God's Boundless Love Makes Forgiveness Possible! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:38-39,

"Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses."
 
When Paul and Barnabas got to Pisidian Antioch they went to the synagogue and proclaimed the gospel to the folks there.

At the heart of his message, as always, was his point that through Jesus Christ the forgiveness of sins is available by faith (alone). Earning forgiveness by serving God by the law will never bring justification.

As the judge of all creation, God’s justice always prevails, and we all face a certain fate of eternal death because of sin.

But now, through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, we have forgiveness of sins for everyone who embraces him in faith.

How remarkable that God would choose to send his Son to take our punishment! What a boundless love that is expressed here!

Today I worship our God of boundless love that has provided us believers forgiveness of sins and eternal life with him!

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God Always Fulfills His Promises! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:32-33,

“We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: 'You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’”

As Paul addressed the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, he related the gospel message with a truth about God that has withstood the test of all mankind’s entire experience: “What God promised our fathers he has fulfilled…”!

Faith is predicated on the notion of fulfilled promise. Will our Creator do what he says he wil dol? The answer to that question is as certain as our very existence itself: what God promises, he will do. He told Adam and Eve, if they ate from the tree in the garden they would die. He promised to send his Savior to the world and he did. God has made promises, and he always, without fail, thoroughly fulfills every one of them!

The basis of our salvation is faith. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, Romans 4:3, 4:9, 4:22, Galatians 3:6. Paul brings this out clearly in Romans 4:19-22, “Without weakening in his faith, he [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why ‘it was credited to him as righteousness.’”

Just as Abraham’s faith in God’s promises was rewarded, so is ours today, as Paul goes on to explain in Romans 4:23-24, “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”

Nothing in all of life is more certain than the fulfilled promises of God!

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The Resurrection Of Jesus Christ Authenticates Who He Is! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:30-33a,

“God raised him [Jesus Christ] from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people. We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus.”

Here is an astonishing message! Jesus has been raised from the dead!

As Paul preaches to the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, he tells them Jesus is the Savior that God had promised the patriarchs of Israel centuries earlier!

The resurrection of Jesus Christ authenticates all God has said and all Jesus taught while he was here. Whatever we learn from our Bibles is true and authoritative, as God has demonstrated to all men that Jesus Christ is exactly who he said he was when he was here - by raising him from the dead.

Our belief in this truth brings us salvation. "If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9. "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you." Romans 8:11. Our sins are forgiven and we will be raised from the dead as well!

As we read of all of the blessings that are ours through our embracing Jesus Christ in faith, and of the horrific judgment for those who reject God’s one and only Savior, we best heed what is said! “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life." John 5:24.

No Muhammad, no Joseph Smith, no other individual who has ever asserted himself as someone of importance has this authentication.

Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone has been raised from the dead, never to die again!

“I [Jesus Christ] am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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God Can Use Even Our Worst Impulses For His Purposes! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:27-31,

“The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.”

It is amazing to me how it is that God can use even the sinful impulses of mankind to carry out his purposes. God sent his Son into the world to provide a sacrifice to pay for the sins of all mankind.

Paul tells us in Romans 3:25, “God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”

John tells us in 1 John 4:10, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

And Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Also, in Luke 19:10 Jesus simply says, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

For those unfamiliar with their Bibles, Jesus saves us from God’s wrath, his judgment of our sins, (and every soul that has lived has sinned.) He died in our place, to take the punishment due us onto himself.

As Paul spoke to the people of Pisidian Antioch, he noted that it was the failure of the people and rulers of Jerusalem to recognize God’s Son, so far removed from God they were, that in their jealousy and hostility to the One sent from God, they asked Pilate to put him to death. Without grounds for a death sentence, they demanded that Jesus be put to death, so great was their murderous hostility. In this, God used these sinful impulses of man to bring about his own agenda, something far beyond the small-minded purposes of sinful man: in God’s great love he brought about redemption for them!

The transcendence of God is something to behold! Nothing any of us can come up with is beyond our Creator’s ability to manipulate and/or use for his own purposes!

As Paul articulates in his wonderful doxology of Romans 11:33-36, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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God Sends His Word To The World! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:5,

“When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues.”

