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CHAPTER FOUR
In this Chapter, there is a record of what for this year, 2014, is the first time we have presented a biblical account of things in separate form from the Church Calendar when it went forth in its pictorial splendour. It may be a convenient summary for some. In this hope, it is presented here, Following other types of summary in this volume.
2015 CALENDAR
This is the first of the many years of this calendar where we have added
A Calendar Message
As we are a Christian Church, we are pleased to pass this on with our greeting.
GOD IS FROM EVERLASTING TO EVERLASTING,
BUT MAN NEEDS MORE THAN BLAST TO LAST
Does culture dictate a thing ? Does society accept it ? Do educational authorities embrace it ? That is enough. Wheel it in, put on the rack those who think otherwise. But the word of God is not like that. It does not depend on the will or word or the work of man. You may disagree with it, but God is not embarrassed. You may reject or neglect it, but it will never cease to work. The stump of human ideas is not the stamp of God. Consider outcomes: history records endless deaths of devious philosophies. Yet the Bible continues the same, immovable, always attested by events, whether they be foretold degradations, and restorations such as Israel, or mad death obsessions as current, or massive sexual perversion2. It is biblically diagnosed, foretold and condemned with vigour.
"God has made man upright, but he has sought out many devices," 3. One is the atomic bomb; another is the heart divergent from God; a third, is utter unfaithfulness, changing the divine Rock for rockets4, divine power for human ideas and these often for inhuman devastation. With results apparent, step by step, it is impractical, improvident and self-vaunting whether using oneself as base or criterion for choice, directly or indirectly. Man is free to delude himself on his own importance, as if he were a garrulous god, and so find his life wasted5 .There is no greater waste in kind, available to man6 than following self-trust or any trust anywhere before trust in the Lord 7. You can have the whole world but not gain anything.
Mankind is free to seek first this world and its desires, and to die in vain in its polluted paths. He can invent individual ways and rules of his own, and live and die with or for them, like a contorting star. Yet human originality in making up gods and morals is not divine salvation, but presumption, when it comes to the gift of eternal life from the Maker of all life, and the necessary divine satisfaction to provide cover for one's sins. Therefore, when it comes to positive engagement, with life from God, not incorporation with coming corpses, not with spirits lost forever, what then ? Then it is a narrow way, as in all excellence; but this ? It is the narrow way of and to God8
Past all the murky ways of splendid self-appraisals and clever rationalisations to secure self-made satisfaction, past innovations for one's life made as if gods and their created ilk were some kind of fantasy land for selection. What is left ? It is the knowledge of God Himself. First it is His knowledge of us, leading for those who seek Him, to man's needful knowledge of Him. Before our world's time, before sin could insinuate9, before evil could contaminate, a wilting will guiltily evacuate, or a spirit bent on idols or self-glorifying operate, it was all clear to God. He knew all and knew His own, how to keep them throughout coming history, saved at the first as to the last entirely in grace through love10. Delighting, in love, that all mankind might be saved11, lacking nothing, giving all in the cross of Christ, God turned man's murder weapon against His Christ by His grace into salvation available to man, Christ Himself the sacrifice for sin12. Blinded by nothing13, He saw and foresaw all.
Yet just as man blinded himself14, so God saved such as could be saved, this with neither abolition of love in favour of force, nor expulsion of truth in favour of guile. That would merely yield to pretence or pretension, and lead to runaway ruin15 for any and for all. Those are this world's ways. But His own people16, these He has kept most carefully, not varying from the pathways of love for any substitute17 giving grace instead of gall. Now see its scope, first in an illustration. King David lamented, wishing that he had died for his son, Absolam18; but the Father sent His Son to die for us. Jesus Christ humbled Himself, that in holiness in its infinitude, He might pay for the sin of man, while incarnated as a man19. Having in Himself the fulness of the Godhead20, death could not hold Him21! His body irrupting from it, was resurrected into life, dying vicariously, but rising victoriously.
So the Son of God fought as man for man to bear his misdeeds meriting death22 (Hebrews 2, 9), with personal payment. Sufficient for all 23(I John 2:1-2)., this is applicable only to those who, as in all disease, receive the remedy24 (John 1:12-14, 3:16,36, Luke 13:1-3)
Foreknown in love 25(John 6:65, Ephesians 1:4), liberated in grace and kept in the power of God 26, these are justified by faith27, God reckoning to them, His own righteousness. At last they are glorified; for God is neither wilful or capricious in heart, nor unsound in wisdom. Nor does He deviate because of technical difficulties! He is neither impelled by undirected passion, nor deceived in any way by the all but immeasurable deviousness of the human spirit, deceiving even itself28.
