A Chosen People (Con't)

(con't. from yesterday, April 9)

Part 3

Read Zechariah, chapter 3 

  Satan is always standing by us, accusing us. His words are relentless. "You keep messing up. You won't be faithful! You won't obey Him! Remember yesterday? You are not worthy to be His child! You are a hypocrite  and everybody knows it. Just give it up!"

  The way we can silence and rebuke Satan is to face him and proclaim the gospel truth: "Yes, I sometimes fail, but He has forgiven me and will always forgive me and will always love me!" And immediately thank God for His grace and forgiveness! Even as Satan is speaking to you, begin to thank and praise God for His eternal faithfulness! Turn every accusation of Satan into a praise for our Savior!

  Yes! That's how we rebuke Satan -- we turn his curses of us into praises for our Savior Jesus! Yes, look  at Satan, but gaze at Jesus!

   Yes, glance at Satan, but gaze at Jesus!

   Look at verses 3 and 4.  The guilt of the high priest is demonstrated by the filthy clothes he wears. God, in His grace, has them removed and re-clothes him in righteous garments. Just like Jesus did at the cross. We gave Him all our filthy garbage and clothing and He exchanges it for His garments of righteousness: a vivid picture of forgiveness.

                                       ************************************

"I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels" (Isaiah 61:10).

  Jesus wore our sins when He was on the cross so that we could wear His righteousness forever!

  What's more, He restores Joshua to his role as high priest, even placing the priestly turban with the words "Holy to the Lord", described in Exodus 28.

  What has Joshua done to deserve this or make it happen?

  Absolutely nothing!

  It is all an act of God's grace.

  Because of Jesus we didn't get what we deserved -- punishment for our sins. But also because of Jesus we got what we didn't deserve -- His mercy and forgiveness!

  Review chapter 3 and see what Joshua received. He was...

     Chosen!

     Rescued!

     Secured!

     Forgiven!

     Declared righteous and holy!

   All from God's amazing grace...

    And all a preview of what Jesus would do when He came! Zechariah's vision was truly a prototype, a preview of coming attractions -- of glorious times to come!

   And God allowed Zechariah to have a review of it!

   He was so blessed.  And we are even more blessed -- Because WE have been

     CHOSEN!

     RESCUED!

     SECURED!

     FORGIVEN!

     DECLARED RIGHTEOUS AND HOLY!

   And so the greatest evil in all of world history became the greatest gift in all of world history!!

                              "When He shall come with trumpet sound, 

                    O may I then in Him be found. 

                    Dressed in His righteousness alone, 

                    Faultless to stand before the throne."

                                --- From "The Solid Rock"

 

A Chosen People

 Part 1

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praise of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light" (1 Peter 2:9).

I love finding glimpses of Jesus in the Old Testament. And there are so many! As Sally Lloyd-Jones says, "Every story whispers His name."

A really special example is the prophet Zechariah, who has the task of encouraging his people to finish the rebuilding of the temple when they return from exile. God sends him visions of future things that will come, because they are His chosen people! Forever!

Years ago -- many years ago -- when we went to the local movie theater, in addition to the main movie, they presented a feature called "Previews of Coming Attractions." They were enticing us to watch for the great things coming soon! In a way, the Old Testament is like that: presenting previews, prototypes, of what is coming next! And Zechariah is like that -- a hint, a preview, of something even more wonderful coming! And it's all about Jesus -- the best is yet to come!

Read chapter 3 in the Zechariah record. Verses 1-3 set the stage for us. We have a powerful picture of that unseen battle happening in the spiritual realm. There  is Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, while Satan stands beside him to accuse him. That's what Satan does! He accuses, he shames, he recounts past sins. Here he is ready at accuse Joshua -- probably pointing out everything he has ever done wrong, his failures, his unworthiness.

And he is doing this right now -- to us!

He is the prosecuting attorney! But what does God say? And what happens next?

Part 2

Read again Zechariah, chapter 3.

Verse 2. It appears that Satan, the prosecutor of Joshua, has not started his tirade. But God silences him even before he begins. And how does God describe Joshua? "A burning stick snatched from the fire."

You  probably have sat near a bonfire. And you have seen a charred log, burned down, blackened and smoldering. It's been through the flames. It still has its shape, but is not what it once was. It looks ruined, maybe useless. This is the picture Zechariah gives us: a person pulled out of destruction, rescued from what could have utterly consumed him entirely, and says to Satan, "This one? I have pulled this one out of the fire and will use him in my work!"

