healing

SPIRIT OF CHRIST CHURCH

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spirit of Christ“Furthermore David the king said unto all the congregation, Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great: for the palace is not for man, but for the LORD God.” (1 Chr, 29:1).

When I think of the days of my first pastorate more things stand out to me than others after 27 years. Before and after I married my wife Sarah, I was preaching in the Northwest of the United States. I had opportunity to be the keynote speaker and preach the “This Jesus” Conference in November 1988. I preached on, “The Beauty of Jesus” from Psalm 45 and I will never forget it. God worked wonderfully especially among the ministers there. I was invited after that to speak in many different churches in that area, I loved doing it.

People would come in fifteen inches of snow like it was nothing. It was amazing. There was one church were at least 900 people were dancing in the Spirit. I never saw anything like that before. I tried to be dignified but it was really powerful. I saw numerous healing miracles and baptisms in the Holy Spirit. The devil was being defeated left and right.

While back on Staten Island in 1988 God was speaking to my heart. I felt what I could only describe as a spiritual anticipation. I knew something was happening in the Spirit. I was telling people that God has a church for me. One uncle said to me cynically, “You don’t have a church.”  Later, God spoke to me from scripture, “And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD.”  (Psa. 27:6). Not long after, a Pastor for who I had preached for in Wisconsin connected me with a group in Pennsylvania who were meeting in a home. It was a beautiful home owned by Peter and Christine who were a tremendous force in the work of that ministry and who helped us maintain the building we would eventually purchase. I was well received by them. I was officially a home missions Pastor.

We moved into a townhouse in Lansdale, PA and wanted to get the carpets cleaned.  A man named Ted knocked and he was holding his baby girl Nicole when we opened the door. While looking around the house he saw my theological books all over the floor he asked me if I was a minister. I replied in the affirmative and he cleaned all the carpets for free. What a blessing!

I found out Ted came from a Mennonite family. I asked him if he would like to visit our church. He said that he did, but I did not see them for weeks. I called on the phone and I found out that both their children were suffering with the croup. So, God gave me holy boldness and I said something to the effect that, “I am going to pray that God heals both your children and when they do you will come out to service.”  Well, God did exactly that and Ted and Joyce came out to church. Joyce did not really agree with Pentecostalism and so I debated with her about some things. My wife wondered why I was being so forthright with her. I said, “I like Joyce. I think God is working on her heart.” He really was.

Not long after, my brother Mike was preaching one Sunday Night and Ted and his wife Joyce were there. My brother pointed at him and said, “Brother, the moment I lay hands on you you are going to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak with other tongues.” My brother came over, laid hands on him and Ted fell to his knees and quietly spoke in tongues. It was amazing. Ted and Joyce as I remember consumed the Bible and books about the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

Joyce had not received the baptism of the Spirit yet and on Sunday night we were sitting on the floor and I was praying with her while she was crying. I will never forget when she told me, “Everyone is getting the Holy Ghost but me.” It broke my heart.  But not long after, we were in church one Sunday and during worship I heard her speaking in tongues. I was surprised and asked her, “When were you going to tell me you were baptized in the Holy Spirit.” She told me that she had been praying at home and God filled her. Her countenance was glowing and she was so excited.

I found out Ted was a talented musician. We sang acapella and we had no music until he led worship. He played a twelve string guitar and he was anointed. He played it furiously and broke strings every Sunday. I had never seen a better Psalmist. While he was leading worship I saw what I believed was a hot flask of oil that poured on the top of his head by an invisible hand. I knew God was calling him and Joyce to ministry. They both have traveled internationally and were both he and his wife are pastoring a growing church in Pennsylvania.

I can tell you some things that came out to me among the many things that God did. There was a pregnant woman named Lisa hooked on drugs who came to our church. She was on speed during the pregnancy and her family concerned about the child. She gave her life to Christ and we prayed for her after she confessed this issue. God protected that baby and Amber was born healthy and strong.

