Month: August 2020

378. Planted in the Land

Amos 9:15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land, which I have given them, saith the lord thy God.

God promises to firmly plant us in the kingdom of God. The promise given to Israel after the exile to return to the Promised Land was fulfilled, but the spiritual and eternal fulfillment for the people of God is that He will place us in the eternal Kingdom, and no one will snatch us out of His hand. The spiritual promise is that we are in the kingdom and the kingdom is in us. This is eternal life.

The Land is the inheritance held for us firmly in heaven. This future heavenly home is also present in believing hearts. Heaven (the promised land of paradise) has come into our hearts when we believed in Christ for salvation and forgiveness. We have been born again and become like children to enter the Kingdom of God. This is the land in which the Lord has planted us, and His planting is eternally secure.

In spite of appearances and in spite of the fact that we may feel like we are losing our grip from time to time, the Lord will never lose His grip on us. God’s life lives within; the land and the plant are united as one. When I am planted I am one with the kingdom in a perfect union with God and all other believers past and present. 

God gave me the land and planted me in it. The eternal kingdom is mine and I am securely in it by simple faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit keeps and preserves me in the one true faith and seals me in the kingdom. We pray for God’s kingdom to come in a way that we may be certain we have it and we can see it by faith. God will keep His promise: I am in the eternal kingdom.

377. Return and Restoration

Amos 9:14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.

This promise of return from Exile for the Jews applies spiritually to us New Testament believers. The promise is that we will return from Exile in the world to our True Homeland in heaven with God. The Lord will bring us again back home to Himself, the place that we lost because of sin. Jesus brings us again back to the Paradise God has planned for us.

We were in captivity to Sin, Death and the Devil. These three masters are tyrants who bend us to their will. And through the temptations to sin we go along with them, do what they demand, and then we suffer the consequences. Sin, Death and the Devil use the World (Babylon) to hold us captive away from God. We know there is a better place with God where we belong, but we don’t know how to get there, and we cannot reach Paradise no matter what we try to do. We are captives. Jesus came to set the captives free, free to come home to the Kingdom of God.

In God’s kingdom within our hearts we (actually, God) shall build the places in the soul that we have allowed the Enemies to lay waste. The Lord will reclaim what we have destroyed so that we can live. In the kingdom we (with God) will plant vineyards. The Spirit of God within plants, waters, feeds and nourishes the branches so that they will bear fruit. This is the purpose of Redemption and Sanctification: to bear fruit. We will drink and eat of the fruit of the vineyards and gardens within the spiritual kingdom.

God will do this; this is His promise. We will bear fruit because the Lord will make it happen. We, by ourselves, have produced nothing but weeds, tares, thorns and thistles. But the Lord produces real and useful fruit in abundance. We will drink and eat the fruit of the vineyards and gardens of the soul. Other people around us will also benefit from the fruit Jesus produces in us. Since we don’t see the building, planting, drinking and eating, the Lord must tell us what He is doing in us. When we by faith see the beautiful work of Redemption and sanctification we are filled with thanks, praise and appreciation. The Lord promises, and He will do it.

376. Prosperity

Amos 9:13 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

This prophecy about the Messianic Age is a promise of prosperity, abundance, plenty and fertility. The awesome physical harvest of crops symbolizes a spiritual time of prosperity. Since we don’t see the spiritual abundance of the Kingdom of God brought to our hearts by the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we must visualize it through the lens of earthly realities we can see. Our faith transfers the picture of prosperity and extravagance over to the spiritual blessings we have received through faith in Christ.

The promise for us is that The Days will come; indeed, they have come in the coming of the Son of God into human flesh on our earth. The Kingdom has come, and we pray for its glorious harvest to be realized in our hearts, “Thy kingdom come.” The days have come; the kingdom has come; the harvest is plentiful. But we pray In the Lord’s Prayer that the Lord might reveal the blessings to our spirit.

The farmer who is plowing in the Spring is catching up to the reaper of last Fall’s harvest. The crops are so plentiful it is taking that long to harvest it all. The reaper of last year’s crops is still reaping when it time to plow and plant this year’s fields. The treader of grapes is still working the winepresses of last Fall’s harvest when it is time to sow again in the Spring. This is an amazing and extravagant picture, but we are able to visualize it if we know anything about growing wheat and making wine. And when you see the vineyards on the hillsides it looks so purple with grapes that it appears like dripping wine.

God wants you to know how wealthy you are and what riches you have inside you. It is really more than you can handle. Jesus gave signs of this Age when he turned water into more and better wine than ever and when he fed the 5000 with a little bread and fish and then had more left over than when He started. God wants us to see how good He is, how rich and generous, how extravagant and over the top. It is hard to imagine what spiritual riches we have received when we received Christ: forgiveness, life, health, provision, protection, everlasting salvation, eternal life, inner peace, lasting joy, a confident hope, and steadfast love. Plus all the promises and blessings in the Bible are ours to enjoy forever. One could take a lifetime of meditation to appreciate all the abundance of spiritual blessing we have in us.

375. Live in the Good

Amos 5:14-15 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

This is a conditional promise: If you seek good, then you will live and the Lord will be with you. Promises of Life and Presence abound in Scripture, but this one is a conditional promise. Living well and enjoying the presence of God is a result of seeking good and not evil. Hate evil and love good, and then the Lord will be gracious.

This condition of seeking good and not evil may be taken in three ways. Any of these three ways will have the same “life” result. Most likely, all three of the following understandings apply to the promise.

1. Seeking good and not evil, in the first place, can mean simply seeking God and nothing else outside of God. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God…” Place God first and only in your thinking, deciding and doing. Keeping the First Commandment is the basis of a good life: Fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Then all the other commandments will follow, all of which will make life real living and living well. Of course, we break this command on a regular basis, so we must repent and believe the gospel of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. He keeps it for us. For Jesus, the will of the Father is first and only in His thought, desire and life.
2. Seeking good and not evil, secondly, has to do with desiring and actually doing that which is good and not sinful. The more we desire to do good works, be kind and loving to all, and serve others the better life will be. We fail at this, but faith in Christ changes our desire and our seeking. Although, as hard as we may try we still fail. Thus repent and believe the gospel daily.
3. Seeking good in life, in circumstances, and in other people is the third possible meaning of this command. First, look for the good in every circumstance and event, no matter how bad it may appear. This is more than optimism versus pessimism. It means there is always a silver lining. God is in everything and will not leave us without a blessing in all things. This attitude of looking for the good makes a cheerful heart. And that’s a good thing. Second, look for the good, not the evil, in other people. Condemn sin, but not the sinner. Your own attitude toward other sinners will change when you can find the good in them, that is, something that God is doing through others, whether they be believers or unbelievers. Be a “good-finder,” not a faultfinder. Life will be better. Again, we don’t naturally do this, but with God’s forgiveness and Spirit we can change.

Seek good, and live!

374. You Shall Live

Amos 5:4 For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live. V. 6 Seek the Lord, and ye shall live.

There are many promises about living, being alive, abundant life, eternal life, and God’s very life within. You shall live! So much of this life is not life, because too much of our lives are filled with sin, which always brings death. In this life we are shrouded with sin and death, which hides and takes away from the full life God wants us to enjoy. Instead of just taking the promise of life for granted, we need to appreciate everything that real living means. It means living forever without end, without pain, suffering, troubles and death. But it also means living now with true joy and inner peace. Sin and Satan cannot touch the joy and peace of believing in Jesus, although they will deceive us into thinking that God is not all good and that He is holding something back. (This is part of the temptation to Adam and Eve.) 

There is a condition to this promise of living: Seek Me. If you seek the Lord, then you will live. But it is not conditional in that our seeking causes us to live. The unconditional truth is that the Lord God is seeking us. He looks for us, as for the lost sheep; He arranges things so that we might look to God for every need; His relentless search does not stop until He finds us. We stray and get into scrapes, not caused by God but caused by sin, and then He finds us, picks us up, cleans us off, and restores us to wholeness.

