You sell Your people for nothing. You make no profit from selling them. You make us an object of reproach to our neighbors, a source of mockery and ridicule to those around us. You make us a joke among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. My disgrace is before me all day long, and shame has covered my face because of the voice of the scorner and reviler, because of the enemy and the avenger.
All this has happened to us, but we have not forgotten You or betrayed Your covenant.....If we had forgotten the name of our God and spread out our hands to a foreign god, wouldn't God have found this out since He knows the secrets of the heart? Because of You we are slain all day long. We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. (vs. 12-18; 20-22)
....the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb ....and they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because You were slaughtered and You redeemed people for God by Your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation....Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels...Their number was countless thousands , plus thousands of thousands saying with one voice: "The Lamb Who was slain is worthy!" (Revelation 5)
It's hard to know what God is up to sometimes. He looks at all of history - global and personal - at one glance. All laid out like a tapestry, pre-woven and complete. We see a skein, at best. Our lives fit into His plans in a way only He knows. Hindsight might show us the why of our pain, but it might not. In the end, our God will have delivered us from the problems, taken us through them or taken us to be with Him because of them. If we are sheep led to slaughter, we are in good company. If our faith is ridiculed because we did not see Him completely heal or deliver, we can still trust Him that He knows our hearts and His plans. Understands not as a bystander, but as a victim. Above His head they put up the charge against Him in writing: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. ...Those who passed by were yelling insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, "If you are the son of God, come down from the cross!"(Matthew 27)
To lose faith because of present trials might just truncate the purposes of God. When, like Job, you know you have not transgressed His new covenant with you, what is to be the response in great calamity? If we do not know this, we will have a very difficult time in the tribulations to come. We must know that we are loved and watched over like the sheep of His we are. The entire history of mankind was changed because One Lamb was slaughtered. Heaven understood the mission was completed. But it cost. And not just any life. You see, God was planning to save us by His blood before He created anything. This Lamb was slain before the foundations of the world were set. He came knowing He would be butchered by the slandering crowds - by the very ones who had praised Him with palm branches the day before. So the offering up of our lives to His will, even if we die for it, puts us in good company now and forever. If we think we get a free pass here on earth, then trials will do us in. Everybody has them. It matters what we do in the midst of chaos we did not create. We do have power to overcome. In the end that will be what matters: They conquered (the evil one) by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their own testimonies, for they loved not their lives even to death. (Revelation 12)
Just as the psalmist declares, we remember what has already been done. Our testimony of God's faithfulness in our lives keeps us focusing on how real and powerful He is. In the confusion of the moment we must not listen to the Job's friends who tell us God is punishing us. He was not punishing His Son, but saving the world. In the end, God saw Job through the trial. His Son He brought, through His death, to the very throne room of glory to oversee the end times. Those who lose their lives will save them. Daily. Sometimes that means glory. Sometimes, the confusion of trials. But, who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written: Because of You we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are victorious through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, hostile powers, height or depth nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord! (Romans 8)
Amen and amen.
All this has happened to us, but we have not forgotten You or betrayed Your covenant.....If we had forgotten the name of our God and spread out our hands to a foreign god, wouldn't God have found this out since He knows the secrets of the heart? Because of You we are slain all day long. We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. (vs. 12-18; 20-22)
....the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb ....and they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because You were slaughtered and You redeemed people for God by Your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation....Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels...Their number was countless thousands , plus thousands of thousands saying with one voice: "The Lamb Who was slain is worthy!" (Revelation 5)
It's hard to know what God is up to sometimes. He looks at all of history - global and personal - at one glance. All laid out like a tapestry, pre-woven and complete. We see a skein, at best. Our lives fit into His plans in a way only He knows. Hindsight might show us the why of our pain, but it might not. In the end, our God will have delivered us from the problems, taken us through them or taken us to be with Him because of them. If we are sheep led to slaughter, we are in good company. If our faith is ridiculed because we did not see Him completely heal or deliver, we can still trust Him that He knows our hearts and His plans. Understands not as a bystander, but as a victim. Above His head they put up the charge against Him in writing: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. ...Those who passed by were yelling insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, "If you are the son of God, come down from the cross!"(Matthew 27)
To lose faith because of present trials might just truncate the purposes of God. When, like Job, you know you have not transgressed His new covenant with you, what is to be the response in great calamity? If we do not know this, we will have a very difficult time in the tribulations to come. We must know that we are loved and watched over like the sheep of His we are. The entire history of mankind was changed because One Lamb was slaughtered. Heaven understood the mission was completed. But it cost. And not just any life. You see, God was planning to save us by His blood before He created anything. This Lamb was slain before the foundations of the world were set. He came knowing He would be butchered by the slandering crowds - by the very ones who had praised Him with palm branches the day before. So the offering up of our lives to His will, even if we die for it, puts us in good company now and forever. If we think we get a free pass here on earth, then trials will do us in. Everybody has them. It matters what we do in the midst of chaos we did not create. We do have power to overcome. In the end that will be what matters: They conquered (the evil one) by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their own testimonies, for they loved not their lives even to death. (Revelation 12)
Just as the psalmist declares, we remember what has already been done. Our testimony of God's faithfulness in our lives keeps us focusing on how real and powerful He is. In the confusion of the moment we must not listen to the Job's friends who tell us God is punishing us. He was not punishing His Son, but saving the world. In the end, God saw Job through the trial. His Son He brought, through His death, to the very throne room of glory to oversee the end times. Those who lose their lives will save them. Daily. Sometimes that means glory. Sometimes, the confusion of trials. But, who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written: Because of You we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are victorious through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, hostile powers, height or depth nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord! (Romans 8)
Amen and amen.
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