Friday, 1st January 2010
Wow, how time flies :-)
In a twinkling of an eye, it is not only a brand new year but a brand new decade!!!
As we enter into the 2010s, I really want to thank the LORD for seeing me through yet another year. Indeed, 2009 has been a dektos year, like what Ps Joseph Prince declared. There has been a series of breakthroughs, one after another. He has especially blessed my career above and beyond what I could ever ask or imagine, and caused circumstances to happen so that I could end my sabbatical. Once again, my entire family has been reunited and can worship together in the church of my forefathers. Hallelujah!
As a youth, I remember hearing the phrase "good riddance to bad rubbish". This really sums up the situation in my spiritual journey. Like Paul says, we need to forget what lies behind and reach out to what lies ahead. Sure, there were lots of nonsensical rubbish that were being spewed in the past about us being able to lose our salvation, us being appraised by God, us having to obey the law in order to be healed, etc but God has gotten rid of every single bit of it. The slate has been wiped clean and 2010 marks a brand new start. Thank you Lord!!!
I also remember fondly a song that was written all of 30 years ago called Happy New Year by a Swedish band that was very popular back then called ABBA. There was a part of the song that goes as follows:
"It's the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we'll find
What lies waiting down the line
At the end of eighty-nine..."
This song was written in 1979 but it sure applies in 2009 as well, except that the last line should read "at the end of nineteen".
Listening to it gives one a kind of bitter-sweet feeling because Agnetha Falskog (the blonde one) sings with apprehension about what the future holds. Well, we who are beneficiaries of the New Covenant can answer her question with, "we should find good things at the end of 2019 because we have a good God." Amen?
Dear friends, 2010 is going to be a year of God's unmerited favour. May it be unto us according to His Word!!!
3 comments:
Hello! You wrote: “hat were being spewed in the past about us being able to lose our salvation,” and I want to comment on that.
Tan’’kh – for example Yekhëzqeil (Hezekiel) 18 – promises foregivness to those and only those who do their sincerest to keep the mitzwot (commandments) in Torah. The Creator cannot lie and He does not change (Malakhi 3:6)! A logical analysis (see www.netzarim.co.il) of the first centuries relevant documents proofs that Tan’’kh is in accordance with the teachings of Ribi Yehoshua ha-Mashiakh (the Messiah) from Nazareth.
No human can keep Torah perfectly. There is a provision. Ribi Yehoshua ha-Mashiakh lived and kept Torah with the sincerest of his heart, died innocently and became a sacrifice. Because of this the Creator can give His foregiveness to everyone doing his/her sincerest to keep His instructions found in Torah, and to everyone turning away from their Torah-breaches to instead starting to do their sincerest to keep the instructions in Torah.
Thus, the person who was in a relationship with the Creator, but who starts breaching Torah deliberately, for example if he/she begins to regularly eating pork; he or she will according to Tan’’kh not be forgiven by the Creator.
Regards, Anders Branderud
Hi Anders
You are right that no human can keep God's laws completely, and that is why God sent Yeshua.
Yeshua said that He did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it and that He did. He took our place of sin so that we can take His place of right standing with God the Father.
Ezekiel took place before the cross. Those of us who live this side of the cross who believe in our heart and confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord are saved, and saved eternally :-)
Ezekiel 18:9 (NKJV)
9 If he has walked in My statutes
And kept My judgments faithfully—
He is just;
He shall surely live!”
Says the Lord GOD.
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Leviticus 18:5 (NKJV)
5 You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.
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In Ezekiel 18 and Leviticus 18, it is clear that a man who is justified by the Law, can live ONLY IF he does them.
However, Abraham who was before the Law, was not justified by the Law; he was justified by faith - "And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness." (Gen 15:6) - and Habakkuk 2:4 also says that "the just shall live by his faith."
What is the purpose of the Messiah's sacrifice if one can still be justified by the Law? The apostle Paul explains this very clearly in Gal 3:
5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.
6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” 7 The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.
10 But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law.” 11 So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” 12 This way of faith is very different from the way of law, which says, “It is through obeying the law that a person has life.”
You can only choose to be justified either by the law or by faith, not both. However, Paul in Ga 3:19-22 explains that the law is not the way:
19 Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised. God gave his law through angels to Moses, who was the mediator between God and the people. 20 Now a mediator is helpful if more than one party must reach an agreement. But God, who is one, did not use a mediator when he gave his promise to Abraham.
21 Is there a conflict, then, between God’s law and God’s promises? Absolutely not! If the law could give us new life, we could be made right with God by obeying it. 22 But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.
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