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Psalms 74:1-12 A
Contemplation of Asaph. O God, why
have You cast us off forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the
sheep of Your pasture? Remember Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, The tribe of Your inheritance, which You have redeemed— This Mount
Zion where You have dwelt. Lift up Your feet to the perpetual desolations. The
enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary. Your enemies roar in the midst
of Your meeting place; They set up their banners for signs. They seem like men who lift up Axes among the thick
trees. And now they break down its carved work, all at once, With axes and
hammers. They have set fire to Your sanctuary; They have defiled the dwelling
place of Your name to the ground. They said in their hearts, "Let us
destroy them altogether." They have burned up all the meeting places of
God in the land. We do not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet; Nor is there any among us who knows how long. O God, how long will
the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme Your name forever? Why do You
withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Take it out of Your bosom and destroy them. For God is
my King from of old, Working salvation in the midst of the earth. Father, we give you all the praise and thanks for
all you do in our lives. Please send us rain Father we need it desperately. Send
the Holy Spirit to touch our hearts so we can understand your Word and put it
into practice. Open our ears so that we can here your voice. We give you all
the glory and praise. Amen!
Romans 9:14-18 NKJV
This lesson continues on with the topic of election,
partiality, God’s righteousness, mercy, and compassion. After last week’s
lesson one would get the impression that God does pick and choose individuals
to go to Heaven or Hell, but that would make God out to be partial to some
individuals and not to others. This character would contradict what the Bible
teaches about being impartial and fair to all. What God does all boils down to
what lies deep within your heart. With the inherited sin nature, your heart is
enmity against God, even though you may have head knowledge of what the Bible
states, of who Jesus is, and what He did for you on the Cross. The people of
Paul’s time were the same way they knew what the scriptures of old said, but it
wasn’t in their hearts. Romans
8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not
subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. What you have in your head needs to
migrate to your heart. You need to love God with all your heart, soul, mind,
and strength. Mark
12:30 AND
YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, WITH
ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' This is the first commandment. You need to
love God with your heart first. You need to take what is in your mind that you
learned from the Bible, and accept it as the truth. You need to reject mans
view and reasoning of how life is to be lived and replace it with God’s holy
and true word. God is on stand-by and waiting for people to turn from their way
of believing in what they must do or in what mankind devised they must do to go
to Heaven. The moment a person realizes there is nothing they can do to earn
their way to Heaven and accepts the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God hands them that
gift of grace, that mansion in our Fathers house is prepared for them. John 14:2 In My Father's house are
many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to
prepare a place for you.
So where are you at this point in your
life? Have you accepted Jesus as your saviour and living according to his Holy
and True Word, or living by mans standards and religious ways? Do you want to
spend eternity in a mansion with streets of gold or in a fiery pit where beasts
and demons torment you?
Romans 9:14-18
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! Last week
we left off with Paul making this statement, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." With this
statement Paul raises these questions in verse 14 before anyone can ask them
and follows up with an explanation in the verses to follow. The main question
being is there unrighteousness with God? Absolutely not, God is Holy and True,
he chooses through His foreknowledge and judges according to each person’s
attitude. God’s calling goes out to all, but it is us that harden our hearts
toward Him. Hardening of a heart is like this, God calls to you through your
spirit, or by something someone said, or something your read or heard and you
think about it for a couple seconds, and then you go on with your life? When
this happens, you have just harden your heart toward God! So what is a calling
by God like and do you only get one calling? God gives us many callings in many
forms. It can be through pain, disease, sorrow, or joy of the beauty of His
creation, the miracle of child birth, etc., but we are too busy with our lives
to reflect on these things and who is responsible.
I will mention four that stick out in my mind during my
life although there were many, I’m sure. First, being young and still at home during
those years my mother and some aunts and uncles told me I should go into the
ministry. I never gave it a second thought, because it didn’t fit MY AGENDA in
what I wanted in life. Second there was a newly ordain priest that whenever I
was talking to him I experienced a warm spiritual presence of a supreme being
(approx. 1972). A feeling of complete comfort, rest, assurance, and no worries,
but I ignored it and went on with MY LIFE. Third the same warm experience
during Lent several years’ later in church, but again I IGNORED (approx. 1980).
Fourth a calling to pick the Bible up (2007) and seek what it actually said
which led me to asking questions. This calling I did not ignore and the truth
was revealed to me about many things I believed in that was of man, and not
God, resulting in me giving my heart to Jesus and living according to His way
and not mine. I thank God and give Him all the praise and glory for not giving
up on me, because I realize now, I was bound for Hell! I was living according
to my standards and not Gods. So you see God doesn’t call one time, He calls
many times, all we have to do is pay attention to these callings. How many
times has God called you, but you ignored his calling and gone on with YOUR
LIFE? Please take some time and reflect on this, God does not want to see
anyone spend eternity in Hell.
15
For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON
WHOMEVER I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOMEVER I WILL HAVE
COMPASSION." Paul is quoting this verse from the Old
Testament. When God was talking to Moses He states this; Exodus 33:19 Then He said, "I will make all My goodness
pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be
gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion." Paul continually goes back to the Old
Testament which tells us the importance of the Old Testament. It is the
foundation of the New Testament. Many people say the Old Testament is dead and
of no use. The only thing that has gone by the wayside is all the ritualistic
laws and sacrifices, because Jesus put an end to them when He became the
spotless sacrifice for all. The door to Jesus was rent from top to bottom, we
no longer need a priest to offer sacrifices for our sins. Matthew 27:51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in
two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, Jesus is our
High Priest and now by faith we go directly to Him with our sins and problems.
