All Will Be Fulfilled

Matthew 5

The Sermon on the Mount

Vs 17-18

Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I have not come to destroy but to fulfill them. 
For truely I say to you, until Heaven and Earth pass away, one jot or tittle shall not in any way pass from the Law until all will be fulfilled. 

Jesus is saying that not the least part of a letter of a word (a "jot" is a dot, and a "tittle" is the tiniest stroke of the pen) will be nullified, but that every detail of every word of every story and teaching in Scripture will hold True and actual until this whole Earth and Universe are destroyed and made into a New Heaven and a New Earth. 

And when Jesus walked this Earth, He said here that He fulfilled all the laws and prophesies of the Old Testament. With His life He fulfilled all the civil and moral laws, and His death fulfilled all the Sacrificial laws. He is also fulfilling all the Feasts God told His people to celebrate. 

When Jesus died, He was our Sacrificial Lamb; and when His Blood splattered His altar, the Cross, He fulfilled the Personal Sacrifice for each one of us individually for Salvation. God saves us one by one. 

And when His Blood was poured out at the foot of the Cross He was fulfilling the Corporate Sacrifice, to purchase the whole Earth, which makes Him our rightful Judge. He judges whole Nations. 

And when he returns to rule as our King over all kings and Lord over all lords, then He will fulfill all the rest of the Prophesies, concerning Israel and all the Last Things. 

Then this Time Line of Mankind will come to an end, and a whole new epoch will ensue, in a New Universe with a New Earth-like planet, all designed to operate on a completely different basis of existence. Jesus said, Look, I am making all things new (Revelation 21:5); not just the Earth, but a whole new Creation! 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Salt And Light

Matthew 5

The Sermon on the Mount

Vs. 13-16

You are the salt of the Earth: but if the salt has lost its savor, how shall it be salted? It is therefore good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be walked on under foot of men.
You are the light of the World. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all that are in the house. 
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father Who is in Heaven.

Salt is good for two things: to bring out the flavor, or to preserve. So we as God's children need to season our families and our culture in such a way as to bring out the delicious flavor of all the good things that are there, and also to preserve these good things about our society by killing the microbes of unrighteousness that are spoiling and decaying it. 

But if we succumb to the base and negative parts, then who is left to elevate our neighborhoods to a better lifestyle? We must be the salt that will season and preserve the right things. 

Light is what enables us to see. We must enlighten our friends and neighbors so that they can see. We must not hide that we do good things out of a false humility; but let our lives be an open book, living in glass houses, letting others see that God strengthens us to accomplish what we do.

O my Father, please teach Your children how to be the salt and the light that our families and neighborhoods need so desperately. Help us to accomplish the good things You planned ahead of time for us to do, and strengthen us to withstand the push-back from the enemy and his minions. 

One Day all these rebels and degenerates will be compelled to bow their knee and agree that You alone are Lord over all lords and King over all kings, worthy of all honor and praise and glory and blessing, along with Your own people who are already willingly giving You this worship and homage.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

The Beatitudes

Matthew5: 3-10 

The Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit:
For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Poor in spirit means to not be self-satisfied in your spirituality. Realize that the paycheck that you have earned for your sinfulness is only death. We are born with dead spirits, we have no spiritual life until we are born into God's family by His putting His Holy Spirit into our spirit to make it alive. But first we have to realize that we are spiritually dead, unable to help ourselves.

Blessed are they that mourn:
For they shall be comforted.

We are to not just say we're sorry, but actually feel remorse for the lives we have lived in defiance of God and His ways for us. We need to mourn the death of our innocence or our morality from the life we have lived up to now. To mourn the sorrow we caused our Loving Father by our rebellion. 

Blessed are the meek:
For they shall inherit the Earth.

Meekness is not weakness, it's great strength under control. The picture is of a massive war horse who obeys its rider through a bit in its mouth. That horse is one of the strongest animals domesticated by Man, yet they are controlled by its rider who is only a fraction of its mass. That's meekness. 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
For they shall be filled.

Hunger and thirst are primal instincts for survival. To hunger and thirst after righteousness is to direct this basic need toward a moral right-ness that will undergird every attitude and purpose. 

Blessed are the merciful:
For they shall obtain mercy.