I remember another woman named Sherri and she was drawn to Christ through a message on the armor of God. She said as she came up for prayer and knelt alone she could hear an argument going on between the devil and God. The devil said, “She’s mine!” and God spoke and said, “NO she is mine!” She became a glowing Christian. Wow.

Another woman, originally from Germany, was pregnant with what I believe was her fourth child. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She was told by the doctor’s at that time she would have to abort her unborn child in order to live and that was unacceptable to her. We prayed for her and God healed her and she had a beautiful baby boy.

One time I myself was stricken with Bells Palsy and the right side of my face froze, it was devastating. I wept a lot in private and no one knew how much it crushed me, especially during a time I was teaching on healing. It was Ted and another man that prayed with me. Ted prayed for my face, but he did not touch my face. He told me that he did not want me to feel any heat from his hand, so that I could feel the Holy Spirit healing me. God healed me and now I knew personally God heals the sick.

The Lord granted me opportunities to minister in Word and to sing on television and radio and I got to evangelize in New England often. We even created an album during my time in Pennsylvania.

But not all churches are perfect in fact, wherever people are they are problems. People will tell me this happened in a church or that happened. I always ask them, “Were humans involved?” As a young pastor I did not realize that the human factor would prove to be a huge issue. Where the Spirit is, the flesh is as well. Where God is at work, the devil is at work as well. We still live on this side of heaven.

These people I began to serve were at one time the disgruntled members of another church. It was my first pastorate and I was unaware of this and I had no idea how challenging it would be. I was only 23 years old and I thought preaching was enough experience- it was not. Whether the past issues of people were valid or not is not the point. Not all Pastors have diplomatic ability, people skills or political savvy and these abilities are NOT part of the requirements to be a Pastor. A Pastor’s obedience to God is his greatest asset. But if you are a person that is called to set fires instead of putting them out you may want to think twice about dealing with people who are hurt by a previous church in a pastoral capacity. I was more of a fire setter. I was confrontational and uncompromising-which means, I got hurt badly in the end.

The family that was the largest tithe payers were affluent and I think that since they were hurt by a previous church experience they took a very business like approach to church. The man owned a successful business for sure and he arranged a balloon mortgage on the church building. I was so young I did not even know what that entailed. If I would have known I would never have agreed to it.  He and his wife and another family left the church. A few years later when the mortgage came to maturity we had to sell the building to an Anglican church for not much more than the price for which we purchased it. I miss the building to this day and even feel selling it was a mistake. The lesson I learned was stay put and watch God provide he will take care of things despite what people do.

There was a woman and man, both who were married who were committing adultery in our church. While I was ministering in California a second time (a story I will relate another chapter). My father came and preached in my place. He was an excellent Bible teacher and loved teaching about God’s purpose for marriage. My father said they confronted him after one message. My dad let me know and he did not feel they had much respect for the Word. By this I learned that God was attempting to reach this couple in his mercy so that they would repent. I was shocked when I found out that same woman was crossing out verses in her Bible that she did not like, writing notes on the sides of her Bible such as, “My god would not do that.” She was under a spirit of delusion. I reprimanded them with the scripture and they left the church refusing the restoration process. These were very sweet people but sometimes when people think that they have more love than God does, they will end up in compromising situations which will damn their souls.

My mother in law, an angelic Pentecostal woman died suddenly from colon cancer at fifty two years of age. After that my father in law was experiencing severe heart issues and my wife was back on Staten Island taking care of him best as she could. What was worse is that we experienced a church exodus as well. It was my first, it hurt. A year later my dad died from heart surgery complications. Satan was hitting us on all fronts.  The best thing that happened during those times was the birth of my son Stephen. I learned that as a Pastor you had to play hurt, sometimes bleeding and that only going through things like these is when God will build compassion in your heart. This was the beginning of a very long painful process and eventually I would have to find a job, my dream of pastoring was shattered and I wept many a morning as I went to work.

