Precious
When was the last time you thanked God for Jesus? And for His precious gift of salvation. I was reminded recently, that having Jesus in my life is the most precious thing in this world. In the era that we live in, bombarded with sensationalist hyperbole and words that don't really mean anything, it's easy to forget what the word precious means.
Jesus describes, in Matthew 13:44, the kingdom of heaven, which is like a man who finds treasure and in his joy, reburies it in a field, and then sells all he has to buy that field again. How have we taken the word of God and turned it into something common and trashy? When was the last time I saw the kingdom of heaven as a precious treasure?
I was just thinking about that today as I walked from Waterloo to Westminster Abbey. Imagine that man's excitement and joy, the Bible says, in selling all his possessions. To him, there must not have been a better setting for getting rid of all his stuff. What did it all count for, his pittance, compared to that glorious treasure he had exchanged it for?
When was the last time I felt that way about being a Christian, a child of God?
How precious is my Jesus to me?
And then after that, at SWOT, we looked at Romans 1, and how all man has sinned, and the extent of our sin. In our study, we learnt that sin, as Romans 1:23 describes it, meant exchanging the glory of the immortal God for the mere images of Man and animals - desiring to BE God, and to lust after the glory and authority and honor due Him. And the reasonable punishment for that, is being given up to our sin, or as the Bible says in Romans, being given up to our own sins by God. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, that there are two kinds of people, those who bow the knee to God and say "Thy will be done" and those who God turns to and says, "then thy will be done". And as James says, being given up to sin gives birth then, to death, and separation from God.
And yet, in Christ, we are spared from that death - how precious!
And it's best described in Isaiah 35:10
"And the ransomed of the LORD will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away."
Jesus describes, in Matthew 13:44, the kingdom of heaven, which is like a man who finds treasure and in his joy, reburies it in a field, and then sells all he has to buy that field again. How have we taken the word of God and turned it into something common and trashy? When was the last time I saw the kingdom of heaven as a precious treasure?
I was just thinking about that today as I walked from Waterloo to Westminster Abbey. Imagine that man's excitement and joy, the Bible says, in selling all his possessions. To him, there must not have been a better setting for getting rid of all his stuff. What did it all count for, his pittance, compared to that glorious treasure he had exchanged it for?
When was the last time I felt that way about being a Christian, a child of God?
How precious is my Jesus to me?
And then after that, at SWOT, we looked at Romans 1, and how all man has sinned, and the extent of our sin. In our study, we learnt that sin, as Romans 1:23 describes it, meant exchanging the glory of the immortal God for the mere images of Man and animals - desiring to BE God, and to lust after the glory and authority and honor due Him. And the reasonable punishment for that, is being given up to our sin, or as the Bible says in Romans, being given up to our own sins by God. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, that there are two kinds of people, those who bow the knee to God and say "Thy will be done" and those who God turns to and says, "then thy will be done". And as James says, being given up to sin gives birth then, to death, and separation from God.
And yet, in Christ, we are spared from that death - how precious!
And it's best described in Isaiah 35:10
"And the ransomed of the LORD will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away."
posted by leb at 3:38 PM
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