Brown's Daily Word 9-25-07

Good Morning,
We read in 2 Chronicles 30:1, 5-6 about a man named Hezekiah, who reigned over Judah from the throne in Jerusalem. His father had been king before him. The father was an evil man, and when he died the kingdom was in a sad state. But Hezekiah had learned from a young age what sin did to people, and he determined in his heart to bring the people back to God. He led the people to seek the Lord, and they found Him and revival ensued. But Hezekiah was not satisfied that this revival be located just in Jerusalem. He wanted the whole world to be in on it, and so he sent word from border to border about what God was doing. V. 1 says the method chosen was letters, and v. 6 says the letters were carried by ‘posts’, or letter carriers.
You and I are supposed to be God’s mail carriers. We have a message from the King to deliver throughout the land. Today, news travels fast by the web and by email. The post office will tell you: it’s hard to find people who want to carry the mail. Most want to work behind the counter, in the sorting room, or behind 1 way glass, supervising. Why is this? And why in the Christian world do so few want to ‘be the one’ to go out and personally hand deliver the mail for God?
One of the salient features of the mail delivery system is the postage stamp. Recently I did some research about the origin of the postage stamp. The postage stamp can trace its origin back to a hill far away. It was invented by a man named Roland Hill who lived far away in England. We as Christians can trace our origin back to a hill far away as well!
In the name postage stamp, the word post is the root word. Originally the post was just a wooden pole driven into the ground, and on it the king would tack up announcements and decrees and proclamations and they would stick there on public display with the king’s seal thereon so everybody who passed by would realize the king had made these official statements. For the believer, on that hill far away another wooden post stood, and on it God nailed up His love letter to the world. He put the King of kings on public display, and made the announcement of His love, the declaration of His mercy, and the decree of His grace.
Boundless love was shown for it and the great price paid for it. All will agree we pay an ever increasing price for the stamp, but do we love it? Other than licking it I don’t remember expressing my affection for it! We must remember in this illustration that we are the stamp, not the licker. Ever heard of a philatelist? Honestly, where I come from we don’t use words like that. I only learned the word in studying this week about stamps. The philatelist is the stamp collector. The word comes from 2 great NT Greek words: phileo = “to love” and taleo = “to pay for”. The philatelist loves stamps so much he is willing to pay whatever necessary in order to purchase them. And our God is collecting the souls of men because He loves them so much He is willing to pay any price. As a matter of fact, that word ‘taleo’ is the root word of what Jesus said on the cross—‘tetelestai’ = “it is finished” or “paid in full!
Think about where it can be found on the envelope. It is always up in the corner. God has us cornered. He is on our trail and took us to the place where we had our backs against the wall with no place else to go! That’s where Boaz, the kinsman redeemer, found Ruth, the Gentile bride. She was in the corner of the field where the gleaners were allowed.
Think again about the location of the stamp. It’s on the right side! Don’t put the stamp on the left side; that’s the wrong side. Don’t put it on the back side, it’s the wrong side. Put it on the right side! And make sure you’re on the right side, the winning team, and deliver the mail for God!
Ponder the colors of the postmarks. They use 2 colors: black and red. And I once was stained with the black marks of sin, but Jesus blotted out my sins with a crimson red, rich, royal, righteous blood He poured out for me. When the postmaster places his postmark across the top of the letter it overlaps the stamp. Do you know what they call that? They say that stamp has been canceled. And when Jesus sees all the sins of a repentant sinner like you He doesn’t rub them in, He stamps them out, canceled, paid in full!
Reflect on the watermarks. Many stamps today have a watermark for identification. And the Bible says that they that gladly received God’s Word received a watermark, baptism, for identification. You don’t have to have the watermark to be a stamp, but it helps the stamp to have one!
Consider what you see pictured on the stamp. Originally you would only find royalty on stamps, like we put presidents on money. But these days you find all kinds of things on stamps, and these days you’ll find all kinds of things in the lives of Christians . . . but it used to be that when you looked at a Christian, you would see the King.
Copious records are kept of the millions of stamps that have been made in so many designs it would make your head spin. At the post office they have a big book that lists all the stamps ever made, and I want you to know that in heaven there’s a big book of records. Is your name written there? The postmark lists the time and date of the letter’s deposit, so, when was your name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life? Jesus said, rejoice because your name is written in heaven!
There are a lot of other kinds of stamps out there that are not postage stamps, and they cannot carry the mail. Do you remember green stamps? None of them could carry the mail. And there’s only 1 way to heaven, it’s through Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life! Put a fake stamp on a letter and today’s technology will filter it out and return to sender, right back where it came from. But true postage stamps go where they are sent!
Stamps stay put. They stick to their place. They don’t slide over or slide back. Go where God sticks you and stay put, and let God use you to carry His mail! 1 Corinthians 15:58: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."