The encouragement to seek the Lord is not doing something, but the emphasis is on avoiding the negative. The negative is seeking good from something or someone else other than the One Good God. The negative is trusting in self, my own abilities and my own good works. The negative is neglecting or ignoring God in all my ways. Turn that around let the Searching Shepherd seek you. Then you will live. God is life; God gives life; and the good life comes only from God. Thank the living God for life. 

373. Cleansed Blood

Joel 3:21 For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion,

The Lord promises to clean our blood, with His blood. “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” Our blood is guilty; Jesus’ blood is innocent. He takes the guilt of our sin upon Himself and suffers the righteous punishment for it as an innocent man. Then the Lord can and does dwell with us in our cleansed and purified heart. He promises to dwell in Zion, that is, in the Church, that is, in the heart of faith.

The “blood” referred to in this promise most likely means guilt, or bloodguilt, the guiltiness that devours a murderer or a violent person. All of us shall stand before the judgment seat of the righteous judge and be declared guilty of blood, except that Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin and guilt and murder. And by His innocent blood we stand before the righteous Judge and are declared free, innocent and not guilty.

We have all murdered others, and our own selves, by the words we utter, the thoughts we think, and even the physical deeds we do. If we are the cause of another’s perfect peace and full joy of life being diminished in any way we are guilty; bloodguilt seeps in. It must be forgiven and cleansed with innocent blood. This is what God does; this is the promise; and God dwells in a clean heart.

Hatred in the heart, using harsh language, using foul language, gossip, criticism, false witness, being selfish, withholding love and kindness makes us guilty of blood. No sinner escapes this condemnation of guilt. But we have this word: I will cleanse their blood. Hear these words from the Lord. It is true. He really means it. He cleanses.

372. The Church Lives Forever

Joel 3:20 But Judah shall dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.

Judah is the Kingdom of God, the Church of Jesus Christ on earth. It is the invisible (to human eyes) group of all believers in Christ. It is made up of all the believers in heaven and on earth, those who have trusted in Christ for salvation throughout history but are now passed on and of those all over the world today who are still living. Jerusalem is the same invisible church that will one day become visible as the New Jerusalem comes down from God in heaven. This is the forever world in which we shall dwell with God in His actual visible presence world without end.

The promise is this: eternal life; we shall live forever. This promise is repeated throughout Scripture, especially in the writings of John. We sort of take it for granted, but when we think about it, “dwelling forever” is very awesome. We are not able to imagine what life, full, rich, abundant life, that goes on and on without weakness, sickness or death could really be like. We get used to the transitoriness of life with it pains, discomforts, frustrations and disappointments, and we tend to think and resign ourselves to saying, “that’s life.” But the truth is: this is not life. The way we live now is not the way God intended life to be. No matter how high our standard of living today (higher than 99% of history’s people) it is nowhere close to the life God created and redeemed.

We have a vague idea and a vague hope of real life, but we can only see through a glass darkly. But when we see face to face we will be awestruck. The entire church will live forever with God in a perfectly beautiful and wonderful world without end. That promise gives us hope for this day.

Faith sees this life. Faith is the conviction of things not seen. The heroes of Hebrews 11 died in faith, “not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar…. they are seeking a homeland…. they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one…. God has prepared for them a city.” For now, today, we have received the things promised, eternal life, God’s life, dwelling forever, God’s Kingdom in our hearts by faith. God give us faith to see!

371. Wine, Milk, Water

Joel 3:18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down new wine, and hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim.

This is another prophecy concerning the Messianic Age. The Days of the Messiah will be verdant, rich, and abundant like a utopian paradise. This kind of peaceful prosperity remembers the Garden of Eden and foreshadows the New Jerusalem. The first two chapters of the Bible are recapitulated in the last two chapters of the Bible. In between is the Fall into Sin and the curse of the earth and its consequences and the Redemption of mankind with its consequences.

The inherent promise is that we who enter the kingdom of God by faith in Christ are living in a wonderful world. It is spiritual, in the heart, so it is as yet unseen but nevertheless believed. One Day we will experience this glorious world in a physical and tangible way. 

