Brown's Daily Word 9/10/14

   Praise the Lord for this new day.  We will gather at 6 PM for our Mid-week services of fellowship and study.  We will gather for a meal at 6 PM and for Bible Study at 6:30 PM.  We will be starting a study on the minor prophets.  As many of you know, my mom died on the 1st of September.  A service of mourning and celebration was held  on Wednesday (earlier today - India time).  It is almost over by now.  The service will start around 11 AM and conclude around 7 PM.  People will come as they come for a wedding celebration.  They will share a special meal.  The family was preparing for over 2000 people.  My mom was loved by so many because she loved Jesus first and loved so many.  Her life was an amazing life of witness and service. 

    Jesus turns our mourning into dancing.  We read in the Gospel of John that Jesus attended a wedding celebration in Cana of Galilee and performed His first miracle there.  He also went to a funeral service in Bethany where He performed a great miracle.  I believe that, in a deeper sense, in a fallen world, God's business is joy.  Ultimately, He is in the wedding business.  It is not just the grace business, not just the joy business.  Jesus is in the wedding business.  I am participating in a Jewish wedding in a few days.  I know our Lord Jesus always  provides very fine wine.  He makes our drab and boring lives colorful.  He ferments our lives that are often boring and tasteless.

    In Isaiah 25 the prophet was talking about a great hardship coming upon the people of God due to their rebellion against Him.  But then he said, "God will rescue you. There will be a Messiah. What will mark him?"  Isaiah 25:6, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wine.  Of rich food full of marrow and of aged wine well refined."  What was the kind of wine that Jesus made at the feast?  The very best.

    But that's not all that Isaiah said.  He didn't just talk about one who would come and provide wine.  Verse seven of Isaiah 25: "And he will swallow up this mountain, the covering that is cast over all peoples."  He's not just coming to bring a rich feast with a lot of good wine; he is coming to remove the covering—that's the death shroud—that is upon the people.  He is going to swallow up death for all people.  But when John described Cana he  was not talking about Jesus taking away death.  John 4:46: "So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee."  He went back there again.  "He came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water wine. At Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill."  Verse 50, "Jesus said to this official, 'Go, your son will live.'"  The official went back to his own town, met his servants as they were coming to get him, and the servants said: "Your son has been healed."  The official asked when this happened.  They gave the hour and it was exactly the hour that Jesus told him that his son would be healed.  He was given life again.

    That's not all that Isaiah spoke about.  He did not merely say that this one who comes will give much good wine and life.  The Book of Isaiah says He will give life to all people.  The official was a Roman centurion, showing that the gospel was extended to all peoples.  But that's not all that Isaiah says. "He will swallow up death forever and the Lord God will wipe away tears from their faces."

    The greatest wedding story and the Love story comes to a great culmination in the book of Revelation, in which it is written at the great consummation as all the peoples who have trusted in Jesus come together, there will be a great what kind of feast before the Lamb.  At the great wedding feast what will happen?  The people of God, the new Jerusalem, will come down from heaven adorned as a bride and at that point God will wipe away "All tears from their eyes."

 In Jesus our great Comforter,

  Brown

http://youtu.be/iPeVIuRjUi4

Brown's Daily Word 9-9-14

     The Lord blessed us with awesome an summer-like day yesterday.  The Lord decorated the evening by displaying the majestic harvest moon.  Alice and I walked under the brilliance and beauty of the Harvest moon.  The hills were laughing and the trees were praising the Lord in silence.  A friend posted the photographs of turkeys grazing with the chickens.  The trees are about burst forth into brilliant colors.  We all can say, "what a wonderful world" and we all can sing, "How great Thou art". 

    One of the my favorite Psalms, Psalm 139, portrays the Lord God who watches over us with much love and care.  Our Lord God knows us better than we know ourselves.  He is aware of every action and anticipates our innermost thoughts. Verse 1 begins: "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me."  The knowledge God has of us is not only expansive, it is also deeply personal. David described God as seeing us from afar, but that doesn't mean that he thinks that God is far off.  This God who knows us knows us from the inside.  David used the language of "perception" and "discernment" to characterize God's knowledge of him.  "You perceive my thoughts," he said.  "You discern my going out and my my coming in, my rising up and my lying down.  You are familiar with my ways."  This thought moved David to praise in verses 17-18: "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.  When I awake, I am still with you."

    John Calvin began the "Institutes of the Christian Religion" with the assertion that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are related. "Nearly all the wisdom we possess," Calvin wrote, "that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves."  Calvin went on to say that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating God to scrutinize himself.  But, Calvin pointed out, what we learn about ourselves is not entirely comfortable because when we consider ourselves in the light of God, we see both "what we were like when we were first created and what our condition became after the fall of Adam."

    King David, the writer of Psalm 139, paused and pondered the majesty of God.  He pondered the vastness of God's wisdom, power, and grace.  King David  aligned himself with God's purposes, and he asked God to search him.  He aligned himself with God's purposes by differentiating himself from the wicked.  Verse 19-22 read: "If only you would slay the wicked, O God!  Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!  They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.  Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you?  I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies."  We are embarrassed by his sentiment—David's words sound harsh to us—but that is only because we have lost our moral compass.

