It’s Time to Starve Discouragement
We should go out of our way to honor fellow Christians, to say out loud, in front of others, the wonderful things God is doing through his redeemed people. Call it honor time. Build it into your rhythm of life together with your church family. It is not to build a mutual admiration society meeting. It is to look at the work of God in another person and name it. It is to recognize the glorious ways the Holy Spirit is building his church through his people.
Every Tuesday night we circled our chairs to face one another. Sometimes it was more an oval than a circle, an outward expression of our mutual inability to get ourselves in right order. We came from work or from school or from wherever we had been on Tuesdays. We brought our Bibles. We opened with an ice breaker. It was something people in churches do all the time. But it was something I never knew existed.
Our time was broken into three segments. We talked theology, we confessed our sins to one another, and we encouraged one another. We called that last part “honor time,” stemming from Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:10, “Outdo one another in showing honor.” It wasn’t flattery. Flattery is saying something nice to someone else hoping they will return the favor. Flattery is self-serving. Honor is not.
Perhaps the best verse in all of scripture to explain what it is to biblically honor another is found in Colossians 1:27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Biblical honoring is looking at another Christian and calling out the work of God in them. It is not a mere human encouragement. It has divine origins. Most people never see God’s grace in their lives pouring out to others. Most people exist on a starvation diet of encouragement. Most people assume they are who they tell themselves they are. What else is there to believe? We all need someone to help us see Christ in us, the hope of glory.
Christ in You
We start with Christ, the Alpha and Omega (Rev. 22:13). He was before all things and is above all things (Col. 1:17). From him come all good things (James 1:17). Jesus is the most praise-worthy person in the universe. His goodness is pure. He deserves all glory and honor. He is the only one who is truly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled (Gal. 5:22–23). He is full of grace and truth. He is merciful and faithful. Everything we desire to be in our devotion to God, Jesus is perfectly. So we look first to Jesus to see clearly the fruit in his people.
The Bible teaches us that Jesus is not only “out there”; he’s also “in here,” in the hearts of his people (Rom. 8:11). Christ is in his people. We barely have proper categories to understand this truth. Jesus is not beside us like a friend. He resides inside us like our conscience, or our heart, or our brain. He indwells his people. The only perfect man to ever live is more than just a man. He is God—one with the Father and Spirit. By his Spirit, he lives in the hearts of his people.
The greatest truth about every Christian is the indwelling of God himself! Christ in you, the hope of glory.
-
For Those Whom God has Afflicted?
Why does God afflict us? Because He loves us, and wishes to make us holy as He is holy, and happy as He is happy. For, as it has been well said, “Fiery trials make golden Christians!” God had one Son without sin—but He never had any son without sorrow. God chastens purposely and lovingly. Affliction comes from Him; and He afflicts, not as a stern Judge, but as a Father and a Friend!
Dear Brother or Sister, I have come into your sick-room, as it were, and wish to tell you a few things for your comfort and profit. God has seen fit to stop you in the midst of your busy life, and to lay you aside for a while. It is not by chance that His afflicting hand has fallen upon you. It is not at random that He has chastened you. It may seem to be a mere accident that you are afflicted, and not another. But no; God has done it purposely!
Learn this then—that your present sickness or affliction is from God. It is His doing. He it is, who has brought this present chastisement upon you. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our heavenly Father’s ordering, and He prizes His redeemed children more than many sparrows.
Sickness usually comes as a messenger of divine love—it is sent to be a blessing, and may be made, by God’s grace, a very great blessing to the soul. God afflicts His children, because He desires to do them some great good.
The gardener cuts and prunes his tree, to make it grow better, and bear more precious fruit. In the same way, God often uses His sharp knife for some gracious purpose. The wise and loving father thwarts his child, and sometimes scourges it, for its good.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The History of Study Bibles
The Reformers knew that for the church to remain faithful to Christ, the church and her congregants needed both to read and to study the Bible. The 1560 Geneva Bible embodied that commitment. We should be thankful for the gifted teachers and leaders of our own day who have applied their labors to publishing quality study Bibles that are faithful to God’s Word. May we take advantage of their labors. Take up a good study Bible and read.
In 1560, an exiled group of pastors and theologians made history. They published the first full edition of the Geneva Bible. It was a remarkable feat on many fronts.
These scholars who worked on the Geneva Bible had been leaders of the Reformation in England and Scotland. When “Bloody Mary” took the throne, she threw into reverse the advancing Reformation, taking the nation back to Roman Catholicism. Britain’s Reformers found themselves in prison, martyred, or in exile. Many went to Calvin’s Geneva.
