The Rescue - Why Did Jesus Come?

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Introduction

In just a few weeks most of us will be hovering over a gastronomical feast preparing to eat much more than we should, appropriately celebrating the generosity of God towards us that is much more than we deserve.

Not long after, we will celebrate the most sublime example of that generosity, the greatest reason for giving such hearty thanks just weeks before—God come down. God getting low. God with us. Emmanuel.

Christmas starts the story of Jesus, the greatest tale ever told. But it is not really a tale at all, because the story is a true one. It is the most important part of the true Story of Reality.

What follows is an excerpt from The Story of Reality—How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between. In this part of the Story I answer the second of the two most important questions anyone could ever ask about the remarkable man from Nazareth: Why did He come? It is a question there is far too much confusion about, even for those who call the Story their own.

To answer that question I first want to tell what Jesus did not come to do. Then I want to tell you why He did come. It’s captured in the most important Christmas verse in the Bible you will never see printed on a Christmas card and you will never hear recited at a Christmas pageant. It tells of a rescue operation that formally started at Christmas, but ended in a dark event decades later. It tells the reason Jesus was born. It tells the reason God came down.

The Rescue

Now to our second question: What did Jesus come to do? Since there is more debate on this than there ought to be, we must first correct a misunderstanding. Sometimes knowing what Jesus did not come to do is almost as important as knowing what He did come to do, because a wrong understanding of the first can lead to confusion on the second.

So let us be clear. Jesus did not come to help us get along, or teach us to take care of the poor, or to restore “social justice.”¹ To some, this assertion is a bold stroke, since they have been told just the opposite. This is because there are many noble people who are drawn to Jesus for His moral excellence (as they should be). However, often their admiration of His civic virtue has distracted them from a more important matter.

Their mistake is thinking that Jesus came principally to teach us how to live a better life. He did not. God had already sent many before with the kind of advice we need to hear, and there was no point in His personally coming down merely to repeat what had already been said. No, Jesus came for a different reason.

What I am going to say next will come as a shock to some, but here it is. You can eliminate every single thing Jesus ever said in His life about the poor and social justice, and still you will not undermine His main message one bit. As severe as that may sound, this is precisely what one of Christ’s closest followers actually did.

The Gospel of John is the last biography written on Jesus, and it came to us from His last surviving Apostle, the “beloved” disciple John, a member of Jesus’ intimate inner circle. Many think it the most elegant summary and most definitive statement of who Jesus was and what He came to do. Yet you can read from John’s first sentence to his last and you will not find a single word about helping the poor or restoring social justice. Not one. In John’s lone reference to the poor, Jesus is actually somewhat dismissive of them.² That is not because He doesn’t care about them, but because He is comparing their situation with something far more important.

This observation about John’s account in itself seems enough to make the point about Jesus’ focus, but let’s go a bit further. Jesus gave four major discourses—the Sermon on the Mount, the Bread of Life Discourse, the Olivet Discourse, and the Upper Room Discourse.³ Only in the first does He mention the poor at all. Yet even here there are two qualifiers you must keep in mind.

First, in His Sermon on the Mount Jesus commends not the poor per se, but rather the poor in spirit. To them, He says, belongs the Kingdom of Heaven. There is a reason the Kingdom belongs to them—not because they are poverty stricken (their income is irrelevant to Jesus), but because they are morally broken and they know it.⁴ That is what “poor in spirit” means. Picture the tax collector in Jesus’ parable—hardly a destitute man—beating his breast pleading, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”⁵ This man proclaiming his spiritual poverty goes away justified, Jesus says, while the Pharisee, whose spiritual arrogance clouds his genuine spiritual need, does not.

The second qualifier I want you to keep in mind about Jesus’ comments on the poor is this. In the vast majority of cases where Jesus mentions the poor, He does so not to commend the poor as such, but to make a point about something else—hypocrisy, a widow’s generosity, Zaccheus’s repentance, the rich young ruler’s confusion, or a lesson about the afterlife.⁶ Even when He mentions them, the plight of the poor simply was not the focus of Jesus’ teaching.

Now, we must not conclude from this that Jesus didn’t care about the poor and so we need not care, either. He cared very much about them, and the Story has much to say about their situation. Do not miss, though, that He also cared about the rich and powerful. Jesus helped everyone and anyone who came to Him—poor beggar or prostitute, wealthy tax collector or Pharisee. The divide for Jesus was not between the poor and the rich, but between the proud and the repentant, regardless of income or social standing. Miss that, and you miss everything.

These are the facts we must face if we are to get Jesus right. “Social justice” is not the Gospel. It was not Jesus’ message. It was not why He came. His real message was much more radical. Jesus’ teaching—and the Story itself—focuses on something else. Not on the works of Christians, but rather on the work of Christ. That is what the Story teaches.

And so our question remains: Why did God come down? What was the reason He became a man? What did He come to earth to do? The Story tells us.

I want you to think for a moment about what the Story says about Christmas. Now when I say “Christmas,” I am not speaking of any of those things that usually come to mind when you think about the birth of Christ. I do not want you to think, for example, about shepherds or wise men or stables or mangers or anything like that. Those things all have their place, but they have nothing at all to do with my point.

I am talking about something in the Story you probably have never noticed. I want you to consider the most important Christmas verse in the Story that you will never see on a Christmas card, and you will never hear in a Christmas pageant because it is not in the accounts of Jesus’ birth at all. In fact, it does not appear anywhere in the record of His life. Instead, you find it in a dark and foreboding passage that speaks of blood and sacrifice and death. It is a section of the Story recounting a ghastly, grisly system of slaughter where bulls and goats were bled out, their innocent lives forfeit on behalf of others who were the guilty ones.

Now, I think it is obvious to just about everyone that animals can never really pay for people at all. The system of sacrifice God gave to the Hebrews, as important as it was, served only as a kind of sop, a temporary measure to cover man’s moral wound for the moment. It would never do in the long run, and it was not meant to. No, man owes the debt, and in the long run man, not creatures, must pay. And only a sinless man—someone with no debt of his own—could cover the debt of another. And only a man who was more than a man could ever pay for the sins of multitudes.

And this brings us to the most important Christmas verse you will never hear on Christmas. Here it is:

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings You were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about Me in the scroll—I have come to do Your will, O God.’” (Heb. 10:5-7 NIV)

Note the opening words of this passage: “When Christ came into the world….” The Story is saying that on that first Christmas, in some incredible way the eternal Son of God in a baby’s body said to His Father, “Here I am. I will do as You have asked. I accept the body You have prepared for Me, the body that will bleed out in perfect payment for sin.”

And this is the answer to our question. This is why Jesus came to earth. God’s Son surrendered His sinless human self to be the future unblemished offering to perfectly and completely save sinners.

And this we do find in the birth narratives, everywhere. God tells Joseph that Mary “will give birth to a son, and you will give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” In the field that first Christmas night the angel tells the shepherds, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord.” Zacharias prophesies over his son, the infant John Baptist, saying John would go prepare the way for “the Lord,” and “give His people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.” Thirty years later John points at the Lord Jesus Christ and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”⁷

Each of these events echoes our unsung Christmas verse: “A body You prepared for Me.” The Lord. The Christ. The Savior. Emmanuel. God with us, who would die for us. The Lamb of God.

So, the Story tells us the precise reason the Son came to Earth. Not to teach love and peace and care for the poor, but to submit Himself to something unspeakably violent and brutal. That is why every crèche ought to have a cross hanging over it, because Jesus was born to die. And on this point Jesus speaks clearly:

“God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (Jn. 3:17 NIV)
“The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Lk. 19:10 NIV)
“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Lk. 5:32 NIV)
“I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative.” (Jn. 10:17-18 NASB)
“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28 NIV)

I want you to think very carefully about Jesus’ last statement, because there are three questions we must answer to understand His meaning. The first is, “What is a ransom?” Well, a ransom is the price paid to purchase a hostage or a slave, of course. A ransom buys a body. Second, “Whose body does Jesus buy with the ransom?” He buys those who are held hostage. He pays a price to purchase sinners, rebels, and slaves. Finally, “What is the price He will pay?” Jesus will buy bodies by surrendering His own body. “A body You prepared for Me.” He will sacrifice Himself to save others.

So, Jesus came to earth to save sinners. The statement is so common to our ears, it is easy to miss its significance. “Save” means to rescue from imminent danger. Jesus came to rescue us because we were in danger. What was that danger? What was Jesus rescuing us from? Here is the answer. Jesus did not come to rescue us from our ignorance or our poverty or our oppressors or even from ourselves. Jesus came to rescue us from the Father. ⁸

Remember, the King is angry.⁹ He is the One who is offended. He is the One who is owed. He is the Sovereign we have rebelled against, the Father we have disobeyed, the friend we have betrayed. And that is a dangerous place for us to be. Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.” Later in the Story we learn, “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”¹⁰

That is the bad news. And it is very bad news, to be sure. Yet, without the bad news, the good news is not good. And the good news is very, very good. Here it is: The Father has mounted a rescue operation. There has been an invasion.¹¹ God came down. “A body You prepared for Me.”

Jesus’ life was filled with many extraordinary deeds, so many, one of His disciples wrote, the world itself could not contain the books needed to record them.¹² But there are two very particular things Jesus did that were vital to the rescue.

First, Jesus lived the life we should live, but do not. We rebel; He submitted. We sin; He obeyed. We live for self; He lived for the Father. We falter; He succeeded. He had no hint of sin, no darkness, no shadow. As one has put it, “He remained free, uncontaminated, uncompromised.”¹³ Jesus never failed, obeying even to the death. This no one has ever done. There was no one like Him.

Second, Jesus made a trade. He took His perfect life and He traded it for our rotten lives. He gets our badness—and the judgment and punishment that go with it. We get His goodness. We take His place, and He takes our place.

If that seems hard to imagine (and I understand completely if it does), let me offer something that might help. On a flight from Jacksonville to Miami I spoke with a dear Muslim woman about the differences between the God of Jesus and the God of Mohammed. I said that both were holy and both demanded we be holy, too, and there will be justice to pay because we are not. But on this issue of justice, I said, we come to an important distinction.

I asked the Muslim woman to imagine our plane being hijacked and the terrorists trying to drag her out onto the tarmac to kill her in front of cameras for all the world to see. I then asked her to imagine that I put my own body between hers and the attackers and said, “Don’t take her. Take me instead.” She said she could not imagine anyone doing that for her.

Yet this, I told her, is what God has done in Jesus. To satisfy justice, God came down. Not Allah; Yahweh. Not Mohammed; Jesus. God stepped out of Heaven and dwelt among us—“A body You prepared for Me”—and said to the Father, “Take Me instead.” That was the trade.

The trade took place on a small outcropping of rock outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. It was called Golgotha, the place of the skull. We know it as Calvary, the place of the cross. It was the reason Jesus was born. It is the reason God came down.

¹ The term “social justice” is misleading. The poor only need justice if they have been wronged in some way. Otherwise, the Story teaches charity and mercy towards those in need. The view that all poor people are victims is a recent invention. It is not what Jesus taught, and it is not part of the Story.

² The single reference in John to the poor is found in Jn. 12:8: “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have Me.” (NIV)

³ Find the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5-7; the Bread of Life Discourse in Jn. 6; the Olivet Discourse in Matt. 24, Lk. 21, Mk. 13; and the Upper Room Discourse Jn. 13-17.

⁴ Jesus does make reference to the poor in Lk. 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” (NASB) Even here, though, it seems clear that, in light of the rest of the verse and everything that follows about Jesus’ teaching on “the Gospel,” He is principally making reference to spiritual benefits, not material benefits.

⁵ “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Lk. 18:9-14 NIV)

⁶ Hypocrisy (Matt. 6:2-3), a widow’s generosity (Lk. 21:2-3), Zaccheus’s repentance (Lk. 19:8), the rich young ruler’s confusion (Matt. 19:21), a lesson about the afterlife (Lk. 16:20, 22).

⁷ “And this we do find in the birth narratives….” Matt. 1:21 (NIV), Lk. 2:11 (NIV), Lk. 1:76-77 (NIV), Jn. 1:29 (NASB).

⁸ Jesus saves us from the Father, but His intention is not at odds with the Father since it was the Father who, out of love, sent Jesus to rescue the world in the first place.

⁹ The point about the King being angry is developed earlier, in chapter 15 of The Story of Reality.

¹⁰ “Do not fear those who kill the body…” (Matt. 10:28 NASB), “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31 NASB)

¹¹ The idea that the incarnation is a kind of invasion of enemy-occupied territory comes from C.S Lewis in Mere Christianity.

¹² “The world itself could not contain the books…” (Jn. 21:25 NASB)

¹³ “He remained free, uncontaminated, uncompromised,” John Stott, The Cross Of Christ (Downers Grove: IVP, 1986), 231.

Lesson 14: Hope and Comfort in Christ’s Coming (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

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October 30, 2016

We live in a time when many people lack hope. Those who battle depression usually lack hope and depression is one of the most prevalent emotional disorders in our society. Plenty of things fuel a lack of hope: Current world conditions, including the spread of Islamic terrorism; the increase of godlessness all around us; economic worries; disappointments in life; health concerns as we age; the loss of loved ones; and, our own approaching deaths.

But the Bible wants us as believers to stand out as people of hope in this hopeless world. In Romans 5:3-5, Paul explains: “… we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” In Romans 15:13, he prays, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Paul has already (1:3) commended the Thessalonians for their “steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” He added (1 Thess. 1:10) that he had heard how they were waiting “for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.” But when Timothy returned from his visit there, he told Paul that some in the church were grieving because they had expected Christ to return soon, but in the meanwhile, some of their loved ones had died. Did this mean that these loved ones would miss out on Christ’s glorious coming for His church? Would their resurrection be delayed until later? So Paul addresses this concern in our text. He shows us that …

The certainty of Christ’s glorious coming gives us hope and comfort in our grief.

Before we work through these verses, I need to mention that this text, along with John 14:1-3 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-52, forms the biblical basis for the pretribulation rapture of the church (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 & 2 Thessalonians [Moody Press], p. 124). John MacArthur (pp. 135-137) gives nine reasons why he thinks the rapture of the church will precede the tribulation and second coming. But, he admits (p. 135), “No solitary text of Scripture makes the entire case for the pretribulation Rapture.” In other words, it must be inferred by comparing these three texts with other references to Christ’s second coming.

While I greatly respect MacArthur as a godly man and a solid Bible teacher, as I explained last week, I find it difficult to believe that the Bible does not directly teach a major doctrine, such as a second “Second Coming” of Christ, but rather it must be inferred. I don’t have time to go through MacArthur’s nine reasons. But I think that his reasons for the pretribulation rapture are inferences based on assuming what he’s trying to prove. So at this point, my understanding is in line with historic premillennialism, namely, that Christ will come at the end of the tribulation to take us to be with Him before He establishes His millennial kingdom on earth. In short, our text is not explicitly teaching a pretribulation rapture of the church unless we read it into the text. Rather, it gives us hope and comfort through the promise of Christ’s glorious coming.

One other thing to say in advance is that Paul did not write these things so that we can draw elaborate prophecy charts or to satisfy our curiosity about future world events. Rather, his concern is pastoral: he wants us to experience hope and comfort in the Lord when we lose believing loved ones based upon the certain promise of His coming. Note these three main truths:

1. The promise of Christ’s coming is certain because He was raised from the dead and because we have His direct word on it.

1 Thess. 4:14-15a: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord ….”

A. The promise of Christ’s coming is certain because He was raised from the dead.

When Paul states, “For if we believe,” he’s not implying any uncertainty. The Greek text implies, “since we believe” (ESV). Paul uses “Jesus,” the human name of our Lord (only used elsewhere in this letter in 1:10, also in connection with His resurrection), to show that our faith in Christ’s coming is based on the historical facts of His life, death, and resurrection. If Jesus was only a mythical figure, the embellishment of some legendary character who really didn’t do the things reported in the four gospels, then none of the apostles would have suffered and given their lives to proclaim Him as Lord and Savior. Paul’s point is that Jesus’ bodily return is just as certain as His physical death, burial, and resurrection, which are historically validated facts.

