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Exodus 5:1-2

“Afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’” And Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.’”

As we approach the Christmas celebration, we come face to face with the veracity and validity of the Bible:

Did Jesus really come?

Is the Bible just a cunning book of crafted stories and can we trust that God is real and that He loves us?

It is my intent to equip and prepare the Lord’s people for the mess that is coming our way over the next few weeks, months and years.

I was saved at the age of 14 in Barbados, a little spot on the global map. I had heard the Gospel many times before but, that Monday night 36 years ago, I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and to save me. According to the Bible, I am saved. I believe that Jesus is God, that He died for my sins, that he is the only way of salvation, and in my need for a Savior, I called on His name to save me. My salvation is not based on a feeling or a ‘hope so.’ It is based on the written Word of God, and the confidence, faith and trust that I put in the person of Jesus Christ. In Romans 10:8-13 we find these words, from the Bible, but what does it say?

“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For ‘whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.'”

If you too have obeyed the Word of God as written here, you are saved as well. I am not perfect; I am a sinful man and I fail my family and the Lord more often than I can count. God, however, is Gracious and Kind, His Mercy is new to me each day, and His love for me is inexhaustible. He made me a promise that I can confess my sins when I sin and that He will forgive me and cleanse me of all unrighteousness every time. There are a lot of burdens put on saved people about perfection: That is not in the Bible. Passages are taken out of context and not read in a balanced view with the whole Bible.

Over the past few years, the Lord has helped my wife and me, as well as our whole church, to embark on reading the Bible cover to cover. Just start, get to the end and start again, over and over. I am on my fifth reading, and what I find is that the men whom God called were sinful men like me. Men with flaws, men who were adulterous, some murderers, like Moses and some who were idol worshipers like Aaron, some who were simply not nice people at all. This does not condone sin in any way. God cannot do that. But sinners we all are, and we all will be until Jesus gives us our glorified bodies and raptures us up to heaven. We can get a glimpse into how Jesus deals with us by how He told the disciples, and we as His followers, to deal with our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Here are two examples:

Luke 17:4, “And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and comes back to you seven times, saying, I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

Matthew 18:21-22, “Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.'”

In the book of Proverbs, The Lord tells us, in Chapter 10:12, that “Love covers a multitude of sins.” Now some will say that I am advocating sinning and that I am taking advantage of the Grace of God. I will admit that I, as well as every other Christian on this planet, takes advantage of God’s Grace. We simply do. Our children take advantage of the love and grace that we have for them, and we are no different than they, with respect to the Lord. What the Lord requires is humility and repentance. Yes, we are to turn from our sins and work at bringing our body into submission, but we will sin, sometimes quite badly and often with dire consequences. But God is Gracious and Kind, slow to anger and patient with us His children. He remembers that we are just dust and frail at best.

Jacob, one of the Old Testament patriarchs, was a trickster who stole his brother’s birthright. He tricked his father and defrauded his brother. He married two women, had children with four, and yet God called him a Prince. God honored him and protected him, loved him and made a great nation out of him. Did he have some hard times? Yes, he did! He suffered a lot. He had strife in his house between his many wives, he had in-fighting with his children; so much so that they stole and sold off Joseph to slave traders and then told their dad he was dead. Jacob described his life on earth this way in a conversation with Pharaoh recorded in Genesis 47:9:

“And Jacob said to Pharaoh, ‘The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.'”

Jacob described the days of his life as evil. They were hard, but he knew who his God was, and he knew where he was going. There is never any doubt in his mind, no doubt in his conversation that he was going to meet his Father in Heaven. This man, like all of our ancestors in the faith, understood that salvation has never been and will never be about how good I am. If that were the case, we are all dead in our sins and going to hell. Jacob understood as did Abraham, Moses, Aaron and David that their security was based on the faithfulness of God to hold them securely in spite of their sinfulness, weaknesses, and at times “fleshliness.”

The same David who defied Goliath, numbered Israel without God’s permission. The same Samson who broke every rule of his Nazarite vow is called a servant in Hebrews 11:32. The same Elijah that called fire down from Heaven was found scared and asking God to kill him a chapter later. The same Peter who walked on water, denied Jesus in fear of a little girl. On and on I can go, but there is no need.

When we began this writing, I posed a question from Pharaoh found in Exodus 5:1-2, “Who is this Lord that I should obey Him?” Pharaoh was filled with pride. He was accustomed to being revered as a god by the people of Egypt, and to submit to the God of Israel would have meant that there was a God greater than him, and he could not have that. So, he defied God. He refused to submit; thus, over the course of the next 6 chapters, God destroys Egypt. He leaves them broken, without food, without gold and silver, and without an heir to the throne of Egypt. God completely establishes himself as the Supreme God, able to control the weather, the insects, the waters, and life itself.