Calvin wasn’t much for idle hands. Florentine jewelers who had converted to Protestantism were also among the exiles who came to Geneva. Most of their prior work revolved around saint’ statues, rosaries, and the like. They needed something new to do. Calvin suggested they make watches. The rest is (watchmaking) history. So, too, the British scholars who came to Geneva needed to work. Calvin suggested they publish a Bible. The rest is English Bible history.
The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to use verse divisions, thanks to the work of Robertus Stephanus. Prior editions of the English Bible had chapter breaks only. Stephanus, a brilliant linguist, published several editions of the Greek New Testament. He introduced his innovative verse divisions in his 1551 edition. Nine years later, these same verse numbers appeared in the Geneva Bible.
The Geneva Bible was also the first Bible to have study notes or annotations. The first edition had these annotations in the Gospels only. This edition also had woodcut illustrations, maps, and even tables, which provided a cross-referencing index for names and topics. As later editions rolled off the press, more annotations for the rest of the canonical books appeared. Some later editions even modified the notes or replaced them altogether. Then, as now, the book of Revelation posed special challenges to interpreters and annotators. Later editions fully replaced the notes it had published on John’s Apocalypse.
The Geneva Bible was intentionally affordable. Pocket-sized editions were made available, as were inexpensive editions of the New Testament. The Geneva Bible was intended to be read. It was also intended to be studied. And it was. It was the Bible of William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and the Pilgrims and Puritans who landed in the New World. A Scottish law from 1579 required “every Householder with 300 merks [silver coins]” to own one. Despite King James’ attempts in 1611 at positioning his new translation in the market, the Geneva Bible held sway well into the seventeenth century. Countless readers were helped by the notes reflecting the doctrinal understanding of the Reformation.
There has been no shortage of English Bibles since the Geneva Bible. Neither has there been a shortage of study Bibles since the Geneva Bible. By way of an informal nonscientific study, I counted the study Bibles listed in Christian Book Distributors Bibles catalog for spring/summer 2015. Not counting children‘s Bibles, the number topped one hundred, among them a facsimile edition of the 1560 Geneva Bible. All of these study Bibles except the Geneva Bible date from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
It would not be too much of a stretch to speak of the century spanning from 1917 to the present as “The Century of the Study Bible.“ In 1917, Oxford University Press published the Scofield Study Bible. This Bible had first been published in 1909 with a system of cross-references. But the 1917 edition had copious notes promoting a dispensational scheme of theology.
Read More
Related Posts: -
A Great High Priest
We tend to think that someone or something else will help in time of need, but not Jesus. Maybe we think we’ve sinned too badly, or too many times, to go to Him again. Perhaps we think we can handle our weaknesses and sins on our own, or with a little help from a friend. But the author of Hebrews provides us with every reason to confidently draw near to Jesus, “Since then we have a great high priest…Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:14, 16). Believers can approach God confidently because of the person and work of Christ. And when we do, we can be confident that we will “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).
Where do you turn when you have sinned? If we’re honest, it’s not always to the throne of grace. When we have grown irritated, frustrated, or angry; or when we let an entire day go by without thanking God for the many blessings He has given us; or when jealousy and envy pervade our hearts, we don’t usually feel confident about drawing near to God. Oftentimes we want to hide, make excuses, or blame another person, or circumstance. But if you, like me, have tried to go to anyone or anything except the throne of grace in the wake of sin, you know that it isn’t helpful. However, when we go to Jesus we find “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14).
Jesus is unlike any other priest about whom the Scriptures speak. He is not only superior to every other priest (Heb. 5:1-4), He is also from a different order of the priesthood (vv. 6, 10). Furthermore, after accomplishing the redemption of God’s people, He “passed through the heavens” (4:14) and “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs” (1:3-4). Not only this, He is a fully human and fully divine high priest. Therefore, when we are in need of grace, we have no reason to turn away from the faith, or waver from the faith, or doubt the faith that we profess and hold so dear. Instead, we have every reason to “hold fast our confession” (4:14) and go to the throne of grace.
Sometimes, in the wake of sin, it is tempting to think that God is incapable of empathizing with us. What wonderful news, then, that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). If you read the gospel accounts, you will not only be encouraged, but will soon realize that when Jesus came to earth He experienced what it was like to be human, so that He can help us in time of need. Remember, we are too weak to carry out God’s will in our lives. We don’t have the power to persevere, but God does.
Read More
Related Posts:
