Author Archives: Steve

Rescue Me – Exodus 14:13-14

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“But Moses told the people, Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.” (Exodus 14:13-14, NLT)

After Pharaoh let the Israelites go, he changed his mind yet again and ordered the Egyptian army to pursue Israel. The Egyptian army caught up to the Israelites while they were camped along the shore of the Red Sea.

As the Egyptians approached, the Israelites began to grumble and complain that they regretted leaving the slavery of Egypt. This complaint was to be a common one among the Israelites over the next forty years.

But in one of the great affirmations of faith in the Bible, Moses declared in these verses his confidence that God would rescue the people of Israel from the Egyptians.

In order for God to rescue them, the Israelites needed not let the approaching Egyptian army distract them from focusing on God and His deliverance.

The psalmist also assured us that  when we turn our attention to thanking and obeying God and not to worrying about impending trouble, then God will come to our rescue: “Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God, and keep the vows you made to the Most High. Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory” (Psalm 50:14-15, NLT).

Make this your prayer in difficult times:  
Heavenly Father,
     Don’t let my problems distract me from calling on you for help and deliverance.
     I will listen for your voice and in calmness I will see your approaching deliverance and my fears will be assuaged.
     Rescue me from my trouble and I will give you glory.
Amen.

Who Needs Whom? – Psalm 50:7-15

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wholeworldinhishands1“Listen, My people, and I will speak; I will testify against you, Israel. I am God, your God. I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or for your burnt offerings, which are continually before Me…If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is Mine…Sacrifice a thank offering to God, and pay your vows to the Most High. Call on Me in a day of trouble; I will rescue you, and you will honor Me.” (Psalm 50:7-15, HCSB)

God did not need the sacrifices of Israel to be exalted.

Since God already owned every kind of animal, He did not need their sacrifices to make Him glorious or almighty.

Yet, Israel continually offered sacrifices to God.

So, a lack or religiosity was not Israel’s main problem. They certainly knew how to be religious!

The problem was that their religious practices were not transformative! The burnt offerings sacrificed in worship to God did not seem to make a difference in them.

So their sacrifices made no difference to God!

And, today, our best religious practices do not exalt God. Even being our religious best does not make God more glorious or almighty!

God is God, Exalted, Glorious,and Almighty, regardless of anything we can say or do.

So, what God was trying to tell Israel then, and us today, is that it’s not He Who needs us, but we who need Him!

God does not need our worship or our religious practices to somehow make Him omnipotent. He IS omnipotent!

Our worship is a celebration of God’s majesty, His exalted state of being. Our worship is a pledge of our allegiance to Him, a surrender of our lives and wills to His authority.

We cannot give God something He needs, but we can offer ourselves fully and completely to God and then He will be everything we need.  

Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1, HCSB)

Death Defeated – Exodus 12:41-42

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“In fact, it was on the last day of the 430th year that all the Lord’s forces left the land. On this night the Lord kept his promise to bring his people out of the land of Egypt. So this night belongs to him, and it must be commemorated every year by all the Israelites, from generation to generation.” (Exodus 12:41-42, NLT).

The Passover was the major festival associated with the Exodus and the formative event of the Jewish religion.

The Passover was so-named because it memorialized God saving the Israelites from the death of the firstborn by marking their doorways with the blood of the Passover lamb: “For the Lord will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the Lord will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down” (Exodus 12:23, NLT).

Why did the Passover require the Israelites to apply blood to their doorposts when they were not required to perform such a ritual to escape harm in any of the other preceding nine plagues?

The Passover commemorated deliverance from death, not political independence.

As with all people, Israel’s main enemy was not bondage to Egypt, but bondage to death.

So, God could not simply exempt his people from this plague as he had preserved them from the other plagues.

Death reigned in the world because of sin, and because of God’s justice, sin could not be ignored; it had to be punished or atoned for.

Because blood represented life, it alone was acceptable for the forgiveness of sins. Thus, Passover demonstrated that deliverance from death was only by means of a substitutionary blood sacrifice, the Passover lamb, that took the place of the firstborn son of every family of Israel.

It is significant that Jesus’ death and resurrection were associated with the Passover season.

The Passover symbolized the reality that Jesus Christ gave his life as “a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45) and became “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Through His sacrifice, sin and death were once and for all fully and finally defeated.

Now, God’s judgment passes over those to whom the blood of Christ is applied.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered— to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. (Revelation 5:12, NLT)

The Power of Integrity – Acts 5:32

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“We are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit, who is given by God to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:32, NLT)

After a first wave of persecution by the Jewish religious leaders, the early Church flourished because it had been empowered by God: “Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women.” (Acts 5:14, NLT).

Acts 5:1-11 records the events that precipitated this great demonstration of the power of God in the Church.

A man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira sold some property and brought a portion of the proceeds to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount.

The Apostle Peter, by the power of the Holy Spirit, recognized their deception and told them they had embezzled the money from God: “You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!” (vs. 3-4).

Both Ananias and Sapphira fell dead when Peter confronted them with their sin!

Their lack of integrity had the potential to compromise the Church  and so they fell under the direct judgment of God.

