Something Greater

Isaiah 14, Part Four: Pride and Arrogance Israel had been besieged by Babylonia. Jerusalem was sacked and its population killed or exiled to Babylon (Daniel 1). Babylonia itself was then besieged and conquered by the Medes. (Daniel 5:3). The final king of Babylonia, Belshazzar, proclaimed five instances of "I will...": I will ascend to heaven; Above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High. (Isaiah 14:13-14 ESV) STARS: kokab "ko-KAWB" (a star, as round or shining); probably from kabbon (hilly, as heaped up) or from kawa (to prick or penetrate; to blister, as smarting or eating into) MOUNT OF ASSEMBLY: har mo'ed "har mo-ADE" (a mountain or range of hills of an appointment; a fixed time or season; a festival; a year; an assembly; the congregation; the place of meeting; a signal); ...

How Great Our Savior! "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Romans 3:23-24 (ESV) JUSTIFIED: dikaioo (to render just or innocent, to show or regard as as just or innocent); from dikaios (equitable in character or act, innocent or holy); from dike (right, as self-evident, justice); from deiknyo (to show) REDEMPTION: apolytrosis (the act of ransom in full, riddance or salvation); from apo ("off" or away) and lytron (something to loosen with, a redemption price, atonement); from lyo (to "loosen") Jesus Christ became our ransom, the payment in full that loosened off the sentence of death required by our sin against God. The Ransom allowed God to declare us to be innocent, equal in character to that of His Son , justified in His sight as entirely right in character and act. How great our sin, yet how great our Savior! Image provided by mo...

Passing Over Former Sins What is the meaning of the phrase, "God passed over former sins"? What value did this act of God give to the work of salvation by Christ? "Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins." Romans 3:24-25 (ESV) God's plan, the death of His Son Jesus Christ, was to show the righteousness of God. God's righteousness had been in a sense "tarnished" , or hidden, by withholding punishment for "former sins". What were the "former sins"? As Creator, God has every right to immediately punish evildoers for sin . He demonstrated His justice in casting Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and in the world-wide flood that destroyed nearly all life, and the sudden, complete destruction of Sodom and Gommorah. Yet hundreds of generations of human civilizations, ...

Doing Good Works versus Undeserved Grace How would you communicate the concept of undeserving grace to someone who is hung up with doing good works to get into heaven? How could you relate this truth from your own application in life? There are hundreds of laws, commands and parables in both the Old and New Testaments that require obedience. They can be summed up in just two: "Which is the great commandment in the Law? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV) There is absolutely no doubt that the Bible teaches that people are to obey God's commands by living a life of good works. We are to treat God, and other people, with love . LOVE: agapao (to love in a social or moral sense, to have a strong personal atta...

The Point of Circumcision How did the Jews miss the point of what circumcision was all about? "But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth - you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised k...

The Stars What experience causes you to stand in awe of God? For me, it is looking from high above a valley well after the sun has set. The stars fill the sky so abundantly more than when I look up from my backyard. Thousands, millions, billions of stars...huge, global-sized orbs of flame and heat...pinpoints of power that is beyond even the mid-sized star we call The Sun. If our understanding is accurate regarding the speed of light, the stars are millions of millions of miles away from us! We think that the nearest star to us, aside from our sun, Proxima Centauri, just over 4 light years away . It would take four years, traveling at the speed of light, to reach this nearest star! The farthest recorded star is approximately 25 billion light years away! (http://www.astronomyexpert.co.uk/howfarawayarethestars.html) And the number of stars is uncountable! One best guess is that there may be as many as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in our universe. (http://www.esa.in...