Month: September 2024

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things…
Hebrews 1:1-2

Since the theme of the Epistle to the Hebrews is the better covenant that came through the Son of God, everything about Him exceeds all that was in the Old Testament. The prophets of old were servants of God who saw short glimpses of the glory of the LORD, but Jesus was the Heir of All Things.

As Heir, Christ inherits anything and everything that was God’s. Possessions, authority, dominion, power, abilities, attributes, and the character of the divine now belong to the Savior of the World. The promised Immanuel kept His promise, and God continued abiding with His creation. Everything that had gone on for millennia in the past was now obsolete and inadequate. What had appeared to be very real, present, and relevant was revealed to be just shadows and images of what was to come.

The term “all things” leaves nothing out. Even the unknown assets of God that we have no clue about still are Christ’s to use or lose or give away, because He is the Heir of All Things.

God, even in the Old Covenant, possessed all things, all power, and all glory. What actually changes is access to the Holy One of God. All distance, all obstacles, and all limitations are gone. Our Great High Priest now intercedes for us so that we can approach that which had been unapproachable since the lifetime of Adam.

It would have been enough to walk through heaven in the same way a tourist walks through a world class museum: Look, but don’t touch. But here’s the part of the New Covenant that boggles the imagination: He who has become Heir of All Things has also made us joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). Who’da thunk it?!!

 February 3 

…but He whom God raised up saw no corruption.
Acts 13:37

It’s not hard to understand that this verse refers to the Lord Jesus, especially if it is read in context as part of a sermon that the Apostle Paul gave at Antioch in Pisidia. Even so, those who purposely choose to misunderstand something can and will do so, hoping to confuse others at the same time.

False religious witnesses have been known to twist this verse to teach what it does not say. They argue, “If Jesus is ‘He Whom God Raised Up,’ then He can’t be God, because the verse shows that they are different.” Actually, the verse doesn’t show that, and here is the reason why.

The One, True God of the Universe can reveal Himself in three distinct ways as the Father, the Son, and as the Spirit. The Bible calls each God, and each had part in Christ’s resurrection.

God the Father raised Jesus from the dead. “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4). “Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead)” (Galatians 1:1).

God the Holy Spirit resurrected the Savior. “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11).

Christ raised Himself up from the grave. Jesus said “Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again…” (John 10:17,18). “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’” (John 2:19).

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit brought back Jesus from the dead. Confusing? It shouldn’t be. Christ is He Whom God Raised Up.

 February 2 

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.
Revelation 22:13*

It’s not a coincidence that Jesus Christ calls Himself the First and the Last in both the first and last chapters of Revelation. He is there when things begin to exist and when things are all played out. As Creator He made the physical worlds and started the clock ticking for the universe. As Consuming Fire, He will melt the elements and be present when time is no more.

These are bold statements which no one but God can claim for Himself. This title claimed by the Savior is just one more proof of the deity of Christ. It is  surprisingly easy to present this argument  to any false religious witness that is in denial that Jesus is actually God manifest in the flesh.

Isaiah 44:6 states, “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God.” When the name LORD appears written in all caps, the reference is to Jehovah God. He claims to be the First and the Last and besides Him there is no God. This claim is repeated twice more in Isaiah (Isaiah 41:4; 48:12).

Logic makes clear that there can’t be two firsts and two lasts. One would have to yield to the other which leads to only one of three possible explanations for interpreting these scriptures:

1.The Bible contradicts itself.
2. Either Jehovah or Jesus is lying.
3. Jehovah and Jesus are different names for the same person.

Since explanations 1 and 2 are obviously wrong, we are left with a pretty clear proof of the deity of Christ. There can only be One who is both the First and the Last.

*See also Revelation 1:11

December 31

Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true.” And
the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His angel to show
His servants the things which must shortly take place.
Revelation 22:6

Old Testament prophecy is hard to get a handle on. It is often disjointed, mixing the first and second comings of Christ in the same chapter, and sometimes even in the same verse. It often gives visions and allegories that aren’t literal, so the actual meaning is unclear. After the prophecy is fulfilled, though, it can finally be understood. These prophets got glimpses of things they didn’t understand, but preached it or wrote it down, even though they were clueless to its meaning. They were given the sacred responsibility of conveying God’s word to His people, so they blindly obeyed out of fear of the Awesome God they served.

Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the others saw images of God that the rest of humanity weren’t privileged enough to see. The experience was sometimes so terrifying that they’d fall to the ground like dead men. In many of these cases, they were seeing the pre-incarnate Christ. He is the Lord God of the Holy Prophets.

Now that much of the prophecy is fulfilled and the whole canon of scripture is given, believers today have a much better understanding of God, His Messiah, His will, and what is going on in Old Testament prophesy, than even the prophets who wrote it. Although those seers were very privileged in their day, above all their peers, the average, run-of-the-mill believer who came during or after the life of Jesus of Nazareth was blessed to a far greater degree. The Lord Himself told His disciples: “…Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it” (Luke 10:23,24).

In the last chapter of Revelation, the Apostle John is touring the New Jerusalem at the end of time. All the promises and prophesies that were ever written in God’s word are now fulfilled, and Christ stands before the holy men of God who were used to record scripture. He then reveals Himself to them as the Lord God of the Holy Prophets.

December 30 

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16

Only Begotten Son – One of the better known titles of Christ because it is used in perhaps the most-memorized verse of scripture. Actually, it occurs only four times in the Bible and was penned only by the Apostle John. Although the phrase is very familiar, what does it really mean?

Early in church history, there were heretics who reasoned that if Christ was begotten, he had a beginning, so He is something less than the eternal God. There are plenty of people who believe this today, and they’re still wrong.

To try to correct this, the Nicene creed, written in AD 325, tries to define “begotten.” This early doctrinal statement declares Christ to be “eternally begotten of the Father” and “true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.” This refuted the heresy that Jesus was merely a “God Jr.” or “God, the Sequel.” Rather, Christ was the eternal God revealed in a human body.

The word in the Greek for only begotten is “monogenes,” which can also be translated “sole” or “one and only.” The idea here is that Christ is unique. He wasn’t one of many sons of God, but the one and only Son. The Word becoming flesh, God manifested in flesh, and Only Begotten Son are three ways of describing this unique miracle of incarnation.

False teachers today do what they have been doing throughout the centuries. They redefine terms, plug a new phrase back into the verse, and try to make it say what it doesn’t. John 3:16 means exactly what we thought it did the first time we heard it and believed it. God loves us and gives us eternal life through His Only Begotten Son.

*see also John 1:18, 3:18; 1 John 4:9

December 29 

The things which you learned and received and heard and
saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:9*

“The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). To know the peace of God is to know the Savior. He is the God of Peace.

The earliest mention of the coming God of Peace came in Jacob’s blessing of his son Judah. The patriarch foretold that: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh [i.e. the peacemaker] comes” (Genesis 49:10).

The peace offering was one of the five main Old Testament sacrifices offered to God. Everything about it is a type of the Lord Jesus. This freewill offering was an animal chosen from the flock or herd that was without defect and given to God as an act of worship. The offerer would receive a portion of the meat while enjoying fellowship with God (see Leviticus 3:1-17). The Lord gave Himself freely to bring peace to men.

700 years before the Babe was born in Bethlehem, Isaiah prophesied: “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given […] and His name will be called […] Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Then, when the actual fulfillment took place, a huge chorus of angels sang to a small group of frightened shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”(Luke 2:14).

When Christ was in the upper room with His disciples, He made a promise to them: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

The Prince of Peace is hailed as “Our Peace” in Ephesians 2:14 because He has broken down the barrier that divided the Jewish and Gentile peoples. He is also the “Lord of Peace” who is with us always and continuously grants us peace in every circumstance (2 Thessalonians 3:16). Jesus came into this world to give peace to the troubled of heart and mind. He is the God of Peace.

*see also Romans 15:33, 16:20; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; and Hebrews 13:20

December 28 

For with You is the fountain of life…
Psalm 36:9

Several years ago, one of my boys gave me a small, ceramic fountain for Christmas. It was in the shape of a mountain scene, with water moving from a top pond down a three-inch waterfall, into a second pool, and dropping another short distance into a third little lake. The sound of it was relaxing, so I kept it in the corner of my office and let it run, non-stop. However, the work of recycling a pint of water hundreds of times a day was too much for the little electric pump, so it burned out within a year.

This experience made me appreciate the engineering of ancient fountains that had no moving parts, operated using gravity, and kept running for centuries. Some fountains in Athens and Corinth operate from aqueducts and date back to the 6^th Century B.C. There is evidence that the Sumerian culture had them as early as 2000 B.C.

David plainly understood the fountain principle of a well-spring of water shooting up and giving life and energy. The prophet Zechariah also used a fountain analogy to foreshadow the Messiah: “In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness” (Zechariah 13:1). The image presented is God’s abundant, overflowing provision to cleanse His people from the contamination of sin. This provision was made available by Christ’s sacrificial death on a cross.