It’s interesting that Paul says that Jesus died, but Christians have fallen asleep (1 Thess. 4:13, 14, 15). While other ancient cultures used “sleep” as a euphemism for death, Paul seems deliberate when he contrasts Jesus’ death over against believers’ sleep. Jesus bore the full wrath of God for us, dying in our place (1 Cor. 15:3-4). If our trust is in Him to bear our sins, then physical death becomes not a curse, but more like sleep. This implies several things:

First, it does not imply “soul sleep.” The Seventh Day Adventists and some other groups teach that when we die, our soul sleeps until Christ’s second coming. But Paul said (2 Cor. 5:8) that to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. He said that he wanted to depart and be with Christ (Phil. 1:23). Jesus told the repentant thief on the cross (Luke 23:43), “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” When Stephen was stoned to death, he cried out (Acts 7:59, 60), “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” “Having said this, he fell asleep.” And, as Paul goes on to say (1 Thess. 5:10), “whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him.” Soul sleep is not biblical.

Second, sleep as a metaphor for death implies that death is only temporary. You wake up from sleep. Jesus used this term when He said, just prior to raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:11), “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” As far as we know, after death our souls will be in a disembodied state with the Lord until He returns. At that point, He will raise our bodies. In Daniel 12:2 the angel reveals to the prophet, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.” It doesn’t matter whether our bodies have decayed in the ground, been eaten by vultures, exploded by a bomb, or cremated and the ashes scattered at sea. Death is only temporary for our bodies, which will be raised. But our souls go to be with the Lord the instant we die.

Also, sleep implies relief from our bodily aches and pains and rest from our earthly labors. Heaven is the “Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9). And, sleep is not harsh or fearful for believers. Paul longed to depart and be with Christ, which he said was much better than this world of suffering (Phil. 1:23).

Paul’s point in our text is that our resurrection depends on Christ’s resurrection. As Jesus told the disciples (John 14:19), “because I live, you will live also.” Or, as Paul also said (1 Cor. 6:14), “Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:14, “those who have fallen asleep in Jesus” is literally, “through Jesus.” The meaning seems to be that “just as Jesus’ death was in the hands of God, so is the death of saints in Jesus’ hands, and just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so Jesus will raise believers” (Marshall, cited by G. K. Beale, 1-2 Thessalonians [IVP Academic], p. 134). Thus death does not separate us from Him. If we fall asleep through Jesus, just as certainly as He was raised from the dead, we will be raised when He comes.

B. The promise of Christ’s coming is certain because we have His direct word on it.

Paul adds (1 Thess. 4:15a), “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord ….” These words refer to what follows concerning the order of the resurrection when Christ returns. Scholars are divided over whether Paul is referring to Christ’s general teaching regarding His coming, to some saying of Christ that is not recorded in Scripture, to a revelation of a New Testament prophet, or to a direct revelation to Paul. While there are many parallels between Paul’s teaching here and Jesus’ words in the Olivet Discourse (Beale, p. 137), nothing Christ said in the gospels reveals the order of the second coming that Paul here reveals. In 1 Corinthians 15:51, Paul calls these truths “a mystery,” which means something not previously revealed. Thus I think that God revealed these things directly to Paul.

But, however we understand it, Paul is emphasizing that he was not speculating or offering his opinion here. Rather, he is relating to us the direct “word of the Lord.” This makes the promise of His coming and our being raised up with Him certain.

2. Christ’s glorious coming will reunite us with deceased loved ones in Christ, will give us all new resurrection bodies, and will bring us to be with the Lord forever.

1 Thess. 4:15-17: “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

John Stott (The Message of 1 & 2 Thessalonians [IVP Academic], pp. 102-104) outlines verses 16-17 as: (1) the return; (2) the resurrection; (3) the rapture; (4) the reunion. I’ll follow his outline:

A. The return: Lord’s return will be in power and great glory.

There will be a shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of God. Leon Morris observes (The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians [Eerdmans], p. 145),

It is very hard to fit this into a secret rapture…. It may be that from this he intends us to understand that the rapture will take place secretly, and that no one except the saints themselves will know what is going on. But one would hardly gather this from his words. It is difficult to see how he could more plainly describe something that is open and public.

These verses parallel John’s description of the second coming (Rev. 1:7), “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him.” That’s a reference to Daniel 7:13-14, where the prophet sees one “like a Son of Man” coming with the clouds of heaven, and to Zechariah 12:10, where Israel will look on the Messiah whom they pierced and mourn.

F. F. Bruce (Word Biblical Commentary, 1 & 2 Thessalonians [Thomas Nelson], p. 104) notes that the Lord’s coming here “is described in terms associated with manifestations of the divine glory in the OT.” Clouds are a regular feature of biblical theophanies (appearances of the Lord; Bruce, 102; Stott, 104). There are supernatural phenomena here, because if Jesus appeared locally in the clouds over Jerusalem, He could only be seen in that vicinity. But this is a worldwide appearance in the sky, where every eye sees Him in His power and glory. The shout is probably a loud command from Christ, the commander of the heavenly host. The voice of the archangel may relay Christ’s command to the troops. The trumpet blast arouses the dead. It will be a truly awesome spectacle!

B. The resurrection: First, our deceased loved ones in Christ and then we will receive new resurrection bodies.

The spirits of departed saints are with the Lord now. He will bring them with Him when He returns, join their spirits to their resurrected bodies, and we will receive our resurrection bodies as we meet them in the air. This is the first resurrection; the unbelieving dead come to life at the end of the millennium (Rev. 20:5).

Paul does not say here whether Old Testament saints will return with Christ and receive their resurrection bodies at this time, since he only mentions “the dead in Christ.” Those who hold to a pretribulation rapture believe that OT saints are not raised until Christ’s second coming at the end of the tribulation. But Paul is speaking here to new believers, assuring them that their departed loved ones who had believed in Christ would be resurrected before those who are living when Christ returns. So I don’t think that he was necessarily excluding OT saints when he says, “in Christ.” Against the pretribulation view is the implication (Rev. 20:4-5 & 1 Cor. 15:23) that there are two, not three, resurrections: the righteous when Christ returns and the ungodly at the end of the millennium. Amillennialists argue that Jesus (John 5:28-29) spoke of a single resurrection of all the righteous and wicked at His second coming. But Revelation 20:4-5 mentions two separate resurrections. Whatever view you hold, the certain point that all agree on is that both deceased and living saints will receive new, eternal resurrection bodies, not subject to disease or death, when Jesus returns.

C. The rapture: We who are living will be caught up to meet the Lord and deceased saints in the clouds.

The word translated “caught up” means to snatch or seize by force. In Acts 8:39, it refers to the Spirit snatching Philip away from the Ethiopian eunuch after he led him to Christ. Paul uses the word to describe his experience of being caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2, 4). Many commentators point out that meeting the Lord in the air and returning with Him and all the saints to earth parallels the Hellenistic custom of going out to meet a visiting dignitary and escorting him back to the city. In Jesus’ parable about His second coming (Matt. 25:6), the bridal party goes out to meet the groom to escort him back to the banqueting hall. In Acts 28:15, Christians from Rome went out to meet Paul and escort him and his party back to the city.

When Paul includes himself and some of the Thessalonians among those who will be alive at Christ’s coming, he was not mistakenly asserting that they all would be alive at the second coming. He hoped that he would be alive, but he didn’t know for sure. Later (1 Thess. 5:10), Paul says that he and his readers could be either alive or dead when Christ returns. Years later, he indicated that he expected to die before the rapture (2 Tim. 4:6).

MacArthur (pp. 135-136) and other pretribulation rapture proponents argue that if the rapture is after the tribulation, there is no purpose for believers to be taken up to heaven, only to return immediately to earth. Rather, they say, Christ takes us to heaven to deliver us from the impending tribulation. But that’s an inference based on their presupposition. The Bible doesn’t need to give us a reason why we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air. It may be that by so doing, we share in His glory when He returns in front of the unbelieving world. And, it may be that since the air was often thought of as the abode of demons (Eph. 2:2), the Lord’s meeting His saints in the air shows something of His power over those evil powers (Morris, p. 146).

D. The reunion: We will be reunited with departed believing loved ones and we all will be forever with the Lord.

It will be wonderful to be reunited with all of our loved ones who have died in Christ and to be with all of the saints from the past. But the best part of Christ’s return is that we will always be with the Lord! He is with us now spiritually (Matt. 28:20), but then we shall see Him face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). Now, we fluctuate in our sense of His presence with us, but then we shall always and forever be aware of His glorious presence. As Jesus prayed (John 17:24), “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

Even the apostle John, who knew Jesus intimately when He was on earth and who saw the amazing visions of the Revelation, did not know exactly what we will be like in heaven. He wrote (1 John 3:2), “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” The instant we see Jesus in His glory, we will be forever transformed into His likeness, free from all sin, sickness, and death. All of our loved ones in Christ will also be transformed. Any conflicts or bad experiences that we had with them on earth will either be forgotten or shrugged off as being of no consequence in light of the surpassing glory of being with Christ and being like Him. But all of this is not for speculation. Rather,

3. The practical value of Christ’s coming is hope and comfort now in times of grief.

Paul begins and ends with practical application (1 Thess. 4:13, 18): “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope…. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

When Paul says, “we do not want you to be uninformed,” and he concludes, “comfort one another with these words,” he is saying that there is practical benefit in knowing biblical truth. As I said, Christ’s coming is not so that we can fill out prophecy charts, but rather so that we have real hope and comfort in the midst of life’s trials and losses.

I’ve been around Christians who suppress all tears when a loved one dies. They smile and try to turn a funeral into a celebration. But the Bible does not forbid all grief when we lose loved ones. Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb, even though He knew that He would shortly raise him from the dead. Paul tells us (Rom. 12:15) to “weep with those who weep.” Grieving is normal, but we are not to grieve as those in the world who have no hope in Christ.

Some may wonder, “But what if my loved one didn’t know Christ? How can I have any hope and not grieve if I know that my loved ones are in hell?” That’s hard, but we have to trust that the Lord will judge everyone fairly and justly. All of His judgments are righteous and true. Each person will get exactly what he or she deserves. Also, there are gradations of punishment in hell appropriate to the degree of light which the person rejected. And the Lord knows how people would have responded if they had been given more light (Matt. 11:20-24)! To the degree that we see Christ’s glory now our grief over the thought of unbelieving loved ones being in hell will be alleviated. That grief will vanish when we get the full view of His glory when He comes.

Conclusion

Often at the time of a loved one’s death unbelievers will say, “He’s in a better place now.” Or, “We’ll see him again in heaven.” But outside of Christ, such hope in the face of death is only wishful thinking. It has no foundation on the truth. But if Jesus died for our sins and was raised from the dead and is coming again to raise dead saints and transform living saints, we can have certain hope and comfort in Him in our grief.

Application Questions

How can we know if our grief over the loss of loved ones is normal or like that of those who have no hope?
What are some different practical ramifications for how we live now if the rapture is before or after the tribulation?
How would you answer a skeptic who said, “Jesus hasn’t come back in 2,000 years; He’s not coming”? See 2 Pet. 3:3-10.
Practically, how can we grow in the hope of His coming so that it affects our daily lives?

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

6. God’s Comfort: It is Well With My Soul

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Editor’s Note: This is a lightly edited transcription of the audio message. Thanks goes to Marilyn Fine for the transcription work.

We just have two more weeks of this series, and I hope that this series has been as much a blessing to you as it has to me. I have been so blessed in studying these songs, the stories of the writers, and all of the circumstances around each song. Today, we come to one of the all-time favorite great hymns of the faith. Today, we will be talking about the song, “It is Well With My Soul.”

Now, we know that this song is about peace. There is probably no other song that has been sung as frequently as this song at funerals, at times of bereavement, or at other times of grief. This is an all-time favorite. I think the reason why so many people choose to sing this song or have it sung, in times of turmoil, is that it so eloquently expresses the feelings and the faith of a Christian. That is one of the things about poetry, about hymns, about the Book of Psalms–they so eloquently express how the writer feels and we take those words and we say, you know, “that is exactly how I feel. I just did not know how to say it that way.” Have you ever read anything like that? “That is how I feel. They just put into words exactly what I have been feeling.” I think that is why this song is so loved.

Now, the song begins “when peace like a river.” Even though peace is not mentioned that much more in the song, it is really a song about having peace within your soul. I want to talk about that for a minute before we get into this in a little more detail. I am sure most of you are familiar with the biblical meaning of the word, the Hebrew word for peace. It is “shalom.”

I am taking Hebrew this semester. It is about to kill me. I had this as a vocabulary word last week and I know this word. It is the only one I know of about 5,000 words that we have to learn. Of course, I was especially interested in looking up the definition and looking at all the various meanings. You may be familiar with the word, shalom. It is not just peace. It also brings a strong, strong connection with wholeness or wellness. It can also mean help. You probably know that to those who speak Hebrew, “shalom,” is their greeting. It is what they say when they see each other. It is what they say when they say goodbye to each other. It is shalom. It means I wish for you or I pray for you peace. Not only peace such as a quiet spirit or happiness or things going well in your life, but a sense of wholeness that everything is in order in your life, that everything is as God intended it to be. So, there is really a much deeper meaning to the word “peace” as it is used in the scripture.

Now, we know that in the Fruit of the Spirit peace appears. Dr. Brunson just preached recently a series on the Fruit of the Spirit. His message on peace was one of the best things I ever heard. I say that about all his sermons. It was so good. It is a great series if you are studying this. The Fruit of the Spirit is peace. In Romans 5:1, Paul tells us what we used to be in the past. We were at enmity with God because of our sin. But, when Christ came, then we had peace with God. So, there is peace with God in that sense.

Then there is peace with one another. The Bible talks a lot about relationships. Paul in his letter to the Philippians urged two women to get along with one another. I guess in biblical times sometimes women did not get along. He urged them…how would you like that to be your heritage, your name, in Paul’s letter for the rest of the world to know that you were in an argument with another woman! But, this carries the idea of peace with one another, a peaceful relationship.

I think more than that as we talk about this word today we are looking at it in relation to inner peace, a spirit that is not restless or troubled, but our spirits being at peace with our situations, with our circumstances. That does not necessarily mean that our circumstances have changed to give us peace. It means that we have become at peace with our circumstances and this is a much deeper meaning than we might ordinarily associate peace of mind with.

Now, you are probably very familiar with the fact that in this day and age, at this very time, the highest selling medication in this country is Prozac or Zoloft or medications that alleviate stress and emotional depression. I have a friend who is a nurse and she was the nurse at a youth camp last summer at a large church in the Metroplex. I saw her afterward and asked how did she make out. She said, well, let me tell you, I was prepared to deal with skinned knees and maybe a broken arm or two and sprained ankles, and that kind of stuff. She said all I did was to dispense medication. These kids are medicated. I literally could not even stop for a coffee break in the morning putting out everybody’s medicine. Much of it was this type medication. That tells us something about our culture, doesn’t it? Even though we have a great deal of affluence and things, we seem to live in a time where stress, emotional turmoil, unhappiness, and especially depression is really prevalent in our culture.

