service genset jogja
Genesis 12:1-4, Joshua 21:45

Just Trust God!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 12, 2022

Genesis 12:1-4 records the call of Abraham to forsake his life in Ur and go to a new land that God would give to him and to his descendants. His call is “Just trust me!” He promised to bless Abraham, to make Abraham prosperous and to bless his descendants. He promised to make him famous in the all the world in every generation.  He also promised to bless everyone who blesses him and to curse all his enemies. All Abraham had to do was trust God! We too are called to trust God. He says to us “Just trust me!”

Here is the message of Genesis: God is worthy of our trust. He is faithful even though we are not. We often think Abraham and other biblical characters are perfectly flawless in their faith, but that’s not the case at all. Abraham no sooner arrived in the Promised Land that things got tough for him. Verse 10 says, “Now there was a famine in the land. So, Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.” Abraham had his failures. Yet, he is held up as the “father of all those who believe.” The rest of the book of Genesis will show us how God keeps his promises to Abraham and his descendants.  Please notice that Abraham’s faith was not perfect. Several times he doubted and took matters in his own hands, but God still remained faithful. The point of Abraham’s failures is to assure us that although we too are not perfect in our faith or obedience, God remains faithful to His promises to us.

The message of Genesis is God is trustworthy! He will keep his promises. It is that truth that brought Abraham out of Egypt and back to where he was supposed to be. God didn’t give up on Abraham and He won’t give up on you or me!  God hasn’t changed. You and I can trust him also. He will keep his promises to us even when we fail to live up to our promises to Him. Even though Israel failed often during their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, God remained faithful. The culmination of this long and painful journey is found in Joshua 21:45. It says, “Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” Without exception, without doubt, that will be our testimony as well!

Tags: ,
Permalink
Genesis 11:5

Going Up!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 11, 2022

The citizens on the plains of Shinar built a great city and a tower to reach up into heaven. Genesis 11:5 tells us that God “came down to see the city and the tower.” Here again God speaks to us in human terms. It’s a figure of speech called anthropomorphism. God didn’t literally come down because He’s everywhere! It’s used to arouse attention to the fact that as man wanted to reach God’s abode, heaven, no matter how high he might build God would always have to look down upon it. Boice says, “Here were men attempting to build a great tower. The top was to reach to the heavens. It was to be so great that it and the religion and defiance of God it represented would make a reputation for these citizens of Shinar. There it stood, lofty in its unequaled grandeur. But when God wants to look at it he comes down. He has to stoop low to see this puny extravagance.”

Flying home from Israel we saw the huge cities below us. Philadelphia with its main sky scrapers looked so puny from several thousand feet above the earth. I remember seeing the twin towers once flying home from overseas and noticed they looked like a couple a small dominoes from the airplane window. The great pyramids of Egypt are specs in the sand at a certain height. It’s so for all human constructions.

Boice goes on to observe, “So also with our intellectual or spiritual achievements. The greatest is nothing compared to the immensity of the universe, not to mention the universe’s Creator. The only truly significant accomplishments are God’s (sometimes in and through us), for only these partake of the nature of God and endure forever, as God does.” But God, from His vast perspective and power, looked down on us tower builders and condescended to our needs and took upon himself the body of flesh. He became the sacrifice that would pay the penalty for our own rebellion against God. No one can reach God by any human effort. No one can satisfy the longings of the soul through any religious practice. But the Lord Jesus Christ came down to us in order to lift us up to Him.

 

Tags:
Permalink
Genesis 11:1-4, Matthew 23:8-12

The Ground is Level

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 10, 2022

In Genesis 11:1-4, the residents on the plains of Shinar built themselves a great city with a very tall tower that was to reach “into heaven.” It was to keep them from being scattered throughout the earth and to “make a name for themselves” that everyone else would have to look up to. Obviously, they wanted to be looked up to! Don’t we all? Larry Richards observes, “It’s a very natural thing to want to be appreciated as men and women of God, and to be looked up to with respect. It’s healthy to want to be a leader.” Unfortunately, many times we want the respect and appreciation of others for the wrong reasons. We want people to look up to us so that we can look down on them. I expect this is one of the many sins at Babel.

For some reason Christians often measure each other by the severity of their lifestyles. We look down on those who eat when we fast. Who’s lives are different than our own and we build our own tower of babel to put ourselves above others. This was the major problem of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day. They practiced a public kind of piety expecting to be honored and respected by the rabble around them. Jesus often confronted the “super-spiritual” for their pride and arrogant opinion of themselves.

Jesus taught us not to call each other exalted names like rabbi, teacher, master or father (Matthew 23:8-12). He did not want us to put others as inappropriate mediators between us and Himself. It’s often been said that the ground is level at the foot of the Cross. And that applies to us all. It should be obvious in church as well for all of us are equal in Christ. When we go to church it should be clear that here “there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, male or female” (Colossians 3:11) and we could go on. You see Christ is all and is in us all. Charles Bugg wrote, “the church exists for everybody because we are brought into the community of faith not by our goodness but by God’s grace and forgiveness. The Bible is clear: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23, NIV). Our sins may be different, but we have all sinned. Our failures may be our own, but our faith is the same in Christ. The ground is level at the cross. When we come to Him, we come to each other. That is true community.”