In the New Testament, Jesus asked for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman He met at the well in the town of Sychar. He explained to her: “…Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13-14).

Only Christ can satisfy and fill the thirsty soul, because He alone is the Fountain of eternal life.

December 27 

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Genesis 3:15

The words above come from the LORD’s curse on the serpent after the fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. The identification of the “Seed of the Woman” with Christ Jesus goes a long way back to at least the teachings of Irenaeus, a second-century church father and apologist. For centuries, it has been hailed as the earliest reference to the Messiah in the Bible and is considered a legitimate name of Christ.

The interpretation of God’s pronouncement of judgment on the devil was that the Savior dealt a death blow to the “old serpent” at Golgotha, the place of the skull. Satan’s doom was sealed at that point, even though when Jesus died as a substitute for sinful man, the devil stuck Him at His heel when His feet were nailed to the cross. Christ rose from the dead and broke the evil one’s claim over death. Lucifer has not and will never recover from his defeat at Mount Calvary.

It’s important to note that victory over the devil came through the Seed of the Woman and not the seed of man or Adam’s seed. Jesus was virgin-born, and so had no human father. He was God’s Son. In giving this very first recorded title of Christ, God eliminated every other man born on earth.

Verily God, yet become truly human
Lower than angels – to die in our stead;
How hast Thou, long-promised “Seed of the Woman”
Trod on the serpent and bruised his head!
                               – H. D’Arcy Champney (1854-1942)

December 26 

And they came with haste and found Mary
and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger.
Luke 2:16*

When my family lived in Ecuador, S.A., Christmas was a big deal, especially in the underdeveloped rural area where we lived. There, the people were so poor that almost no one got presents, but each school child in the country did receive a small bag of candy sent in from the governor of each province. Christmas there was not December 25, but whatever day the grade-schoolers had their program and the goodie-bags were handed out.

In the jungle, the schools almost always presented a living Nativity. An open-front thatched-roof hut was made with bamboo poles. The stable was full of animals (chickens, turtles, monkeys, iguanas, and dogs). School children played the roles of Mary, Joseph, angels, wise men, and shepherds, and the school teachers surveyed the audience to find a suitable “volunteer” for baby Jesus.

The babe that was chosen was usually a newborn wrapped in swaddling. This not only served as a diaper, but the tightly wound length of cloth made the infant feel secure so he’d sleep for hours. The new candidate for baby Jesus was laid in a box of fresh banana leaves, where he lay quietly until the commotion of the program was over. He was supposed to be the main attraction of the day, but was almost forgotten when candy was given out.

Bethlehem’s Babe, too, is often overlooked with all the distractions of the holiday season. The focus of Christmas day is usually under the tree and not in the manger, where the Savior of the World was laid, where the incarnate God was sleeping. Angels announced Him as Christ the Lord and shepherds worshiped before Him. He was Immanuel, God with us, in the body of a Babe.

*see also Luke 2:12

December 25 

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
Until Shiloh comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people.
Genesis 49:10

This curious title of Christ is taken from Jacob’s blessing of his sons shortly before his death. In affirming Judah, the patriarch promises that he’ll give rise to the kingly tribe and that position will continue until the coming of Shiloh, the peacegiver. Long before the coming of Christ, ancient rabbis acknowledged that this single reference to Shiloh was a messianic title.

The word, however, does appear repeatedly in the Old Testament, but in a very different context. Shiloh was the resting place of the tabernacle after the conquest of Canaan. Burnt offerings were given there and Days of Atonement observed. However, the supposed place of peace was given over to immorality and idolatry, so God cursed it (Jeremiah 26:6). The destruction of Shiloh was so complete, that its location was forgotten for about 2,500 years. It was rediscovered by archaeologists in the 19^th century, but that Shiloh never brought peace.

Since Shiloh is an unusual title of Christ, Christians considered it an interesting name to give to their churches. The most famous of these was the Shiloh Methodist Meeting House of Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee. For two days in April 1862, Union and Confederate troops fought around the grounds of the little log cabin church. 24,000 men were either killed or wounded in what was the most tragic battle fought in the Civil War up to that date. That Shiloh also brought no peace.

When the true Shiloh came to His own people the first time, He was rejected; His own wouldn’t receive Him. They cried out for the crucifixion of the Prince of Peace and refused to let Him rule over them. At that point, the scepter and the lawgiver departed from Judah. The Middle East has been without a peacegiver for two millennia. Israel, the church, and the world still wait.

Even so, come Lord Jesus. Come Shiloh, come.

December 24