I think I told this story in here before about the time we were in North Carolina in the mountains. We went into a little health food store when I was in my health food stage (which I got out of pretty quickly. Stay in that for very long and you will want to get out of it, too!) So, at this counter they had these little stones and on these flat little stones were painted words like love and joy and peace and things like that. There was a little sign which said $3.95 apiece. I said, “What are these?” She said, “Oh, those, they are like crystals and if you take them and you buy one and you keep it with you all the time, whatever the word you have, that will happen to you.” I said, “Really, I want to talk about this. So, if I buy the stone that says, joy, I am just going to automatically have joy?” She started to get a little antagonistic as she could tell I was kind of making fun of her. I did not mean to, but it just burst out of me. She said, “Yes, that is true.” I said, “Well, is there a money-back guarantee? That is what I want to know.” She said, “No.” Of course, I just let it go, but I did say to her, “Do you sell these?” She said she couldn’t keep them in stock. That, people, is sad. That is sad. Somebody is making a lot of money painting on little rocks.

So, the song, “It Is Well With My Soul,” talks about this kind of peace, a peace of wholeness and wellness that does not come from an outside source, but it comes from faith in Christ. It comes from God’s gift.

Now, I want to tell you the story briefly. I am sure many of you are very familiar with the story of Horatio Spafford who wrote the lyrics to this song. It is a classic story. He was a successful attorney in Chicago in the middle 1800s. He and his wife had four daughters and a four-year-old son who about the time that all of this started taking place was lost to scarlet fever. The little boy died of scarlet fever at age four. Very soon after that, literally just weeks after that, the Great Chicago Fire occurred which consumed virtually the whole city. He lost most of his fortune. Everything was gone. So, he put his efforts into trying to rebuild the city and helping the thousands of homeless people who had nothing.

Well, later on in 1873, he decided his family needed a vacation because of all the stress and all of that. So, they were going to see some friends in Europe. He was detained by business and Spafford’s wife and his daughters went ahead. They were on this luxury liner, the Ville Du Havre, and you may know the story that during the night, off the coast of Ireland, the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and the ship was sunk. You can only imagine as you read those words in the hymn’s stories. If you saw Titanic, that is what instantly came to my mind of the fear and the panic and the screaming. We can only imagine how it must be to know that your children, in this instance, or other loved ones died in that way. Well, his wife was rescued floating unconscious on a piece of wreckage. All the survivors were taken to Wales. She cabled home to her husband and her cable simply said “saved alone.” Of course, he immediately booked passage to Wales to be with his wife. When he got on the ship, he told the captain that when you come to the place where the Ville Du Havre went down, will you come get me? I need to see that. So, it was on a dark, cold December night, early in the morning, the wee hours of the morning, that the captain knocked on his door and said that he believed they were passing by the place where the ship sank. He walked out to the deck and stood there in the freezing wind, in the darkness with the black inkiness of the sky and the water. He wept in grief over his lost children that went down in that spot. When he went back to his cabin, he could not sleep, of course. But, as he sat, these words began to come to his mind and they began to overflow. He took a pencil and he began to write these words , “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll.” He had just been out there looking at the ocean, the giant waves. “When sorrows.” He saw those sea billows as metaphorical and the sorrows that just washed over his soul. Huge immense billows which came and washed over him. “When sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say it is well with my soul.” That is usually the end of the story, but the story goes that when he and his wife were reunited, they took stock of their lives and decided what they were going to do with the rest of their life. They decided to go to Jerusalem. They went to Jerusalem and they began a ministry there to orphans. They bought outside of the city walls a home of a sheik that had sold his home. It is now The American Colony Hotel. If you ever go to Jerusalem, you must go there because it is a lovely, lovely home. It is a little hotel now. There are pictures all through it. Pictures taken in Jerusalem in the early 1900s and around Israel. He and his wife gave their lives to ministering to orphans and the homeless and the helpless and the needy in the place where Jesus had lived. That is where they ended up dying. To this day, some of their descendants, the Spafford descendants, continue that ministry and it is located right within the Damascus Gate of the Old City.

So, he left quite a heritage not only in this song, but I think also of proving in the way he lived out the rest of his life after an unspeakable tragedy. The fact that his life could go on and he could still minister and he could still give and he could still have a degree of satisfaction and joy in this life.

[Bible.org Editor’s Note: Unfortunately the picture is not as rosy as it might seem. Before moving to Jerusalem the Spafford’s left their church and created their own sect which resulted in a number of deviant beliefs and practices over the years. Thus Horatio’s life can serve as both an encouragement and a warning.]

Now, we are going to watch this today on video. You cannot have a series on him without the Gaither Homecoming video. I know. So, you are going to sing…this is kind of the all-stars…and you will see famous people like Michael W. Smith and people like that. It opens up Bill Gaither’s interviewing Ruth Graham, Billy Graham’s wife. This is her favorite hymn so she talks about it and then they go into the song so I want you to listen to it.

Bill: Oh, the bliss

Ruth: Of that glorious thought

Bill: My sin, not in part

Ruth: But in whole

Bill: Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord

Ruth: Absolutely

Song playing….

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

So much goodness! I want you to note the train of thought in the verses of this song. The first verse he talks about when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, God has taught me to say it is well with my soul. When there is personal grief and sorrow so great that I cannot even express it, nevertheless, it is well with my soul. I know that God is in control of my life. I know that God is with me. I know He will give me the grace to go through what I have to do. That is what He talks about in verse 1. I hear people often say, “oh, I could never go through what somebody has had to go through.” You know what. You do not have to. God gives you the grace to go through what you go through and you do not have to have the grace to go through what everybody else does. He gives you the grace to go through what you are going through at that time.

The second verse talks about my sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part but the whole was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. What is that? The peace of God. My sin. I do not have to bear the punishment and the judgment of my sin. Remember, we talked about that in here before. When you invite Christ to come into your heart and you give your life to Him, He took your judgment and your punishment in His very body on the cross. That is what we are talking about when we talk about giving your heart and life to Him. You are no longer under that curse of sin. So, what is he talking about here? Horatio Spafford is talking about his being at peace with God. I do not have to bear the guilt. Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” I do not have to bear the condemnation. I do not have to feel guilty. I do not have to bear the punishment because Jesus has taken all of my sin on the cross.

Then, the last verse which is just such…can you sing those words or even read them without getting a lump in your throat? I cannot because I think of how many of God’s children in times of sorrow and grief have clung to these words with everything that is in them. There is a CD that has this that I listen to when I walk. I look up at the sky and I think, “God how many of your children who have had to walk through such horrible, difficult things have looked up at that sky and thought, ‘one of these days the clouds will roll back and the Lord shall descend.’” You know what will happen? He will come and it will be well. See, the contrast in this song is that he is saying my personal grief and sorrow are unbearable, but it is well. I will get through it. God will give me the grace to do it. My eternal security – it is well. The end of time when all of life…when it is all over, it is well. Either way, you see, no matter what, it is well with me. It is well with my soul because he had made peace with God and knew who and what He was doing. You know what? This goes back to the meaning of the word, “peace,” a wholeness. Not just a lack of conflict. When Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you.” He said I do not give you peace like the world gives you. Peace like the world gives is the removal of the bad circumstances, but I give you My peace. “My peace I give to you.”

Now, very quickly, let us talk about a couple of these things. There are many things that disturb our peace – losses, the grief, the sorrow like Horatio Spafford went through and Job went through. I want to say this quickly because I want you to identify with people in the Bible who have had losses and who were in turmoil and disturbed worry. In Matthew 6, Jesus spoke about worry. There is a proverb that says, “Anxiety in the heart of man weighs it down.” I love the way it says that. Is it not just like a weight? Is it not when you are worried it is just a heavy weight on you.

Jesus said, before He was going to the cross, He said, “My spirit is troubled. I am troubled in My spirit and you can sense in Jesus Himself anxiety. These are normal things that trouble us and make us restless.

Disappointments. I was reading the other day the last chapter in Luke where the two people were walking after Jesus had been crucified were walking on the road to Emmaus and Jesus walked with them and they did not know it was Jesus. He said to tell Him what was going on and He tells them about Christ. They said we were so hoping He had been the one. We know the end of that story that He reveals Himself to them, but they did not. I think about that when I read that. “We were so hoping He had been the one.” That is something we had been so hoping in. We just knew it was going to happen and it did not. It did not happen. Your prayers were not answered the way you thought. Disappointment. These are things that rob us and destroy our peace.

Let me tell you something. There is a way that we can have God’s peace very quickly. First of all to understand God’s promise. In John 14, and I mentioned this verse before, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid.” It is a gift from God. This peace that Jesus gives each one of His children is a gift. It is a gift that He gives us. Listen, how could Horatio Spafford bear this? God gave him peace. God gave him peace enough to write this song. God, I think, puts something on this song that makes it so that where it binds itself to your spirit. I mean I think so many people feel that way. I will say there are other hymns I am very much over that I will never need to hear again. This is not one of them. I could hear this 50 times a day and I start to cry every time I hear it. That is the way this kind of song is.

Jesus said, “I give my peace to you.” Well, let us think about Horatio Spafford. He gave him that peace. He wrote this song. He could express it. What else did He give him? He gave him a ministry. He gave him a ministry to people who had no parents, to people who had no children. He gave him a ministry of preaching the gospel and sharing the good news. He gives them still to this day even though he is in heaven he gives him a ministry of ministering to the down and out in Jerusalem. That is a gift from God, part of the peace, the wholeness. His life that was given to serve God.

Another way we can have God’s peace is to be spiritually minded, understanding and seeking to understand spiritual things and to make a choice to do that. In Romans 8:6, Paul said “to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” As you fill your mind with songs and with the things of God it brings peace to your spirit and to your soul. Then, mostly importantly of all, to know God’s Word. Psalm 119 says, “Great peace have those who love thy law.” Great peace to those…have you ever been at worry or anxious or you are disturbed? What do you do? You go for your Bible, don’t you. Say, Lord, speak to me. Give me some comfort. Show me. Give me something to hang on to. Great peace have those who love thy law. God’s Word brings us comfort and brings us peace at a time when we need it. So, the peace of God is a gift and He gives it to us when we need it and He gives it to us. That does not mean necessarily that all of the bad things go away. It simply means that He gives us the ability to walk through those things and to continue to trust Him. I have looked at people who have gone through very difficult things. Even though they may be angry at God or upset or question or something, it is amazing to me how many people that are truly His still cling on to Him and say somehow I am not going to let go. They walk through that and God gives them an even greater ministry and even greater opportunity for their lives.

Now, a person such as that is Dawn Meade. Dawn is the Director of Women’s Ministry here. Many of you remember it was not that long ago when she was eight months pregnant with her little boy, Chandler. Her husband was on staff here with the prayer ministry. She came home from work one day and found him dead. You may remember how tragic that was and how we prayed for her. Chandler was born a healthy, good looking little energetic boy and if there is one word in watching Dawn walk through all of this, if there is one word I would use to describe her in watching from a distance it would be serenity. She does have the peace of God all over her. So, I want her to come and share for a few minutes about it. It is one thing to talk about it. It is something else to hear from someone who has walked it.

Dawn

Thank you. Thank you, very much. You will have to forgive me because tears come very easy to me. “That’s OK, we can do that here.” I have her permission so…

I told Susie earlier that I felt like I needed to call her yesterday and say “you do not need me to come up here to talk about peace. Not if you would have seen me traveling on an airline this Thanksgiving with a 17-month-old who had a stomach virus and a head cold.” What is it about 17 months old that you have to teach them how to share their toys, but they share freely their germs! So, I spent Thanksgiving myself with a stomach virus. You walk through that and you just have to do some praying: “God, I am clinging on to you because right now I am angry. I am hurt and I just do not understand, but I know that I know that You are in control and I know.”

I have those verses just like many of you do where you hang your hat. “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to give you a hope and a future.” We hang our hat on that. I heard a definition, or read a definition in the dictionary one time about peace and it was the absence of conflict. I think Susie alluded to that. That is the world’s definition. That is not God’s definition of peace. If you look through the Word it says we will have trials. We will have tribulations. Being a Christian is not an absence of those things. As a matter of fact, it is almost an invitation for those things because as we walk through those things, we have an opportunity to decrease so that He can increase because there is an outside world watching on asking, “is there something else to this life? Is there something more than this?” Oh, yes, the answer is yes! There is. I think Susie even alluded to the scripture verse. This is Jesus talking in John 14:27. I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart and the peace I give you is not like the peace the world gives. So, do not be troubled or afraid. The peace that the world has is not what His peace is about. His peace has nothing to do what is going on around here. His peace has to do with what is going on in here.

Since Crawford died on June 10th of 2002, raising as a single parent our son by myself has many of its own challenges. I know many of you are single parents and have walked through that yourself. I remember one night, it was a 3 am feeding, and I was exhausted, just absolutely exhausted. I was still nursing at the time and Chandler had finished nursing and it was that calm in the middle of the night and he was satisfied. In the quiet and the stillness, out of the corner of his eye, he looked up at me and he smiled. Just the sense of that moment of God being near was precious. Then, I sat him up and then he projectile vomited all over me and himself! You know, you just gotta’ fasten your seatbelt sometimes and hold on, but God was there in that part of it. He did not leave just because the moment changed or the moment got a little more hard or difficult. His presence was still there.

One of the verses that God gave me to know my salvation was 1 John 5:13. “These things I have written so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Hang your hat on it, ladies, because you can know that He is in control. You can know that He is sovereign. Let me tell you about one of the things God has led us through. Chandler is 17-and-a-half months old now and a very beautiful, vivacious and very active and investigative little boy— as many of you who have some 17 month olds know. The thing for me that is difficult is at the same time that I say 17-and-a-half months I also know it has been 17-and-a-half months since I lost my husband. So there is a precious, bitter-sweetness when I say the age of my son because it is also a reminder.

Since we are talking about hymns, let me share the one that I want sung at my funeral. I would like to read some of the words to it. It is the hymn, “Because He Lives.”

God sent His son, they called him Jesus,
He came to love, heal and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon.
An empty grave is there to prove my savior lives.

The second verse:

How sweet to hold a newborn baby and feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still, the calm assurance this child can face uncertain days because He lives.
Then, one day, I will cross the river,
I will fight life’s final war with pain,
and then as death gives way to victory,
I will see the lights of glory and I will know He lives.”

Any of you who have lost dear, precious loved ones know. Heaven is a little sweeter place because of it. Earth has lost a little bit of its shine, if you will. Yet we go on. We have much to be grateful for. We have much to praise the Lord for, but there are precious family members that are on the other side cheering us on and will be there when we see them, as well. So, what do we do? We hang our hats on His promises. We walk—sometimes one minute at a time. Sometimes it does not look the way we want it to look, but we can know that we know He has our best interest at heart. Those of you who know Him personally know then that at one point this is all going to be over and we are going to see Him face to face. We are going to see our loved ones again. One of the things I want to hear is “well done, well done, good and faithful servant.” Thanks! (applause)

Conclusion

Let me just end today with a couple of scriptures. In Philippians 4, the classic verse on peace it says that we are to “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made know to God.” When that happens, what will happen? “Then, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” That is a great promise about the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. We do not know why we feel that way, we do not know how we are doing it. I am sure Dawn looks back and thinks “I do not know how I made it through those months,” but God’s peace will do that. That is a promise. It is a gift from God. Let me remind you about Isaiah 26. That simple little verse says, “Thou will keep him in perfect peace”….what?!… “whose mind is stayed on Thee.” As we keep our hearts and minds fixed on Christ Jesus, He will give us that peace within ourselves.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for the gift of peace You have given us. We seek to understand what You mean when you say in Your Word, when You say that we have peace and we have these other gifts and, Lord, I thank you for the understanding that it is not just about things going right. It is much deeper than that. That we have peace with You. That we can have peace with one another in our relationships and most of all that we can have peace with our circumstances and peace with the fact that you are in control of our lives. So, Lord, I pray that today it would be well with the souls of every woman in this room. If there is anyone here today, Lord, that it is not well with them, they are troubled, they are not sure of their relationship with you, Lord, I pray that today would be the day that that is settled and it would be well with their soul.

Thank you for this gift that You have given us, Lord. I pray that we would be faithful to appreciate it, faithful to use it, and that we would also be found faithful, Lord, that despite what we go through that we would be experiencing the peace and the joy it is to walk with you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

See you next week.

1. God’s Pursuit: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

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Editor’s Note: This is a lightly edited transcription of the audio message. Thanks goes to Marilyn Fine for the transcription work.

Introduction

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I never understood people complaining about having a birthday. I am so thankful to be alive and I am thankful to have every year and every day. Aren’t you? I am so grateful. I found a song not too long ago. I can never remember the title, but it said, “Lord, do not take me away in the midst of my days.” That is a prayer I pray, “Lord, I do not want to get sick and do not take me before my time. I want to enjoy every day, every month, every week, every year that You give me.” Time is a gift from God. I am so glad to be here today.

I have really looked forward to getting back together with you. I have loved coming to Focus and listening to Paula and just getting to sit back and put my feet up and have a good time. That has been fun, but I am very happy to be here today and begin our series on Great Hymns of the Faith. I know that some of you are not all that familiar with hymns so I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about why this is a study that will be beneficial to everyone.

Who does not like to sing? Everybody likes to sing—or at least you like music. I guess people who have really beautiful voices like Rebecca, who is going to sing for us today, love singing. I do not have a good voice, but I love to sing anyway. I can sing with Brooklyn Tabernacle like you cannot believe in my car. In fact, one time I scrapped the whole side of my car on the garage because I got a little carried away with Brooklyn Tab. So, enthusiasm has a lot to do with it.

I have learned from my study this week that there are so many verses that talk about singing. I was amazed, and I knew this was a strong theme in scripture. But there are just page after page of people in the Bible talking about singing and exhorting us to sing—especially in the Book of Psalms. It is an integral part of worship.

I do not know about you but the first thing I look for on Sunday morning when I get into church is the music. I open the bulletin and the first thing I want to see is what we are singing. Do you do that? Other people are not that interested in the sermon. I am very interested in the sermon, but I want to know what we are going to sing. I have to get my mind ready for it. Singing is so important. Paul tells us in the Book of Ephesians, “Be filled with the spirit and speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” There are psalms that we sing and have been sung in the past. There are hymns which we are talking about today, and then there are spiritual songs – praise songs and choruses. All of these things give praise to God.

Now you know the funny thing is music is very subjective, is it not? There often are some disagreements about music. Some people just like hymns, and some people just like praise songs. I have learned that I have my own particular preference of music. But just because something speaks to my heart in a unique way does not mean it will to everyone. I found that some, especially the younger generation, like the praise songs and the choruses. That to them speaks to their heart in a way that hymns speak to mine. So, music is very subjective.

I remember quite a few years ago hearing Dr. Dobson on Focus on the Family had done a series on Christian music. I happened to tune in the last day when he said he was going to take a vow right now to his audience. “I will never again do a series on this because it is so subjective and people’s emotions are so strong when it comes to music.” It is very individual, but there are some things we can definitely all agree on.

Singing is a Scriptural Theme

First of all, singing is a theme in scripture. You go back to the Book of Exodus when the Jews, the Israelites left the land of Egypt. Remember they crossed over the Red Sea. Remember what they did? They sang the song of Moses led by Miriam, “The horse and rider thrown into the sea…” There are so many references to music in the Old Testament. When the armies would go into battle they would sing praises. David talked frequently about singing in the Psalms. In the Book of Revelation, it ends with what? Singing around the throne. We will someday stand and sing around the throne. That tells us that there is singing in Heaven. That tells us that music is a gift from God, is it not? It is a gift from God and it does something for our spirit.

Now, in Church history all through time the Church has sung. Even before the Church, the Jews in the Old Testament used a psalter which is the Book of Psalms. Most of the Book of Psalms is written in poetry when it was written in Hebrew. Now that it is in English we do not see that part of it. But, this was also used by the early Church. The psalms were also used by the early Church and spiritual songs and hymns were also used. Even as far back as the very first century themes of songs were beginning to develop.

Some people believe in Philippians 2 when Paul quoted that “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess” that that was the line of a well-known hymn at that time. But, singing began to die out and it was Gregory the First, Pope Gregory the First, in the seventh century who brought back singing. That is his place in history. He brought back congregational singing and choral singing. He made popular, which has had a comeback recently, Gregorian chants. Have any of you ever heard Gregorian chants? Let’s listen to a Gregorian chant. (playing chant)

Okay, you are not jumping up and clapping with Gregorian chants. But, you know what it brought back? Harmony, beauty, a time in the service that was given for people to be quiet and listen to the harmony and the music. Of course, they understood the Latin at that point.

So, it was during the Reformation, though, that singing became popular as we know it today. Martin Luther, without a doubt was one of the most important men in history. He brought the Reformation to its height. He brought back congregational singing. He was a musician and he wrote songs. He would take words, scriptural words, and take popular tunes of the day. He even took some of the songs from the bars. If you remember he got criticized for that, but his comeback was, why should the devil have all the good music? Is there a good tune? Let’s use it. It is just a tune. It is just a tune until you put it with the words. So, he said “with all my heart I would extol the precious gift of God and the noble art of music for music is to be praised as second only to the Word of God because by her all emotions are swayed.”

A Hymn

Now, let us talk about what makes a hymn a hymn. A hymn is a structure that has usually three or four verses and a chorus and it has an ordered thought. Most hymns we will see tell a story. I started here, then I came here, then I went here, and now I am here. That is usually how hymns are structured.

It is amazing how hymn writers will put tunes that match the words. For example, if you hear “Alas, and did my Savior bleed,” it will be a quiet, almost mournful tune because it is about the death of Christ. If you are hearing a song “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation,” it is soaring and loud and majestic and it is a song of praise. So, many of the hymn tunes reflects the feeling of the words. But, you know, here is the thing that I want you to know about hymns. Hymns are timeless. The same hymns, the words that you are going to hear sung in a few minutes, are words that have been sung for years and years and years by churches in foreign lands, by mission points, by people in downtown churches, and by people in mission churches. These words reflect the feeling of people throughout the years. That is called “transcendence.”

Now, very quickly, if you grew up in a church, then hymns were a part of your life. I grew up in a church that had, I guess they would call it “good church music,” but it was very boring. Every Sunday morning, EVERY Sunday morning we sang “Come Thou, Almighty King,” which is one of my favorite hymns now. But here is how people sing it….(singing in monotone). Nobody sang. They just mumbled it like that. It was years later when I was somewhere else and I read those words and I thought, “these words are unbelievable.” “Come Thou, Almighty King, help us Thy praise to sing” with unbelievably soaring words. Let me tell you something. The Bible does not talk about singing and mumbling. The Bible says “make a joyful shout to the Lord, all the earth. Sing out the honor of His name.” Is that mumbling? “Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Break forth in song. Rejoice and sing praises. Praise the Lord for His goodness. Sing praises to our God for it is pleasant and praise is beautiful.” Listen, singing is an important part of expressing our love and devotion to God. Your voice may not be beautiful. It does not matter. You are to sing with joy and aggressively and with your spirit. So if somebody complains about your singing on Sunday. You just say I am supposed to sing this way. It pleases God.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Now, let me tell you about our song today. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” It was hard to pick these hymns. There are so many, but this is such a classic song.

I want to tell you the story about Robert Robinson who wrote this song before Rebecca comes and sings it for us. You know, when you know something about the author of a song or a book it enhances the meaning, does it not?

Robert Robinson was a young man in the early 1700s when he was sent away to a trade school by his mother. His father had died young. She had too many children that she did not know what to do. She sent him to trade school and as happened to most young men in that day what he learned to do was steal and rob and to drink. He went with some of his friends one night after a drinking binge. They went to see a fortune teller. It really rattled him because she talked about the spirit life, the spirit world. It really shook him.

He found himself just a few weeks later standing in an evangelistic meeting on a street corner in London which was being preached by the most famous preacher of his day, George Whitfield. Whitfield was one of the leaders of the first great awakening here in the United States. He was a great, great preacher. Robert stood there. He and his friends had gone to make fun of this man, but as so often happens he was moved by the message of the Gospel.

A few days later he invited Christ to come into his heart and he went into the ministry. He went to seminary and was trained and began pastoring in London. At 23, he entered the ministry and he wrote this song. At the young age of 23, he wrote “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” He was preaching that Pentecost Sunday and he asked the Holy Spirit to help him write a hymn that would ask God to flood into our hearts with His strings of mercy and keep us faithful to Him and enable us to sing praises to Him.

Years later, Robert Robinson began to suffer bouts of depression. He began to doubt his faith. He began to question the reality of God and he left his church and abandoned his call. As he was working and traveling around trying to make a living, he fell into a deeper, deeper depression.

Well, one day he was on a stagecoach and a young woman got on the stagecoach and sat next to him. She had just become a Christian and she started trying to share her faith with him and tell him about how her life was changed by the Lord Jesus. He said, “I do not want to hear it. I do not want to hear it.” She said, “Let me read something to you that helped me so much. Maybe it will help you.” She opened the song book she had in her lap and she began to read to Robert Robinson the words, “Come thou fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise.”

Robert Robinson sitting next to her began to weep. Then, his weeping turned to sobs. He said, “Oh, madam, I would give 1,000 worlds, if I had them, to mean those words as you were saying them. Because, you see, I am the person who wrote them. I cannot get back to God.” He began to tell her about his depression and this brand new Christian woman said to this man, “Oh, no, sir, no, no. Look, here it is right here: streams of mercy never ceasing.” It was at that point that he began to pray and ask God to forgive him and he began a journey back to the Lord.

He eventually returned to London, and was preaching in churches around the area. He was scheduled to preach at a church in London on Sunday and that Saturday night before, at age 54, he died in his sleep.

What a story, though! That this man, it is almost eerie, that he lived his song. The last verse of the words that you will hear, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” He knew himself. He knew his heart. “Here is my heart, oh take and seal it.” He did wander. He did wander from God, but God restored him through the words of a woman who had no idea what she was sharing. Isn’t that the way God works?

Singing the Song

On your table are the words to this song. Rebecca Hoagland is going to come and sing for us. Rebecca works for Hunt Petroleum. She is a faithful member of Focus and she and her backup group are coming to sing for us. We are delighted to have them.

Thank you. Susie, that is an incredible story. I have been preparing the song and had no idea the story behind it. Let me introduce to you quickly the band. This is Mark Frye who is the music minister at Meadows Baptist in East Plano and Patrick Berg is our student minister at Meadows. Our words are a little different in the second verse, but I think that is just translation. (music playing - singing hymn -- applause)

A Verse by Verse Look

There is something about adding music to words, is there not? Thank you, Rebecca. That was wonderful. Thank you so much.

Now, you may have noticed in the song, as some of you were reading the words, that this song is a prayer. Is it not? “Come, thou fount of every blessing.” Right away the writer, Robert Robinson, says to us that God is the source of every blessing. Is He not? James said for “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of light.” Every good thing is from God. I just want to kind of walk quickly through these verses as we see what they mean.

Verse 1

The first one: “God’s streams of mercy.” I love that picture that there are streams of mercy. If I could put a picture with this, in my mind I have a picture of those posters you see from Colorado with the mountain streams tumbling, and the water spraying everywhere over the rocks. Streams of mercy. God’s mercy is available to us and he says God’s streams of mercy, implying that there are always available to us.

Do you know what Paul said in the Book of Ephesians, chapter 2? He said, “but God who is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our sin, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up to sit in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.” Rich in mercy! God’s mercy is rich.

I want to say this to some of you who may be here and think you probably push God to the end. You do not have to worry about that. God is longsuffering. He is patient. There is no such thing of Him running out of mercy. He is rich in mercy. I used to think years ago when I was first married I used to think the definition of a rich person was somebody who could go to the grocery store and buy whatever they wanted. Well, yes, I still think that. I want to tell you. I went Saturday and think the definition stands. Yes, a rich person has what? Unlimited resources, unlimited resources. They do not have to worry about balancing their checkbook, I guess, to the penny. They do not have to worry about making a deposit before they go to the store. They do not have to worry about those things. They are rich. Unlimited resources. God is rich in mercy. Not only does He never run out of mercy and say “I am sorry your account is up.” He never says that, but He says to you also they are new every morning.

We will talk about this more next week with “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” In Lamentations 2, the writer says this in the midst of this really sad book. Lamentations is a book of lament. It is a sad, sad book by the prophet, Jeremiah, who is called a weeping prophet. The word in Hebrews literally means aching, but there is one good verse in there. Amidst all the sadness and sorrow and depression of that book, Jeremiah is saying that as bad as things are, God’s mercies are new every morning.

Now, you know what that means? Today can be a new start. Every day is a fresh start. When the sun comes up, it is a fresh start for you. If you have blown it the day before and you have tried to do things in your own strength, you can start over tomorrow morning when you get up. Every day His mercies are new.

“Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise.” Does that not tell us then when we hear that part of the verse that these songs call for a response? It calls for a response. So much of music and so much of praise is putting out something and asking us to respond to it.

He says, “come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise.” You know that is a line I use when I am having my quiet time or I am in church. Do you ever do this? You sit down and you just kind of feel dead inside. You are just not with it. Do you ever feel, “yeah, it is probably just me. Spiritual giant that everyone else is here. I just feel blah.” This is the line that comes to my mind. “Come thou fount of every blessing tune my heart.” Get me in tune. Let me start thinking. Bring some music, some psalms and words to my mind. Get me tuned up. Get me all tuned up like an orchestra does. You know when it is getting ready to play and they tune up a few minutes before. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. “Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise.”

Verse 2

Now, verse 2. Rebecca sang the words in a little more modern translation or modern interpretation, which is good. You may know it as the old verse which no one ever understands which says, “here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home.”

Rebecca sang the words and basically what it means is, I have come this far. You brought me this far and now help me to realize that and to continue on from this point. The story, the “Ebenezer” that no one ever understands, is from I Samuel 7, a story with the Israelites and Samuel. The Philistines, if you know much about Old Testament history, they were the tormentors of the Israelites. They were tormenting the Israelites and the Israelites came to Samuel and they said something like “please pray for us that God would give us victory over these people that we would live in this land of blessing and not be tormented by the Philistines.” So, Samuel prayed for them. He was the prophet at the time. They went into battle and they overcame the Philistines and they did not bother them for something like 40 more years.

In honor of their victory, in memorial of their victory, Samuel did what Old Testament prophets and kings often did. He set up a stone, a memorial stone. The memorial was to remember that God has brought us this far by faith and this far safely. He named it Eben-ezer. Eben is stone in Hebrew. That is what the word stone means in Hebrew. Ezer means help. Stone of help. So, an Ebenezer is a memorial you set up as a stone showing, reminding yourself. You know, the Israelites were big on this on visual aids. They were always building memorials and stone altars to remind them, to show them as a visual sign of God’s protection and God’s guidance. That is the “here I raise mine Ebenezer.” It stood for God’s help on behalf of helpless men. That is what Robert Robinson was saying. Here I am saying I am helpless, but God can help me. We see in his life’s story how he was helpless; how he fell away, but God brought him back and restored him.

Now, the second part of that verse it says “Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.” Just this line in itself has so much rich, rich theology in it. Jesus sought me. Did you seek God and say “Hey, can I become a Christian?” No, He sought you. We love him, why, because He first loved us. I know you all are familiar with that verse. God seeks us.

I remember this summer telling you about a book I read about the orthodox Jewish woman who became a Christian and she said it is like God was stalking her. Jesus was stalking everywhere she turned around she heard somebody talking about Him. The next time she turned around she heard a song. The next thing she would be in a store and she would see that picture of Him, the kind of brown picture where He just had that long hair and it would enthrall her and she would be drawn to this picture. She said it is like Jesus was stalking her. I know that sounds weird, but I love that because that is what He has been called, a Hound of Heaven. When God goes after somebody He brings them to Him. Jesus sought me. He came after me. He came after Robert Robinson even when he had fallen away. How? Through the words of a young, brand-new Christian woman.

So, “Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God.” That phrase reminds me of the famous story in the gospels where Jesus told the story of the 99 sheep. Do you remember that? There was a man having 100 sheep. He has 99 in the fold, but he is missing that one. Here is the difference between man and God. I know myself, I would say “99, oh, well, what is one? You know, I am doing pretty good with 99.” But what does God do? No, He wants that one, that little lost sheep.

Remember, we have always said in here, too, if you want to know what God is like all you do is look at Jesus. That is where you go. The first place you go. If you wonder about anything about God, look at Jesus’ life and how He lived.

SO what did He do? He gave the picture of a man who was out seeking the lost sheep, the lonely, little lost sheep, and brought it back. The Bible says he was carrying him on his shoulders. That is such a picture of God seeking us, coming after us. Maybe some of you have had this experience. Maybe you are having it currently in your life when you feel God speaking to your heart and He is drawing you and He is saying “I want to walk with you. I want to know you. We need to get rid of some things in your life and we need to move on here.” Listen to His voice. He is seeking you.

Listen, the time to respond to Jesus is now. Many times, even though He is always merciful, long suffering and patient, He will not call. His voice will not be heard as loudly as it is now. So, I exhort any of you who are in here. If you feel God drawing you to Him, just that conviction in your heart, then I beg you to respond to Him. He is seeking you. He is coming after you. The Bible tells you He knows your name. He knows the hairs on your head as we prayed a few minutes ago in the prayer room. He loves you. He wants you. He desires you. He is seeking you. That is what this man is saying. Jesus sought me when I was a stranger. I was out there wandering and I did not even know what I was doing and He came after me. He came after me.

When He did this—another old word you may not be familiar with—He “interposed” his precious blood. That just means He intervened for us. He intervened between us and our eternal demise, which was going to be separation from God forever in eternity. He intervened for us with his precious blood.

Verse 3

All right, then in verse 3 we have a prayer where you can see how the author has come to be sought. It is almost as if he is realizing the richness of God’s mercy, the streams of grace, and the seeking that God has performed to go after him so that he ends it with a prayer to God where he says he is “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”

Anybody in here not sometimes “feel prone to leave the God you love?” Yes, we are all prone to do that without the keeping power of the Holy Spirit. I love, and you should know this about me, I love honest people who will say what they feel. I love the prayer in the New Testament when the man was asking Jesus to heal his daughter. Jesus asked “do you believe?” He said, “Lord, I believe but help my unbelief.” I love that prayer. It is so honest and it is so real. I pray it all the time myself. I believe, but I have so much unbelief. Help my unbelief. This is in the same vein where he is saying “I am prone to wander. I feel it.” I know myself. I know what I am going to do. I can tell. I can tell.

“Lord, I pray that You would take my heart. Seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.” An honest prayer. I did not realize until I began studying these how many writers of hymns became so vulnerable in their words. Bernard of Clairvaux, who lived in about the 11th century, a monk, wrote the unbelievable words to the hymn, “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee.”

“Oh, Sacred Head Now Wounded,” is another song I heard my whole life and it was not until maybe a few years ago when I listened to it recorded differently by someone else that I really heard this last line. It is a lament over the death of Christ on the cross. The last line he says, “Oh, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love for Thee.” That is a pretty serious prayer. Kill me if I back off. Kill me if I leave. Take my life if I ever ruin my testimony. Pretty strong words.

It is in the same vein of Robert Robinson’s prayer. “Lord, I am prone to wander, I feel it. I am prone to leave even the God I love.” So, what do I do about it? Well, here is my heart. I give my heart to You. I give my life to you. You take it and You seal it. Seal it for what? For Your courts above.

Listen, salvation is all by God. He has done it all. All we do is say yes. All we say is “Yes, Lord. Now what? That is the old thing that I fought for so long and it always comes back to that “Yes, Lord, now what? is the question. What do you want me to do? The attitude of “Yes, Lord, I will do what you want me to do.”

Conclusion

I think this song expresses the feelings of so many Christians through the years. God’s grace pursues us. He is rich in mercy. We respond to that and even when we have responded we can sometimes wander. So, what do we do? Say, “Lord, I am prone to wander, but here is my heart. Take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.”

Now, I want you to take this card with you this week and I want you to read it in your quiet time and in your prayer time. Keep it at your desk and read these words over. Let these words become a prayer in your heart to the Lord.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for Your goodness to us. Thank you for Your mercies. Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise. Teach us the melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above. Oh, we praise Your name, Lord. We are fixed upon it. The name of your redeeming love. Now Lord we pray we are prone to wander, but we pray, Lord, here is our heart. Take it, seal my heart, seal it for Your courts above. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Related Topics: Theology Proper (God), Women's Articles, Worship

Lição 2: Preparação para a Entrada na Terra (Josué 2:1-24)

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Introdução

Em termos humanos, quão difícil era a tarefa com que se confrontavam Josué e o povo, no que dizia respeito a entrar na terra de Canaã? Quais eram alguns dos obstáculos que Josué e o povo enfrentavam? Enquanto líder, Josué tinha de lidar com suceder a um líder como Moisés e liderar um grupo de pessoas teimosas e de cerviz endurecida. Todos juntos, enfrentavam cidades fortificadas, gigantes e um Jordão inundado. Tudo aquilo que Josué e o povo eram chamados a fazer, humanamente falando, estava muito além das suas capacidades - desde a travessia das águas transbordantes e turbulentas do Jordão até à conquista do povo feroz, poderoso e ímpio que ocupava a terra.

Independentemente destes obstáculos, acreditando nas promessas de Deus, aplicando os princípios da Palavra de Deus e contando com a presença da Sua pessoa, Josué seguiu corajosamente em frente, enviando em segredo dois homens para espiarem a terra, a fim de recolherem a necessária informação estratégica e táctica de que qualquer comandante militar precisaria com vista a planear uma estratégia bem-sucedida para tomar a terra.

Josué Envia os Espiões (2:1a)

1a E enviou Josué, filho de Nun, dois homens, desde Sitim, a espiar secretamente, dizendo: Andai e observai a terra, e a Jericó.

Poderíamos perguntar por que enviou Josué os espiões. Era isso necessário caso confiasse verdadeiramente no Senhor? Afinal de contas, não prometera Deus a Josué que lhe daria sucesso? Por que não se limitou a seguir em frente, sabendo que, de alguma forma, Deus providenciaria o que fosse necessário? De facto, a batalha era do Senhor… não era?

Para esta acção, Josué tinha como precedente a liderança e exemplo de Moisés – acção esta que resultava do próprio comando de Deus em Números 13:1-2. Por aplicação, Josué estava a viver e a agir segundo os preceitos da Escritura, conforme lhe fora ordenado em 1:7-8.

Embora Josué tivesse a promessa da salvação de Deus, não fora instruído quanto à forma como Deus derrotaria os inimigos que enfrentavam. À imagem de um líder militar prudente, limitava-se a recolher informação concernente à disposição das defesas inimigas, à condição da sua moral e a outros factores importantes em qualquer campanha militar. Além disso, não era suposto que presumisse do Senhor. Deveria confiar implicitamente no Senhor mas, em paralelo com tal confiança, cabia-lhe usar os recursos que Deus lhe dera: o trino, os homens e a sabedoria que fora adquirindo. Veja Mateus 4:6-7.

Princípio: A fé na provisão do Senhor não deverá nunca levar a presumir dos decretos ou acções soberanas de Deus, dos nossos sentimentos intuitivos ou das nossas vontades e desejos. A fé olha para os princípios aplicáveis da Escritura, recolhe a informação ou factos necessários para tomar decisões sensatas e, depois, baseando-se em princípios bíblicos e nos factos conhecidos, segue em frente, confiando na provisão e orientação do Senhor (compare com Lucas 14:31). Caso o Senhor deseje intervir de forma miraculosa como fez em Jericó, fantástico – mas não devemos presumir dos Seus caminhos soberanos.

Porquê o secretismo? Obviamente, os espiões deveriam introduzir-se na terra em segredo, tal como os espiões normalmente fazem. Aqui, a referência ao secretismo estava relacionada com o povo de Israel. Josué não informou as pessoas de que enviaria espiões. Neemias procedeu de modo similar quando inspeccionou Jerusalém. Josué estava a agir em nome dos propósitos de Deus e do melhor interesse do povo. Lembrava-se do malvado relatório dos espiões da geração precedente e da maneira como este desencorajara o povo. As pessoas são pessoas, e ele não pretendia que colocassem desnecessariamente os seus olhos sobre os problemas.

Princípio: Por vezes, é sensato da parte dos líderes fazerem o necessário de modo a manterem os olhos do seu povo fixos no Senhor e nas Suas promessas, em detrimento de nos problemas. A necessidade é de encorajamento mútuo. Em algumas circunstâncias, temos de enfrentar os problemas, mas devemos aprender a fazê-lo através dos olhos da fé na pessoa, promessas, princípios e propósitos de Deus. Este era um assunto de discrição e de orientação de Deus mediante estudo e conhecimento do que seria melhor nesta situação particular. Por vezes é bom chamar a atenção de todos para os problemas, outras vezes não é (compare com Neemias 2:4-17).

Repare que o texto diz “e a Jericó”, o que nos mostra que Josué estava particularmente interessado nesta cidade. Porquê? Jericó ficava a apenas cinco milhas (cerca de oito quilómetros) do outro lado do Jordão, e era uma das fortalezas mais formidáveis da terra. Conquistar esta cidade não só lhes daria uma base forte na terra, como também fragmentaria literalmente as forças dos cananeus – ao irromperem pelo meio de Canaã, os israelitas levantariam obstáculos às suas linhas de comunicação e abastecimento. Tal providenciaria um efeito desmoralizador adicional sobre os restantes habitantes.

Princípio: Novamente, isto ilustra a forma como, após orarmos por sabedoria (Tiago 1:5), termos de inspeccionar e avaliar as nossas próprias circunstâncias: onde estamos, para onde precisamos de ir, o chamamento de Deus nas nossas vidas, os nossos dons e talentos, as nossas fraquezas, impedimentos e as situações e forças que enfrentamos. Depois, com base nessa informação, estabelecemos planos, metas e objectivos, em paralelo com prioridades, e atacamos o problema em concordância, enquanto confiamos na intervenção e direcção de Deus (veja Provérbios 16:1 ss). Comece pelas coisas mais importantes e trabalhe nelas uma a uma. Tal inclui a nossa vida pessoal (necessidades espirituais, físicas e educacionais), vida familiar (relações, necessidades espirituais em família, etc.), vida eclesiástica, vocação pessoal e assim por diante.

Os Espiões Recebidos por Raab (2:1b)

1b Foram, pois, e entraram na casa de uma mulher prostituta, cujo nome era Raab, e dormiram ali.

Raab é mencionada oito vezes na Escritura (Josué 2:1, 3; 6:17, 23, 25; Mat. 1:5; Hebreus 11:31; Tiago 2:25); em seis dessas ocorrências, o seu nome é acompanhado por um substantivo descritivo específico. Sabe qual é? É “meretriz”. Por que iriam os homens ter com uma meretriz? Poderemos aprender alguma coisa deste acontecimento?

Tal facto tem criado problemas a muitos. De forma a remover tal este estigma – afinal, o nome dela aparece listado entre os antepassados do Salvador em Mateus 1:5 -, já foi mesmo argumentado que não seria uma meretriz, mas somente uma “estalajadeira”.

Um expositor, Pink, admite que ela tenha sido uma meretriz, mas é evidente que isso o incomoda. Ele disse: “Foram divinamente guiados até àquela casa em particular, embora não seja provável que no início estivessem pessoalmente conscientes desse facto”. Algumas linhas à frente, acrescenta: “A casa na qual se haviam abrigado pertencia a uma meretriz, de nome Raab: ainda que já não praticasse o seu negócio malvado, fora anteriormente uma mulher de má fama, estigma que ainda a perseguia”. ¹

A menos que Pink assuma de 2:9 ss que a declaração de fé de Raab abrangia a compreensão da Lei e respectivos estatutos, não vejo suporte bíblico para esse argumento, mas apenas um preconceito quanto à possibilidade de Deus usar uma mulher assim e de a trazer até Si enquanto ainda trabalhava como meretriz. É quase como se ela tivesse de limpar o seu acto antes de poder ser salva ou de Deus conseguir operar no seu coração.

Josefo (Antiguidades dos Judeus, livro V, capítulo 1, 2) procurou ilibar os espiões de qualquer suspeita de ficarem na casa de uma prostituta, chamando a Raab “estalajadeira” (compare com a nota de margem na Nova Versão Internacional). Contudo, “estalajadeira” e prostituta” eram sinónimos naquela cultura (compare com o Theological Wordbook of Old Testament, p. 246). A casa de Raab era o único lugar onde os homens poderiam ficar com alguma esperança de permanecerem indetectáveis e onde lhes seria possível recolher a informação que procuravam. Para além disso, a casa dela providenciava uma forma fácil de fuga, já que se localizava no muro da cidade (v. 15). Não há indicação de que Raab fosse uma prostituta do templo. ²

Provavelmente, os dois espiões conheceram-na na mesma rua onde talvez praticasse o seu ofício; ou quiçá, ouvindo falar deles, estivesse à sua procura fingindo angariar clientes, de acordo com o costume de uma meretriz ou mesmo de uma estalajadeira (compare com Provérbios 7:6-23). Por esta altura, ela começara a crer que o Deus de Israel era o verdadeiro Deus; porém, ao viver nesta cultura totalmente decadente, é improvável que conhecesse bem a Lei de Moisés.

Raab poderá ter identificado os homens como forasteiros e, por causa do estado de alerta de toda a cidade – motivado pela possibilidade de espiões -, bem como das suas convicções acerca do Deus de Israel, terá concluído que eram israelitas, convidando-os para sua casa, por motivos de protecção e expressão da sua fé, mas não de negócio.

Esta ocorrência ilustra maravilhosamente a graça de Deus. Ele não faz distinção de pessoas. Aceita-nos e perdoa-nos, não por causa do que somos ou do que poderemos ser, mas sim pelo Seu Filho, por causa do que Ele faria e que agora faz e fará através daqueles que confiam n’Ele e agem na fé. Não importa o que fomos ou costumávamos ser. O que interessa é Jesus Cristo, o que Ele fez, e se vamos ou não colocar n’Ele a nossa confiança.

Isto também aponta para o controlo soberano de Deus sobre os assuntos dos homens e para a forma como dirige os passos dos que confiam na Sua provisão ou procuram conhecê-Lo melhor. Deus actuara no coração de Raab; conhecia a sua fé, a sua ânsia quanto a conhecê-Lo e quiçá tornar-se parte do Seu povo; por isso, Deus operou soberanamente, juntando os espiões e Raab para protecção dos primeiros e bênção da segunda.

Deus poderia ter tornado os espiões invisíveis, ferido as pessoas com cegueira ou recorrido a anjos, mas escolheu antes usar dois homens e uma mulher, caminhando pela fé com coragem para agirem segundo as suas convicções – Ele optou por utilizar as circunstâncias mais normais da vida.

Princípio: De modo a confiarmos no Senhor, estaremos nós
à procura de milagres, do sensacional, pedindo experiências fora do normal antes de sairmos e confiarmos n’Ele? Ou estaremos dispostos a sair rumo às situações normais da vida, confiando em Deus para que nos use e dirija às pessoas comuns cujos corações tocou?

Repare que Josué é uma combinação interessante entre o miraculoso e o comum.