What separates the Jews and the few Egyptians that obeyed God, is humility. Those that had God’s protection humbled themselves under the Mighty Hand of God and acknowledged his Sovereign Power. For those of us that are preserved in Jesus, we have come to the same crossroads, and we have chosen to humble ourselves under the Power of the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

There is a growing number of people asking the same question, ‘Who is God that I should obey Him?’

There are only two categories of people on this planet: those who humble themselves under the Mighty Hand of God, and those who defy God and ask, ‘Who is God that I should obey Him?’

The Bible describes the people who question God’s place and authority as ‘fools.’ We are surrounded on this little planet by billions of fools. They defy God; they refuse to obey Him, not for the lack of knowledge, but because they deliberately refuse to humble themselves and obey God.

No book in the world has been investigated more than the Bible. It has never been proven to be false, and it is still the basis for the majority of our moral codes in law, in business and in society at large. You have to decide what to do with it. It either is the Word of God or it is nothing to us, but it is not just a good book.

We stand at the beginning of the end here on earth. The Lord Jesus will return to judge this earth very soon, and He will take His New Testament saints out just before all ‘Hell’ breaks loose. There will be hail, famine, earthquakes, fire from heaven, waters turning to blood, and billions will die. Yet many will defy God and ask, ‘Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?’ Many will choose the mark of the Anti-Christ over allegiance to God Almighty. If you read the book of Revelation, you will see that God is about to unleash His wrath on this earth; and the major failure will be that people, for the most part, will be un-repentant and filled with pride. And, their pride will be a willful pride; they will see the power and majesty of God much like Pharaoh did. And rather than humble themselves, they will shake their fist at the God of the Universe and defy Him. The pot will call into question the power of the Potter. We find this account from Revelation 16:17-21:

“Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’ And there were noises and thunderings and lightning; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail since that plague was exceedingly great.”

Notice that the people still ‘blasphemed God’ instead of humbling themselves and submitting. They know for sure that this is God doing this; there is no question, but they defy Him. In Revelation 9 after four angels are released to kill millions of people, the summary of how the people of the earth reacted is shown in verses 20-21:

“But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

There simply was and is no humility and no repentance: ‘Who is the Lord that we should obey Him?’ What a sad time we live in; what a difficult time to serve the Lord and to try to obey Him. We live in a time when good has been classed as evil, and vice-versa. God has been demonized and Satan elevated. Right is now wrong and evil normalized. We have excused sin for mistakes and defiance as individuality. The Bible tells us that God cannot be mocked; whatever a man sows he will also reap (Galatians 6:7). We are reaping a whirlwind of evil as we speak.

I have chosen to humble myself under the powerful and Almighty hand of God. When asked ‘Who is the Lord that you obey Him?’ I answer,

He is the ‘I AM’ who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, the Almighty God who destroyed the ‘god’ of Egypt and did not even break a sweat doing so. He is the God who delivered the Jews from bondage, fed and watered them for 40 years in the wilderness and gave them the land we call Israel today. He is the God who parted the Red Sea, the God who one day about 2,000 years ago, stepped out of Heaven and became the man Jesus Christ. He paid for my sins and then rose from the dead and established that neither death nor the grave could have any power over the saved: Ever. He is the God of the Living: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samson, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all alive and well. They are alive and well because they humbled themselves under the Mighty Hand of God; they submitted to the Living God and believed with all their hearts that Jesus is God.

Have you submitted to God?

Have you humbled yourself under the Almighty Hand of God?

Or are you a modern-day Pharaoh asking, ‘Who is God that I should obey Him?’

Just remember what God did to Pharaoh. It was not pretty, and Egypt has never recovered the prominence they had up until this day. For those of us that are saved, we need to discipline ourselves through the Power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to say no to sin. BUT we will sin, we will fail, and we will need to ask God for forgiveness. He will forgive, He will restore, and He will always respond to genuine humility.

Look Up! Jesus is coming soon!

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

1 Timothy: Biblical Foundation for Pastoral Ministry, Part 2

1 Timothy 1:3-11: Instruction against False Doctrine

“As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk desiring to be teachers of the law understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.

“But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust” (1 Timothy 1:3-11, NKJV).

Let’s hit the ground running by affirming that the Apostle Paul was the author of these two letters that we are about to study. Nearly all worthwhile biblical scholars will attest to this fact.

The first letter to Timothy was composed around 64 A.D., which was the year that major persecution broke out in Rome due to the fire that engulfed the city and destroyed nearly all of the buildings and homes, save for a few acres around the palace of Nero, the Emperor of the time. Nero was a madman who fancied himself a poet, musician, and warrior, but had also carried out the murders of his mother and pregnant wife without remorse. Blame for the fire was being put on him due to the fact that he had planned to redesign Rome and build an opulent palace, naming the structure after himself.