Human language cannot adequately describe the wealth and abundance of this wonderful kingdom within. This is one attempt: 1) The mountains will drop down new wine: the grape harvest is so full that the vineyards look like flowing wine. 2) The hills shall flow with milk: the herds of cows and goats produce so much milk that the herds on the hillside look like flowing milk. 3) All the rivers flow with waters: fresh and clean water is often hard to come by, but all the rivers flow with waters year around. 4) A fountain (a spring or well) waters the valleys.

Wine, milk and water flow abundantly. This is the power and presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the heart that flows over the whole being of the believer. The kingdom of God within the heart is so rich that there never needs to be any fear of death, sickness, poverty, hunger or thirst. Spiritually, the Word and the Spirit are all we need to enjoy God’s unceasing blessings. May God grant the faith to believe and receive all the riches that God gives through Jesus Christ our Lord.

370. No Strangers

Joel 3:17 So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.

“Strangers” here refers to foreign empires, like the Assyrians and Babylonians, who would attack Judah and Jerusalem. Marauding invaders are the strangers who come to steal, kill, and destroy. Throughout history aggressive empires, rulers, and armies would instill fear of death in order to plunder and dominate. The threat of death was ever before the smaller and weaker peoples, tribes, and villages. It was always the “threat of death” through war, captivity, and enslavement that forced submission.

This physical history is a picture of spiritual history. In the spirit world evil forces use death and the threat of death to intimidate us into fear, worry, doubt and unbelief. “The thief (the devil and the demons) comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.” This is what Sin, Death, and the Devil seek to do to us. These are the “strangers” who will not be passing through the soul any more.

This is quite the promise. The Lord your God dwells in Zion = the Holy Spirit lives in your heart. Jerusalem is holy = the heart is righteous through faith in Christ. Anything ungodly or evil is not allowed in the Holy City of the heart where the Holy God dwells. Temptations, works of the flesh, evil thoughts and desires, and demons will constantly attack the Christian’s heart, where all the bad stuff comes from. But God promises that these strangers shall not pass through. Anything that is sinful and unholy cannot overcome the Holy God in the heart. Anything not of God is “strange.” We put on the armor of God and we wield the Word of God. 

This promise we have does not stop the strangers from seeking to steal, kill, and destroy, but we trust the Lord who is in the city (the heart) to defend us, to forgive us, to cleanse, and to drive out the evil ones. “One little word can fell him.” We can say to sin in the heart: “God lives here.”

369. Hope and Strength

Joel 3:16 The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.

The Lord promises that He will be for the Church Hope and Strength. Hope is the present reality of a future or invisible event that we do not see now. Strength is the spiritual strength needed to fight and overcome our spiritual enemies, For instance, we hope for a time of peace and calm. Hope says we have it now, but it must be apprehended by the faith that the Spirit gives. Strength is in the object of our faith, which is Jesus, the Overcomer.

We do not see or enjoy all the promises, gifts, blessings and good things that the Lord has already given to us. Hope makes present and visible the eternal invisible things of God that are not seen. The Lord Himself is with us and in us to be our strength. If God is for us, who can be against us? When we are looking at a hopeless situation Jesus is our Hope. When we are weak Jesus is strong. We acknowledge our hopelessness and weakness, and then we believe in Jesus as our Hope and Strength. Jesus is many things to us. Jesus is everything to us. Jesus not only gives us what we need; Jesus is what we need. 

The promise and blessing of Hope and Strength comes to us in our present circumstance and need when the Lord speaks. When He speaks a word it is like a roar; He roars like thunder. He overwhelms evil with His Voice. When He speaks heaven and earth is shaken. We don’t see it happening that way because this is what happens in the spiritual realm. God’s Word is as loud and authoritative and positive to our spiritual life as thunder is to our physical ears. 

Faith sees and hears the awesome power of God’s Word  The thunder of the Gospel is necessary to defeat and demolish such a powerful enemy as evil. The earth was literally shaken and tombs were opened and thunder clapped when Jesus died for our sins on the cross. This was just a tiny example in the physical world of what was really going on in the spiritual world. Jesus says with a huge voice to Sin, Death, and the Devil: “You are finished!” God’s authoritative Word says to us: “You have hope and strength.”