Our intensely passionate God - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 19:7,9,

"I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals... I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another's flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them."

Who is going to cause this misery on God's own people? Who is it that is going to cause them to be slaughtered by their enemies? Who is it that is going to bring such horrific circumstances their way that they eat their own children?

God prophesied it through Jeremiah and that is exactly what happened. The Israelites had abandoned God and turned to the worship of make-believe idols. Now, God brings his judgment against his own people.

Some today have a notion that God is a lovey dovey Santa Claus figure. Without reading and understanding and fearlessly facing the truth God gives us, we might all have this false notion of him.

Yes, God so loved the world that he sent his own Son to die on our behalf. However, he is also the very same God who will cast all who fail to place their faith in him into a fiery lake of burning sulfur.

Our God is filled with what we might conceive as an unbridled passion. I don't mean to imply that God does not control himself - he doesn't need to. The reality is that God is intensely passionate in both his love and in his sense and expression of justice.

How thankful I am, that through the love of God, I will escape the judgment of God. He sent his Son for me, paying the penalty for my sins and now I occupy the happy place of being a member of his family. In fact, he want us all. How do I know that? "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9. Also, "This [prayer] is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." 1 Timothy 2:3.

He wants us with a level of passion that only he possesses.

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

The theological "black box" - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 13:11,

"'For as a belt is bound around the waist, so I bound all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah to me,' declares the Lord, 'to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.'"

I am such a jerk, that I have to admit I find it amusing when some theological type resorts to a comment such as, "We just can't know this side of glory, as the Lord, in the counsel of his sovereign wisdom has not disclosed it to us" as they are challenged by some question that points to an incoherence in what they are advocating. Other lofty terms are employed as well, "In the redemptive will of God, he has not chosen to disclose to us..."

Most of the time a simple "I don't know" would suffice and would certainly be much more palatable, much more believable. After all, God is transcendent and there should be those things we just don't know and can't know.

The trick is knowing when someone is hiding behind this ploy, using it to duck the hard questions. There is an entire theological school popular in our day that resorts to this for its very survival. It can't even answer the most basic of questions, such as why one person is saved and another not. I have to say, the Lord in his Word is loud and clear on that answer. The problem is the truthful and knowable answer to that very question renders the theology completely incoherent.

I think at times the theological "black box" as described above is employed to cover for a failure of doing the heavy lifting of reading and studying the Scriptures or not thinking through the position, or, in fact, that the theological position being advocated really is incoherent - it simply doesn't square with the Scriptures.

Here is a very simple question that many have not figured out: Why did God chose Israel as his own covenant people? Why are the Jews God's chosen people?

Don't know? We don't have to resort to the "black box." Read Genesis 15:6.

What was God's intention for having a chosen people? We don't have to resort to the "black box." Read the above verse, Jeremiah 13:11. Read also Romans 9:4-5 for some further information. (I'll bet you know other passages that answer that question as well.) These are the kinds of verses that may keep us from having to resort to the "theological black box."

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

On being "given over" by God to sin - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 7:21,

"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves!"

This frightening message from the Lord was directed toward his own people who had substituted their own religious observances and idol worship, displacing what God asked of them when he made his covenant with them at Mt. Sinai. The Israelites did this in order to pursue what they thought best as opposed to what God told them.

Israel's utter disregard for what the Lord asked of them, their disregard for the covenant they had entered into with God placed them in the horrifying position of being "given over" by him. God gave them over, told them to "Go ahead" and pursue their religious exercises (which, by the way, included the sacrificing of their own children in fire to these imagined idols.)

Being "given over" by God communicates an horrific certainty of God's judgement. We read of God "giving over" those who will suffer due to their rejection of him:

"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another." Romans 1:22-24.

"They exchanged the truth about God for a lie,and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." Romans 1:25-27.

"Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy." Romans 1:28-31.

As we are told by the writer of Hebrews, I am reminded that, "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Hebrews 10:31.

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

Destruction of the beautiful and delicate - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing,
majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 6:2,

"I will destroy Daughter Zion, so beautiful and delicate."

This destruction of a city characterized as "beautiful and delicate"
seems so wrong. Who is it that is going to bring this destruction? Is
it the devil? Is it ISIS? Palistiian terrorists? Who could possibly
want to destroy a thing of beauty? A thing so "delicate" as the city
of Jerusalem, the city that was home to God's own people?

God announced he was going to destroy his own people, and do it right
within the city found to be so beautiful and delicate by God himself!

What does this tell me about God? From the book of Jeremiah we find
the cause of God's destruction of Jerusalem was due to the sinful
rebellion of God's own who populated the city. God's judgment of his
own people, of the city of beauty and so delicate tells me that
nothing can stop God's justice from being expressed. Nothing.

