The Victor Gives Victory

"Some of the spoils won in battles they dedicated to maintain the house of the LORD."

1 Chronicles 26:27

One attribute of God's character is described in His name "Jehovah-Jireh:"  the LORD will provide.  God provided bountiful, rich land for His people whether they were employed in the fields or serving in the temple of God.  People were commanded to bring a tithe of their increase to the temple so priests and Levites who were not able to work the field or raise cattle could be sustained.  This passage also reveals spoil kings and fighters obtained from victories in battle was also brought to the house of the LORD.  It was the spoil from victory that provided the necessities to maintain the building.  It is an interesting thought, that victories and losses on the battlefield had a direct impact on temple maintenance.

As I mused over this fact, I thought about the various conditions which existed concerning the temple of God.  King Solomon built a gorgeous temple with gold, precious stones, and bronze that was razed to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar.  Even when it was later rebuilt, it did not have the same glory.  There were seasons when the doors were actually sealed shut and the inside was filled with so much rubbish no one could enter!  During the reign of some kings the book of the Law was read, and at other times it was misplaced for years!  Many factors went into the good or poor maintenance of the house of God:  wicked or righteous kings, the negligence or devotion of the high priest and Levites at the time, and sometimes the people were more preoccupied with their own houses and ceased to give.  Other times the giving was so abundant that the people were told to please stop!

My mind carried this thought another step further because the Bible teaches that Christians are now the temple of the Holy Spirit.  As it was true for the physical temple made with hands, so it is true for us spiritually:  how greatly can spiritual condition vary from person and person and season to season!  Though we have been given the victory through Jesus Christ, we need to personally appropriate and maintain the good condition of our hearts, minds, and lives.  Some seasons are filled with joy, strength, and courage.  But even after being delivered from our sins and embracing the victory affording in the person of Christ, we can become battle-weary, fearful, self-focused, and beaten down.  We can be the ones being spoiled!  We can be robbed of our joy and be deceived and influenced through the lies of Satan and our flesh.

Over time (and speaking for myself), this temple of the Holy Spirit can fall into physical and spiritual disarray.  We grow weary of cohabiting with Tobiah and his filth (Neh. 13:7), and try our best to ignore altars to idols set up in the most holy place.  We plug our ears at the annoying cries of the moneychangers and give up trying to clean up after all the animals the Pharisees are hawking.  Sometimes we are content to close up and bar the doors because we are so fed up with the cacophonous confusion!  But by God's grace, He gently reveals it is high time to make a whip purge the temple of the Holy Spirit by the authority and virtue of Christ's blood.  Because of the victory Christ has won, we are to be purified, sanctified, and consecrated wholly unto God again.

Were we unfaithful yesterday?  It matters not, long as we repent and are faithful from now on.  Love keeps no record of wrongs but rejoices in the truth without failing.  We are the temple of the Holy Spirit if we have repented and trusted in Christ.  The spoils Christ has won He gives to us that we might present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy, and acceptable unto God.  God will sustain us, but we also have a responsibility to maintain a life marked by holy, righteous, good works all to the glory of God, who has purchased us with His own blood (Acts 20:28).  Christ is victor, and freely grants us the spoils of victory:  He gives Himself according to the power of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 1:30-31 reads, "But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption--³¹ that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the LORD."

The Promise for your Children

When I returned to my seat at a recent conference, pamphlets titled "A Revival Promise" written by C.H. Spurgeon were placed upon each chair.  According to the back of the publication, this is a sermon taken from Volume 20 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.  There was a paragraph I though particularly relevant for all those who have children.

"I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring."  Parents, lay hold greedily upon these points of the promise.  I am afraid we do not think enough of the promise which the lord has made to our children.  Grace does not run in the blood; we have never fallen into the gross error of birthright membership, or the supposition that the child of godly parents has a right to Christian ordinances.  We know that religion is a personal matter, and is not of blood nor of birth; we know also that all children are heirs of wrath until the grace of God regenerates them; but still there is some meaning in that gracious saying, "The promise is unto you and your children, even to as many as the Lord your God shall call."  Paul was assuredly not wrong, but sweetly right, when he said to the jailer, in answer to his question,  "What must I do to be saved?" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house."  Lay hold of those words, Christian parents, and do not be content to get half the promise.  Pray to God to fulfill it all.  God to Him this very day, you mothers and fathers, and implore Him to have pity upon your offspring.  Cry to Him, and say, "Thou hast said, 'I will pour my Spirit on thy seed, and my blessing on thine offspring:' do it, Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake."

Guts to Trust

As I reflect upon my recent trip to the United States for a pastor's conference, I have a renewed appreciation for the Bible.  It is the divinely inspired, living and authoritative Word of God.  No man could ever exhaust the wealth of wisdom contained within those pages.  There is always more for us to learn and obey.  Though God's Word does not change, it changes us and remains relevant still.  To every person in whom God has breathed a living soul have these words been written.

A danger grows from our familiarity with passages, phrases, and events in the Bible.  When we listen to a sermon or read the Word, we can fall into the trap of simply confirming our current beliefs.  Instead of reading for the purpose of entering into God's presence and listening for the still small voice of the Holy Spirit, we read only to stroke our spiritual pride.  There is a big difference between agreeing with God's Word and believing it.  A man might agree that a course of action is good and right, but that does not means he will actually work toward that end.  In Aesop's fable called "Belling the Cat," a group of mice agree their safety would be greatly improved if a bell was attached to the collar of the cat.  The ringing of the bell would alert them to his presence and give them advance warning so they might escape.  A venerable mouse stood up and said, "This is a great idea - but who is going to bell the cat?"  Everyone agreed in the plan, but it didn't mean they would actually have the guts to put it into practice.

