mindy

It means that if God is going to have hands they will be our hands. If the head is to be taken around the world it is we who will be taking Him.

Being seated next to Jesus gives us the freedom that Paul speaks of in Romans. We are free to defeat evil because we have all of the power of heaven committed to seeing us succeed.

The sanctification of our hearts and lives is proof to the Christian that God is at work, but the proof that Paul offers to the doubtful Ephesians is the work of God in Jesus' life. Paul is telling us that God can sanctify us (raise us to new life from the death we live in now) because He's already done it in Jesus. Because God has proven that Jesus is best, every other god-like thing must go to the back of the line.

The priest carried the sacrifice into God's presence according to the rules and laws that God covenanted with His people so that the whole nation could be forgiven of their sins. Would that we could carry Jesus as we enter into the presence of the Father and by lifting Jesus up show all people how much God wishes to save them by His great and awesome love. We are called to be priests, the real question is do we reign as we have been called?

I am sorrowful because I pour out His blood with my sin, it's personal. If I were the only person broken by the tragic weight of sin, Jesus would still have lived a painful life and died a tragic death, just for me. I am joyful because the God sized hole in me is filled by the mercy that was loosed by Jesus' obedience unto death and power unto resurrection.

Giving grace is good practice for realizing how wonderful it is to receive. Giving grace is hard work and we are much more grateful to receive when we have struggled to give.

I hesitate at the thought of a Passover meal in Heaven because death will be abolished in heaven. So I guess the notion is that the "passing over" has become permanent. The angel of death won't be invited to the bride's supper and so maybe "passed over" for an invitation. Yeah, maybe that's it!!!

God's people need not fear the angel of death. It has never had any power over the blood of the innocent slaughtered on our behalf.

Animal sacrifice teaches us many things. First, it reminds us that something has seperated us from God (sin) and that gap must be bridged by specific and willful obedience. The right things must be done in the right ways, not because they heal the sin fracture, but because they invite God's mercy to rain down on us, and it is His mercy that brings the healing. The sacrificial system invites a continual re-evaluation of our relationship with God so that we might remain on the mercy side of His character (in which He gives us life), rather than attempting to stand proudly before the justice of Holy God (in which we choose to stay dead). Animal sacrifice shows us that God is willing to accept a lesser offering as long as it is the best you can bring and given with a contrite heart.

God delights in showing us mercy because we are His people and so that we can show others that they too can be saved. Animal sacrifices provided a tangible, concrete example and ritual that showed God to others. Pure and simple evangelism, seems to me.

I am grateful that God uses our preferences to teach us. Blood is repulsive and sticky and disease ridden, in the same way sin is repulsive and sticky and disease ridden. God uses the ritual of blood sacrifice to illustrate for us how grotesque sin is when viewed from His perspective. It becomes obvious that the blood of the animal cannot cover the repulsiveness of the sin, it is only by grace that God allows the sin to be covered by the obedience of His only begotten Lamb.

2 Corinthians 11.2 - I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. For I promised you as a pure bride to one husband, Christ. As the bride of Christ we must never share our love with another, but remain pure in our hearts and on fire with His love. When we use our gifts and graces for the adversary we are selling the best of what God created us to be. This is prostitution of the highest order, selling a heavenly blessing for an earthly satisfaction.

Gideon's continuing leadership in Israel holds the same promise for us as the kingship of David. David fouled up with Bathsheba and Uriah (2 Samuel 11), Gideon fouled up with the ephod. These leaders were allowed to continue by the grace of God even though they sinned. You and I are also guilty of many sins and yet God's grace will still strengthen us and make us great disciples!!! We are not freed from the snare by our own hands, we are freed from the snare by the hand of God. Cool!

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: I guess God knew what He was talking about in those ten commandments! We humans cannot be trusted to resist the temptation (the snare) of worshipping what we can see instead of worshipping God whom we cannot fathom.

In Psalms 83.9 Do to them as you did to the Midianites or as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the Kishon River. 10 They were destroyed at Endor, and their decaying corpses fertilized the soil. 11 Let their mighty nobles die as Oreb and Zeeb did. Let all their princes die like Zebah and Zalmunna, 12 for they said, "Let us seize for our own use these pasturelands of God!" 13 O my God, blow them away like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind! A school professor once told me "If it gets repeated, then it must be important." Psalms repeats this incident, so it must be important. Gideon's response was so right that God invites us to pray for a repetition of it anytime self centered people try to steal from God.

Sadly enough, churches today are often guilty of the sins of Succoth and Peniel. We are afraid of new people, folks who are different from us, kids with orange hair and rings in their belly buttons, folks who don't know how to dress for or behave in church. And when we become afraid we do exactly as these cities did, we become inhospitable, unloving and unfriendly. I pray that God will remind us that He is greater than any enemy we fear.

7:22 "...the LORD caused the warriors in the camp to fight against each other with their swords." I think we are still tempted to say that the confusion was caused by Gideon's strategy. This verse makes it clear that the confusion was a gift from God. Let us remember that God was (and still is) in control of the enemy however powerful the enemy seems to be.

I wonder how this relates to Jesus feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves?