Preserved by God

"Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

1 Thessalonians 5:23

Having forgiven our sins and purified us by the Gospel of grace, He is able to preserve us blameless until Christ returns.  A "life preserver" is intended to save a potential victim of drowning, and Jesus is faithful to save all who trust in Him.  As it is written in Jude 1:24-25, "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, ²⁵ to God our Savior, Who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen."  During study preparation I was intrigued by the concept of how God preserves His people and realised His manner of preservation is very different than ours.

When we preserve things, we do so with the intention to keep them exactly as they are.  The first thing that comes to mind are fruit preserves or conserve, fruit canned with a high-sugar content to prevent spoilage.  I thought of pickled organs or body parts suspended in formaldehyde, or even entire bodies stored in glass tubes in clear fluid like in science fiction movies.  There are chemical preservatives added to food to keep it fresh as long as possible.  Artwork is preserved by sealing out moisture, dust and insects, and by maintaining an appropriate temperature out of direct sunlight.  All is done to keep things how they currently are to prevent further decay, damage or degradation.

This is not God’s way of preservation.  He does not put us in glass tubes to protect us from potential dangers of the world, nor is He like an additive infused into us to slow the decomposition process.  After we are born again, He does not preserve us how we are:  He uses our experiences in our fallen world, other people and trials to refine us, gives us His word to change us and supplies the Holy Spirit to transform us.  Our whole selves are blameless by His atoning sacrifice and no one can snatch us from His hand, yet God puts us through the fire of affliction and preserves us while He refines and purifies us.  Spiritually we are made righteous and preserved blameless, but He also moulds us to be more like Jesus every day.

By faith in Jesus we are enabled to endure and press on--even if we feel like the stress and toil of life is tearing us apart.  We can have all confidence in God's preservation and salvation during this life and also when our souls are required of us in physical death.  Having been made alive to God through spiritual regeneration, He desires us to keep growing, learning and choose to joyfully embrace our sanctification.  He does not treat us like the servant who buried the talent in the ground merely to preserve it:  God desires we would be invested in life for His glory and to be fruitful.  Praise God for preserving us blameless and also helping us mature and be changed for the best at the same time.

God Must Be Glorified

It is great pleasure for those who give gifts to have them joyfully received.  Some people can be difficult to buy for because they seem to have everything or have refined tastes.  King Solomon was a man of enormous wealth, and I imagine very challenging to impress.  To have your gift gladly received and used by him would have been a great compliment, and in a small way could be viewed by the giver as accepting his own person.  If a commoner has difficulty to give a suitable gift to someone who isn't even royalty, to find an acceptable offering before the LORD God is impossible!

In His grace, God provided His Law for the Hebrews that outlined acceptable offerings and sacrifices for His glory that also benefitted the people by atoning for sin and feeding them.  Imagine how joyful the people were after the tabernacle had been constructed, Aaron the high priest and his sons were sanctified, and the LORD consumed the sacrifice on the altar with fire from heaven in their sight.  Leviticus 9:23-24 tells us what happened:  "And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of meeting, and came out and blessed the people. Then the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people, ²⁴ and fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar. When all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces."  When a baseball player hits a home run fans instinctively stand to their feet, and when a rugby player scores a try a shout of joy rings out from faithful supporters.  The glory of the LORD appeared to the people and the burnt offering was consumed on the altar, God's people shouted with joy and fell on their faces before His presence.

To have your offering received by God with fire from heaven!  What amazement, what gladness swept through the people!  The incredible act proved God's existence, was affirmation they had done according to His Law, their sin was forgiven and they had been accepted by Him--unlike Cain who was rejected.  But the euphoria did not last long.  Leviticus 10:1-3 says, "Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. ² So fire went out from the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. ³ And Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the LORD spoke, saying: 'By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified.' " So Aaron held his peace."  God who consumed the sacrifice offered Him, in accordance to Law, also consumed the priests who disobeyed God by doing what He had not commanded.  In the process of offering the first sacrifices in the history of the nation of Israel two men perished before God due to their sin.  This had a sobering effect upon all who witnessed the event:  no priest in the line of Aaron was God, and they were to give Him reverence rather than show off or seek glory for themselves.

This passage makes clear our best efforts or doing as we see fit makes us acceptable before God.  The only way we can stand before Him, serve Him and present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable before God, is when we follow God's ordained way.  Jesus has revealed Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Under the New Covenant of grace, our God remains a consuming fire.  We see this in the early church when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit about the price of the land and were struck dead.  Great fear came upon the church and all who heard these things.  The righteous response of His faithful servants is to humble ourselves before God and to glorify Him through our obedience--not to bury the talents He gives us lest He find reason to reject us--for this betrays our carelessness and selfish desire for our own glory.

Hebrews 12:28-29 says of Christians, "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. ²⁹ For our God is a consuming fire."  As Adam Clarke wrote, "He will either hallow or destroy us: he will purify our souls by the influence of his Spirit, or consume them with the breath of his mouth!"  Those who humble themselves before God in faith and obedience are made holy by His indwelling presence, and He daily teaches us to put our sin to the sword in repentance.  It is only by the grace of God through the Gospel we are enabled to stand before Him and offer ourselves as living sacrifices.  Having accepted us by grace through faith, we are to serve Him with reverence and godly fear.  Judgment begins at the house of God, and by our sanctified lives may the almighty God be glorified today!

Jesus With Us

The Bible is the powerful word of God that has profound meaning packed into each individual word, phrase and sentence.  In cross-referencing different books of the Bible fresh insights are illuminated, providing additional points of personal application.  Because some verses or statements that convey comforting truths are repeated often to the point of becoming cliche, it is possible the context of the scripture can be ignored or forgotten.  The immediate context of a verse is extremely significant, for without it we can miss the purpose of why it was written and how God intended it to impact our outlook.  A verse I read this morning illustrated this well.

If you have been a Christian for a little while, it is likely you have heard Jesus has promised believers "never to leave or forsake you."  This is true in every sense.  But this is the second half of a verse without providing the reason why this was brought up at all--and it might surprise you.  For the sake of context I will include the previous and following verses in Hebrews 13:4-6:  "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. ⁵ Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." ⁶ So we may boldly say: "The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?"  Now there are many situations where we are comforted and encouraged to know Jesus is with us and will not forsake us, yet the immediate context of this promise is an exhortation against covetousness and to be content.  I suspect the cliche version is rarely used towards that end.

Reading these verses together gives us insight how fornication and adultery demonstrate covetousness, to pursue a romantic or sexual relationship outside of singleness or marriage.  There are people who are not married and covet a spouse, and others who are married and desire to pursue others in lust.  Because Jesus is with the single and the married person alike, regardless of our marital status we can experience contentment through faith in Him.  We might not struggle with covetousness concerning relationships but with other things others have and we do not.  Our conduct as children of God ought not to be marred by covetousness--greed and sinful ingratitude for what God has provided us or our current marital state--but we can find contentment and rest in Jesus alone.  You may not have experienced this yet, but based on the promise of Jesus contentment is offered along with His presence.  As real as the offer of salvation is through the Gospel for sinners, so contentment is provided by Jesus by faith for the naturally covetous.

The following verse is also connected to the contentment we have in Jesus alone:  "So we may boldly say:  "The LORD is my helper; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?"  Because Christ is with us, we can have confidence in the LORD's help today without fear of man.  We can also rest comfortable in a future that seems uncertain, for no man is greater than our Saviour Who is with us and will never forsake us.  People can mock and scorn us; man can even kill us.  But no one can separate us from Jesus Christ, His love, and deprive us of sweet fellowship with our Saviour.  We are greatly helped and realise we are never alone because Jesus will never leave or forsake us.  Many people have been left by their spouse and been heartbroken, but Jesus will never break our hearts like this.  We ought to have broken hearts for all the times we have coveted, looked with lust, and lived without contentment when Jesus was faithful to be with us and never left us alone.  The contrite and repentant heart Jesus will heal and purify, and this is reason to rejoice forever by faith in our Saviour Who is with us.

Blessed are Those Who Lack

In His wisdom, God created man in His own image with needs God alone can meet.  He made our bodies to send signals to the brain with feelings of hunger, thirst, and if we are too hot or too cold.  By responding to our senses, we can take practical action for the health and well-being of our bodies.  The simple action of drinking water or moving from the sun into shade can prevent heat exhaustion, dehydration and sunburn.

Our needs go beyond tending to our physical flesh, for we have emotional and spiritual needs as well--having been given the capacity to have understanding of personal relationships and our environment, love, desires, ambitions and a conscience to guide our moral decisions.  Based on a complex combination of what we know, how we feel and our personal preferences we seek outcomes to benefit us to our satisfaction.  The trouble is feelings of happiness, contentment and satisfaction are temporary and fleeting.  We expend effort to pursue good feelings that can be hard or impossible to obtain, and whenever we experience them we cannot enjoy them as we would like.

Because we are made in God's image and have a personal relationship with God, He has designed us in such a manner that lasting, genuine satisfaction can only be found in Him alone.  Our hunger, thirst and desires we can only temporally relieve point us to seek Him in faith in every area of life.  Jesus taught His disciples in Luke 6:20-21:  "Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. ²¹ Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh."  By faith in Jesus those who felt the pinch of poverty, hunger and lack, and the pain of grief could look beyond the present season to a new opportunity for lasting satisfaction, abundance and joy.  There have been times we have been pleased to receive our wages or a gift that allowed us to afford expenses and to obtain our desires.  We have felt the physical pleasure of eating delicious food and the satisfaction of being content.  We have wept over things that made us wonder if we could ever be happy again, and happiness has come unexpectedly.

This fleeting sense of satisfaction we have experienced here and now on earth point to the future God has planned for all who trust and love Him, for hunger, thirst, grief, sorrow and sickness will pass away.  We can know in part what it means to be well, satisfied and content through Christ, and we will know this completely when we reside in new, glorified bodies in a new heavens and earth where righteousness dwells in the presence of God forever.  Life is good, but the best we can experience today by our efforts pales in comparison to the lasting satisfaction and joy found in Jesus where contentment and peace are abundant and constant.  God is worthy to be praised when we become aware of our lack and personal need, for it opens our eyes to the poverty of anything this world can offer and the sufficiency of Christ.