God knows. Therefore, none can cunningly arrive in heaven to pollute it 29, making heaven hell; for great is His gift available to man, and it comes with no pretended saving substitute allowable, recognised or capable30. God knows His own mind! This fact is dramatised, as in Matthew 22:11 in Christ's parable, where a presumptuous 'guest' came without the free wedding garment, the cover of Christ offered 31, and was accordingly cast out.
It is the reception or rejection of this divine cover32 which simply excludes or includes. In none is a truly repentant heart's desire for salvation rankly excluded and dashed to death! for the principle stands that God would have all reconciled to Himself 33. Thus the repentant sinner who comes to Him in faith, He will not cast out34 . Yet it is not as god makers (roll your own principles) with new images for man from his own delusive will, that they come. Instead, they enter in terms of truth35, which does not vary36. In this alone is the way open: provided by God it leads to Him37.
Accordingly, if anyone seek the Lord, love life and wish to receive from its Beginning, its meat and meaning, as also its designed end or culmination, life eternal rather than simple outage for presumption and wilfulness, such a person need not fear some horrible deterrent proudly to block his path. The target of the salvation of God that Christ provided was THE WORLD, escape from the ways of which is a profound relief38; for its wiles are so vain. His door is open39.
Is there trial ? yes, there is trial in this, and that exposes
to reality. Divine contempt for wilful
delusion ? certainly, this also40. Yet God has not abandoned
mankind. Indeed He would have ALL to be reconciled, whether in heaven or on
earth and says so in so many words. Having made peace by the blood of the cross,
He would have ALL! 41. Hence past all trial, the truth is desired for
man, for "where sin abounded, grace abounded much
more," Romans 5:20; and what He desires with all His heart, He activates42
even into this late stage of the Age43, as you see in
Revelation 22:17.
Eternal life, including that supernatural change in the heart of man, in restoration of the original image of God, put in man from the first44, is a gift of grace. As to natural life, in the form of man, this original physical image is loaded with information; and that is now what is never found to be produced in kind, without the operation of intelligence; nor is life ever discovered making itself. These are non-events. Indeed, the opposite is the case. The human genome, in fact is found significantly declining over the generations, through environmental pressures and copying errors (attested in the work of Dr. J.C. Sanford of Cornell, Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome). The decline of the genome, our body's architectural instruction for building, of the natural, is a matter of down, not up.
First formed and informed, then slowly deformed over generations, the body of mankind has its own lowering law, the Second of Thermodynamics. Eternal life, on the other hand, like creation, is the gift of God and it has its own Lord45. At the last as at the first, there is the way of truth and the way of error. The facts do not alter. Man was made when God spoke, by intensive and extensive commands, exhibited in his DNA where such are recorded, with information moulded by Spirit from the start; and he needs remaking and restoration46 in spirit. This is provided in regeneration47. Mercifully, it is available, and made manifest.
But God cannot be transformed into any evil angel ( it is the
Evil One who specialises in this kind of imposture as in II Corinthians
11:13-14), nor is He a manipulable stooge48.
Rather is He bent on calling man home, to Himself as a hen her chickens in the
very Person of Christ49.
He is not as for a fool50,
calling his comrades to folly, but as faithful, calling the lost race home51.
The door is Christ
Himself52.
The world has its own style of standards (variable of course, and worthless
being disjoined from the living God), and it judges by them. That is
interesting; for God Himself has His standards, His word not ephemeral
but eternal, and He judges by them. That is crucial.
What of those who wilfully avoid His call ? These meet judgment as naked53. They are like containers to be filled, but left empty: the greatest of these inflows being His own love54, by Himself defined. This is necessary as the way to operate on earth; and the inherent one in heaven. Indeed, it was love that motivated the sending of the Messiah55. Without this, there is neither approach nor acceptance of man before God. With this, and what He has done through it, there is both salvation and payment of sin's cost56. In all this, just as love is an indispensable element of life, so is truth, justice and mercy as in Psalm 89, Matthew 7. Many were the prophets who foretold what Christ in time came and did, and great was His fidelity to all required, His words to this hour, like no others, fulfilled to the letter in history 57, His death the sublime satisfaction of justice.
Christians are called to bypass this world's standards, though they should lose the whole world with its power and self-congratulation, in order to serve God and follow His directions. Humbled or even killed on this earth58, they meet challenge in His strength; and as they love God, so they have the first and final example in Christ's eternal redemption by the sacrifice of Himself59, even as sole sin-bearer. It motivates even more than did the love of liberty at Normandy.