    The Psalmist's uncomfortable words are a reminder that there really is such a thing as evil and that it is right to denounce evil, but those who denounce evil in others must be prepared to confront a more subtle enemy: they must be prepared to face the evil in themselves. That's why the Psalmist concluded with a prayer for himself in verses 23-24: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

    In a Christianity Today article entitled, "Looking for Monsters," Kay Warren writes that the first time she visited Rwanda, she went expecting it to be easy to spot the monsters who had perpetrated that country's terrible genocide in 1994. "What I found left me puzzled, and ultimately terrified," she writes."Instead of finding leering, menacing creatures, I met men and women who looked and behaved a lot like me.  They took care of their families, went to work, chatted with their neighbors, laughed, cried, prayed, and worshiped.  Where were the monsters?  Where were the evildoers capable of heinous acts?  Slowly, with a deepening sense of dread, I realized the truth.  There were no monsters in Rwanda, just people like you and me."

    The good news is that the God who is your creator is also your redeemer.  This God who knows you inside and out, the God who sees you coming and going, the God who is the architect of your soul, is also the architect of your salvation.  He is the God who became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ.  He is the one who shed his blood.  Your creator is also your redeemer—Jesus Christ: the only one who saves us from our sin.

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/ln0r7MJXw-w

Brown's Daily Word 9/8/14

     Praises be to Jesus for this new day.  He blessed us with summer like days this past weekend.  He blessed us in His house with His people yesterday.  Alice and I walked in the cool of early last evening.  The moon reflecting the sun looked glorious, almost the full moon.  Sunita and Andy and Gabe landed in Cyprus safe and sound.  They are getting situated in their new home Cyprus.  Sunita said it is a lovely house with a brilliant view of the sea.  One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Exodus chapter 12.  It is the wonderful account of the Passover.  It is concerning the last plague sent by the Lord to Egypt.  It is about sacrifice and also is about deliverance, as the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice the lamb and apply the blood of the lamb on the door posts of each house hold.  It is all about the Passover Lamb.  When we reflect on the event of the first Passover we can conclude that it’s what’s on the outside that counts.

    “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29)  Perhaps the first thing to note about Passover is that Passover was a plague!  The heading for chapter 11 gives the other name for the Passover, it was “the plague on the firstborn.”  There had been nine plagues prior to this one – nine signs to Pharaoh that the LORD is God and Pharaoh should let the people go.  Each time Pharaoh refused and each time his heart gets harder, and so the plagues got harder, too.  They get deadlier and deadlier as time went on.
    God was going to pass through the whole country.  The distinction would be that some would take shelter under the blood of a lamb and the LORD would pass over them, while the rest would be judged.  Each household was instructed to sacrifice lamb without a blemish and then, (v22) "using a bit of hyssop plant as a paintbrush, paint the blood on the outside of your doorframes".  Then they were to go inside and not come out again till morning – only safe as they sheltered under the blood of the lamb.  Once inside (verses 8-11) "roast the lamb with bitter herbs and eat it with unleavened bread".  They were to eat it quickly, still standing, ready to leave the country because it would be the last night in Egypt.
    Jesus is that He is the Lamb, so what we see here in Exodus is not just an account of one remarkable night in ancient history.  Passover reveals the most fundamental truths about our LORD Jesus.  Unlike the plagues of hail or darkness or gnats, in which Moses would stretch out his hand and the plagues would come through him.  This time the LORD told even  Moses to stay inside because, “I am coming.”  All of Israel, even Moses must take shelter because the LORD Himself was judging the land.  Salvation, if it’s going to come, has to be salvation from God.  Passover was a meal certainly, but before it was a meal, it was a sacrifice, and the real key to the sacrifice was its blood.

"When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the top and sides of the door-frame and will pass over that doorway, and He will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down."

    It’s the blood that makes all the difference.  That was true of every house in Egypt that night.  Whether Egyptian or Israelite, every house without blood on the doorpost had someone dead in it.  On that cross: the LORD became the Lamb.  The Savior became the Sacrifice.  Our Maker was crucified – slaughtered as a Lamb.  It’s all about the blood on the doorposts.  It’s not about the LORD inspecting each household to see whether it’s up to scratch.  It’s ONLY about whether the household is sheltering under the blood.  And it’s not even about how much faith you have in the blood.  If the blood is applied at all, you’re saved.  Strong faith in the blood and wavering faith in the blood lead to exactly the same outcome. 
    Often people say, “I don’t have very strong faith.”  I can reply, “Me neither.  But thank God we’re not saved by how strong our believing feelings are!  Thank God we are saved, not so much by our faith in Christ’s blood, thank God we’re saved by Christ’s blood!”  Passover teaches us about our Christian lives.  Christ saves you by His blood – not by anything in us.  It’s not about the quality of our living, speaking, acting, or praying.  It’s not even about the quality of our own faith.  It’s only about the blood.   Our status with God, both now and into all eternity, is NOT about the quality of our life –  Our salvation has nothing to do with US – and everything to do with HIM, nothing to do with our performance and everything to do with His performance.
    People so often worry that their sins have cost them their relationship with God.  We can not out-sin the Blood of Jesus.   It’s about His blood outside – not your heart inside.   1 John 1 verse 7:  The blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purifies us from EVERY sin.
    Salvation is entirely outside ourselves; it’s all about Jesus, the  Lamb of God, who alone takes away the sins of the world.  It is not about how we lead our lives as though our performance, good or bad, is what counts before God.  Trusting in our Lamb is a whole way of life.  We are not sinless but we are called to sin less every day.  Once we recognize that His shed blood covers us, we can live in joy and live a life of worship and witness.  We can live a life of a servant .  We can run the race that is set before us in freedom and joy, renouncing sin, receiving His Grace, and taking shelter under His Blood.
In Christ,
 Brown
http://youtu.be/taOXJZY-d-w