Jesus Christ told Nicodemus that God so loved the world that he sent
his Son into it. Will God's love prevent him from exercising his
judgment against any and all who sin? Not in the slightest. What we
find is that our Creator expresses both love and justice. Not only
love and not only justice. And, not just a little of each but a
god-sized truckload of both. We read in Jeremiah 9:24, "'Let the one
who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know
me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and
righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,' declares the Lord."

How can God express both love and justice at the same time? As I
picture in my mind Jesus Christ, God's own Son, hanging on that
miserable cross suffering intensely, I see God's justice expressed
against all the sins of all mankind for all time. The scene is one of
thorough and complete justice as Jesus suffered for our sins. It is
also a scene of thorough and complete love as God's Son willingly
suffered his Father's wrath, his justice, that we might find
forgiveness of our sins. He hung there suffering for each and every
sin, for each and every one of us.

All sin will be paid for. Don't be fooled by the notion, "I can't
believe a God of love would..." Believe it! Look at the cross and
understand, look at Jerusalem and understand. Although all sins for
all people have been paid for, that payment will only accrue to the
accounts of those who have embraced Jesus Christ in faith. All others
will surely be cast into that lake of fire we read about in Revelation
20.

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send
me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are
receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just
respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

The insanity of it all - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 5:30-31,

"A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?"

What an indictment! What an observation!

Prophets are to communicate to the folks what the Lord wants them to hear. If the prophets prophesy lies, then not only are the folks not getting from the Lord what the Lord intends them have, they are being given bad direction, bad information, a wrong understanding of God.

Priests are to represent the folks to the Lord, to approach the Lord on their behalf. If the priests rule by their own authority, then not only are the folks not being represented to God, the response the folks get back is what the corrupt priest wants - not what the Lord wants.

And... "my people love it this way"! How astounding! The sinful rebellion of God's own people had led them to a point where they wanted bad information and a faulty understanding of God, they preferred a wicked and deceitful person, rather than God himself, to respond to their cares and concerns!

How utterly deranged is that? And, yet, it goes on all the time in churches today, in our culture today, all around us today. The embrace of homosexuality as an acceptable alternative, the murder of unborn babies, the mindless rush to seize Darwinism, Progressiveism, Humanism, anything and everything to keep us from having to face the reality that we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

The insane part of this all is the question asked at the end of verse 31, "what will you do in the end?" This life is temporary, this life will only support things for a very short period... and then comes the time we all have to give an account of ourselves to God. How do people persist in a self-imposed delusion, loving it that way, when the very life that provides the opportunity to live that way evaporates? Where will they be left?

Insane, isn't it? "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.'" So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God." Romans 14:11-12.

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

The intensity of God - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 3:1-5,

"'If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again? Would not the land be completely defiled? But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers— would you now return to me?' declares the Lord. 'Look up to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been ravished? By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers, sat like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld, and no spring rains have fallen. Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute; you refuse to blush with shame. Have you not just called to me: "My Father, my friend from my youth, will you always be angry? Will your wrath continue forever?" This is how you talk, but you do all the evil you can.'"

This accusation by the Lord against the people of Israel displays an intensity of emotion. It is the intensity of a man wronged by his wife who left him and ran off to prostitute herself.

What I don't see here is the sterility of theology. What I don't see here is an academic discussion of the attributes of God. What I don't see here is the infertile and impotent recitation of the liturgy of a Sunday morning "service". What I don't see here are the vestments of clergy, the trappings of proper utensils and accouterments of religious exercises performed. I don't see church membership rolls and business meetings and "ministries" to cover every possible diverse demographic imaginable.

What I do see here is our God, caught in the intensity of emotion that most never bother to notice. An intensity that only real life, where unfaithfulness breaks the heart, can produce.

Our God has a heart. A big god-sized heart that harbors big god-sized emotions. Real emotions at an intensity we can only be stunned by.

After all, what kind of passion drives our God to send his Son into the world to die an horrific death to pay for our sins? How could that intensity of love for us be measured? Certainly it is at least equal to the suffering our Lord experienced on that cross.

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

Be forewarned! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Jeremiah 2:11-13,

"'Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, you heavens, and shudder with great horror,' declares the Lord. 'My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.'"

Not only had Israel abandoned her God, but she replaced him with counterfeit gods. The appropriate reaction to this is an appalled shuddering with great horror! Any counterfeit to God is worse than worthless, it brings God's terrifying judgment.

I am reminded of Paul's comment in Romans 1:21-23, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."

The result of Paul's observation is that God gave people over to their perverted and darkened hearts. Now, only a horrifying event awaits them, an event with no end. A future event that is certain to come to pass that lurks in the fearful dark of mankind's worst nightmare: "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire." Revelation 20:15. And, "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." Revelation 21:8.

Woe to the man or woman who exchanges God in their hearts for a counterfeit! "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Hebrews 10:31. Anything we embrace in our hearts that supplants God is a counterfeit of him.

How thankful I am that Jesus Christ has made a way for me into God's family! How wonderful to hear Jesus' words, "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. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live." John 5:24-25.

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!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com