He cast blame for the fire upon the Christians of Rome, who many citizens saw as atheists for their refusal to worship the many gods and goddesses of the Empire as well as the self-imposed divinity of the Emperor. They were also seen as disloyal to Rome, suspected of varied crimes, and as insurrectionists due to their allegiance to Jesus Christ and not the Emperor as the rightful ruler of all things. Major persecution and horrendous torture was put on the Christians, from being torn apart by wild beasts in the arena, to being set on fire, crucified, forced to fight gladiators who gladly killed them for the delight of the crowds, and was the final stop on the journey for both Paul and Peter.

Both men would be imprisoned and martyred around A.D. 67 from beheading and crucifixion respectively. Persecution on an empire-wide scale would not begin until a few years after Nero’s suicide and the establishment of a new imperial dynasty, the Flavians, and the rise of Domitian (81-96), who demanded to be called “lord and god” on pain of exile. The apostle John would feel his wrath and be exiled from Ephesus to Patmos, where he would compose the book of Revelation. That is for another study in the future. We need to return to Paul and his letter.

The letters to Timothy were written to encourage him to be a godly example to his church as Paul was to him, and to exercise the spiritual gifts as well as to give guidance in carrying out the responsibilities expected of a pastor. The church at Ephesus had been founded by Paul, and he ministered there for three years (Acts 20:17-38). As was presented briefly in the last teaching, the city was a major hub of commerce in the Empire and was the main city on the peninsula of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). We have also noted that Timothy had been mentioned in other New Testament writings such as Acts and the letters to the Corinthians, Philippians, and the church at Thessalonica as Paul’s ministry associate, along with others such as Luke, the author of the Gospel and Acts, and Silas.

Paul opens after his greeting (1:1-3) to address some strange doctrines that were an issue with the church, namely fables, or stories that have no historical or doctrinal foundation (which skeptics accuse the Bible of containing), and the useless ritual of examining family backgrounds or genealogies, which were ancestral roots that could be used to show someone’s social or economic superiority over others. These things, according to Paul, cause unnecessary disputes and take away time and teaching for those things which are sound.

Verse 5 describes the use of Scripture as the tool for presenting the truth. It produces a pure-hearted love, a good conscience, and a faith that is sincere. Others in the church, however, had ignored this and were resorting to talk that wastes time and produces nothing. These would-be, so-called “teachers” would espouse nothing more than their own opinions and ideas that were not grounded in the truth of Scripture, and really amounted to nothing of merit or worth. These people really had no idea of what they were talking about, and the result is the spread of what Paul sees as absolute foolishness.

When we hear the “sermons” of some ministers today that are based on self-esteem, motivation, educated opinion, social relevance, and political philosophy that stir emotions but does not lead to the cross and repentance before the Sovereign Lord, the points made by Paul ring true more so as we see the rise of apostasy and rebellion against the expectations of God.

Paul now focuses his attention on what is to be the proper use of Scripture in the work of the church. In verses 8 and following, he declares that the Word of God is to be used as a point of comfort for the righteous and a tool of condemnation for those who flaunt their wickedness, such as those who blaspheme, speaking evil of God. Scripture condemns murder, both in word and deed, the constant problem of sexual immorality, the forbidden practice of homosexual behavior and sodomy (Leviticus 20:13; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Romans 1:26-27), the abduction and kidnapping of children, lying, and perjury. All of these are contrary to the teaching of Scripture. The Word of God (2 Timothy 3:15; Hebrews 4:12) never allows these acts of wickedness to stay hidden or explained away by the sinner.

God’s Word is a light that drives out the spiritual darkness of a person’s heart and soul (Romans 3:10-18).

The solution is to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ (John 3:16, 14:6; Romans 10:9-10) and trust Him to run and guide your life. Jesus Christ is far more important than any agenda or cause. No pastor worth his salt will devote time to anything that will take his focus upon the spiritual welfare and growth of his people. His focus is to be on Christ and those things that are pleasing in His sight (1 John 3:22). It seems to me that the modern church of Jesus Christ has its mind on trends and fads that promote relevance and popularity along with the desire to be liked by the world. That is a recipe for disaster.

We all need to repent and get right with the LORD and get back to the main purpose of why the church is here in the first place – to preach the Gospel, teach the truth of God’s Word, and to encourage each other in these troubling times (Hebrews 10:25). Nothing else matters, and His arrival is soon. Let’s greet Him with a harvest as we meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Stay tuned.

drwhitchard@aol.com

General Articles

Who is God? :: By Sean Gooding

Biblical Foundation for Pastoral Ministry, Part 2 :: By Dr. Donald Whitchard