The people of the OT were to live by faith just as we are to live by faith.
This is what verse 15 is stating, those that live by faith are those that God
will have mercy and compassion on. By putting our faith in what Jesus did at
Calvary we enter under God’s umbrella of Grace and receive God’s mercy and
compassion. The Bible has many instances of compassion that God and Jesus
exhibited, and through these instances lives were changed.
16
So then it
is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows
mercy.
Paul is proclaiming a great truth that mercy and compassion cannot be earned or
merited by the sinner, regardless of what he does. In other words we cannot
pray ourselves into Heaven, or have others pray us into Heaven, if that were
the case then we would be doing it and not God. The Bible does not teach that
we can work our way to Heaven. We have studied this truth in Romans 4:1-5 What then shall we say that Abraham our father
has found according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not
before God. 3
For what does the Scripture say? "ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS
ACCOUNTED TO HIM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS."
4 Now to him who works, the wages are
not counted as grace but as debt. 5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him
who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, What we
want/will and run after is our human works to earn salvation. Man is good at
devising formulas to get to Heaven, but none of them will work because they are
of man and not God’s prescribed order. It is only by faith in the finished work
of Jesus on the Cross, He is the only way! John 14:6 Jesus said
to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through Me.
17
For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "FOR
THIS VERY PURPOSE I HAVE RAISED YOU UP, THAT I MAY SHOW MY POWER IN YOU, AND
THAT MY NAME MAY BE DECLARED IN ALL THE EARTH." This verse
speaks to me in many ways. First of all with it pertaining to the lesson, Paul
is using OT scripture again to prove his point in demonstrating how God uses
stiff necked hard hearted individuals to bring about His will. Although in this
case God is using Pharaoh to display His power so His name will be known
throughout the earth. This is not a display of mercy or compassion by God, because
God sees Pharaoh’s heart and what he placed his faith in and that being the
god’s of Egypt. Pharaoh was stuck on the religion of his country and nothing
would or could change that. So God used him for his glory and magnification.
This also confirms the fact that God does not pick and choose who is going to
Heaven, but it is up to the individual and who they place their faith in. God
will not force himself on anyone, because He wants us to come to him through
our acknowledgment of being a sinner by nature and repentance. God wants true
and faithful servants in Heaven with Him. This is why Lucifer got kicked out of
Heaven, because he turned on God, his creator and was no longer faithful. If
you force someone to do something their heart is not in, they will not remain
faithful, and it is the same with God. If He forced a person to believe they
will not remain faithful.
To put this into perspective, take what is going on with
our current government. We are being force into things we don’t want like
healthcare, gun banishment, remove God from schools and government buildings,
etc. I don’t know exactly what the statistics are but I would venture to say
the majority of the people don’t agree with these things. So are they going to
be faithful to the government?
So the other thing I get from this verse is this. God
used Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar to bring about His will, is God using our
government and world leaders to bring about the prophecy of Revelation?
18
Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom
He wills He hardens. Paul concludes here that God has mercy on
who He wants to, and those that have hard hearts He will use for his purposes.
Does that mean that those who have hard hearts have no chance to go to Heaven?
No, if the person comes to the truth of the Gospel and puts their faith in
Jesus and only in Jesus, then they will be saved. This is why it is so important
to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and why Jesus has commissioned all
believers to go out and spread the Good News. Mark 16:15-16 And He said
to them, "Go into all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature. 16 He who believes and is
baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
We
have no idea what lives we may touch by our words or actions that will get a
person thinking and seeking Jesus and a better way of life. God’s calling may
be through us for some people. We must plant seeds so the next person can water
the seed and the next cultivate the soil, and through this process fruit will
be produced, meaning another will come to Jesus and ask Him for forgiveness and
the gift of Grace. We have to seek the truth and the truth lies in God’s Holy
and True Word, the Bible. If people won’t believe in what the Bible teaches,
then they are hardening their hearts toward God like Pharaoh. Luke 11:9-10 "So I say to you,
ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will
be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks
receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
For I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ,
for it is the power of God
to salvation for everyone who believes,
Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a
steadfast spirit within me.
Unless you are Born Again,
you cannot enter into Heaven, the Kingdom of God."
Bill Wiesbrock
Last Week’s Trivia: Who was Abiathar?
Answer: Abiathar was the eleventh high priest
after Aaron during David’s reign. He was
the sole survivor of the slaughter of eighty-five priests at Nob by Doeg the
Edomite and he escaped to David when David was still a guerilla fighter.
Abiathar was David’s friend until near the end of David’s reign and stayed with
David during Absalom’s revolt. Abiathar took the Ark to Jerusalem and helped
smooth the way for David’s return to Jerusalem. We don’t know why, but Abiathar
supported Adonijah’s conspiracy. The other leaders of this conspiracy were
executed. Abiathar’s life was spared probably due to his past loyalty and
service, but banished from the tribes. He is mention several times in the
Bible; 1 Samuel Chapters 22, 23, & 30;
2 Samuel Chapters 8, 15, 17,19, & 20;
1 Kings Chapters 1, 2, & 4; 1 Chronicles Chapters 15, 18, 24, & 27.
This week’s Trivia: Who was Abida?
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