The sudden judgment on Ananias and Sapphira had a sobering effect on both the believers and others who heard about the incident.  

A believer’s integrity is critical to the effectiveness of his or her witness to others.

The power of the Holy Spirit is not hindered when believers live and act with integrity.

To engage in deception and somehow think that God doesn’t know is a fundamental misconception of one’s faith (or lack of faith). That sort of behavior would certainly call into question whether the deceiver really knows Christ and has the indwelling Holy Spirit.

For the Church to thrive and effectively (and powerfully) declare the gospel, Christ’s followers must be people of the highest integrity.

“The way of the Lord is a stronghold to those with integrity.” (Provers 10:29, NLT).

Lighting the Way – Psalm 43:3-4

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“Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain, to the place where you live. There I will go to the altar of God, to God—the source of all my joy” (Psalm 43:3-4, NLT).

In this prayer for God’s redemption, light and truth are viewed as guides and the Temple on the mountain in Jerusalem symbolized God’s holy presence among his people.

So the psalmist prayed for God’s light and truth to lead him into God’s presence where he could find happiness.

This verse is a Messianic promise because it ultimately finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the light that leads us to the truth of God, where we can live in His presence and the joy He gives us through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

On several occasions during His earthly ministry Jesus explained that He was the fulfillment of this Messianic promise.

Jesus said that He was the light of God and, as such, He would drive out darkness and bring truth to people’s lives so they would do what is right and be a light to others: “But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants” (John 3:21, NLT).

Jesus told His disciples that He was the light of the world and if you follow Him you will find God’s truth: “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (John 8:12, NLT).

When Jesus told His disciples that He was going to die, they were anxious and He reassured them by telling them that He Himself was the way to God: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NLT).

Remember, God sends His light to you to illuminate the way to Him so that you can guide others to Jesus, God’s Light, so they also can find their way to God!

Living Life from the Bottom – Psalm 42

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“Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God” (vs. 5).

Do you ever think you’ve got it all figured out?

Life is treating you well so you must be in God’s will because you are so blessed.

Then the bottom falls out of your life and all that “blessedness” seems to go away.

Then you get all conflicted and begin to question everything you think you knew about what is God’s will.

In fact, it may even seem as though God is hardly speaking to you any more.

These are some of the emotions the psalmist is expressing in this Psalm. He asks himself why he is so depressed when God is his hope and his Savior? He knows God is there and yet he yearns for fellowship with God: “As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God” (vs. 1-2).

But life has him at a disadvantage; he is down and out and looking for a way up to God.

It’s as if he is living life from the bottom!

So, my fellow bottom-dwellers, when you live life from the bottom, what’s important to you is not so much that you get to the top, but simply that your cry for help is heard and heeded by God…to know that God hears you from the bottom!

There’s a passion (or desperation) for God that comes from being at the bottom that’s really not there when you’re at the top of your game.

You see, God’s Kingdom is the abode of desperate people: “The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (Matthew 5:3).

We trust and hope in God the most when we have to, not when we want to.

It’s hope sustained by desperation!

God knows how we work and so this is the way He works on us, from the bottom up!

“We also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4, NLT).

Bold! – Acts 4:31

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“When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak God’s message with boldness” (Acts 4:31, HCSB).

Because Peter and John had healed a man who was lame from birth by the power of God and “were teaching the people and proclaiming the resurrection from the dead, using Jesus as the example” (vs. 2), the Sadducees became provoked.

These religious authorities did not believe in resurrection because they did not think it was taught in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, which was the only portion of Scripture they believed authoritative.

So they had Peter and John arrested!

When Peter and John appeared before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious tribunal, Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and boldly, passionately and persuasively proclaimed the gospel of Jesus to save and heal to these religious leaders.

The members of the Sanhedrin were amazed by the boldness of Peter and John, knowing they were not formally educated in the Jewish law. So, the Sanhedrin turned them loose but forbid them to preach and teach in the name of Jesus.

Peter and John answered that they could not stop telling the story of Jesus.

The boldness of Peter in this situation stands in contrast to his denial of Christ on the night of His arrest before He was crucified.

Boldness is referenced three times in Acts 4:1-31 (vs. 13, 29, 31):

  1. The boldness of Peter and John was observed by the Jewish religious leaders (vs. 13);
  2. the Church in Jerusalem prayed for boldness to proclaim the gospel (vs. 29); and
  3. the Church was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak God’s message with boldness (vs. 31).

Being bold is both a desired and essential behavior for Christians. Boldness was needed by the disciples in the early Church. Boldness is needed in the Church today!

Besides helping us speak the right words at the right time, boldness helps us persuade people about the truth of the gospel because they can see that we actually believe what we say they should believe.

We should pray and ask God for boldness and then expect God to empower us with boldness to speak and live righteously as a convincing witness and testimony to the gospel of Jesus in our lives.

“Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness.” (2 Corinthians 3:12, HCSB)

When Futility Gives Way To Hope – Psalm 39:6-7

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“Certainly, man walks about like a mere shadow. Indeed, they frantically rush around in vain, gathering possessions without knowing who will get them. Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You” (Psalm 39:6-7, HCSB).