Some one has said " Every addict is some one's beloved". In a deeper way every one who is sick is some ones' beloved". Pray for the following:

Ryan.K ,who is in hospice care.
LA, for total healing
JB who will be going for drug rehabilitation
GD, who is battling chronic depression
Don Harbecke, 52 years old is having a quadruple heart by pass today in Illinois,
Jack B, experiencing heart problems,
Leslie Broughton, in the intensive care
Larry, Jane, and family who just moved to their dream house. Larry is concerned that he might lose his job in Atlanta
Geraldine who is hospitalized in with a heart attack and a stroke in Columbia, SC.
JN, who is a recent college graduate, looking for job,
Janice, our oldest daughter, who is going back to work next week, after the birth of Simeon. She works for Healthcare for the Homeless in Boston,
Our youngest daughter Jessica, who will be finishing her assignment withe the Americorps in Philadlphia in few weeks,
Sunita who is attending a weeklong conference in Haiti,
Pray for Cameron Tyler, born 8 weeks prematurely, weighing 4 pounds, in neonatal ICU in Boston
Pray for Kristin, Becky, Shannan - our young expecting moms

Brolin Parker... As he recovers from surgery in Albany last week.
Burt Sweet (Retired Pastor) is still recovering from lung surgery in Watertown, NY. Please pray for Burt and his family as his health continues to be fragile.
Geno DeAngelo, Binghamton Police officer, father of four children, battling lung cancer,

Praise the Lord for those who have gone to be with Jesus, having loved him on earth.
Betty Slade in KS.
My uncle Mamdu Naik in India. He was a staunch Hindu, who accepted the Lord a few years ago. He was baptized last year. He died last week at the age of 85. He was the husband of my mom's oldest sister. They were blessed with 6 children. All of their children except one son love the Lord and are serving Him. The Lord has blessed the entire family. One of the grandsons is an evangelist and a pastor. He was formerly an insurance company executive. He left a very lucrative position to serve the Lord in full time ministry. The Lord is using him in a spectacular way. Over two hundred people have come to Christ from a very staunch Hindu families through his ministry. The Lord is doing some amazing things in India. The church is exploding like wildfire.

Jude 1:24 -
Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,

Jude 1:25 -
To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
In Christ our Saviour and Lord,
Brown

"Jesus has a particular eye for the ironical and paradoxical. He gave His disciples nicknames: Peter the Rock who was big on words, but a coward when it mattered; James and John, hotheads, were 'Sons of Thunder'. He told stories about judges who gave justice only after being pestered repeatedly, businessmen who amassed riches only to die the next day, and about priests too precious to help a man who had been beaten up. He talked about people who gave stones in the place of bread, and saw the speck in the eye of another but ignored the log in their own eye. He talked about the blind leading the blind. He called the holy men of his day whitewashed walls" [Rev Peter Weatherby]

"Many of His comments would have had the audience laughing incontrollably, while at the same time making a deep point. The pictures of 'blind Pharisees straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel' (Matt 23:24) is hilarious. Similarly it is reckoned that shpherds were the butt of Galilean society's jokes, and so the one about the shepherd leaving the 99 to search for just one, would have also raised a laugh." [George Newton]

"How often there was a twinkle in the eye of Jesus! His humor shines through his words. For instance, Jesus once pictured the religious legalists of his day. He said they were like a man who polished the outside of his drinking cup, but forgot to clean the inside. "You are like a person," said Jesus, "who picks a fly out of his drink and then swallows a camel" (Matthew 23:24). Jesus made his point by a humorous exaggeration. He used the same kind of humor when he said, "It is much harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" (Mark 10:25). There must have been a twinkle in his eye when he talked about the fault-finder: "Why do you notice the little piece of sawdust that is in your brother's eye, but you don't notice the big piece of wood that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3.