Mercy is not giving or receiving the punishment or negative consequences we deserve. So to give the other a break and not come down hard on them, but being gentle and kind instead would be merciful. When we let it slide and not let it bother us, then God will also treat us that way. 

Blessed are the pure in heart:
For they shall see God.

To be pure in heart is to harbor no ill will toward anyone. For any reason. A pure heart is perfect, and God won't let anything less than perfect live with Him in Heaven. So only the pure in heart will be able to see God as He is.

Blessed are the peacemakers:
For they shall be called the children of God.

Jesus as our Lord God paid the price to tear down the wall of separation between Man and God, making peace. He is the Prince of Peace. So all those who promote peace among men are acting like Him. Like father, like son; like the Father, so the sons and daughters. 

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The enemy, who is a liar, hates everything that smacks of God. When God's people are living good, moral lives, promoting what is good and wholesome in their societies, the enemy bristles with irritation, and must attack and wipe out whatever is uplifting. And that means the people who are promoting this righteousness, who are showing how beautiful and desirable wholesomeness is. So they are being persecuted because they are righteous. 

Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake.
Rejoice and be exceeding glad: For great is your reward in Heaven: For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Many people are following the lies of our enemy, he is very pursuasive in his deceptions. So he uses people to slander and besmirch the people of God. We need to remember that we are not fighting against the people who are attacking us--our battle is with the evil spiritual forces backing them. 

I think that most people who are being deceived don't realize how backward and twisted their thinking is. Like Eve, and like Saul of Tarsus, they think they're doing the right thing when they believe the label of hatred and lay it on what is good and loving. And God's people suffer, but the persecutors are the real victims. 

We can rejoice in the Lord, knowing that He suffers with us when we hurt, and we're not alone in the abuse we are subjected to. But those who are persecuting and slandering cannot claim any hope without Christ. 

They need our mercy and our prayers on their behalf, to ask God to have mercy on them. Just as Jesus asked the Father to forgive those who were crucifying Him. 

I wonder who was praying for Saul of Tarsis, instead of praying against him. And I look forward to finding out who was praying for me, to have God come to me as He did, offering His Love so graciously. 

These Beatitudes are the basis of the Christian 12-step program called Celebrate Recovery. Their application to our way of thinking show us how to heal the hurts and hangups that have hampered our lives. These eight sayings of Jesus dovetail right into the 12 steps of those secular programs. They work because they're God's principles. Whenever the World finds something that works, it's a Biblical principle. Otherwise it wouldn't work. 

So, to enter into the Kingdom, we first must be healed. And cleansed. And have our minds transformed to think God's thoughts for us. That's the only way we'll be able to thrive in the absolute Righteousness of the Kingdom. 

Father, help us all to learn to think Your thoughts for us: about ourselves, about You, and about one another. Teach us Your ways, Father. Prepare us to face the times You said are coming, to remain faithful to You regardless what others around us are saying or doing. And prepare us for Your very presence, Father.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

The Sermon On The Mount, Intro.

Matthew 5-7 

The Sermon On The Mount

The setting for this sermon: Jesus has been baptized by John the Baptist and has been tempted by Satan in the desert. Now he's calling disciples to follow Him and beginning His public ministry.

And His fame went throughout all Syria ... and there folowed him great multitudes of people ... (4:24, 25). 

And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain: and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him: And He opened his mouth, and taught them ... (5:1-2).

Jesus is opening this new chapter in His life. He is attracting multitudes of people who are interested in what He has to say, so He begins by laying out what it will look like when His Kingdom is ruling on this Earth. 

The strict morality presented in this picture looks to us to be extremely strident: To even look upon a woman with lust is the same as committing adultery with her? To be angry with a brother is the same as murdering him? How can He say that the thoughts we allow ourselves to think are as evil as overt acts of violence? 

I think it is because what we think about, what we focus on, comes from what we believe to be true in our hearts, and it colors our attitudes, which fuel our words and our actions. So it's all connected. We need to examine our hearts to see that what we truely believe really is God's Truth, rather than our own ideas or the culture we live in. 

Cultures change and evolve and devolve. God's standards stay the same. So the more evil and wickedness is accepted in the culture around us, the more extreme God's righteousness appears. 