 We call this "grace".
 And we call it "redemption"! 

Because this is what God has done for us!

Another preview of what Jesus did when He came - 500 years years later. That vision God gave Zechariah was another "Preview of Coming Attractions"! Jesus Himself came to earth, our greater High Priest, to that temple, and to the cross,   and saved us from eternal destruction.

(Con't in Part 3 - tomorrow)

The Miracle We are Really After

 
                                                  

                                                  The Miracle We Are Really After

 I love these words from Frederick Buechner:

"For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars, there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-to-day lives who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around knee deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.

It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want, but the experience of God's Presence.

That is the miracle we are really after and that is also, I think, the miracle we really get."

That's true for me. I don't need a brilliant scientist to try to prove to me that there is or is not a God.

The question is, if there is  God, does He want anything from me? Anything to do with me?

I remember C S Lewis' words when he abandoned atheism and embraced Christ. His atheist colleagues were horrified at his decision to become a Christian and ridiculed him relentlessly that he decided to believe in God.

He said, "It's not that I believe in God, but that I believe in THIS God," he said, and he held out his Bible to them.

The miracle he was really after was the miracle he really received.

And so have I.

Four quartets - T. S. Eliot - When He Became a Christian

 

                                When T. S. Eliot Became a Christian

From Four Quartets

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all...
...These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is
   Incarnation.

Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual
Here the past and future
Are conquered and reconciled....

In order to arrive at what you do not know
   You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
   You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
   You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not....

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning...

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well..

--From Four Quartets






Important dates for T. S. Eliot
     1888 - his birth
     1922 - Wasteland published
     1927 - his conversion from agnosticism/atheism to Christianity
     1930 - Ash Wednesday published -- what he called
                his "Conversion Poem."
     1943 - Four Quartets published -- for which he was
                awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature           
        1965 - his pre-resurrection death

When T. S. Eliot became a Christian - From article by John Piippo

"On June 29, 1927, the brilliant T. S. Eliot converted from Unitarianism to Anglicanism. Some of his former fellow atheists were scandalized. Virginia Woolf was one of them.

Her reaction, writes Peter Hitchens (Christopher's brother) was one of fury and almost physical disgust which was, he says, typical of the educated British middle class.

Woolf wrote, 'I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible that he is. I mean, there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.'"

(Hitchens, Peter, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, p. 24).

Woolf's response is similar to that of Richard Dawkins who shrinks back in horror every time some brilliant scientist (Like Francis Collins) speaks of his conversion to Christ.

Hitchens comments on Woolf's Eliot-reponse: "Look at these bilious, ill-tempered words: 'Shameful, obscene, dead to us all.' There has always seemed to me to be something frantic and enraged about this passage, concealing its real emotion -- which I suspect is fear that Eliot, as well as being a greater talent than her, may also be right."

               

Does God really confide in us?

The LORD confides in those who fear Him; He makes His covenant known to them.          Psalm 25:14

See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declared; before they spring into being I announce them to you. Isaiah 42:9

For the LORD detests a perverse man, but takes the upright man into His confidence. Proverbs 3:32

How does He speak to us this way?

Through His Word - not only has He confided His plan for the ages, He also opens our eyes to see what He is doing right now around us - in our lives and in the lives of those we love.


Through prayer - His Spirit opens our ears to hear His voice and opens our hearts to receive the message. Sometimes it is just a whisper, and sometimes it is a loud a-ha moment of joy!

Through His community - the people He has brought into ourlives - sometimes we can glean great truths and guidance from them - no one comes into our lives by accidence.

Through circumstances - sometimes it is just so obvious!

What we know:

• God tells us what we need to know when we need to know it. Not before.

• God always takes the initiative in revealing His heart to us.

     Whether I can hear His voice depends on my closeness to Him, my living in His Presence, and my love for Him.

As we become aware of His Presence it will become easier for us the see the way we should go.

Instead of wondering about the road ahead we will focus on staying in communication with Him.

We shouldn't go through life like a sleep-walker, just following our own regular routines and personal agendas.

We should look beyond those rutted paths and let Him lead us onto new trails of adventure and freedom.

He will reveal to us new glorious truths all along the way.

Just stay with Him. Don't let go of His hand!