier to God’s righteousness, it is a cage from which we are not able to escape and we are held captive by it.  We are slaves to it (Romans 7:14; 2Peter 2:9).  We are slaves to it and need to be set free; we need to be redeemed. 

Christ Jesus was made a curse for us, or was cursed on behalf of us (Galatians 3:13), He was made to be sin for us, or a sin offering for us (2Corinthians 5:21) and He made, of himself, an offering to bear the sins of many (Hebrew 9:28).  He paid the only appropriate ransom - His sinless life (Matthew 20:28) and He paid it in substitution for our unrighteousness “…that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, [as] silver and gold, from your vain conversation [received] by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ (of Messiah), as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (2Corinthians 5:21B).

We have redemption because we have been redeemed; we have been bought with the price of Christ Jesus’ own blood and have been released or freed, to serve God in our bodies.

Redemption of the Body

Romans   8:23  

“And not only [they], but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body.”

Those who have been born of God and have the first fruits of the Spirit, that is, have experienced the reality of salvation; look with longing to the resurrection of their bodies. 

Old Testament Redemption Fulfilled

Hebrews 9:14-15

“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

And for this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.”

"The redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant" is the paying of the ransom for the transgressions that were designated as sin by the covenant of Moses.  Those believers of this first covenant, who in faith made the necessary sacrifices for sin, had their sins atoned for, or covered; for that is the meaning of the word atone.  They were only covered until Messiah (Christ) came to take away sin and to introduce the new covenant with His blood, not the blood of bulls and goats.  The book of Hebrews deals with the sacrificial system and its fulfilment in Christ’s death on the cross.

All mankind, as slaves and subject to the old sin nature, have been purchased by their original owner and been potentially set free.  Mankind has the option to believe and to step free from sin and death or remain subject to his own works.  He will not be judged for sin, this has already occurred on the cross, he will be judged according to his works (Revelation 20:12).

The Outworking of Redemption

 We as Christians have the option to remain subject to our old nature in carnality or bond ourselves to our new master as did Paul in being a bondservant, gk. Doulos, to Jesus Christ.

Exodus 21:5-6

“And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.”

Romans 1:1

“Paul, a servant (doulos) of Jesus Christ, called [to be] an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God…”

Forgiveness:  Gk. Aphesis

Release from bondage, in this context from the bondage of sin.  We are not to be bound by sin in allowing it to dominate our lives, nor are we to be bound by the memory of past failures.  We must press on to the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Recap:

In Jesus Christ we have been purchased from the bondage of sin, both inherent sin (old sin nature) and personal sins (misdeeds) and have been forgiven.  Christ was free from the inherent nature of Adam because of the virgin pregnancy.  God was His father not Joseph and the sin nature is past down through the male.  His humanity was perfect in both His birth and His life and in this perfect life we see the payment necessary for our redemption; A perfect, sinless life in exchange for our sinful lives.

FAITH REST

Faith rest is that quality of life where we instinctively claim the promises of God in situations of pressure.  To instinctively claim God’s promises requires a relationship with God and knowledge of his promises. 

We need to know God as our heavenly Father and know he is able to fulfill his promises (Hebrews 11:6) and believe his word (Psalm 19:7-11; John 17:17). 

Knowledge of his promises must be part of our conscious thinking, where we are able to categorise those promises to life’s situations and recall them in times of need, Hebrews chapter 4.

An academic understanding of God will not suffice; it must be knowledge from a personal experience in his abilities and his grace.  This is not something we gain overnight or by being able to recite the list of his attributes.  It comes by experiencing the fulfilment of his promises, the truth of his word. 

            1. God is holy, but until we experience the pain of his absolute and constant condemnation of sin in our lives, we cannot rightly understand his justice and his righteousness. 

            2. God is love; but until we experience his graciousness in our lives, his absolute and constant capacity to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1John 1:9) we cannot rightly understand his love. 

When this knowledge is attained the claiming of God’s promises becomes almost inherent for we have learnt to love and trust him.

The instinctive claiming of God’s promises is the ability to find peace and rest, when, in pressure situations we look to him, believing that he cares for us.  This is the Faith Rest life that is contrasted to Israel’s testing and failure in the wilderness (Hebrews chap.4). 

