Matthew 9:5-7
Which is easier? To say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’
or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?
Acts 7:58
Stephen is stoned to death.
Saul of Tarsus looks on, safeguarding the cloaks of those watching.
Genesis 7:24
And it rained.
Genesis 7:8-9
Two and two they went into the Ark with Noah, as God had commanded.
Acts 6:13-15
Stephen faces the Sanhedrin. He readies his defence.
This one line is so incredibly complex. And there it is, central to Christ's model prayer. As a child, who learnt the Book of Common Prayer version of the Lords Prayer by heart, I never gave it much thought. But now, when I think on it, I realise how incredibly profound it is.
Got Questions has an interesting article that illustrates just how rich with meaning these words are.
Painting by Ilya Efimovich Repin
'Follow me, Satan', 1895
45×61cm
Genesis 2:4
The first 'toledoth' (תּוֹלְדֹת) introducing the progeny that came forth from God's first act of creation - the Heavens and the Earth.
What a beautiful way of rooting man back to nature and the cosmos.
Genesis 49:11 Israel's promise to Judah.
Binding his foal to the vine
and his donkey's colt to the choice vine,
he has washed his garments in wine
and his vesture in the blood of grapes.
Genesis 45:7 Joseph and his brothers are reconciled.
"God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors."
Joseph's foresight, borne out of slavery, saves not only Egypt, but Canaan and 'all the world'.
Genesis 34:7. Dinah is dishonoured. Jacob's sons seek vengeance.
This is a difficult story. Sin against us is never put right by our own sin. Genesis 34 shows what happens when we trust in ourselves. Better we should trust in God. HE will ensure justice.
I found this commentary, by David Vanacker of Grace Church Wyoming, very helpful in properly understanding this chapter. It is a complicated narrative, with more than surface level lessons to be learnt.
https://gracewyoming.com/the-defiling-of-dinah/
Perhaps the best overall take-out for me, is that 'the narrative passages of the Bible are not meant to teach morality. They are only meant to show the result of the moral choices people make.'
Genesis 32:28 Jacob wrestles with God.
When we pray, when the Spirit helps us with our insecurities, and we can barely describe our fears or our needs, our prayer is wrestling with God.
Jeremiah 1:4-5
And John knew Jesus from the womb.
Isaiah 65:17 and 20.
Not a description of the eternal Kingdom, nor a description of a millennial new Jerusalem... there's no death or sin in either... but hope and inspiration for the believer, perhaps, that things can and will get better.
Isaiah 61:11
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
The Suffering Servant
Genesis 24:11-14
Abraham's servant seeks a wife for Isaac.
I do love how the servant entrusted with such a significant undertaking, uses such a simple approach to discerning a kind and generous heart.
And he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water. And he said, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham.
Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.
Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”
Genesis 19:24-26.
“For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.”
But not even ten righteous souls could be found in either Sodom, or Gomorrah.
Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.
Commentary from Luke 17:28-33.
“The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is whole toward him.” 2 Chronicles 16:9
God’s care is first to His children.
To those who mock the ‘foolishness of the Cross’, wondering why He doesn’t show himself to them, is it any wonder? All are welcome at His table. Accept His gift, let Him in to your heart.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Chapter 7. Beatitude 4: Blessed Are They Which Do Hunger And Thirst After Righteousness (for they shall be filled).
A distillation of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones 'Studies on the Sermon on the Mount'. All credit to him. One of the finest preachers and theologian minds of the modern age.
If every person knew what it was to hunger and thirst after righteousness there would be no war. Here is the only way to real peace.
One of the greatest tragedies in the life of the Church today is the way in which so many are content with these vague, general, useless statements about war and peace instead of preaching the gospel in all it's simplicity and purity.
'Blessed Are They Which Do Hunger And Thirst After Righteousness'. If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statement of the whole of Scripture you can be certain you are a Christian. If it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again.
We have been told that we must be poor in spirit, that we must mourn, that we must be meek.
Here we begin to look for a solution. For the deliverance from self for which which we long.
It is the great charter for every seeking soul.
It is doctrinal. It emphasises one of the most fundamental doctrines of the gospel, namely, that our salvation is entirely of grace, or by grace. That it is entirely the gift of God.
Remember 'blessed' means happy. The whole world is seeking happiness, but it is the great tragedy of the world that it never seems to be able to find it.
According to the Scriptures, happiness is never something that should be sought directly.
It is always something that results from seeking something else.
Whenever you put happiness before righteousness you will be doomed to misery. Put happiness in the place of righteousness and you will never get it.
Think of a man who is suffering from some painful disease. If the doctor only treats the pain, and does not discover the cause of the pain, and treat that, he is a very bad doctor. He is doing something that is extremely dangerous to the life of the patient.