It should be noted that Ted was influenced by an outside source and a very strange man attending our church who had an agenda of his own. The man was very subtle in his demeanor. He convinced Ted that I should no longer be the pastor. They even approached me and wanted me to give up the building so they could have it. That was unacceptable to us. Eventually, he and Joyce left. I tearfully begged them not to leave but they did anyway. It was a real shame. While I am thankful they are serving the Lord I also learned that if people do not want to serve in the church that you Pastor, let them go with a blessing. Keep your spirit sweet. God will provide others who love you and will be glad to serve the Lord with their gifts.

©2015 Rev. Stephen S. Gibney, give credit where credit is due

Beautiful Words

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il_340x270.623982910_pj66When Christ announced the fulfillment of the wonderful day of God’s good news, freedom, recovery, healing and favor in which we live the scriptures declared, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.” (Luke 4:22).

The word for gracious is charis. It is the word we use for grace. His words of grace spoke then and reverberate now not like an echo but a continuing transmission.

Despite the rejection of some, blinded by unbelief (2 Cor 4:3), these words Jesus spoke immediately exerted an influence upon those that heard them.

All of a sudden the light of Christ shined into the hearts of the people like when the first words God spoke in the empty chaos of earth and said, “Let there be light.” (Gen 1:3) in the Old Creation, but NOW in the new Creation (2 Cor. 5:17) the gospel speaks and brings the light of the glory of God-not planetary light, or the sun, moon and stars but the uncreated light of the face of the SON-Jesus in dark empty hearts. (2 Cor. 4:6). In him was light, shining in the darkness that could not put that LIGHT out (John 1:1-5).

In Jesus a bright undeniable light shined in in what was once called, “Death City.” (Mt 4:16). These gracious words were like “honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” (Prov. 16:24). Gracious words are words of beauty.

Christ shepherds us with two shepherd’s staffs and he named one “Beauty or Favor and the other Union or Unity” (see Zech. 11:7). We have the favor God showed Christ, the union Christ had with his Father. You see, Christ is our unending, unbroken covenant. “This is what the LORD says: “At just the right time, I will respond to you. On the day of salvation I will help you. I will protect you and give you to the people as my covenant with them. Through you I will reestablish the land of Israel and assign it to its own people again.” (Isaiah 49:8NLT). 

Christ is The Promise, our promise. He is The oath, our oath. That was God’s promise directly to Christ! It was primarily to the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ he said, “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you.”  He helped Christ through his death through HIS glory (Heb 5:7; Rom 6:3). Now those promises are ours because it is to Christ we belong and he belongs to us. For us in CHRIST- “no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.” (2 Cor 1:20).

Today Jesus himself has beautiful feet, though nail scarred, with beautiful words good news, freedom, recovery, healing and favor for you (Isaiah 52:7). Just hearing the steps of the Son of God and his gospel has already started the process, enlightened your eyes, opened your ears, make you leap for joy (Isaiah 35:5) and revived your spirit (Gen 45:7). He has made you glad (Ps. 92:4).

You will taste these gracious words and see that the Lord is good. (Ps. 34:8).

-Stephen Gibney

The Dawn of God’s Mercy Heart has Visited Us

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1-Its-A-New-Dawn-Its-A-New-Day-Its-A-New-Year...-Im-Feeling-Fine...A new day has dawned in Christ.

“Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us. To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

The morning light from heaven has broken the darkness of our lives.

God acts with tender mercies for broken hearts wounded from the pain and consequence of sin and raw from repentance need the nail scarred tender hand of Jesus comforting them with acceptance love and forgiveness.

There is “the tender mercy of our God…” (Luke 1:78).

Spurgeon points out that the original phrase is, “The mercy of the heart of our God.”

It means the mercy of God’s very soul. Mercy is vitally connected with God’s own existence-his heart. God’s “mercy heart” shows that he will forgive those who ask for for forgiveness, because he is faithful and just to forgive their sins and cleanse them for all unrighteousness.

How is this forgiveness experienced?