That's why we need to "be careful" and "watch out" and "pay attention" to what righteousness is, and what "misses the mark" of perfection. We must constantly be on the lookout for anything in our path that would cause us to stumble. Even a small pebble of delusion can trip us up. Once started on a tangent, the longer we go, the farther we get from where we want to be. 

So let's look at this sermon with a mind to see God's reasonable standards. 

Jesus starts it with The Beatitudes, the Blessed are's. "Blessed" can be read as "Happy." And the Christian 12-step program called Celebrate Recovery is based on these Beatitudes for healing the serious and damaging habits that people need to be delivered from. So we all need to be healed before we actually enter His Kingdom, in order to live there comfortably, happily. 

Tomorrow we'll begin to look at this Sermon to glean what we need to know in these days we are living in now.

O  my Father, thank You so much for this roadmap that You have put into Your written Word. Thank You for having Your Spirit remind Matthew of all Jesus said here, so that we can have an accurate picture of Your Righteousness. 

Father, help us to order our own lives according to Your love for us, so that we can love one another with Your Love, and live with one another in Righteousness and joy. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

A Broken Spirit

Psalm 51: 17

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

II Peter 3: 9

The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsufferng to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Our broken spirit, our contrite heart, is our coming to repentance, realizing that we deserve death. 

Colossians 1: 19-20

For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fulness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the Blood of His Cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or in Heaven.

So the Father's good pleasure is to give all the fulness of being God as well as being fully Man to His Son, so that His Blood, shed on Calvary, would make peace between sinful Man and a holy God. His precious Blood, the Blood of God, has unlimited power and worth to pay the full price for human sinfulness and cleanse us totally pristine, as though we'd never sinned at all, perfect, fit to live with God in His perfect Heaven. 

God saves us one by one, so the first sacrifice God wanted the Levites to teach the people, in the first chapter of Leviticus, is the personal sacrifice. When Jesus died, He was the Lamb of God, dying for each one of us individually, fulfilling that personal sacrifice for Salvation.

So when the Father draws someone to understand that Jesus took his place in death, because He didn't deserve it but he did; then the Blood of Christ washes him as white as snow, and God sends His Holy Spirit to take up residence in his spirit, making it alive. In that sense, that person is "born again," and now has spiritual life, as well as his human life. So every time God saves someone it's a miracle.

And when His Blood was poured out at the foot of the Cross when the Centurian pierced His side, He fulfilled the sacrifice for the whole congregation, laid out in Leviticus 4: 13-21. This Corporate Sacrifice He gave to purchase not just one congregation, but the whole Universe, which makes Him its rightful Judge. So if you consider yourself one of many He died for, then you are still under judgment. 

O my Father, I pray for all those who think they are Yours, but have never come to that repentance that leads to Salvation. I pray that You would show Yourself and Your ways to them in Your Love, and draw them to Yourself. Then they will willingly praise Your holy Name, and give You the glory and honor You deserve. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

"Lest I Smite The Earth With A Curse"

Malachi 4

Vs. 1-3 

For behold, the Day [of the Lord] is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the Day that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord of Hosts. ...

But for you who fear My Name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, ... and you will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the Day which I am preparing, says the Lord of Hosts.

This Day of the Lord encompasses the time when Jesus returns to rule the Earth. It includes all the geological and geographical and weather and sociological and governmental and relational upheavals surrounding His arrival and setting up His Throne to rule. 

And part of that will be fires and explosions and earthquakes that will reduce all the cities of the World to rubble (Revelation 16:19: and the cities of the Nations fell). So the rubble that will be used to pave new roads will include the ashes of the people who burned up in it. What a picture!

Vs. 4-6

Remember the Law of Moses ... 

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful Day of the Lord: 

And he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the Earth with a curse. 

We know that John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah (Matthew 17:11-13), and it is still before the coming of the great and dreadful Day of the Lord. 

And we today are to do what we can to mend our family relationships, as our enemy has been hard at work to destroy our families, knowing that they form the foundation of our society. I do not know of a family that has not experienced dysfunction in some way. 

And this Earth is already under the curse of death, as is the whole Universe: things wind down and wear out, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We certainly do not need any other curses. 