We are not meant to hunger and thirst after experiences. We are not meant to hunger and thirst after blessedness. If we wabtr to be truly happy and blessed, we must hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Experiences are a gift from God, but we must covet and seek righteousness.
What is this righteousness then? It is not a sort of general righteousness or morality between nations.
Men wax eloquent about how countries threaten the peace of the world, break their contracts, yetr are disloyal to their wives and disloyal to their own marriage contracts.
There are those who say that righteousness means justification. It does.
But it also means santification.
It means ultimately the desire to be free from sin in all it's forms and in it's every manifestation. A desire to be free from sin because sin separates us from God.
Our first parents were made righteous in the presence of God. They dwelt and walked with Him. That is the relationship a righteous man desires.
And it means the desire to be free from the power of sin. To get away from the power that drags him down in spite of himself.
It means a desire to be free from the very desire for sin. We find that the man who turly examines himself in the lift of the Scriptures is not only in the bondage of sin, more horrible yet is he LIKES IT, he WANTS IT! Even after he has seen it is wrong he still wants it.
To put it positively, to hunger and thirst after righteousness is nothing but the longing to be positively holy. He who does, is a man who wants to show the fruit of the Spirit in every action and in the whole of his life and activity.
But what does it mean to 'hunger and thirst'. It does not mean that we can attain this righteousness by our own efforts. That is the worldy view of righteousness which focusses on man and leads to the individual pride of the Pharisee.
It leads to those things that the apostle Paul describes in Philippians 3 as 'dung'. The first Beatitude tells us that we must be 'poor in spirit' so it cannot be that worldly view of righteousness.
It is a consciousness of our deparate need.
It is something that keeps on until it is satisfied. It is not just a passing feeling, a passing desire. It hurts, it is painful, it is like actual, physical hunger and thirst.
It is like a longing for a person. There is always a great hunger and thirst in love.
The Psalmist has summed it up perfectly in a classical phrase: 'As the hart panteth afcter the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God, My soul thirsteth of God, for the living God.
As J. N. Darby said, 'when the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.'
Finally, let's look at what is promised to the people who are hungry and thirsting for righteousness.
'They shall be filled'.
The whole Gospel is there. That is where the gospel of grace comes in. It is entirely the gift of God. You will never fill yourself with righteousness, you will never find blessedness apart from Him.
When you and I know our need, this hunger and starvation, this death that is within us, then God will fill us. This is an absolute promise. If you are really hungering and thirsting after righteousness you will be filled.
How does it happen?
It happens - and this is the glory of the gospel - it happens immediately, thank God. We are justified by Christ and His righteousness and the barrier of sin and guilt between us and God is removed.
You are no longer under the law, you are under grace.
God looks at you in the righteousness of Christ and He no longer sees the sin.
The Christian therefore should always be a man who knows that his sins are forgiven.
He should not be seeking it. He should know he has it. That he is justified in Christ freely by the grace of God.
Thank God it happens immediately.
But it is also a continuing process. The Holy Spirit, begins within us His great work of delivering us from the power of sin and from the pollution of sin. Christ will come into you.
And as He lives in you you will be delivered increasingly from the power of sin and from its pollution. You will be enabled to resist Satan, he will flee from you. You will be able to stand against him and his fiery darts.
Finally, this promise is fulfilled perfectly and absolutely in eternity. There is a day coming when all who are in Christ and belong to Him shall stand in the presence of God, faultless, blameless, without spot and without wrinkle. A new and perfect man in a perfect body.
But there is a paradox. At this moment I am perfect in Christ, and yet I am being made perfect.
The Christian is one who both hungers and thirsts AND IS AT THE SAME TIME filled! You reach a certain stage in sanctification but you do not rest on it. You go on changing!
From glory to glory to glory 'till in heaven we take our place'. Perfect yet not perfect. Hungering, thirsting, yet filled and satisfied, but longing for more, never having enough because it is so glorious and wondrous.
Fully satisfied by Him yet a supreme desire to know Him.
Isaiah 42:14–16
I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools. And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.
Isaiah 40:15 Great nations are nothing more than dust on the scales.
Isaiah 39:6
Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord.
El Rey Ezequías Hace Ostentación De Sus Riquezas a Los Legados Del Rey De Babilonia
(King Hezekiah Shows Off His Wealth to the Legates of the King of Babylon)
Vicente López Portaña (Spanish, 1772-1850)
Genesis 15:6 Abram is counted righteous by faith, not deeds.
One of the most important passages in the Old Testament. Righteousness in the OT was demonstrated by adherence to the law. But Abram is counted righteous by faith, before he'd proven by work.
