Mercy Seat

On April 10, 2018   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Romans 3: 25                    God’s Word

God showed that Christ is the throne of mercy where God’s approval is given through faith in Christ’s blood. In his patience God waited to deal with sins committed in the past.

This is another Bible translation I wish to introduce to you. Actually, I have been using it for sometime now. You may have noticed (GW) beside some verses in the last couple of years. I still use my New American Standard as my everyday foundation but reading verses in other versions can give you the slightest nuance that makes the whole scripture go off in you.

Are you familiar with the Mercy Seat from the Old Testament? Okay, so God had the Ark of the Covenant made. It’s cover, or top, is called the Mercy Seat (See WOTD “Plan for Mercy” at this link: https://iveyministries.org/2014/03/gods-plan-for-mercy/). So God created a seat of mercy. Amen and glory to God. The angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament capped off His presence with mercy. Are you getting this? God was never who we have painted Him to be. He was always love (1 John 4: 8). Alright, let’s see where that leads us.

People twist themselves in knots trying to figure out when they are saved from their sins. If I sin right now, am I forgiven? Am I clean? Or do I need to ask God to forgive me? The answer is “God is love.” You were forgiven before you were born. God knew what He was getting when you answered His call. He knew the mistakes, and yes sins, you were going to make before your parents were born. At the dawn of time, when the earth was just being formed God knew you were going to blow it from time to time and so He made a plan for your deliverance.

Did you see this sentence, “In his patience God waited to deal with sins committed in the past”? What does this mean? Sin has been happening since humankind set foot on the earth. The Father developed the plan to send Jesus into the earth to be the propitiation for all sin. Actually, it is bigger than that. He didn’t just atone for sin, he blew it from the face of the earth and from the Father’s memory. So, Father God, knowing He had this plan in place, waived the punishment for sin until the time He could get the perfect lamb here to take on that sin. Then He, God, put the entire sin of the world on that precious lamb. That is to say, He put all of the sin from the past, before Jesus came, all the sin of the present and all of the sin of the future on Jesus. So Abraham and Sarah were cleansed in that moment, the same as Peter and John, and you and I. God withheld His judgement until He could give us all a judgment of “Forgiven”! Amen? Will somebody shout?

Yes, you have been judged already. Hallelujah! You have been judged clean and holy because Jesus’ blood has you covered. God employed great patience for thousands of years until He could get the Messiah into the earth at the opportune time. Then He released His revulsion of sin on that sacrificial lamb. Now judgment has been satisfied. Now we can walk with our heads up into the throne room of God, because we wear Jesus as an outer garment and are filled up with him. There is still not much to recommend us to the throne room of God in ourselves but Jesus has made you perfect in God’s eyes. Glory to God! Thanks for the patience! Jesus has become our Mercy Seat and we praise God for this miracle of faith.

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Pardoned

On November 2, 2016   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Micah 7: 18

Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.

I pray this revelation will fill the earth, and the church. God isn’t angry. He does not retain His anger but rather lets it go in favor of unchanging love. Yahoo! And just consider that this is a passage out of the Old Testament. Frankly, there are lots of New Testament believers who think God is angry now. Some folks are willing to concede that God is now a God of love but they think He was an angry God before. The truth is that God doesn’t change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13: 8). If we take a position that God was angry, revengeful, and wrathful our hearts convict us. We cannot truly believe in a God who is love and live in that love if we believe this same “person” is the one who tortures us and is angry with us. We have to choose – is God an angry deity or is He love?

So do you want another little bite of truth? God sent Jesus to the earth in the Old Covenant, not the New. Even the New Testament begins with Jesus’ birth, yes? So, that means that when God sent him, it was still the Old Testament. Are you following along with me? That would mean that this vengeful, evil, mean, wrathful GOD sent His beloved son to die for us. That makes absolutely no sense at all. Look at today’s Old Testament verse. God chose way back in the day to pardon iniquity and to pass over our rebellious acts. What is that about? Then He chose not to be angry because His very nature is love. He chose to love us rather than to hold onto His anger. He has chosen to put His love for us above our sin.

Here is the bottom line. God chose love over sin. He chose to focus on His love for us rather than on our stinking iniquity. His love has overcome our sin. He put sin under the mercy seat and under the blood. He isn’t writing your name in a book and inscribing beside it every sin you have ever committed. No, your name only has one word written beside it, “Forgiven” and it is written in crimson. You’ve just got to get happy about that. You are forgiven.
Just one side point. I like that God takes His own advice. He has told us not to hold onto our anger. In fact, He said to let not the sun go down on our anger (Ephesians 4: 26). It’s good to see that He has let go of His anger too.

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Forgive & Forget

On October 28, 2016   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Jeremiah 31: 34

I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

The entire topic about forgiveness fills volumes. There is God forgiving us and us forgiving others. However, there is another aspect of this topic that is interesting. Let’s call it forgive and forget. Is it truly forgiveness if we retain the memory of the transgression? Do we forgive someone only to later resurrect that offense in times of anger or self-victimization?

God not only forgives our sins but He puts them behind Him, literally. Isaiah 38: 17 says that he casts our sins behind His back. They are behind Him where He can no longer see them. He isn’t holding onto our sin, mistakes, misdeeds, errors or even plain stupidness. The God’s Word translation of today’s verse reads, “I will forgive their wickedness and I will no longer hold their sins against them.” To God, forgiveness means that He has erased it and put it out of His mind. Whew! That is what I call “Good News.”