The love of the Christian, inspired from the love of the One who first loved us60, seeks heartily to do His will, breaking off known sin and rejoicing in His power61. In this, Christ is not only the exemplar, inspiration and aid62, and the payor to faith in Him for the sin deficit, so cancelling debt and pardoning guilt. He is also precise fulfilment of millena of short- and long-term biblical predictions, including His death date63. Reception of this His gift, by faith, is a grand event for anyone, and a decisive operation! The world may judge shallowly, just as mud on a car may bring negative judgment of the vehicle itself, from superficial people.
This, however, is mere appearance, covering the underlying creation. Thus, the God-made man warrants upkeep64. Not only that: it requires the deliverance by deity65, saving and guarding from sophisticated but barren substitutes. God has no substitutes. These clutter as man swerves from truth to the delusive desolations of sin66, like a drunken drug addict. To pour molten gold into the ocean would be far wiser than pouring God's provision of eternal life, replacing judgment and spiritual bankruptcy, into the sea of forgetfulness and abandon.
Notes For 1-66 above, see the following.
1) Revelation 6 2) Romans 1:17-32 .
3) Ecclesiastes 7:29). 4) Psalm 62:1-2
5) Proverbs 1 6) Matthew16:23-28, Psalm 62:1-2 7) Proverbs 28:26, 3:5.
8) Matthew 7:15ff. 9) Ephesians 1:4 ) Romans 8:30, and Chs. 3,5,9,11
11) Colossians 1:19, I Timothy 2:6, Ezekiel 33:11, John 3:15-18
12) I Corinthians 2:7-16) 13 Hebrews 4:13 12)
14) Matthew 13:15, Ephesians 2:1-10, 4:7ff
15) Luke 19:42ff., Matthew 23:37ff., Jeremiah 13:27, Ezekiel 20
16) Ephesians 1:4, II Timothy 2:19 17) Galatians 1:6-9, Hosea 7:1-2, Jeremiah 51:9
18) II Samuel 18:33
19) Philippians 2, John 5:24, II Corinthians 5:1-7ff, Titus 2-3, Matthew 20:28, I Peter 2:23-25, Romans 5:1-21
20) Colossians 2:9, John 8:58 21) Acts 2:24
22) Hebrews 2:9 23) I John 2:1-2 24) John 1:12-14, 3:16,36, Luke 13:1-3
25) John 6:65, Ephesians 1:4 26) I Peter 1:5-12, Romans 8:30ff.
27) Romans 5:1-12,29, Ephesians 1:6, Titus 3:3-7, II Corinthians 5:18-21
28) Matthew 24:24, I John 1:8, Ezekiel 28:9, Jeremiah 17:9-10
29) Romans 3:27-28 30) II Corinthians 11:4, 10:12
31) Compare Isaiah 61:10 32) Romans 5:17, II Corinthians 5:21, Matthew 20:28
33) Colossians 1:19ff. 34) John 6:37) 35) John 14:6, 8:21-29,40
36) James 1:17 37) II Peter 3:18 38) Hebrews 6:19
39) John 10:9,27-28 40) Matthew 13:14-15 41) Colossians 1:19ff
42) John 16:5-8 43) Matthew 24:22 44) Colossians 3:10
45) Compare I Corinthians 15, Romans 14:9 46) Colossians 3:10, Titus Chs. 2-3
47) John 3 48) Galatians 1 49) Matthew 23:37ff. 50) Psalm 14:1
51) Proverbs 8, Isaiah 55 52) John 10:9,27-28 53) Acts 17:31, John 3:36, I Timothy 1:9-10
54) John 3:16, I Corinthians 13 55) John 3:16
56) Acts 4:11-12, Romans 5:6-21 57) See The Shadow of a Mighty Rock
Chs.
8
-
9,
using
http://smr/bk1conta.html
58) Matthew 16:24-26, John 16:2 59) Hebrews 9:11-12
60) I John 4:19 61) Romans 6, I John 4:9 62) Psalm 40:1-8, Hebrews 10:5-7, Acts 4:11-12
63) See
http://webwitness.org.au/THIRDSUITE/tchprescription2.html,
Ch.2. of The Christian Prescription
64) Isaiah 5:1-6, Colossians 1:10ff. 65) Romans 8:17ff., Hebrews 2:1-3, 6:19, John 8:24, Jeremiah 2:2
66) Ephesians 2:1-12, Acts 4:11-12, Isaiah 43:10-11.