Shout

On January 16, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Zephaniah 3: 14 -15

Shout for you, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away His judgments against you, He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you will fear disaster no more.

Jesus is the Word. He is the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Jesus, the Christ. So, every word in the Bible is a potential source of good news for you, you who are in Jesus. That includes the Old Testament. While you may not typically spend a great deal of time in the book of Zephaniah, it is good to see that God always had good plans for freedom and victory for us.

We have been adopted in the kingdom which was formerly the tribe of Israel. We are members of this family. So, who is the daughter of Zion? The daughter of Jerusalem? Who is Israel? It is you, of course. Some of you know that I frequently line through Israel and write in my own name. This is especially the case when it comes to a promise because every promise God has ever made belongs to me.

I want you to receive today’s passage with the soft tissue of your heart. Here the exultation and the longing for the family. You have good news, you should have a good expectation in all things because the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. He is in your breath. Shout in triumph! Rejoice! He, your Father and King, has vanquished your enemies.

However, that is not all. He has put your just judgment behind Him. He has taken it away. People get so hung up on judgment but, let us not. The Word is quite plain about judgment. Jesus bore our judgment so that we can live as God desired, in perfect union with Him. We are made clean by the blood so that no veil of sin separates us from the love of God. We are now positioned where He can pour out His goodness upon us.

Now if that isn’t shouting ground, I clearly don’t know what is. Shout in triumph, the triumph of our Lord Jesus. Glory to his most holy name!

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God Remembers

On September 16, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 98: 3                NIV

He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

God has not forgotten His first love; the house of Israel. He is faithful to Israel even today. Israel was the seed that was supposed to germinate and spread the love of God throughout the earth so that all would know of the coming of the Messiah. Perhaps Israel didn’t fulfill the entirety of its commission but the Lord’s faithfulness endures. It was not dependent on the faithfulness of men but rather on the love of God. And God’s love has expanded to the ends of the earth so that it fills every nation and every people even if those people do not acknowledge the love and faithfulness of God. 

This verse has a present tense and a prophetic tense about it. It declares that the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God already. That is because God has filled the earth with life, truth and love. Even the ground and plants have been saturated with God’s faith and love. This has been so since the beginning. If God’s faithfulness and love were absent then there would be no life and scientists find life in the most remote places, even places where it was once thought that no life could exist. Life is the product of the love of God. Where there is love, there is life and vice versa.

The prophetic sense of this passage looked forward to the first coming of Christ and even the second coming. Salvation is extended to all who will receive. There is no person on earth that is precluded from the love of God and the resultant salvation. Even where no preacher has gone and preached, there is the knowledge of God. He has put into the heart of every person the knowledge of Himself. He has catalogued the mountains and streams as a testament to His presence. The world around us testifies to His existence even where no person has carried the gospel. His faithfulness has ordained the coming of the Christ to bring salvation to the world and His love is reaching to the ends of the earth. And where no minister of the gospel has gone before God is laying a foundation right now so that no one will perish without having heard the Word of the Lord.  

God is not trying to keep people out of heaven. He is endeavoring to get them into heaven. He is faithful to the small and large and to the ends of the earth. Salvation has come. The saving grace of the Lord is and has filled the earth. We may openly partake of salvation from everything which seeks to hinder us. God’s salvation saves completely. He is faithful in the small things and the large things. Let salvation touch your household today and then by the grace invested in you by the Holy Spirit of God, extend that grace to all without reservation.

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