Tag: bind on earth

36.g. “For I will give it to you”

 

 

Genesis 13:14  The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the LORD.

Those are best prepared for the visits of Divine grace, whose spirits are calm, and not ruffled with passion. God will abundantly make up in spiritual peace, what we lose for preserving neighbourly peace. When our relations are separated from us, yet God is not. Observe also the promises with which God now comforted and enriched Abram. Of two things he assures him; a good land, and a numerous issue to enjoy it. The prospects seen by faith are more rich and beautiful than those we see around us. God bade him walk through the land, not to think of fixing in it, but expect to be always unsettled, and walking through it to a better Canaan. He built an altar, in token of his thankfulness to God. When God meets us with gracious promises, he expects that we should attend him with humble praises. In outward difficulties, it is very profitable for the true believer to mediate on the glorious inheritance which the Lord has for him at the last.(Henry)

Promises are given to us by God….hope, peace, joy, forgiveness, shelter, love, grace, mercy, refuge, courage…..eternal life. These promises, as such, can only be fulfilled and proclaimed by God alone.  The world will try to make like promises but has no means to follow through on them. God can and does follow through on His promises. All of God’s promises have one thing in common for the recipient – obedience. Without obedience these promises are void.  Without faith these promises are meaningless. A person can claim to know of the promise of eternal life and actually believe they have it while never living in obedience, repenting of their sin, or following, trusting, and relying on Jesus Christ. The promise of forgiveness of sin, eternal life, joy for today, and hope for tomorrow requires repentance, acknowledging and turning away from sin, and complete faith, trust, and reliance in Jesus Christ. There are no substitutions for the obedience requirements associated with the promises of God. Suffice it to say, just as there are promises of eternal life through obedience, there are promises for lives of disobedience – eternal hell and torment. To deny the promise of eternal hell and torment cancels the need for the promise of eternal life. Watering down or lessening obedience under the guise of God’s promises of grace, mercy, and love alone without the need for continued obedience and life-changing repentance, and faith-filled acts of honoring and glorifying Jesus Christ in all thoughts, words, and deeds are nothing more than man’s attempt to gain the promises of God while living apart from Him and obedient reliance in Him.

Do not think for a single minute that the promises of God are separated from continued growing obedience to Him. 

6.h.

Revelation 3:7  “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.

Matthew 16:19    I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Job 11:10    If he passes through and imprisons and summons the court, who can turn him back?

John 14:6    Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

1 John 5:20    And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

We are occupied sometimes with the want to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  We listen and want to believe someone is telling us the truth.  Sometimes we just hear what we want to hear and that becomes truth for us.  We are going through some political hail storm in our country right now.  Investigations, interrogations, and judicial inquiries fill the news on social networks, media outlets, TV, and radio.  We hear things only to find out what someone said 3 months or 2 years ago was not the truth.  New evidence is found and the foundation for our beliefs in the situation is no longer supported.  I don’t care what side of the current situation you are on, or what media outlets you choose to listen too, they all have given some truth, some half-truths, and some outright lies.  It is hard to trust what we hear and who to believe.  At some point, many just don’t listen anymore because they get fed up having to try to sort it out.

I think some are the same way when it comes to reading and believing what is recorded in the bible.  People apply the skeptic’s eye they have been trained to use on the culture and society they live in.  They read what is written and say that can not be true because “they did not personally see it”, “it has never happened before”, “that is not in agreement with science”, and “if a man wrote it, it must be tainted with what they believe to be the truth”.

Here we read the Holy One and the True one is speaking to this church in Philadelphia. He is one we can believe.  He is one who speaks no lies. He is in control.  He shuts, no one can open and what He opens no one can shut.  There is so much to unpack in this it would take years and volumes of writing to scratch the surface of it.  Three words describe God, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, and they are the beginning of our foundation of truth.    All-powerful, all-knowing, and always present.  If we do not start here it will be hard to believe or have faith or put action to our faith.  The church in Philadelphia was such a church of faith and to whom this letter is written.