The psalmist realized that in the grand scheme of things his life was fleeting and short-lived, like a vapor or shadow.

People try to find meaning for their lives by gathering possessions as if more stuff will give more significance to their lives.

But, all our accomplishments, all our wealth, all our possessions fade away and are forgotten over time.

If our life in this world is to have any meaning, it must be that it is a preparation for eternal life.

For when we trust in God, we are trusting in God for eternal life.

And, if there’s nothing more than the span of our life on Earth, then our lives are lived in futility and our whole existence is meaningless.

But, when we trust in God, futility gives way to hope. And hope gives our lives meaning.

For those whose hope and trust is in God, life is meaningful and significant because it is not tied to earthly achievements but rather to a heavenly existence!

“Don’t collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21, HCSB).

Enemy Occupied Territory – Exodus 6:5-6

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“You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel, who are now slaves to the Egyptians. And I am well aware of my covenant with them. Therefore, say to the people of Israel: I am the Lord. I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:5-6, NLT).

Moses was commissioned by God to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage. Before confronting Pharaoh, Moses and his brother Aaron met with the Israelite leaders and rallied them with the hope that God would rescue them from Egyptian slavery, as stated in these verses.

When Moses and Aaron demanded in God’s name that Pharaoh release the Israelites, Pharaoh considered their demands an affront to his own sovereignty and reacted by increasing the Israelites’ workloads to an overwhelming level.

The more Moses demanded the release of the Israelites, the tougher Pharaoh made their lives.

This defining moment in the history of Israel is a classic case of the adversity one may encounter individually and collectively when trying to live faithfully for God.

When we are trying to live for God and obey Him, we should not be surprised or dismayed when we are confronted by hardships and adversities.

Because we live in enemy-occupied territory!

There is a dark power in the universe, Satan the devil, who was created by God but rebelled against Him.

And, Satan enticed humanity to commit the same sin (rebellion) he did. When humanity joined Satan in his rebellion against God, we became natural born citizens of Satan’s domain.

Since this dark power was originally created by God, his insurrection does not even constitute a war between equal or independent powers. It is more like a civil war—an uprising of a subversive political faction trying to overthrow a legitimate government.

And the main issue in this conflict is not an individual’s personal sins, though one’s sins may be many or few.

The real issue in this cosmic conflict is where your allegiance is—you are either a part of the rebellion or a citizen of God’s Kingdom (Colossians 1:12-13).

Satan and his cohorts continuously attempt to thwart the plans and purposes of God’s Kingdom that are being carried out by God’s people. And, Satan does not give up any ground without a fight!

But remember that God works best when all seems lost, when there’s no hope, when failure is inevitable, when it seems impossible to succeed!

So, we must stand firm in our faith when Satan causes adversity to attempt to deter us from obeying God.

We know that God will eventually rescue us and secure the final victory in our behalf.

“Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.” (Ephesians 6:11, NLT) 

God Speaking to Us – Acts 1:15-16, 20

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“During this time, when about 120 believers were together in one place, Peter stood up and addressed them. Brothers, he said, the Scriptures had to be fulfilled concerning Judas, who guided those who arrested Jesus. This was predicted long ago by the Holy Spirit, speaking through King David…Peter continued, This was written in the book of Psalms, where it says, Let his home become desolate, with no one living in it. It also says, Let someone else take his position”  (Acts 1:15-16,20, NLT). 

After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the death of Judas created a vacancy among the twelve Apostles.

The remaining eleven Apostles determined that a replacement should be found for Judas so that his position as the twelfth Apostle would not remain empty.

The Apostles considered that the new people of God, like Israel, were to have twelve designated and appointed leaders. (They certainly recalled the promise of Jesus in Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:29-30 that they would sit on twelve thrones in His Kingdom and judge the twelve tribes of Israel).

What’s significant here is that Peter looked to the Old Testament scriptures to find a solution for their predicament. Peter quoted Psalm 69:25 to explain the consequences of Judas’ disloyalty and Psalm 109:8 to explain the need for his replacement.

Peter used a broad interpretation of these Scriptures that inferred the coming of the Messiah and His Kingdom was described and predicted throughout the writings of the Old Testament by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle Paul recognized that the Old Testament writers were inspired by God to foretell the coming of the Messiah and, consequently, he quoted from it extensively to reinforce his writings and teachings: “God promised this Good News long ago through his prophets in the holy Scriptures. The Good News is about his Son… He is Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Christ, God has given us the privilege and authority as apostles to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name” (Romans 1:2-5, NLT).

Now if Peter and the Apostles were well-acquainted with the Old Testament Scriptures, the Bible of their day, and recognized its divine inspiration and authority in guiding their decision-making, how much more should we rely on that same authority today!

The Apostles are the founding fathers of our faith. They are our leaders. They are our example, our teachers!

So, if the Apostles used the Scriptures to guide them in their decision-making, then it is incumbent on us to study and learn the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, and apply its teachings to our daily lives.

Because the Bible is God speaking to us…yesterday, today, forever!

Certainly, we ought to know what He is saying!

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.” (2 Timothy 3:16, NLT)