For us the question is not of guts but of faith.  Do our lives reveal we actually believe what God has said in his Word enough to obey?  Another danger is we would limit God according to our limited understanding of scripture or theology.  Yesterday I began to work on a poem about a man who was shackled by sin and was imprisoned awaiting a death sentence.  Jesus appears to Him and offers salvation:  "If you repent and trust in Me, I will free and grant you eternal life!"  The man places his trust in Christ and the chains fall from his hands.  For a while, he delights in reading the Bible as he grows in knowledge and the wisdom of God.  But as time passes, he becomes rigid in his theology and limits God according to what he can understand.  He builds himself a safe, predictable house fortified with his personal experience and theology.  He bars the door to make sure no heretics could possibly enter.  Sadly, the man dies in this prison of his own design because of his pride like so many Pharisees before him.  At the beginning he was chained in sin:  after being freed the poor man used his knowledge to confine God with shackles.  The moral of the story?  Faith frees both God and man.

Jesus couldn't do many miracles in His hometown because of unbelief.  If I refuse to believe what God says in His Word, I limit His work in my own life.  The children of Israel were not able to enter into the land of promise because of their unbelief.  Asaph writes in Psalm 78:40-41: "How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert! ⁴¹ Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel."  How tragic that I would limit God by my unbelief!  When I walk by sight and not by faith, I hinder the miraculous work He desires to do.  How sad that the ones who God delights in can grieve and provoke Him even after He has paid the price of our deliverance and atonement!  God's Word says He makes all things new!  God's Word says that nothing is impossible with God!

What grace God gives:  even after we construct a little box where we give Him permission to operate, He opens our eyes and hearts to trust Him.  He frees us from our spiritual pride and rigid unbelief.  He softens us to yield to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  May we never read the scriptures to remind ourselves of what we already know, but so we might grow in ways we once never thought possible by grace through faith in Christ.  May God give us the guts to trust!

Fire from on High

"And David built there an altar to the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called on the LORD; and He answered him from heaven by fire on the altar of burnt offering."

1 Chronicles 21:26

It's easy to gloss over a passage like this and miss the significance and personal application for us.  I confess I have missed it many times!  It is beautiful when God by grace removes the scales from our eyes and we see clearly something we never noticed before in His Word.  I pray today this is true for you and me.

David chose to number the people of Israel and the thing displeased the LORD.  After admitting his sin, king David was given three choices by God:  three years of famine, three months of being destroyed before their enemies, or three days of divine pestilence.  David chose to fall into the hands of God for three days "for very great are His mercies."  A grievous plague broke out and seventy thousand of the children of Israel were slain.  1 Chronicles 21:15 reads, "And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. As he was destroying, the LORD looked and relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who was destroying, "It is enough; now restrain your hand." And the angel of the LORD stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite."  After purchasing the threshing floor from Ornan, David set up and altar to the LORD.  He made ready the sacrifice and prayed to God in heaven:  God answered Him from heaven with fire upon the altar!

When I was a little boy, I read the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven to prove that God was the true God, not Ba'al.  I gathered some stones and piled them up in the shape of a small altar I had seen in my picture Bible.  I didn't have a sacrifice, but I balanced some pine needles from our tree carefully on top.  God didn't answer me with fire that day, but I knew He could have.  In scripture many times God answered with fire to show His divine approval.  God used fire as a revelation of His presence and power, both in leading His people and in judgment.  When King Solomon dedicated the temple, 2 Chronicles 7:1 records what happened:  "When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the temple."

I built an altar to the LORD as a boy not understanding the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has made the offering of animals obsolete for atonement.  Jesus once for all died to save and atone for sins of all who repent and trust in Him.  The covenant of the law has been fulfilled and we live in the days of the new covenant of Christ's blood.  The temple also was rendered unnecessary for worship, for those who are regenerated with the Holy Spirit are now themselves the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19).  The only time we see fire come down from heaven in the New Testament by a person is when the false prophet deceives people by performing this particular sign which will convince many:  Revelation 13:13 says, "He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men."

When I read the 1 Chronicles 21:26 passage, I immediately thought of when the Holy Spirit fell upon the believers on the day of Pentecost who appeared as tongues of fire over their heads.  Should we sacrifice an animal on an altar and pray that God answer with fire from heaven, we should expect nothing to happen.  God desires that the Holy Spirit fall upon His people who are called to be living sacrifices!  It is written in Romans 12:1:  "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."  Jesus has been made a sacrifice for sin, and as receivers of His forgiveness and love we are to be living sacrifices unto Him.  May we expect such an outpouring of fire from on high as we pray and seek the face of our Saviour!

What would you rather see:  fire from heaven devouring the carcass of a dead animal, or the fire of the Holy Spirit consuming you as a living sacrifice?  A person filled with the Spirit of God is better than all the animal sacrifices offered from the beginning of time until now.  Let us prepare ourselves to see the LORD, breaking up our fallow ground as we seek His presence.  May God set His church afire for His glory!