Month: <span>July 2017</span>

9-5 ThesesWe’re a generation living with an identity crisis. We have been told that we can choose to be whoever we are, and with that choice, for most of us comes confusion. Where does that leave us? Identity comes from where we come from, where we’re going, who we belong to. It is a complex thing, and not one that is always consciously understood, and yet it still defines us.

I remember that it was only once I had left home and began to live in a different country to the one that I was born in that I became more interested in family history – my origins. Subconsciously I was trying to establish my identity, and that identity had roots. If we decide that we can arbitrarily change that identity we are in effect cutting off our roots. But roots are the very thing in which we thrive. A tree without roots is mere wood. A person without roots doesn’t know where they are going or where they have come from.

The Bible, cover to cover is given to explain not just our roots, but also our destination. The Bible makes explicit what we can see in part as we look at the universe in which we live. The Bible also makes clear that we are God’s and he is ours. He made us, he has plans for us, he has plans for this entire universe.

And so, our identity is bound up in God. We cannot choose it and more than we can choose our parents. And yet, just as a child can disown his parents and walk away from them, we too can walk away from God. The story of the Bible, and of Jesus in particular is that God is not willing to walk away from us. He sent his Son, Jesus to win us back, to open the door to a restored relationship.

It is neatly summed up in the Apostle Peter’s first letter (2:10):

“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy.”

Our identity, our belonging, our hope and destiny is all bound up in a loving God who has shown mercy, who has at great cost opened the door to forgiveness and reconciliation for all. Our God has offered to include us in his people – that’s our identity.

In the book of Hebrews we’re told of a new covenant. The single word translated by these two literally means a ‘together covenant’ – the idea being that of bringing all things together: a consummating covenant. This is the ultimate goal that God has for this universe – a people that belong to him, loved, prepared, as a bride for a groom and kept for all eternity!

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Hebrews 8:10

Bible General

In this busy world it’s so easy to drop our gaze. What I mean by that is that the day to day struggles of life, the pressures of this world attract our attention and draw us away from seeing the ultimate reality. The here and now distracts us from the hereafter.

Of course, that is what this world would have us do. I know that we all have to live, work, deal face to face with life here and now, but, just like Brother Lawrence did, we can live here and now with our eyes on the hereafter.

One of the most exciting, encouraging and hope filled passages in Scripture is found in the book of Revelation. It describes what the Apostle John saw of that final consummation of Christ and his Church. It’s found in Revelation chapter 19.

We know that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns he will do so in power and glory, and that every eye will see him and all will bow the knee. But after that, after the judgement, after the ‘come inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’, after this comes the Marriage Supper of the Lamb!

I recently had the opportunity to meet my MP in the Central Lobby of the Palace of Westminster. I had to ask to see him, I then had to negotiate my way to the Palace of Westminster, through security, proving that I had an invitation, and then into the Central Lobby to await the minister. After jumping through hoops I was on the inside, ready for the meeting, I could relax. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is on the inside. It’s for the redeemed, the saved, the loved ones, the people of God – the Bride of Christ!

Just pause for a moment from the things that demand your attention, the hoops we must jump through, and dwell on the hope that we have. We’re told in Jude that Jesus himself will present us before the presence of God’s glory with great joy. Imagine that! Not only faultless, but Jesus taking joy in presenting you and I before his Father’s glorious throne!

Now, consider the picture that John saw of that marriage supper. First of all there is the heavenly host, a multitude crying out: Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God! Then the Church, the Bride of Christ joins in the song and the sound of it is so powerful that the voices blend as one into what sounds like the roar of many waters. A wall of sound in worship and adoration of their Lord and Saviour, their Redeemer and King!

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

Consider this, hope in this, hold on to this, and, if you know that you have been saved from your sin, redeemed to the Lord Jesus Christ, then, take to yourself this assurance:

“Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!”

General