God calming us down after screaming aloud until hoarse?
With the uttering of a repeat-after-me prayer?
Or is it a divine psychology that says, “That’s OK no ones perfect?”
NO!!!
It is like the sun slowly rising in the east bathing the shore in endless light and warmth. As the sun slowly but steadily takes over the night realm and rises as the dawn- so is God’s tender mercy and love seen.  His forgiveness and acceptance will be like the sun warming your face. It is God’s smile upon you dispelling the shadows of guilt and the dense darkness of shame upon you and brings before your the eyes of your heart an endless horizon that shows only God’s love and favor. The sun rising with healing in its wings dislodges any doubt and removes the very thought, words and acts of your transgressions.Then Luke (1:77-79) speaks of the the mercy heart of God and the dawn of Christ’s  life and love as having VISITED us.A visit is when someone temporarily spends some time with us. That is not far from the meaning of this word.

The word visit is “episkeptomai” in the original language shows us a person who cares about us come to look after, inspect and examine someone who is sick or in need. This person does not just come to show sympathy.

He comes with benefits in his hands. He comes with provision and healing.

Years ago, right into the mid to late twentieth century. Doctors used to carried a black bag and make house calls.

I knew Doctor Patten, I will never forget his hospitality and love. We could always come see him and his three wonderful daughters Wendy, Julia and Cynthia and his son John.  He was a Pastor in Maine and a MD. with a cool british accent. I will never forget him running into our bible college into the institute building with his black bag to visit a sick student. I can still see it in my mind. Strange how you remember some things.

It is the same way when Christ makes a house call. But in a way that is incredible. He is a sun and shield giving grace and glory not withholding anything good.

Jesus comes and we always experience God’s mercy heart and the smile of the dawn of grace, mercy and forgiveness in our lives.

Christ visits us.

When we sin, when we are hurt, broken, whatever the need- it will not be long until Christ rings the door bell and knocks. He turns the knob and walks in. He needs not ask. He does not need to be invited. Our home is his home. Our problems are his problems. His answers our now our answers.

The Great Physician with his great mercy heart and his smile that is like the dawn coming and visiting us. Even now he is at the door, knocking and opening-you can hear his voice, see the light of his presence and he has just what you need.

A Healing Presence

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“Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?” (John 11:36-37).

I have been studying John chapter eleven for a sermon that I will preach in the next few weeks.  Mary and Martha were shaken by the death of their brother Lazarus and the conspicuous absence of Christ. These sisters have so many questions, and only Christ can answer them yet, all they have is to turn to are those who I like to call the “uncomforters.”

One of the things that struck me is that the people who you want around in a time of problems are never there and those that you do not want around are always there.

 It is still is quite a picture how the comforters follow Mary and Martha around. They are like Job’s friends they are better at crying than counsel. I think most of us would have been better off born without the ability to have an opinion.

 This waiting  is the best and worst of times, yet we desperately need a period where we wait. It reveals if we are sincerely resting upon the Lord and leaning upon his promises or still looking to other people or things.  For it is in that time when there is no answer, no light, no activity that faith is born, built and strengthened. Faith is always born healthiest as an only child.

Sadly, the longer people go through something, there is more opportunity there is for insensitive preaching, weird advice and bad counsel. People going through the pain are like the lame man who was in the temple that Jesus passed by many times.  In Acts 3 Peter and John prayed for that man with empty pockets but full spirits and he was healed in the name of Christ. 

The truth is that we see people in our church in pain with chronic issues and we are tired of looking at them, or we think they don’t “get it.” whatever “it” is.  In reality we are the ones who do not  “get it” and they definitely do not “get it.” So we give “it” to them anyway usually in the form of cheap spiritual advice. Look, if you cannot heal or help the problem people have, then it is better you throw them a few bucks or some “silver and gold” than talk them to death.