O Rei É Informado e Questiona Sobre os Espiões
(2:2-3)

2 Então deu-se notícia ao rei de Jericó, dizendo: Eis que esta noite vieram aqui uns homens dos filhos de Israel, para espiar a terra. 3 Pelo que enviou o rei de Jericó a Raab, dizendo: Tira fora os homens que vieram a ti, e entraram na tua casa, porque vieram espiar toda a terra.

Estes versículos indicam que toda a cidade se encontrava em alerta, tendo os espiões sido reconhecidos e vistos a entrar na casa de Raab. O facto de o rei não se ter limitado a derrubar a porta e a invadir a casa poderá ter sido uma questão de hospitalidade oriental. Mesmo nesta cidade decadente, havia um grande respeito pela hospitalidade. De facto, Unger diz: “O costume oriental concede um respeito quase supersticioso aos aposentos de uma mulher”. ³

O rei terá assumido que os espiões estavam com Raab. Tal como nos tempos modernos, na antiguidade as prostitutas estavam frequentemente envolvidas em actividades secretas. O rei esperava que Raab cumprisse o seu dever patriótico e entregasse os espiões. O antigo código penal de Hamurabi contém a seguinte provisão: “Se conspiradores se encontrarem na casa de um dono de taberna, e estes conspiradores não forem capturados e levados à corte, o dono da taberna deverá ser condenado à morte” (S.R. Driver e J.C. Miles, The Babylonian Laws [Oxford: Clarendon, 1956], 2:45).⁴

Raab Mente e Esconde os Espiões
(2:4-7)

4 Porém, aquela mulher tomou a ambos aqueles homens, e os escondeu, e disse: É verdade que vieram homens a mim, porém eu não sabia donde eram. 5 E aconteceu que, havendo-se de fechar a porta, sendo já escuro, aqueles homens saíram: não sei para onde aqueles homens se foram: ide após eles, depressa, porque vós os alcançareis. 6 Porém ela os tinha feito subir ao telhado, e os tinha escondido entre as canas do linho, que pusera em ordem sobre o telhado.7 E foram-se aqueles homens após eles, pelo caminho do Jordão, até aos vaus: e fechou-se a porta, havendo saído os que iam após eles.

Nestes versículos, Raab esconde os espiões, mente no intuito de proteger os soldados e envia os oficiais do rei numa busca vã. Uma vez que agir de outro modo era um acto de traição punível com a morte, o rei acreditou na sua lealdade e não ordenou que a sua casa fosse revistada.

Neste ponto, seria útil focar dois versículos no Novo Testamento e um no Antigo:

Hebreus 11:31 Pela fé, Raab, a meretriz, não pereceu com os incrédulos, acolhendo em paz os espias.

Tiago 2:25 E, de igual modo, Raab, a meretriz, não foi, também, justificada pelas obras, quando recolheu os emissários e os despediu por outro caminho?

Josué 6:17 Porém, a cidade será anátema ao Senhor, ela e tudo quanto houver nela: somente a prostituta Raab viverá, ela e todos os que com ela estiverem em casa; porquanto escondeu os mensageiros que enviámos.

Por que é que Raab foi salva? Porque acreditava no Deus de Israel. Esconder os mensageiros foi uma manifestação da sua fé. Tratou-se de uma ilusão calculada a fim de os proteger, à semelhança de muitas pessoas piedosas que esconderam judeus em países europeus durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Primeiramente, o que Raab fez foi uma questão de fé. Ela passara a crer que o Deus de Israel era verdadeiramente “Deus em cima nos céus e em baixo na terra” (2:11), pertencendo ao Hall da Fama no capítulo da fé.

Em segundo lugar, a fé de Raab, que lhe deu convicções fortes a respeito de Deus, levou-a a agir segundo a sua fé a ponto de colocar em jogo a sua própria vida. Ela sabia que Israel atacaria eventualmente a cidade, uma vez que o seu Deus era o Deus verdadeiro, e desejava ser salva e tornar-se parte da nação. Não sabia muito sobre o Deus de Israel, as Suas leis de justiça ou o caminho da salvação, mas estava ciente de que Ele era o Deus supremo.

E quanto à mentira de Raab? Seria justificável? Será que a Escritura a perdoa? A maioria dos comentadores aprova a sua fé, mas desaprova a sua mentira. No fundo, aprovam que tenha escondido os espiões, mas não que contasse mentiras. Por exemplo:

O Dr. Campbell escreve: “Desculpar Raab por ceder a uma prática comum é perdoar o que Deus condena… A mentira de Raab foi registada, mas não aprovada. A Bíblia aprova a sua fé, demonstrada através de boas obras, mas não a sua falsidade.” ⁵

O Dr. Unger escreve: “É óbvio que a mentira de Raab era moralmente incorrecta.” ⁶

Pink concorda e diz: “Ela falhou quanto a confiar plenamente no Senhor, e o temor do homem trouxe uma armadilha. Aquele cujos anjos feriram os homens de Sodoma com cegueira (Gén. 19:11) e que matara os cinquenta homens enviados para prenderem o Seu profeta (2 Reis 1:9-12) poderia ter evitado que os oficiais encontrassem os espiões.” ⁷

Mas estará isto correcto? O que era suposto que ela dissesse? “Se acham que eles estão aqui, entrem e revistem a casa.” Note, por favor, que se tratava de uma questão de guerra.

Em 6:17, Josué explicou que Raab foi poupada por ter escondido os espiões, agindo como aliada. Sejamos honestos. Quando vai de férias, deixa uma luz acesa ou programa a sua televisão para ligar à noite, a fim de dar a impressão de estar em casa quando, na verdade, não está? Fazemos isto de modo a enganar os intrusos, embora não seja verdade.

Repare no que diz o Expositors Bible Commentary (Comentário Bíblico Expositors): “Raab mentiu tanto no que fez quanto no que disse. A ilusão era uma importante estratégia de guerra. A espionagem seria impossível sem tal elemento. Ao esconder os espiões, Raab aliou-se a Israel contra o seu próprio povo. Foi um acto de traição!” ⁸

Em preparação para o Dia D na Segunda Guerra Mundial, deixamos propositadamente os alemães acreditarem que íamos invadir a França em Calais, creio, quando a nossa intenção consistia em invadir as praias de Omaha e Utah em Cherbourg, França.

A Declaração de Fé de Raab
(2:8-13)

8 E, antes que eles dormissem, ela subiu a eles sobre o telhado; 9 E disse aos homens: Bem sei que o Senhor vos deu esta terra, e que o pavor de vós caiu sobre nós, e que todos os moradores da terra estão desmaiados diante de vós. 10 Porque temos ouvido que o Senhor secou as águas do Mar Vermelho diante de vós, quando saíeis do Egipto, e o que fizestes aos dois reis dos amorreus, a Séon e a Og, que estavam dalém do Jordão, os quais destruístes. 11 Ouvindo isto, desmaiou o nosso coração, e em ninguém mais há ânimo algum, por causa da vossa presença, porque o Senhor, vosso Deus, é Deus em cima nos céus e em baixo na terra. 12 Agora, pois, jurai-me, vos peço, pelo Senhor, pois que vos fiz beneficência, que vós, também, fareis beneficência à casa do meu pai, e dai-me um sinal certo, 13 De que dareis a vida ao meu pai e à minha mãe, como também aos meus irmãos e às minhas irmãs, com tudo o que têm, e que livrareis as nossas vidas da morte.

Primeiramente, vemos a confiança e convicção de Raab quanto ao poder do Senhor. De alguma forma, sabia do que havia ocorrido no Mar Vermelho e mais tarde, bem como que tal resultara do poder soberano do Deus de Israel. O que dividira o Mar Vermelho não fora meramente produto do engenho de Israel ou algum capricho da natureza.

Aplicação: Isto recorda-nos que as nossas vidas não devem limitar-se a ser diferentes; deve existir algo nelas que aponte para Deus como a razão pela qual são distintas nas coisas que fazemos e dizemos – tais como ir à igreja, a nossa preocupação com outras pessoas e suas necessidades e o nosso testemunho específico, que confere um motivo para a esperança dentro de nós (1 Pedro 3:15-16).

Em segundo lugar, vemos a confiança e convicção de Raab no Deus de Israel (Javé) como o único Deus verdadeiro, que reina sobre o céu e sobre os assuntos dos homens na terra. A sua declaração no versículo 11 – “…porque o Senhor, vosso Deus, é Deus em cima nos céus e em baixo na terra” – é mais do que a constatação de que o Deus de Israel fosse uma divindade. A ideia é de que Ele – e apenas Ele – É o Deus verdadeiro, envolvido nos assuntos da terra e dos homens.

Aplicação: Tal recorda-nos o envolvimento de Deus nas nossas vidas. Ele É o Deus soberano que mantém unidas todas as coisas pela palavra do Seu poder, que actua nas nossas vidas. Será que vivemos à luz deste facto?

Terceiro, vemos a confiança e convicção de Raab quanto ao julgamento iminente do seu povo e ao seu desejo de ser salva, aliando-se ao Deus de Israel (vs. 13). Repare em “Agora, pois…”, que indica que este pedido resultou do seu conhecimento, convicção e fé relativamente ao Senhor.

Em quarto lugar, vemos nos versículos 12-13 que não estava somente preocupada consigo mesma. A sua preocupação incluía a sua família ou agregado familiar. Este é o plano número um de Deus para o evangelismo – a nossa rede familiar, de amigos e colegas de trabalho.

Aplicação: Quão preocupados e focados estamos naqueles que nos rodeiam – orando pela salvação, procurando conhecê-los e amá-los e, eventualmente, partilhando o amor de Cristo?

Os habitantes da terra encontravam-se aterrorizados. Três vezes neste capítulo, o verbo “desmaiar” é usado para descrever o estado emocional ou a moral das pessoas (vss. 9, 11, 24). Mental e emocionalmente, eram um povo vencido. Deus já entregara nas mãos de Israel o povo de Jericó. Há quanto tempo seria este o caso? Desde que haviam ouvido falar dos eventos no Mar Vermelho (2:9-11).

A questão que se coloca é a seguinte: teria Israel conhecimento disto? Com a excepção de Moisés, Josué e Caleb, os israelitas recusaram acreditar na promessa de Deus; em vez disso, permitiram que o relatório negativo dos dez espiões fizesse desmaiar os seus corações, pois focavam os problemas em detrimento do seu Deus.

Repare na ironia aqui presente: os nativos contemplavam o Deus de Israel e tremiam nas sandálias. Já os israelitas, que tinham testemunhado as obras poderosas de Deus vez após vez, olhavam para os seus problemas em lugar de para Deus, estando aterrorizados na descrença.

Atente nas passagens seguintes:

25 Depois, voltaram de espiar a terra, ao fim de quarenta dias. 26 E caminharam, e vieram a Moisés e a Aarão, e a toda a congregação dos filhos de Israel, no deserto de Paran, a Cades, e, tornando, deram-lhes conta a eles, e a toda a congregação, e mostraram-lhes o fruto da terra. 27 E contaram-lhe, e disseram: Fomos à terra a que nos enviaste; e verdadeiramente mana leite e mel, e este é o fruto. 28 O povo, porém, que habita nessa terra, é poderoso, e as cidades fortes e mui grandes; e também ali vimos os filhos de Enac. Os amalequitas habitam na terra do sul; e os heteus, e os jebuseus, e os amorreus habitam na montanha; e os cananeus habitam ao pé do mar, e pela ribeira do Jordão. (Números 13:25-29).

26 Porém, vós não quisestes subir; mas fostes rebeldes ao mandado do Senhor, nosso Deus. 27 E murmurastes nas vossas tendas, e dissestes: Porquanto o Senhor nos aborrece, nos tirou da terra do Egito, para nos entregar nas mãos dos amorreus, para destruir-nos. 28 Para onde subiremos? nossos irmãos fizeram com que se derretesse o nosso coração, dizendo: Maior e mais alto é este povo do que nós; as cidades são grandes e fortificadas até aos céus; e também vimos ali filhos dos gigantes. 29 Então eu vos disse: Não vos espanteis, nem os temais. 30 O Senhor, vosso Deus, que vai adiante de vós, ele por vós pelejará, conforme a tudo o que fez convosco, diante dos vossos olhos, no Egipto; 31 Como, também, no deserto, onde viste que o Senhor, teu Deus, nele te levou, como um homem leva seu filho, por todo o caminho que andastes, até chegardes a este lugar. 32 Mas nem por isso crestes ao Senhor, vosso Deus, …” (Deuteronómio 1:26-32).

Aplicação: Quão similar a nós é a situação descrita! Independentemente de tudo, quer se trate da picada de um mosquito ou do ataque de um leão, temos de aprender a manter os nossos olhos no Senhor e longe do problema (veja Hebreus 12:1-2).

A Resposta dos Espiões (2:14)

14 Então aqueles homens responderam-lhe: A nossa vida responderá pela vossa, até ao ponto de morrer, se não denunciardes este nosso negócio, e será pois que, dando-nos o Senhor esta terra, usaremos contigo de beneficência e de fidelidade.

Manter-se calada a respeito da sua presença e recusar-se a prestar informação sobre eles seria uma prova da sua fé no Senhor e da boa vontade relativamente ao povo de Deus (compare com Mateus 25:24 ss).

O Cordão de Escarlata
(2:15-21)

15 Ela então os fez descer por uma corda, pela janela, porquanto a sua casa estava sobre o muro da cidade, e ela morava sobre o muro. 16 E disse-lhes: Ide-vos ao monte, para que, porventura, vos não encontrem os perseguidores, e escondei-vos lá três dias, até que voltem os perseguidores, e depois, ide pelo vosso caminho. 17 E disseram-lhe aqueles homens: Desobrigados seremos deste teu juramento que nos fizeste jurar. 18 Eis que, vindo nós à terra, atarás este cordão de fio de escarlata à janela por onde nos fizeste descer; e recolherás em casa, contigo, o teu pai, e a tua mãe, e os teus irmãos, e a toda a família do teu pai. 19 Será, pois, que, qualquer que sair fora da porta da tua casa, o seu sangue será sobre a sua cabeça, e nós seremos sem culpa; mas qualquer que estiver contigo, em casa, o seu sangue seja sobre a nossa cabeça, se nele se puser mão. 20 Porém, se tu denunciares este nosso negócio, seremos desobrigados do teu juramento, que nos fizeste jurar. 21 E ela disse: Conforme às vossas palavras, assim seja. Então os despediu; e eles se foram; e ela atou o cordão de escarlata à janela.

Mesmo antes de partirem, os espiões confirmaram o seu acordo com Raab: primeiramente, a sua casa deveria estar identificada com um cordão de escarlata pendurado da janela. Em segundo lugar, ela e a sua família teriam de permanecer dentro da casa durante o ataque à cidade. Por último, os espiões deixaram claro que ficariam livres do juramento de protecção para com Raab caso a mesma denunciasse a sua missão.

Esta história é muito parecida com a salvação experienciada no decurso da última praga que Deus trouxe sobre o Faraó e o Egipto, ao matar o primogénito de cada lar, mas poupando os israelitas graças ao sangue do cordeiro Pascal, com o qual os dois umbrais e o lintel das suas casas haviam sido borrifados. Embora não tenha sido identificado como tal, é provável que o cordão de escarlata fosse uma imagem de Cristo.

Nos dias de Noé, havia segurança e abrigo para aqueles que entravam pela porta da arca. No Egipto, a segurança e o abrigo eram obtidos por aqueles que se reuniam atrás das portas aspergidas com o sangue do cordeiro Pascal. Para mim e para si, também há segurança e abrigo do julgamento eterno – mas apenas se entrarmos pela porta certa: Jesus Cristo. Como Ele disse em João 10:9, “Eu sou a porta: se alguém entrar por mim, salvar-se-á.”