O my Father, to end Your Old Testament with a curse is very disheartening. We had no hope until Your Son came to be our Lamb of God, so that we could be made fit to enter His Kingdom and live with You. Now everything You wrote about that will happen, has happened; and Jesus can return any time now. 

There are wars and rumors of wars, there are famines, there are weather anomalies, there are volcanoes and earthquakes, there are divorces and abuse within our families, Israel is back in her Land, and Jerusalem is her capital again. And every other prediction that is to preceed His coming in Your written Word has come to pass. 

So I pray for Your children, Father, that we will pay attention to the promptings of Your Spirit to obey Your Law by loving You and loving one another as You have loved us. 

Help us, Father, to not consider all the pressures this World presses upon us to conform us as though they're real, but show us how to transform our minds to think Your thoughts toward us (Romans 12:2). 

Continue to send out workers into Your fields of the World that are ready for harvest; and draw every lost lamb to Yourself, and into the safety of Your one fold with one Shepherd. 

And help me, Father, to "occupy" while my Lord is in His "far country" (Luke 19:12-13ff). Teach me how to use the "pound" You gave me to make "ten more pounds" to finance Your Kingdom here; and help me to accomplish all the plans You have planned for me to do during my few days I am living in this World. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Rebuke The Devourer

Malachi 3: 8-12

Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me. But you say, How have we robbed You? In tithes and offerings. 

You are cursed with a curse: for you have robbed Me, even this whole Nation.

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My House, and prove Me now in this, says the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open the windows of Heaven and pour out on you such a blessing that you will not have room enough to receive it.

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the products of your fields; neither shall your vine cast off its fruit before its time to be ripe, says the Lord of Hosts.

And then all Nations will call you blessed: for you shall be a delightful land, says the Lord of Hosts.

Here he's using a question and answer format again. 

This whole Universe belongs to God, including this Earth, and everything in it. He chooses to let us use and enjoy what He's put here, but we need to acknowledge that it's His, by giving back the first ten percent. This is His Owner's Share that He requires.

But when the people didn't do this, He sent "the devourer" to eat up what they had. Just like Haggai told them, in the second year of King Darius, when he told Zerubbabel the governor in Judah and Joshua the high priest, that they were satisfied to live in their beautiful houses while the Temple still lay in ruins (Haggai 1:1-11). 

This is the only place in the whole Bible where God says we can test Him (prove Me in this), in giving Him the first portion of our income. 

I have a personal story about this. When our children were small, and we were barely scraping by financially, my husband suggested that we begin to tithe. 

I was already "prioritizing" the bills, deciding which ones I could pay this week, what I could put off 'till next week, and what I could pay part of. 

So I decided that if I was going to tithe, I would have to take it off the top first, or there'd never be any left. After a few weeks of this, I noticed that I was able to pay what was due each week, without putting any off. And a few weeks after that, we had a little left over to donate to our friends who were missionaries. 

We didn't have any more income, or any less bills: God had stretched our 90% to cover more than our 100% had previously. I don't know how He did it, but He kept His promise. He rebuked the devourer for our sakes for our obedience, just as He said He would. We took Him at His Word, and He came through!

But I wouldn't presume to test Him in anything else. 

We show what we value by our checkbooks and our calendars. What we spend our money and our time on. That's what displays where our hearts are. 

O my Father, thank You for always being faithful to keep Your promises to us. Whenever we decide to obey You, You always come through with Your rewards, even stuff we didn't even expect. You are so good! You are good to us every day, all the time. You want to bless us more than we can stand, and we deprive ourselves of Your good gifts when we try to do things ourselves, on our own.

Help me, Father, to always remember Your goodnesses to me; especially whenever I turn a corner and need to appreciate another aspect of Your personality. 

O Father, I will never in this life be able to understand all You are. I don't know if all eternity future will be long enough to really get to know You. There is no end to Your beauty and Your majesty and Your power and authority. There will be no end to the increase of Your Kingdom and Rule; You will continue to cause Your Creation to grow and evolve and change: from this Era of Man, to the next New Heaven and New Earth, to whatever will come after that, forever and ever. 

And every knee will bow in adoration of You, and every tongue will confess Your authority and ownership and glory. How good for us to choose to worship You now, rather than be compelled to do so in the next stage of existence. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!