When people get around the religious cheerleaders, spiritual quacks and misguided guru’s  people’s faith is confused and even paralyzed. When you are going through something you feel like moving to another state and changing your phone number. Everybody knows what you should do except you. You get around well-meaning people who treat you like a religious lab rat and experiment on you with all the latest and greatest stuff.  We learn from Job that you can have people quoting the Bible to you and they do it wrong and have no wisdom. Even the best medicine administered in the wrong dose and at the wrong time can cause ill effects.

We should not intimidated by pain. Jesus never shied away from confronting pain with compassion. If you are breathing, walking and talking then God can use you by filling you with the Spirit of Christ as you just are there for others.  Pain can make us a healing presence because God shows his tenderness and strength through us.

Love drives us to those in pain, because we have learned from experience that Christ is not intimidated by life’s problems. He stayed with us and strengthened us in our past trials. We know what hurt is. It hurts us to see them hurt. We are able to bring comfort to others in need because we have received comfort from the God of every comfort so we can comfort others. People who have not learned from their pain are uncomfortable.

The more pain the more comfort we receive. The comfort we receive the more we can give to others so they can patiently endure suffering (see 2 Cor. 1:3-7).

Today, instead of going to make something happen, or counseling people with some religious guesswork and theories we should just go with the love of Christ in our hearts so his loving smile and his healing presence could be felt by them through us.

 

© 2011 Stephen S. Gibney Soul Health Care

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Twisted Thinking

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We hear Romans 12:1-2 quoted as often as John 3:16 but I wonder if we get it. Paul pleads,  “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” 

Over and over again in our lives we hear that everything we do begins with a thought. You cannot have wrong thinking and right actions. It doesn’t work!  That is why right teaching and biblical doctrine matter.  The problem is what we think about God. Sin has twisted your thinking.  When it comes to thinking about God the Bible says, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” (Ps. 10:4).  Yes, that verse says that God is not in any of his thoughts. Other translations indicate that the spiritually dead person has no place for God in their thinking,  The NIV states, “in all his thoughts there is no room for God.” The margin of the KJV says that, “in all his thoughts they keep thinking, “there is no God.”  That is one of sin’s greatest hijackings of our souls it leaves no room for God.  We set aside God first in our thoughts then our deeds. It brings a moral, practical atheism that lets sin and self-control the soul. Sin attempts to erase the concept of God from our minds or distort it. We must spend our lives untwisting that thinking by the teaching about God that comes from his Word, the Holy Scriptures.

What you think about God has direct influence over how you worship God and how you live. The minimization of God has a direct influence over everything we are. As the old preachers told us we need to magnify the Lord in our lives. Let him be bigger than the trial. Don’t let sin and unbelief put a magnifying glass in front of your problems. But let God become bigger in your mind and heart. Let praise be the magnifying glass that helps you see that God is bigger than your problems.

Amen to that!

If we place God at the center of our preaching, not the peoples needs, problems not our agendas but God-this will give clarity to our understanding of God and he will be the Savior and Helper.  The Bible says teaches when Christ redeems all of his Bride and when all is said and all is done the final result will be that “God may be all in all.” (1 Cor 15:26-28). God must become bigger in our lives because sin attempts to make him seem so small.

At the heart of self is idolatry. The first two commandments are vitally linked. God will not only have no rivals but he forbids the making of an images, especially an image of him. Why? The mind is a factory for idolatry to paraphrase, John Calvin and unscriptral thinking eventually become anti-scriptural. Notice the image can be our thinking. We need to repent not only of sin but from wrong thoughts about God. Peter commented on Paul’s letters, “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2 Pet 3:16).  Notice the untaught and unstable wrestle with the scriptures: they distort and twist them because self is at the center and has no room for God in its thinking.

Christ and genuine Christianity teaches that you must have a new nature. The glorious truth of the new birth is that God gives us life and then we renew our minds by the truth as found in Jesus Christ and the scriptures.  “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” (Heb 8:10).  God writes his laws on our hearts gives us a love for God and the power to do what is pleasing to him.