After she was brought out of Egypt Israel was a redeemed nation, bought by the blood of the sacrifice, and was a picture of the individual believer in Christ.  From the time of her redemption to the moment she first arrived at the river Jordan, her faith was tested (the Chariots of Pharaoh at the Red Sea; Moses’ delay at the Mount of Law Giving; their dissatisfaction with God’s provision of manna; the report from the spies into the promised land), but in each of these tests of faith she failed, and because of her lack of faith Israel did not enter into the promised land.  That adult generation, except for Caleb and Joshua, did not enter into the Promised Land (the place of rest), but died in a wilderness because of unbelief. 

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews in 4:1 warns us as individual believers, “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.”  And he could very well have added, lest we also spend our lives in a spiritual wilderness. 

Faith Rest is a life of victory through faith in God and his word.

November 2011

ANTI-SEMITISM

In today’s world the term anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism etc is construed as anti-Jewish, yet the Arabs are descendents of Shem as well as the Jewish race, so why are the Jewish people singled out in this manner?

The Jews have been historically persecuted by nations including Arabs and therefore it cannot be because of their Semitic background.  Why the Jewish people?

There are many reasons given (and excuses), but there is an underlying reason the world will not acknowledge, a cause that is found in the unseen world of the spiritual.  It is due to God’s present ‘hands off’ dealings with Israel because of her rejection of the Messiah, and especially in these latter days with Satan’s desperate need to destroy the people God has called his own. 

Because of their rejection of Messiah, God has condemned the Jews to a period of estrangement from the land, which has been an historical fact since AD70.  This estrangement has also included a latent hostility within the gentile world; hostility that comes to the fore at times and for different reasons but I believe its main cause is God’s moral integrity and exclusivism seen in Judaism.

(This hostility to moral integrity and exclusivism is borne out by the same antagonism that is shown toward Jesus Christ.    The Christian doctrine that Christ is the only way of salvation, that ‘no man comes to the Father but by Christ’ excludes all other religions - all forms of self-righteousness and to a world that believes itself to be adequate to stand before God, Christ is anathema.  This reason also applies to those who like to pretend there is no God.)  

The Bible confirms the Jewish claim to being ‘God’s special people’ as a legitimate claim, but throughout history the gentiles whether religious or secular have either distorted the Biblical teaching or rejected it altogether.  The latent hatred for the Jewish people rises to the fore under anti Biblical circumstances; when the Biblical principles for life are rejected and Christ himself is spurned.  Every period of ‘anti-Semitism’ is spawned by this self-righteous religious mentality and often by those who call themselves Christian.

One of the most anti-Semitic of these has been Roman Catholicism, even though Rome’s hatred has also vented itself against Christian groups who dared question her self proclaimed right to dominance (I recommend Dave Hunt’s book “A Woman Rides the Beast”).

Because of distortion and rejection of Biblical truth and subsequent rejection of Jesus Christ by the Gentile world, events foretold in Scripture regarding the re-gathering of the Jewish people have begun. 

By means of a growing anti-Semitism God is about to bring extreme pressure upon his ancient people for the purpose of drawing them back to the land and purging the race of its incorrigibles, to cleanse the land of unrighteousness and to set up the promises he made to Abraham regarding the land and to David regarding the Kingdom.

We are all spectators at the moment, but there is coming a day when the world’s gentile inhabitants will also be players in this terrifying drama, when God cleanses the world of arrogance and pride through judgement and destruction.

My saying so has no bearing on the future; it is God’s saying so that ensures its fulfilment.

August 2015

THE HARDENING of PHARAOHS HEART

Brian Huggett

The concern over a seeming conflict in the Scriptures between man’s free will and the sovereign will of God has been something every serious student of Scripture has had to face.  Some just say "...We cannot understand God’s ways..." and look no further.  These are not serious students. Others believe God has no control over his creatures and the will of man is not subject to him.  This, if it were true, must necessarily have God rule his creation on an ad hoc basis.  Still others say the sovereignty of God overrules man’s volition and we are no more than puppets on his string, with some being predestined to everlasting life and all others being predestined to hell.   

The passage that says God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” is a true statement, God did harden Pharaoh’s heart and he also condemned Pharaoh for that hardness.  In Scripture God’s decree makes all things certain, including the sins of men, yet throughout the scriptures it is stated that the penalty of sin is death, also at God’s decree.  What is the explanation to this seeming unfairness of God, or are we to be left uneasy in our hearts.

Knowing God to be absolute love and absolutely just, it cannot be that he causes his creatures to sin and then arbitrarily and wantonly condemns them to hell, for God is not willing that any should perish (2Peter 3:9); and if this is true then the opposite must also be true, God must be willing that all men be saved.  Does God who is desirous of the salvation for mankind, harden a man’s heart to condemnation or is the hardness of a man’s heart due to man’s own perverse nature?  God wills that all men should be saved, yet are all men saved?  God wills all believers to love the brethren yet do all believers obey his will?  Perhaps we have another unsolvable question to put in the too hard basket and need to wait until eternity for the answer.  But let us try. 

God is all knowing, he is omniscient.  He knows all things of eternity past and of eternity future.  He knows all things to do with his creation, past present and future and he has always known the distribution of each and every atom in his creation with all conceivable alternatives thereto, right to the end of time.  This includes the decisions of creatures and all of their conceivable alternatives.  If you can place any limitation on knowledge you have not understood omniscience, you have not begun to understand God.  From his omniscience of things actual, as well as things possible, God has chosen those things that would actually come to pass and decreed that they would happen.  From God’s omniscience, the actual could have been adjusted and a suitable and lawful alternative inserted for any moment in time, but once his decree was given the events of history became immutable, unalterable and God’s plan for his creation became fixed. 

God’s decree is a result of and is formed from his omniscience.  God’s decree does not necessarily reflect his desire, for it includes the free will of man and the sin that results from that free will.  God’s omniscience saw the arrogance and self will of man and by reason of his own eternal and perfect purposes decreed that it would happen.  He was never willing that men should sin and die but knew beforehand that they would. 

It is because of God’s omniscience, that he foreknew those who would believe in his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, how he could elect and predestine them to eternal life even before they were born, how he could at the Cross judge every sin that was ever committed before most of those sins would be committed.

Man’s will is free to make decisions for or against God during this life on earth.  At physical death he cannot say he will cease to exist or say where he will spend eternity.  That is God’s prerogative; that is God’s will.  Those who say they did not ask to be born are acknowledging God’s existence but wilfully turn their backs on him.  “...knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were thankful. But they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.”  Romans 1:21-22 

God is perfect love and he is also holy – perfectly just and perfectly righteous.  From this justice and righteousness comes perfect law, which law controls the universe especially the world of rational creatures.  Because God exists and is as he is, law exists, for it is part of God’s nature.  Because God is all in all, his law is all in all and there is nothing that is not subject to it.  Man, even in his rejection and unbelief is subject to God’s laws and we can prove that easily by this simple illustration.

A chandelier, of a thousand candles and half a tonne of lead crystal, is hanging fifteen feet above the ballroom floor.  The metal ring from which it is suspended has broken and is slowly straightening.  If one of the foolish says, "I will defy the law of gravity", and stands immediately under that chandelier, he will be killed or badly injured.  Why?  God has decreed his law of gravity to be effective in all situations and if man by his foolish presumption defies it, he will suffer the inevitable consequences.  

The natural laws, or so-called scientific laws pertaining to the material universe, are not the only laws that govern it.  We have spiritual and moral law that is just as immutable, just as fixed as the law of gravity etc.  They apply to rational and moral creatures and can be understood even though they may not be believed by the unregenerate and/or ungodly.

        "...The wages of sin is death..." is a spiritual law just as is the rest of that same passage, "...but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord..". 

Perfect justice must condemn sin, it cannot do otherwise or else it would not be perfect justice.  A sinner who offers to God his imperfect thoughts or deeds is unacceptable to God, and being unacceptable to God is eternal death.  God would have to lower his perfect standards to accept those imperfect thoughts and deeds and this is not possible.  A sinner can be acceptable to God but only by obeying the "law of the Spirit of life" in Christ Jesus.

Perfect love and perfect justice were fulfilled, "in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" and because “Christ died for our sins”.  Through his sacrifice we see “God was in Jesus Christ reconciling man to himself...”  and by these simple statements the law of the Spirit of life is seen in Christ Jesus and is applicable to all mankind, for "no man can come to the Father but by Him.”

As with the law of gravity, men who refuse to believe and adhere to God’s spiritual laws must suffer the inevitable consequences.  Perfect justice and righteousness, attributes of God himself, combine to produce an eternal and all pervading law that demands adherence from creation.  By means of law God can be said to have hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  The inevitable result of rejecting God’s law is rebellion.

God did harden Pharaoh’s heart and God does hold Pharaoh responsible for his unbelief and rejection.