As I read of the beginning of Barnabas’ and Paul’s first missionary trip, I see that it was “the word of God” they proclaimed at their first port of call at Salamis on the island of Cyprus.

As we continue to read of the events that took place, it was the word of God that Paul and his team carried into new territories. The message they took was not the word of the church, the word of the denomination, the word of this or that new  movement. It wasn’t the word of some new world religion or the latest teaching from some seminary or university. It was the word of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not the traditions developed or the doctrines hammered out at the epicenter of Antioch: It was the word of God himself.

In that town we are introduced to a “sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus”, Acts 13:6. Saul (Paul) and Barnabas were opposed by this man and Paul condemned him as a man who never stopped “perverting the right ways of the Lord.”

Not the ways of Paul and Barnabas and not the ways of the church in Antioch. Not the ways of the early New Testament church, not the ways of the circumcised believers nor the ways of the Gentile believers, it was the ways of the Lord that Bar-Jesus was opposing as Paul and Barnabas brought the word of God to Cyprus.

We are told it was “the word of God” that the proconsul of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, wanted to hear that Bar-Jesus was in such opposition against. Imagine the insanity of opposing God!

Two men, Paul and Barnabas, (three if we include John Mark), who set out on a journey to take the very words of God to mankind!

We’re talking about the words of the Creator of the cosmos: it is his communication to mankind that Paul and Barnabas are taking to these new areas!

The more I think of it the more astonishing I find it!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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God Speaks! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:1-2,

“In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’”

Within the fellowship that Paul and Barnabas participated in at Antioch there were prophets. I note that when the Holy Spirit told the fellowship to set apart Barnabas and Saul he did it through verbal utterance. “the Holy Spirit said…” This was no “feeling” or “leading” folks there experienced, it was a verbal utterance that presumably was delivered through one or more of the prophets that Luke introduces us to in verse one.

In my mind the utterances of God are of preeminent importance in all of life. Anyone who has a healthy fear of the Lord, a reverence for him, recognizes that all of life need stand still and heed whatever it is our Creator has to say.

Peter helps us understand the nature of prophecy and the association of the prophet with the Holy Spirit relative to Scripture. Far from Scripture being the thought of any man or even the intention of any man, we are told, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:20-21.

“Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”! This is a reality that needs to grip my mind as I consider how much time and how much effort I am going to put into reading my Bible. To think that we have sitting on our coffee tables communication from our Creator, how can I neglect the proper treatment it rightly deserves in my life, in my schedule? Surely I don’t want to hear on that day, “I had things to say to you but you wouldn’t take the time to listen to me.”

Sobering to think of, isn’t it?

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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God Manifests What He Is Doing In How He Gifts Us - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in Acts 13:1,

“In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers…”

It is at this church in Antioch where disciples were first called “Christians”, Acts 11:26. Barnabas was dispatched from Jerusalem when the believers there heard that “a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord” in Antioch. After arriving in Antioch, Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Paul (still called Saul in the account in the book of Acts at this point.) After Barnabas and Paul returned to Antioch we are told they taught the believers there for a year.

At the time, they had also been sent from this church back up to Jerusalem to take a gift to help the believers there who were experiencing a famine. When Barnabas and Paul returned to Antioch they brought with them John Mark, the author of the gospel that bears his name.

As seen, there was a lot of activity taking place at Antioch, and we read in Acts 13:1 that there were prophets and teachers within the fellowship there. God was on the move and it is from this fellowship that we see Paul’s missionary enterprise being launched. God was active at Antioch, and the Holy Spirit raised up gifted people to perform the work that needed to be done. There was a need for prophets and teachers, so the Holy Spirit gifted certain ones to fill that need.

Within the early church, and throughout the centuries of church history, we see God gifting individuals to carry out work that needs to be done. In Ephesians 4:11-13 we read, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

God gifts us all for participating in what he is doing in and through the church. “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good”, 1 Corinthians 12:7. With these gifts he expects us to serve one another. In 1 Peter 4:10 we read, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.”

It is in this that I find the presence of God very active in the church. He gifts us all and raises up certain ones for specific tasks. He did in the early church and he still does so to this day.

I find it fascinating to see how the Lord manifests what he is doing by looking at how he gifts his people.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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