THE ONE YEAR BIBLE CLUB

    Have you ever met the Christian, who tells you, with that glaze in their eyes, "I don't fear The Lord, I just love Him". Fear is negative, Love is Positive.  It's interesting though, that the Christians I have met that spout this non-sense always find themselves involved in the most egregious sins. In our reading today we are clearly told by God Himself, to the people "..so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning."  I really don't care what you think or what you feel, it's irrelevant. The Word of God, the Wisdom of God, tells us, "fear will keep you" when nothing else will.  Love is great, my children love me to death. I come home and their arms are outstretched towards me, "daddy, daddy, you're home, I love you!"  However, with all their love they have towards me, there are days, when the only reason they don't sin, misbehave, talk back to my wife or pull and tear at each others hair and limbs, ...

 One might think that all the different names for God in the Bible were made up by Pastors and Theologians, to make them sound smart in front of their classes and congregations. However, we know that not to be true and the fact is, that The Lord himself is the one who identifies himself by these different names because there is more to God, than just one aspect of himself, ie: The Lord Saves. In our text he reveals himself to Moses and Joshua, as Jehovah Nissi, translated in English, The Lord is my banner. So what does that mean? It means, "The Lord who fights for you!" A more modern word for Banner would be Standard and a more modern word for Standard would be Flag.This coincides with Isaiah's Prophecy, "when the enemy comes in like a flood, I will raise up a Standard....". When the Israelites fought in war, they would have a pole with a Standard, a flag on it and where ever the fighting was fiercest, they would raise up The Standard and the fighting men would ...

    If you were a neutral bystander listening to the ranting rages of the unrepentant sinner, you would hear something like this, " I have a hard time believing in a God who just wants to send everyone to hell; poor, helpless people, loving people, just trying their best with the lot they have been given in life and yet, all this God wants to do is send them to hell". Pretty convincing eh! You might think after that, "yeah, that is pretty harsh, what is wrong with this God anyway". However, best advice we can ever take heed to, is to listen to both sides of the story before we make a judgement. AND here in our text today (Feb 2) Jesus (God) gives his side of the story. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a King who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. ......but they refused to come". Wow! That is completely different side of the story than what I've heard...what I've heard is people want to go to heaven but there is this mean and unjust God that just...

         Verse 31  "And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant."     Faith by Necessity ,  they were forced to either believe or die .  How often in our walk with God will be be forced into situations that we would never have engineered (as long as we were in our right mind) and come to a place where either I believe here or I die. The faith that came, came by a situation that was forced on the Israelite s. Verse 31 is a longgggggg way from the beatings, the..."Moses why don't you leave us alone"....things are only getting worse, why don't you and your God leave us alone...".   Sometimes it's a long journey from..." God you're not helping..."   to  " and then I saw the hand of God and put my trust and faith in him".   As a matter of a fact, it's such a long journey, sometimes people ...

    "Whatsoever you ask and believe, it shall ge given unto thee", declares Jesus. This is both the scripture we love and the scripture we hate. It is the scripture we love because it inspires us of all we can have in and through Christ.  It is the scripture we hate because it reminds us of the endless possibilities that are not coming to pass in our lives; it is both the scripture we love and we hate. If only for one word, how different it could be.  One word, a word we wish Jesus had left out of the equation.  The word that ruins it for us, a condition that often nullifies this scripture for us....and that word, that condition that Jesus throws in, is that we must BELIEVE.  "whatsoever you ask and BELIEVE".  JESUS throws in a condition that is very difficult for us humans, even Christians. While we may all claim to be believers in Jesus, we are not all believers in His promises, we are not all believers in His Word. I would say that if we are tr...

        I am not a big supporter of those Christians who find themselves hated by everyone. I understand the words of Jesus, "they hate you because they hated me" and it is human nature to go to the one scripture in the bible (when there are plenty more) to justify our carnality and un-Christ like behavior.  Time and time again you will read that God's people have always been a people of favor. Yes, we will always have our enemies, we will always have the devil's ponds opposing us, but we will also have God's favor with the heathen. Our scripture clearly states  "The Lord  made  the Egyptians  favorably disposed  toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh's officials and by the people".  Isolated incident???? No, this is a common theme throughout the bible and SHOULD BE a common theme throughout your life, my life.  Daniel, Joseph, Ezra, Zerubbabel, Shadrack, Esther and the list goes ...