Now with people, it can be a different thing. We like to retain the sin of others. “Forget my sin, Father, but I will never forget what that person did to me.” We even retain the sins of people who do not directly affect us. There is no better example of this than David. We are first introduced to David in 1st Samuel. He was a shepherd boy who the great prophet, Samuel, anointed to be king. After his calling and anointing, though, he returned to tending sheep, which is so often the case. The next big thing we hear of David is of him slaying the giant, Goliath. David eventually went on to live in the palace of King Saul and served him faithfully. He became a mighty warrior but in his madness, Saul chased him off. Eventually though, David does become the king of Israel. In fact, The Complete Book of Who’s Who in the Bible by Philip Comfort and Walter A. Elwell, says that he was Israel’s most important king. But the great king fell. He lusted after Bathsheba, contrived to have her husband killed, and then took her for himself. Later he repented, God forgave him and his life prospered. We wrote most of the Psalms and through the Psalms we get the most clear picture of a close relationship, a true loving connection between a person and God.

I am always amazed when out of all of the Psalms, 1st Samuel, 2nd Samuel, 1st Chronicles, and the slaying of Goliath the one thing people choose to bring up about David is that he sinned. Really? Jesus made it quite evident that we have all sinned when he said, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone” (John 8: 7). Paul just came right out and said it in Romans 3: 23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But then Paul, knowing God and His forgiveness, went on to write, “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (v. 24). In other words, although we have all sinned and as such fall short of the glory of God, God, by His grace, extends mercy and forgiveness to us as a free gift. We haven’t earned forgiveness. We don’t deserve it but that is what grace is, a free, undeserved gift. Yea!

Likewise, it was God’s grace that forgave David. Psalm 51 is a clear picture of a contrite and repentant heart. David knew that he sinned against God and even against himself but he also knew God’s loving-kindness better than any human that had walked the earth. He believed in the kindness of God and he repented. Do you know what God had to say about David? The bible says that David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13: 14). God’s opinion of David isn’t of David as a sinner but as a beloved child. He loved that, although David messed up, he sought God’s heart.

What does it say about us if our recollection of David is of his sin with Bathsheba? How many sins have we committed? In fact, Jesus told us not to judge (Matthew 7: 1) and yet we sit in judgment of David as if we are any better. That is sin. If God has forgiven David, why do we insist on holding on to his sin? If God remembers his sin no more, why do we post it on our bulletin boards? Is this an attempt to make us feel better about our sin and inadequacies? I am thankful God forgave David. I praise God that He has put David’s sin behind Him because I need that same grace. I want Yahweh to forget all the times that I have messed up too.

Jesus died for my sin and yours. The grace that was big enough to pardon David is more than able to cleanse us of our iniquity. The blood of Jesus is more potent than any sin or any sinner. Whoever puts themselves under the blood is cleansed, praise God, so we must ask ourselves what relationship we are to have with another person’s sin. Secondly, Father God chooses to forgive your sin (even your sin of judgment) and remember it no more. So, why should you retain the memory of it along with all of the accompanying emotions if God has put it behind him?

I encourage you to take your sin to the loving Father and lay it at His feet. Speak with Him with an open and contrite heart. When, however, you leave the throne room, leave that sin there along with the memory of it. Bury your sin and stop digging it up. Dad doesn’t want to be reminded of it. He has put it behind him. Now, can you?

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No Longer Sinners

On July 14, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 John 3: 6

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. 

Christians make a big deal about sin. It is kind of interesting really that people who have been redeemed from sin would be so sin conscious. But look, Jesus has solved the sin problem forever so let’s get sin off of our minds and focus on that indwelling victory within us. We are saints, not sinners.

You may hear people confessing that they are “an old sinner saved by grace.” Well, which is it? Are you a sinner or saved by grace. Surely, today’s verse will change our confession. We know what these folks mean though, don’t we? They are trying to give Jesus a nod for what he has done for us so it usually is well intentioned. However, I want to get those words out of your mouth because you are now a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5: 17). You have been reborn. The old person has died and behold you are new. Hallelujah. We need to focus on what Jesus did for us in that miracle transformation instead of always looking back at the dirty garments he took from us. Those are grave clothes and they are supposed to be in the grave with the old self. 

Are we perfect? Well, yes. When we are abiding in him and following his leading, we are with the perfect and we are perfect. But then the old man resurrects and we do something stupid or we just simply make mistakes. No problem. Jesus took care of that so we just run to him as fast as our little spirits will carry us and trade our error for his flawlessness. We run to the altar in our minds and cast our “self” on the altar and put on Jesus.

Am I minimizing sin? By no means! I am casting it into the pit of hell where it belongs. My purpose in this devotional is to get sin off our minds and out of our mouths. We should be focused on Jesus and his righteousness. I want to change your self-image. 1 John 3: 9 says, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” This is where we live. We don’t practice sin. We abide in the Holy One of God and we cannot sin. Just keep abiding. Get out of yourself and into Jesus. Let his abiding presence be louder than your former sin. Lose your sin consciousness and revel in the saving grace which abides in you. This simple paradigm shift will lead you to praise and you will be lifted up rather than down trodden.

Look, here is the bottom line, sinners aren’t getting into heaven so you better decide you are a saint. No sinner abides in Christ and Christ most certainly does not abide in a sinner. Put on your reformation in Christ. Let your eyes be fixed on Jesus and the wonder of his majesty instead of focusing constantly on yourself and your shortcomings. In other words, get yourself off your mind. Jesus is our heart, soul and has become our very existence. You are truth and righteousness in the Lord, Jesus, our Messiah.

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