George Whitefield, o eloquente pregador do Grande Despertar na América do Norte (1738-40), discursou uma vez sobre o texto “A Porta Estava Fechada”. Encontravam-se na congregação dois jovens arrogantes e desrespeitosos e, por acaso, um foi ouvido a dizer ao outro, em tom zombeteiro: “E se a porta estiver fechada? Outra será aberta.”

Mais adiante no sermão, o evangelista disse: “É possível que esteja aqui alguém descuidado e presumido, que diz ‘Que importa que a porta esteja fechada? Outra será aberta!’.”

Os dois jovens entreolharam-se, alarmados!

“Sim, outra porta será aberta”, concluiu Whitefield. “Será a porta da cova sem fundo – a entrada para o Inferno.” ⁹

O Retorno e Relatório dos Espiões(2:22-24)

22 Foram-se, pois, e chegaram ao monte, e ficaram ali três dias, até que voltaram os perseguidores, porque os perseguidores os buscaram por todo o caminho, porém não os acharam. 23 Assim, aqueles dois homens voltaram, e desceram do monte, e passaram, e vieram a Josué, filho de Nun, e contaram-lhe tudo quanto lhes acontecera; 24 E disseram a Josué: Certamente o Senhor tem dado toda esta terra nas nossas mãos, pois até todos os moradores estão desmaiados diante de nós.

Josué e os homens de Israel viram nas palavras e acções de Raab uma evidência clara da providência soberana e bênção do Senhor. Repare na confiança deles: “Certamente o Senhor tem dado toda esta terra nas nossas mãos, …”. Existem nesta passagem algumas lições óbvias:

(1) Demonstra a preocupação e obra de Deus para salvar uma pessoa ou família que confie n’Ele (compare com 2 Pedro 3:9). Lembra-nos que Deus conhece os corações dos homens e nos conduzirá a eles se estivermos disponíveis. Também nos ensina que a obra de Deus deve ter lugar em ambos os extremos.

(2) Demonstra a protecção e provisão de Deus em favor dos Seus servos, capacitando-os a cumprir a sua vocação e objectivo independentemente das circunstâncias. A única coisa capaz de nos impedir de realizar a vontade de Deus e de cumprir o nosso chamamento é a nossa própria descrença.

(3) Demonstra a forma como a nossa fé deve levar à acção e ministério em benefício de outros. Raab disponibilizou-se a ajudar quer os espiões, quer a própria família (João 1:35-51; 4:28-29, 39).

(4) Demonstra como a misericórdia e graça de Deus ultrapassam a Sua ira através da cruz. Raab era Amorita e, de acordo com a lei de Moisés, não poderia haver piedade nem alianças com os nativos – apenas julgamento (compare com Deut. 7:2). Através da sua fé genuína, tornou-se uma excepção.

(5) Raab constitui um tipo e testemunho do propósito de Deus quanto a salvar os gentios que, embora sem esperança no mundo (Efésios 2:12), podiam aproximar-se de Deus e serem participantes com Israel, mediante a fé em Cristo.

(6) Raab providencia uma lição ao contrastar notavelmente com Israel e demais habitantes de Jericó. Isso transforma-se num aviso contra o endurecimento do coração naqueles que vêem e ouvem, mas falham no que toca a responder pela fé. Escutar não é suficiente. Repare na aplicabilidade deste conceito:

Relativamente a Israel:

1 Temamos, pois, que, porventura, deixada a promessa de entrar no seu repouso, pareça que algum de vós fique para trás; 2 Porque, também, a nós foram pregadas as boas novas, como a eles, mas a palavra da pregação nada lhes aproveitou, porquanto não estava misturada com a fé naqueles que a ouviram. (Heb 4:1-2).

Relativamente a Jericó:

9 E disse aos homens: Bem sei que o Senhor vos deu esta terra, e que o pavor de vós caiu sobre nós, e que todos os moradores da terra estão desmaiados diante de vós. 10 Porque temos ouvido que o Senhor secou as águas do Mar Vermelho diante de vós, quando saíeis do Egipto, e o que fizestes aos dois reis dos amorreus, a Séon e a Og, que estavam dalém do Jordão, os quais destruístes. 11 Ouvindo isto, desmaiou o nosso coração, e em ninguém mais há ânimo algum, por causa da vossa presença, porque o Senhor, vosso Deus, é Deus em cima nos céus e em baixo na terra. (Josué 2:9-11).

Relativamente aos discípulos:

52 Pois não tinham compreendido o milagre dos pães; antes, o seu coração estava endurecido. (Marcos 6:52).

Relativamente a nós:

7 Portanto, como diz o Espírito Santo, se ouvirdes, hoje, a sua voz, 8 Não endureçais os vossos corações, como na provocação, no dia da tentação no deserto, 9 Onde os vossos pais me tentaram, me provaram, e viram, por quarenta anos, as minhas obras. 10 Por isso me indignei contra esta geração, e disse: Estes sempre erram em seu coração, e não conheceram os meus caminhos. 11 Assim jurei, na minha ira, que não entrarão no meu repouso. (Hebreus 3:7-11).

Texto original de J. Hampton Keathley, III.

Tradução de C. Oliveira.

¹ Arthur Pink, Gleanings in Joshua, Moody Press, Chicago, 1964, p. 54.

² Frank E. Gaebelein, General Editor, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, New Testament, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1976-1992, versão electrónica.

³ Unger’s Commentary on the Old Testament. Vol I, Génesis –Cantares de Salomão, p. 285.

⁴ Expositors Bible Commentary, electronic version.

⁵ Joshua, Leader Under Fire, Donald Campbell, p. 19-20.

⁶ Unger’s Commentary on the Old Testament, p. 285.

⁷ Pink, p. 59.

⁸ Expositors Bible Commentary, versão electrónica.

⁹ Donald K. Campbell com Jim Denney, No Time For Neutrality, A Study of Joshua, Discovery House, 1994, p. 36.

Lesson 15: Are You Ready for That Day? (1 Thessalonians 5:1-8)

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November 6, 2016

A recent article in Reader’s Digest (“The Big One,” 12/15-01/16) warned that a major, overdue earthquake along the northwest coast of the U.S. could trigger a massive tsunami that would wipe out everything on the coast from Washington to Northern California. It would be the worst natural disaster in the history of North America! But in spite of that clear warning, I’ve not read anything about people who live in that area moving away or doing anything to prepare for such a catastrophe.

After I read that story, I asked myself, “Would I do anything about that warning if I lived in that area?” The answer is, probably not. Relocating to a different area would be a major hassle. You’d have to sell your home, get a different job, and deal with many other changes, all for an uncertain event.

But what if the predicted event was absolutely certain? Would you heed the warning? Well, as we all know, scientists can’t be absolutely certain with such predictions, so that tends to make us skeptical of such dire warnings. Most of us would probably rather take our chances than go to the hassle of fleeing from a merely predicted event.

Maybe that’s why people ignore God’s warnings about impending judgment for all sinners. The Bible repeatedly warns that God’s righteous judgment is not just highly probable, but absolutely certain. As Paul told the Athenian philosophers (Acts 17:31), God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” But most people shrug it off or they figure that since they’re not terrorists or rapists, they’ll be okay. But they don’t do anything to get ready for that certain day.

Paul has just dealt with the question of whether our deceased loved ones in Christ will miss out on His second coming. Paul has shown that they will actually precede those who are still living when that momentous event occurs. He wants us to be informed and comforted with regard to that future event. But now he turns to the matter of “times and epochs,” specifically the time called “the day of the Lord.” We can’t be absolutely sure about the Thessalonians’ question that Paul was responding to. Many commentators think that they were wondering about when that day would occur. Or, perhaps they were worried that they were not spiritually and morally worthy to meet the Lord on the day of His coming (Jeffrey Weima, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament [Baker Academic], ed. by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, p. 881). Weima summarizes the flow of verses 1-11:

Paul responds to their anxiety by reassuring them that they need not fear the day of the Lord (5:1-3). He then provides two supporting grounds for his claim: (1) their present status as “sons of light and sons of the day” (5:4-5); (2) their past election by God to obtain salvation and eternal life (5:9-10). Sandwiched between these two grounds is an appeal to live vigilantly as those who “belong to the day” (5:6-8). The discussion concludes with an exhortation (5:11).

I will focus on four truths in verses 1-8:

1. The day of the Lord is certainly coming or God’s Word is not true.

The phrase, “the day of the Lord,” is used often in the Old Testament (e.g. Isa. 13:6; Ezek. 30:3; Joel 1:15; 2:1; Amos 5:18-20 [the earliest reference]; Mal. 4:5) and four times in the New Testament (Acts 2:20; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 2:1; 2 Pet. 3:10). It is also called, “that day” (Luke 21:34; 2 Thess. 1:10); “the day” (Mal. 3:2; 4:1; 1 Thess. 5:4; Rom. 13:12); “the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:12); “the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:10; 2:16); “the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6); and, “the day of our (or, “the”) Lord Jesus” (2 Cor. 1:14; 1 Cor. 5:5; or, “the Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Cor. 1:8). Revelation (6:17; 16:14) also refers to “the great day of their [God and the Lamb’s] wrath” and “the great day of God, the Almighty.”

The concept refers to God’s intervention in history for judgment on His enemies (including those who falsely claim to be His people; Amos 5:18-20) or for deliverance and blessing for His people (Isa. 11:10, 11; Joel 2:28-32, interpreted in Acts 2:17-21 to refer to the Day of Pentecost; Amos 9:11-12, interpreted in Acts 15:16-18 to refer to Christ). Sometimes these cataclysmic days of judgment found partial fulfillment when God wiped out Israel’s enemies and delivered His people from a military threat. But all such events pointed ahead to the culmination of God’s judgment and salvation in the first and second comings of Jesus Christ.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2, Paul says that the day of the Lord is the time when Christ comes and we are gathered together to Him. It will be preceded by a widespread apostasy and the revealing of the antichrist, whom Paul calls “the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction” (2 Thess. 2:3). Thus the final day of the Lord begins with the tribulation and concludes with the second coming of Jesus Christ. Since when he was with them Paul had taught these new believers about this coming, certain day, he reminds them (v. 1) that they had no need for anything to be written to them.

Since this concept of the day of the Lord is repeated so frequently in Scripture, it will certainly happen or God’s Word is not true. Those are the only options! To conclude that because it hasn’t happened in 2,000 years, it isn’t going to happen, is to shrug off all of the many already fulfilled prophecies in the Bible. Peter anticipated scoffers doing this, though (2 Pet. 3:3-7):

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

So we should not doubt that the day of the Lord is coming, even though it is delayed. You either have to throw out the Bible completely or acknowledge that this day will certainly come!

2. The day of the Lord will be sudden, unexpected, and inescapable for those in spiritual darkness.

1 Thess. 5:2-3: “For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.”

Whenever the idea of God’s intervening in judgment or salvation comes up, people are curious to know, “When is it going to happen?” In Mark 13:4, the disciples asked Jesus, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?” He went on to give them a number of signs, some of which were initially fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, but others which await fulfillment in the future. But even though Jesus gave a number of future signs that would signal His coming, at the end of His discourse He still emphasized the need for His followers to be alert (Mark 13:37): “What I say to you I say to all, ‘Be on the alert!’”

Again, just before the risen Lord Jesus ascended, the disciples asked (Acts 1:6), “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus replied (Acts 1:7), “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.” He then went on to repeat the Great Commission. Our focus should not be on fixing dates, but on spreading the gospel to those who will face God’s certain judgment if they do not repent.

The phrase Jesus used, “times and epochs,” is the same as that which Paul uses in verse 1. When Paul had taught these new believers about the Lord’s coming, he probably had passed on to them that Jesus had used this analogy of a thief to exhort His followers to be alert and watching for His coming (Matt. 24:42-43):

“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.”

So the point of the day of the Lord coming like a thief in the night is that it will be sudden and unexpected. The analogy of the woman with labor pains may include some unexpectedness, since even though a woman knows her time is near, she never knows exactly when her labor pains will come on in earnest. But the main idea of the labor pains for the pregnant woman is that they are inescapable. In a day when many women died in childbirth, there was always a certain amount of anxiety about that inevitable process. But pregnant women knew that labor pains were the inescapable consequence of being pregnant.

When Paul says that people will be saying, “Peace and safety!” just prior to destruction coming on them, he may be referring to the prophets Jeremiah (6:14) and Ezekiel (13:10), who condemned the false prophets of their day for assuring people of peace when God had declared impending judgment. Or, he may be referring to a popular slogan of the Roman Empire, which declared peace and safety to all who were under their rule (Weima, p. 881). The picture is that people will be enjoying a time of peace and prosperity, perhaps under the initial rule of antichrist, the new world ruler. They will not feel the need to get right with God and they will laugh off the idea of impending judgment, just as Lot’s sons-in-law thought that he was joking about the doom of Sodom (Gen. 19:14).

Revelation 18 presents the same picture of worldly Babylon when the Lord returns. She will be prosperous and secure, living for pleasure without God. But suddenly, in one hour, destruction will come on her and all of her great wealth will be laid waste. “Destruction” as both Paul and John in Revelation use the term, does not refer to annihilation, but rather, as Leon Morris (The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians [Eerdmans], p. 153) puts it, “the loss of that life which is really life.” He points out that in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, the same word is used to describe eternal “banishment from the living presence of the Lord,” which is its meaning in our text. He concludes (p. 154), “It still needs emphasis that there are no other alternatives than life with the Lord or eternal loss. One or the other is inevitable.”

But what about for believers? How does the day of the Lord affect us?

3. The day of the Lord is an expected event for us who are children of light and day.

1 Thess. 5:4-5: “But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness.”

When I used to believe in the pretribulation rapture, I understood these verses to mean that the day of the Lord will not overtake us as a thief because we won’t be on earth when it comes. But as I understand it now, that isn’t what Paul is saying. Rather, he says that as sons of light and sons of day, that day will not overtake us like a thief because we will be expecting it and we will be living in light of its certainty.

The darkness that Paul refers to is both spiritual and moral. In Ephesians 4:18-19, Paul refers to unbelievers who are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.” In Romans 1:21, Paul refers to those who knew God, but didn’t “honor Him as God or give thanks.” As a result, “their foolish heart was darkened.” As a result (Rom. 1:24-31), God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to various degrading passions.

But when God saves us, He rescues us from Satan’s domain of darkness and transfers us to Christ’s kingdom of light (Col. 1:12-13). While exhorting us to moral purity in contrast to those in the world, Paul said (Eph. 5:7-10), “Therefore do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” (See, also, John 12:35-36.)

So there is a distinct contrast between unbelievers, characterized by spiritual and moral darkness, and believers, who are children of light and day. Believers will not be surprised when the day of the Lord comes because they expect it. But, if that is so, then why does Paul go on to exhort us to be alert?

4. Since we know that the day of the Lord is coming, we should be alert and sober, putting on the armor of faith, love, and hope.

1 Thess. 5:6-8: “So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.”

The certain coming of the day should motivate us to live in line with what we are in the Lord. We are sons (children) of light and of day. I take those phrases to be synonymous. This is our position in Christ. But that position requires action: Let us not sleep, but be alert and sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.

“Others” (v. 6) refers to unbelievers, pictured here as sleeping. This means that they are living as if there will never be a judgment day. If they hear someone mention God’s impending judgment on sinners, they roll their eyes and chuckle as if the person giving the warning believes in fables from the dark ages. Verse 7 is an illustration of the principle from the natural world: people generally sleep at night and get drunk at night. Those who sleep spiritually are in spiritual darkness, either like those physically asleep or like a drunk who has no idea of dangers around him. They will be caught by surprise when the day of the Lord engulfs them.