What should we be thinking about?  How to change and modify our behavior? What steps to follow in order to make life less hostile? The behavioral sciences offered in the forms of motivational speaking and psychology are much of  the reason for Churchianity’s failure today. Most people are learning things backwards because they think because their actions change their life will change and that is only partially correct. Your thinking and emotions must change. Your mind must be renewed.  Only God can do this.

After a person is saved, they have a new heart and spirit but their mind must be renewed in order to be transformed into the image of Christ (Rom 12:1-2). This does not happen overnight but occurs in day by day obedience and consistent submission to God’s will. God sanctified and causes all things to work together for the good of those that love God and are called according to his purpose. “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:28-29). 

He does this by using trials in our life as a means to purify us. But this means that He controls and monitors our trials! He actually uses our trials to purify us and make us holy.  He takes evil and turns it around for good in our lives. He does this because he has loved us before the world was made in Christ! He is with us and will not allow us to be overwhelmed by life’s trouble but as the Old hymn says, “When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow; For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”

What untwists our thinking about God is the straight beams of the cross and the straight edge of the scriptures. Yielding and offering our bodies, renewed thinking that leads to a metamorphosis of life  is directly tied to Christ offering himself. These are “the mercies of God” in Christ. Of the many, many, mercies of God in sending his Son, will we ever completely discover what actually happened on the cross of Christ? We should be constantly focused on it and it will change us. 

This is where we learn to accelerate into obedience and put the brakes on with temptation. The motivating factor is the crucified and risen Savior. “Christ’s gift, meditated on, accepted, introduced into will and heart, is the one power that will melt our obstinacy, the one magnet that will draw us after it…The Gospel of Jesus Christ presents itself, not as a mere republication of morality, not as merely a new stimulus and motive to do what is right, but as an actual communication to men of a new power to work in them, a strong hand laid upon our poor, feeble hand with which we try to put on the brake or to apply the stimulus…” MacLaren Commentary on Romans 12.

Good Friday According to the Confessions of the Church

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XIR16014THE 1563 HEIDELBERG CATECHISM ASKS AND ANSWERS:  What dost thou understand by the words, “He suffered”?  That he, all the time that he lived on earth, but especially at the end of his life, sustained in body and soul, the wrath of God against the sins of all mankind: that so by his passion, as the only propitiatory sacrifice,  he might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation, and obtain for us the favour of God, righteousness and eternal life.

THE 1619 BELGIC CONFESSION STATES: We believe that God– who is perfectly merciful and also very just– sent his Son to assume the nature in which the disobedience had been committed, in order to bear in it the punishment of sin by his most bitter passion and death. So God made known his justice toward his Son, who was charged with our sin, and he poured out his goodness and mercy on us, who are guilty and worthy of damnation, giving to us his Son to die, by a most perfect love, and raising him to life for our justification, in order that by him we might have immortality and eternal life.

THE 1646 WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH: This office the Lord Jesus did most willingly undertake, which, that he might discharge, he was made under the law, and perfectly fulfilled it; endured most grievous torments immediately in his soul, and most painful sufferings in his body; was crucified and died; was buried, and remained under the power of death, yet saw no corruption. On the third day he arose from the dead, with the same body in which he suffered; with which also he ascended into heaven, and there sits at the right hand of his Father, making intercession; and shall return to judge men and angels, at the end of the world. The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, has fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father has given unto him. 

THE 1560 SCOTS CONFESSION: [So we confess, and most undoubtedly believe] That our Lord Jesus Christ offered himself a voluntary sacrifice unto his Father for us, that he suffered contradiction of sinners, that he was wounded and plagued for our transgressions, that he, the clean innocent Lamb of God, was condemned in the presence of an earthly judge, that we should be absolved before the judgment seat of our God; that he suffered not only the cruel death of the cross, which was accursed by the sentence of God, but also that he suffered for a season the wrath of his Father, which sinners had deserved. But yet we avow that he remained the only, well beloved, and blessed Son of his Father even in the midst of his anguish and torment which he suffered in body and soul to make full atonement for the sins of the people. From this we confess and avow that there remains no other sacrifice for sin; if any affirm so, we do not hesitate to say that they are blasphemers against Christ’s death and the everlasting atonement thereby purchased for us.