 

Tags: ,
Permalink
Genesis 11:1-4, Ecclesiastes 1:13

The Search for Meaning

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 9, 2022

The community on the plains of Shinar that organized to build their own way to “the heavens” was a society organized around the rejection of God’s plan and purpose for their lives. Organizing is one of the key features of God’s people. The New Testament speaks frequently of the need for God’s people to be so well organized that it functions like a body, each piece player a significant part in the overall function of the organization or organism. The failure at Shinar was not about organization, it was about the purpose of the organization. Its purpose was to defy God’s intended purpose of going forth and filling the whole earth. “Let’s make a name for ourselves,” they said. But God’s call on Abraham was that He would be the one to make Abram great. He would make from one man, Abram, a great nation! That nation consists of those who trust God – and according to Paul it includes us through our faith in Christ. We too are heirs of Abraham.

The difference between Cain and Able is described for us in Genesis 4:1. It says, “Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.” You see Cain is a “worker.” Abel was a “keeper.” The line of Cain also was the workers. They produced implements and inventions and used iron and metal and other advances of technology. In 4:17, Cain’s son Enoch was said to have built a city. The point isn’t that they shouldn’t have exercised their dominion over the physical world, God wanted them to do that, but again it’s a matter of motive. In the line of Cain, the focus is on finding their significance and meaning in their work, rather than in a loving, trusting relationship with their creator. We’ll find our own significance in the world in which we live! Yet, God created all mankind with a yearning for more than meets the eye. No one will find ultimate significance in the things of this world.

Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, spent much of his life searching for meaning and significance in the things of the world. He wanted to investigate and study every area in which things are done under heaven (Ecclesiastes 1:13). The words “to seek” and “to search” indicate the seriousness of his efforts. He wanted to master and understand life. In short, he wanted to experience everything that could be experienced. His conclusion was that there is no meaning and purpose “under the sun.” Jesus’ frequent call to all mankind is the call to come to Him and find true life, real meaning, ultimate satisfaction, and eternal life.  In Him is the only “fullness.” Apart from Christ, the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre is right. He says, “Life is an empty bubble on the sea of nothingness.”

 

Tags: ,
Permalink
Genesis 11:1-4, 12:1-3, Romans 11:36

It’s Not About Me!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 8, 2022

Ptolemy dominated the scientific world up to the sixteenth century. He insisted that the earth was the center of the universe and all the planets and stars rotated around us. We, on earth, were the center of the universe. It was all about us! But then a rebel named Copernicus came along and showed that the movements in the skies do not support his ideas. Rather, the truth is, that it was the sun that all the planets revolved around. The sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. If you look up “the Copernican Revolution” in Google, you’ll find hundreds of thousands of articles about it. Many people still subscribe to the Ptolemaic theory of the universe; everything revolves around them. The world needs another Copernican revolution where we all learn and live out the truth that it’s not really about us, but rather it’s about God! We’re not the center of the universe, God is!

In Genesis 11:1-4, we read about the descendants of Noah living on the plains of Shinar and deciding together to build their lives around themselves. They say “let us make…” or “let us build…” and “let us make a name for ourselves.” The construction of the tower of Babel proceeded out of a self-centered focus of making life all about “us.” God told Noah and his descendants to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” But nooooooooo! We’d much rather make our own little hovel where we can simply sit back and relax and feel good about ourselves! They weren’t interested in doing what God had instructed. Instead, they said, “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” But that was exactly what God wanted! He had a plan and purpose for his people, but they choose a different path.

Please notice that when God called Abram to leave his family and move on to a promised land he said to him, “I will make you a great nation! I will bless you and make your name great. And you will be a blessing to others.” The call of Abram was the Copernican revolution! It’s the call to leave the geocentric world view where everything is all about me, to a heliocentric world view where everything revolves around God. With nearly 42,000 religions in the world, each with their own instructions on building a tower of babel, there is still only one Son! There is still only one righteous and just and still only one “name under heaven given by which we may be saved!” It’s not our works, it’s not our righteousness, it’s not our religion, it’s not our efforts of any kind. It’s not a religion at all. It’s a person who saves us! He exchanges our sinful rags for his glorious robes of righteousness. It is by grace we are saved through faith in the Son of God: Jesus Christ. Paul summed up His centrality for us in Romans 11:36. He writes, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

Tags: ,
Permalink
Genesis 11:1-4, John 6:29

What will it be?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 7, 2022

In my search for Jesus in the book of Genesis, I’ve reached Chapter 11 where the events on the plains of Shinar take place. The people attempt to work their own way to heaven by building this huge tower called the tower of babel. You glean their intentions from their comments. They say “come, let us make bricks…” The again, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heaven” (Genesis 11:1-4). It’s let us, let us. We learned that all though Noah built an ark, he did it after God’s design and at God’s instruction. It was a response of Faith in God and trusting His word about the coming judgment and the provision for escape from that judgment. Although there is nothing wrong with building anything, cities or towers included, the intentions of the heart are what matter most to God.

Man is always devising his own ways of reaching heaven. It’s just our nature to want to earn or deserve a place in heaven.  Unfortunately, even in the Christian Evangelical community there is much confusion about the true nature of the Gospel. A survey by the Barna Research Group suggests widespread confusion about the gospel – even among churchgoers who feel responsible to spread the gospel. Almost half of the respondents (46 percent) say they have a personal responsibility to explain their beliefs to others. Most of those “evangelizers” (81 percent) believe that the Bible is accurate in all its teachings and that Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected (94 percent). But 48 percent of the evangelizers also believe that “if people are generally good or do enough good things for others…they will earn places in heaven.”

When Jesus’ listeners observed his miraculous works on earth, they asked Him what they needed to do to do such things themselves. In John 6:29, He answered them saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” The question is shall we be saved, i.e., reach heaven, by faith or by works. R. A. Torrey puts this into several questions. He says righteousness is essential but, “Shall it be homemade, or shall it be of God and from above? Shall I go about to establish my own, or shall I subject myself to God’s? Shall salvation be of works, or by faith? Is Christ to be a Substitute for the sinner, or will the sinner be a substitute for the Saviour? Shall the altar smell of sacrifice, God appointed and God-provided, or will we prefer to deck it with flowers that wither and with fruits that shrivel, howsoever fair they seem at first? Is personal goodness, or is God’s grace, as revealed in Jesus Christ, to bring us to the world where all is well? The one is a ladder that we ourselves set up, and painfully ascend; the other is an elevator which God provides, into which, indeed, we pass by penitential faith, but with which the lifting power is God’s alone. Salvation by works is the choice of the Pharisee, salvation by Grace is the hope of the Publican.”

 

 

Tags: ,
Permalink
Genesis 9:13, 2 Peter 3:10, Matthew 24:37-41

As In The Days of Noah…

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 6, 2022

The last part of the story of Noah contains God’s promise symbolized in a rainbow. Whenever the skies turn dark and rains fall, a rainbow appears to remind us all that God has promised never to destroy the earth again – – that is never to destroy the earth again by a flood. Yet we know that there is another day coming. It’s called the “day of the Lord.” 2 Peter 3:10 teaches us, “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” Although the earth will never be flooded again, it will be burned.

When Jesus taught us that truth, He related it to the story of Noah. In Matthew 24:37-41 Jesus said, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”

I like the way James Montgomery Boice explains this verse: He writes, “That judgment came once, and it will come again. But we note that even as Christ speaks of judgment, he speaks also of those who will belong to him in that day and will be spared. Like those in the ark—Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives—those who are united to Christ by saving faith shall be borne up above the waters of that final judgment and shall be kept safe. As in Noah’s day, the judgment that sweeps down on the world will bring eternal loss to those who have rejected the way of salvation but eternal bliss and security to those who are in Christ. In the ark Noah was surrounded by the evidence of judgment, but he was safe. So may you be, if you are in Christ. If you are not, now is the time to renounce your sinful way of life and come to him.”

 

Tags: , ,
Permalink
Genesis 6:16, 7:16

Please, Come in!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
April 5, 2022

In Genesis 6:16 we learn that there was only one door: “…and set the door of the ark in its side.” I’ve been on many Navy ships and can tell you they are full of doors: fore and aft, amidships, athwart ship, and on every deck. The Ark was constructed with three decks, yet it appears that the ark only had a door on one deck. I’d guess it was the middle deck. Aircraft carriers have their main door on the deck below the flight deck and when you see it, it’s perfectly obvious that that’s the perfect place for it.  Now, getting back to the ark and Noah, there were two groups of people during the time of the flood – those who survived and those who didn’t. The ark was the only means of salvation. Those who survived walked into the ark through the one door.

One author writes, “Although it isn’t a popular teaching there are two types of people in God’s eyes – those who will be judged and those who are forgiven. Jesus is the only means of salvation and the only door into heaven. ‘I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved.’ (John 10:9) Is there another way to heaven? The Bible answers clearly: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” (John 14:6) “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12).

Another observation about the one door is that it was secured by God Himself. Genesis 7:16 says, “And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the LORD shut him in.” There are two things we must know about this closed door. Once we come into “Christ” by faith as Noah came into the ark, God secures our salvation.  As the “door” of the sheepfold, Jesus protects His sheep. When the sheep in Jesus’ day entered the sheepfold, there was only one way in, but it usually didn’t have a door. The Shepherd would lie across the opening. No one could come in or go out except over His body. We are safe in Christ! Secondly, once God closes the door judgment fall on all those outside. This was what Christ meant in Luke 13:25: “When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’”  Don’t be like the older brother of the prodigal son, who refused to go in and celebrate his brother’s return. Luke 15:28 says, “But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him…” I hear that as “please come in, please come in…” We’re safe and secure from all harms!

 

Tags:
Permalink
sewa motor jogja
© Chuck Larsen 2019. Powered by WordPress.