THE 1742 PHILADELPHIA CONFESSION OF FAITH SAYS: This office the Lord Jesus did most willingly undertake, which that he might discharge he was made under the law, and did perfectly fulfil it, and underwent the punishment due to us, which we should have borne and suffered, being made sin and a curse for us; enduring most grievous sorrows in his soul, and most painful sufferings in his body; was crucified, and died, and remained in the state of the dead, yet saw no corruption: on the third day he arose from the dead with the same body in which he suffered, with which he also ascended into heaven, and there sitteth at the right hand of his Father making intercession, and shall return to judge men and angels at the end of the world.

Words for the Fickle

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heal“Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.”  The prophet Hosea is speaking to a people that God dealt with so severely he uses words as torn and smitten.  The Contemporary English version words it bluntly, ‘he has torn us to shreds.” The Message version says “he hurt us…he hit us hard…”

People today are not used to hearing about God becoming angry at sin. The post modern Babylonians that have invaded the church with an unbiblical foreign tongue would call such a concept brutal, abusive or legalistic.  They cannot possibly understand how that anyone could be hurt or hit hard, needless torn to shreds by God. They think they have tamed God by changing the wallpaper and curtains as the market the church to the world but God remains an untamed lover of his people. The Bible clearly says, “They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.” (Deut 32:16).

John Calvin says, “The Prophet means by these words, that God does not so punish men as to pour forth his wrath upon them for their destruction; but that he intends, on the contrary, to promote their salvation, when he is severe in punishing their sins…God has not inflicted on us deadly wounds; but he has smitten, that he might heal.” God chastisement of sin is non lethal for his own (Heb. 12:5-11). It is his purging and refining of his people. “When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.” (Isaiah 4:4). It is with this, “hot breath of fiery judgment” (NLT) that he deals with them.

Why? 

Israel has been faithless to God who is like their husband. Any husband seeing his wife and wife seeing her husband not only distracted but involved with another man or woman would be provoked to jealousy. God, “whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14) in his holiness has become like a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24) to cleanse away their unpredictable, fickle love.

God’s love always is revealed as a “covenant love.” The Hebrew word chesed (hesed) describes it as a love beyond law. It is beyond the stones given in the glorious older Covenant. That Covenant with the two copies of the Decalogue were given for God and his people and stored in the Ark of the Covenant. In the place of his throne, his heart, his presence they were stored. But now the New Covenant communicated from his heart is written on fleshly tablets of the human heart. Therefore, God is supremely devoted to his elect people and he desires them to love him supremely. He is committed to them not only to save their souls but to purify and make them holy in his sight.

God brought Eve to Adam. In the same way, Christ must present the church to himself.  He loves the church and gave himself for her. He loves her as his own body. The side of Adam was opened up to bring forth the sophisticated woman, Eve and Christ side was pierced on a bloody cross so that the water and blood to purchase our salvation!  In order for  us to be come closer to Christ He must be our Master and King. His role therefore is, “That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. ” (Eph. 5:26-27).

It was the sun burned, weathered Shulamite, the woman who symbolizes the church who said, “the king hath brought me into his chambers”  (Song 1:4). She stands out like an Eliza Dolittle among the religious fashion models of the palace, and they will attempt to teach her all the right words to say and how to act. But her lover has seen a beauty beyond all the sterile, manicured looks of the daughters of Jerusalem. He loves her and he will work in her and transform her, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.” (Psalm 45:11). 

Have you left him for other loves? Have you substituted and replaced him with other things? You have provoked the one who gave his all for you. He has dealt with you harshly in your own eyes but our own human stubbornness must be broken by seeing the futility of a life that is lived without God. He invites you to return. His healing may not be immediate as your wounds scab over for a while but after a few days you will see that his face will shine on you and a new day will begin as you in his wholeness and love walk with him and know him more and more as the lover of your souls.