The Bible has many scenes of sleeping people who were oblivious to physical or spiritual danger. Some were unbelievers and some were believers. Israel’s enemy general, Sisera, was fleeing from Israel’s army. He came exhausted to the tent of a woman named Jael, who invited him in. After he fell asleep in her tent, she took a tent peg and drove it through his temple, giving Israel complete victory (Judges 4:17-24). He never knew what hit him.

Later, the mighty Samson was lulled to sleep by the deceptive Delilah, who then called for the Philistine warlords to try to seize him (Judges 16). He finally succumbed to her pleas to reveal the secret of his strength, leading to his capture, blinding, and enslavement. By sleeping in Delilah’s lap, he was extremely foolish and insensitive to the danger that he was in.

The disciples could not stay awake to pray with Jesus in the garden. When His enemies came upon Him, they all fled in terror. The virgins in Jesus’ parable of His second coming all fell asleep while waiting for the bridegroom. The wise virgins had prepared themselves with sufficient oil, but the foolish ones slept without enough oil. The wise were taken into the wedding feast, but the foolish were shut out. Jesus’ application is (Matt. 25:13), “Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour.”

That’s Paul’s application here: Don’t sleep, but be alert and sober! The verb, “having put on,” may also be translated, “putting on.” If it means, “having put on,” Paul is saying, “Be what you are. When you trusted in Christ, you put on this spiritual armor. Now, live like it!” Or, if it means, “putting on,” the idea is that the way we remain alert and sober is by putting on this spiritual armor.

Elsewhere (Eph. 6:11-20; Rom. 13:12; 2 Cor. 6:7; 10:4), Paul uses the analogy of spiritual armor, assigning different meanings to the various pieces. In the well-known Ephesians 6 text, for example, the breastplate is righteousness, whereas here it is faith and love. In both texts, the helmet is salvation, but here it is “the hope of salvation,” which points to our future deliverance when Christ returns. In both cases, Paul is drawing from Isaiah 59:17, which pictures God as a mighty warrior:

He put on righteousness like a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head;
And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing
And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle.

In our text, Paul says that as believers, we must put on this armor, which God Himself uses in Isaiah. Paul describes the armor with the three cardinal Christian virtues that he has already emphasized (1:3), faith, love, and hope. John Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 289, italics his) observes, “He omits nothing of what belongs to spiritual armour, for the man that is provided with faith, love, and hope, will be found in no department unarmed.”

John MacArthur (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, 1 & 2 Thessalonians [Moody Press], pp. 161-162) points out that these three virtues protect us against temptation from the forces of darkness. He says that faith is trust in God’s person. He always acts in accordance with His attributes. It is also trust in God’s power. Nothing is too difficult for Him. Faith is trust in God’s promises. He always keeps His word. And, faith is trust in God’s sovereign plan, as revealed in Scripture. It will happen as God’s word states.

Love probably refers both to love for God and love for others, the two great commandments. Hope looks ahead to the glorious future that God has prepared for all who believe in Jesus Christ. MacArthur concludes (p. 162), “When faith is weak, love grows cold. When love grows cold, hope is lost. When hope in God’s promise of future glory is weak, believers are vulnerable to temptation and sin.”

So in light of the coming day of the Lord, do an occasional spiritual checkup. Ask yourself: “Is my faith in Christ and His sacrifice for me solid? Do I daily trust the crucified and risen Savior (John 14:1; 20:31)? Is my love for God fresh and vital (Rev. 2:4-5)? Is my love for others fervent and growing (1 Pet. 1:22; 4:8)? Does my hope in Christ’s coming and the future glory He has promised motivate me to obey and serve Him (2 Tim. 4:8)?

Conclusion

I once worked at the swanky Drake Hotel in Chicago. Years before I was there, in July of 1959, Queen Elizabeth was scheduled to visit Chicago. Elaborate preparations were made for her visit. The waterfront was readied for docking her ship. Litter baskets were painted and a red carpet was ready to be rolled out for her to walk on. Many hotels were alerted to be ready. But when they contacted the Drake, the manager said, “We are making no plans for the Queen. Our rooms are always ready for royalty.”

That’s how our lives should be in light of Christ’s return. We shouldn’t have to make any special or unusual preparations. We should live each day alert and ready for the day of the Lord.

Application Questions

Since there are so many different views on prophecy, how can we be certain enough about it for it to affect our daily lives?
To what extent should we emphasize God’s impending judgment when we tell others about Jesus?
Since Jesus taught that His coming will happen after many different signs, why does He tell us to be alert, since we don’t know the day or hour? Shouldn’t we know the general time?
What are some ways that Christians are prone to “get sleepy” with regard to the Lord’s coming? How can we stay alert?

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

20. Recenze knihy -- Výbuch na spadnutí!

Podtitul: Účinná pomoc pro matky potýkající se s hněvem

Autorka: Julie Ann Barnhillová

Rok vydání: 2001

Vydavatel: Harvest House Publishers

Počet stran: 272

Webová stránka autorky: http://www.juliebarnhill.com

Jazyk vydání: anglický

Tuto knihu byste si měli přečíst v případě, že…

Si říkáte: „Už znovu neztratím nervy a nerozzlobím se na své děti.“ A přesto se opět rozčílíte a zanechá to ve vás jen pocit viny a zoufalství. Knihu byste si měli přečíst i tehdy, když vám rodičovství nepřináší mnoho radosti a/nebo se nedokážete plně radovat ze svých dětí.

„V kostce“…

Tato kniha pojednává o otevřené a upřímné rodičovské cestě jedné matky a o jejím zápasu s hněvem. S nádechem humoru autorka otevřeně vypráví o svých každodenních bitvách a chybách, kterých se jako matka dopouští. Znovu ujišťuje všechny ostatní matky, že nejsou na zápasy spojené s výchovou rodiny samy. Nabízí užitečné a prospěšné rady, jak se vypořádat s hněvem ve svém životě a jak začít dělat kroky směřující ke změně.

Hlavní myšlenky…

Julie Ann Barnhillová rozděluje svou knihu na dvě části.

V první zkoumá různé důvody, proč se ženy potýkají s hněvem, a přirovnává je k sopkám. Zaměřuje se na porozumění vašeho „způsobu výbuchu“. Uvádí, že existují tři takové způsoby. Prvním z nich je doutnající hněv, který se často projevuje negativním přístupem k životu. Druhý způsob autorka popisuje jako výbuch chrlící „verbální uhlíky sarkasmu“ (str. 35). Třetím způsobem je explozivní výbuch mající za následek jak verbální, tak fyzické zneužívání. Autorka upozorňuje, že všechny zmíněné způsoby výbuchu mohou poškodit vaše děti, a proto bychom měly chtít nechat si poradit.

Julie se také zaměřuje na rozpoznávání varovných signálů a problémů, které se za hněvem skrývají, a také známek, že jsme zašly příliš daleko. Uvádí tři varovné signály, které mohou vést k výbuchu. První z nich popisuje slovy „malé spouštěče, velké výbuchy“ (str. 53). Jedná se o nejrůznější drobnosti, které mohou vyvolávat stres. Druhým signálem je sarkasmus, ke kterému se uchylujeme, když nás něco dráždí, a třetím je náš vlastní fyzický stav (tj. PMS), který může vést k výbušným reakcím. Problémy skryté pod povrchem rozděluje do tří kategorií tlaku, kterému ženy čelí. Vysvětluje, že tlaky spjaté s minulostí, vnitřní tlaky a narůstající vnější tlaky mohou být kořenem našeho hněvu. A konečně autorka na základě vlastní zkušenosti uvádí, že pokud ve svém hněvu způsobíte svému dítěti nějakou škodu, zašly jste příliš daleko. Láskyplně proto povzbuzuje ženy, aby vyhledaly pomoc.

Ve druhé části knihy Julie nabízí rozumné a praktické rady, jak dosáhnout změny. Uvádí 14 poučných a užitečných strategií, jak „zachovat chladnou hlavu“. Navíc v dodatcích ke knize poskytuje nespočet informací o depresi, vývojových stadiích dítěte a také široký seznam doporučené četby.

Kroky…

V každé kapitole Julie uvádí příklady Oddechového času/Krotitelů hněvu neboli praktické tipy, které mohou pomoci matkám zvládat svůj hněv. Deset nejdůležitějších zahrnuje:

1. Dané chvíle jsou dobrou příležitostí k tomu, začít opakovat krédo rozumné matky: „Také to pomine.“ (str. 21)

2. Někdy můžete překonat sopečný výbuch tím, že se soustředíte na své fyzické reakce. Nezapomeňte zhluboka a pomalu dýchat… (str. 36)

3. Pokud vás rozčilují hromady špinavého prádla nebo jakýkoli jiný vizuální podnět, snažte se ze sebe své rozčílení setřást a najděte způsob, jak daný podnět nemít na očích, dokud nebudete schopná s ním něco udělat. (str. 51)

4. Naučte se rozpoznávat fyzické známky hněvu, abyste nad nimi dokázaly získat kontrolu a zabránily tomu, aby se váš hněv vystupňoval. (str. 60)

5. V mnoha stresujících situacích vás může coby rodiče zachránit smích. Využijte skutečnosti, že vaše děti jsou skutečně legrační, a uvolněte napětí raději prostřednictvím smíchu než výbuchu. (str. 88)

6. Nikdy nepodceňujte sílu upřímné omluvy. Když si uvědomíte, že jste svůj hněv nesprávně namířily proti svým dětem, uznejte to. (str. 89)

7. Můžeme snížit stres a zlepšit své vztahy, pokud se vědomě rozhodneme odpustit dítěti, které „pořád“ dělá něco, co nás rozčiluje nebo nám vadí. (str. 95)

8. Podívejte se dítěti zpříma do očí a jemně ho uchopte za tvář se slovy: „Mám tě ráda takového, jaký jsi!“ (str. 102)

9. Pokud vás dovedou rozhodit nečekané okolnosti, vyvolávající ve vás hněv, udělejte si pár minut na to, abyste se na ně připravily, a tak zabránily případným výbuchům hněvu. (str. 122)

10. Pokud je vaším problémem PMS, můžete odbourat svou rozmrzelost částečně tím, že jednoduše snížíte příjem soli. (str. 179)

Citace…

„Máte dojem, že jste jediná matka, která zápasí s hněvem vůči svým dětem? Matka, do které byste to řekly nejméně, je možná nejvíce zatížena utajovaným hněvem a vztekem.“ (str. 26)

„Pocit viny coby matky je skutečně tíživý. A v případě většiny z nás je to opravdu varná káď tlaku, protože jsme přijaly za svůj předpoklad, že všechno, co se děje našim dětem, je moje vina, protože já jsem přece matka’.“ (str. 86)

„Měly jste vysoké ideály… a zažily jste, jak se mnohé z nich zhroutily a sesypaly na hromadu reality kolem vašich cukrem polepených prstů… Ale hlavu vzhůru, milé přítelkyně. Na konci tunelu svítí světlo… a tentokrát to není otravná modrá mašinka jménem Tomáš! Ne, je to světlo naděje, představující láskyplný a uspokojivý vztah, který budete spolu se svým dítětem prožívat v důsledku toho, že uznáte… a vypořádáte se se svým hněvem.“ (str. 232)

Jak kniha ovlivnila mé rodičovství…

Jako matce, která se potýká s vlastním hněvem, se mi ulevilo, když jsem zjistila, že nejsem sama. Tato kniha mě povzbudila k tomu, abych se jako rodič dál otevřeně sdílela o svém zápasu s hněvem. Dokázala jsem říci o svých bojích přátelům a založit podpůrnou skupinu, a to i když její členové neprožívají nutně tytéž zápasy. Těmi největšími poklady moudrosti, které jsem v knize objevila bylo, že jsem se naučila přiznávat své chyby a omlouvat se svým dětem a zároveň jim odpouštět jejich drobné rošťárny a milovat je coby úžasné malé osobnosti. Strategie Julie Ann Barnhillové mi zprostředkovaly několik praktických kroků k tomu, jak zvládat svůj hněv.

Mých pět hlavních strategií:

Strategie č. 3: Starejte se o své fyzické já: Dbejte na to, abyste si udělaly čas na návštěvu lékaře/zubaře a na cvičení.

Strategie č. 6: Vypracujte si kázeňský plán: Malá předchozí příprava může značně zredukovat nastalý stres.

Strategie č. 10: Dávejte si pozor na to, co říkáte před dětmi: Mějte pod kontrolou svůj jazyk a přemýšlejte dříve, než promluvíte.

Strategie č. 12: Přehodnoťte své postoje: Naučte se být spokojená za všech okolností.

Strategie č. 14: Založte podpůrnou skupinu: Vyhledejte tři nebo čtyři další maminky, které prožívají podobné zápasy, a pravidelně se scházejte.

19. Recenze knihy -- Rodičovství bez křiku

Subtitle: Revoluční a klidný přístup k výchově dětí

Autor: Hal Edward Runkel, LMFT

Rok vydání: 2007

Vydavatel: Broadway Books, divize nakl. domu Random House, Inc.

Počet stran: 218

Webová stránka autora: http://www.screamfree.com

Jazyk vydání: anglický

Tuto knihu byste si měli přečíst v případě, že…

Vás zneklidňuje chování Vašich dětí a reagujete na něj emotivním způsobem.

„V kostce“…

Tato kniha pojednává o tom, jak vytvořit vztahy, po nichž toužíme tím, že se naučíme soustředit na sebe sama, uklidnit se a chovat se dospěle.

Hlavní myšlenky…

Staňte se „klidnými“ rodiči, které vaše děti skutečně potřebují – naučte se ovládat a chovat dospěle.

Zůstat klidným znamená vytvořit dětem prostor pro jejich vlastní rozhodnutí a zároveň vytvořit prostor pro sebe sama, abychom zmírnili naše obavy, které s jejich rozhodováním souvisejí.

Zůstat klidným znamená zaměřit se na přirozené důsledky jednání a neuchýlit se ke zbytečnému vyhrožování.

Udělejte si čas pro sebe.

Kroky…

Abyste si mohli užívat „osobní“ stránku rodičovství (zábava/ hra), musíte se nejprve postarat o tu „pracovní“ stránku (prosadit se jako autorita).

Vaše schopnost uklidnit se, a to i tehdy, kdy nemáte děti pod kontrolou, je nejlepší způsob, jak určit postavení dětí v rodině.

Namísto křiku se zaměřte na přirozené důsledky.

Přijměte tyto důsledky a poté se staňte životním průvodcem svých dětí; buďte jim nablízku, když se s těmito důsledky vyrovnávají.

Vyzkoušejte si různé polohy svého vztahu k dětem a sledujte změny, které se kolem vás odehrávají.

Mějte se rádi kvůli svým dětem.

Nasaďte nejprve sobě kyslíkovou masku, abyste měli dost sil na to starat se o své děti (podobně jako při cestování letadlem, kdy v případě nehody nasazujete masku NEJPRVE sobě a teprve poté dítěti).

Najděte si čas na své koníčky, kávu s přítelkyní, apod.

Citace…

„Emocionální reakce jsou nejhorším nepřítelem dobrých vztahů.“

„Kdykoli se poddáme vlastním obavám, vytváříme přesně ten výsledek, jakému se snažíme vyhnout.“

„Jediným způsobem jak si udržet pozici vlivu na své děti je znovuzískat kontrolu nad sebou samými.“

„Vaše emocionální odpověď je na vás. Vždycky máte na výběr.“

„Nedostanou-li naše děti prostor pro dělání chyb, žijí pouze životy někoho jiného.“

„Stát se klidným rodičem, jenž se vyvaruje křiku, spočívá naučení se fungovat mimo své nejvyšší principy, nikoli v reakci na vlastní nejhlubší obavy.“

„Vaše dítě vás zkouší, aby si ověřilo, zda jste vyrovnaní a důslední. A přeje si, abyste tuto zkoušku složili.“

„Vaším cílem není potlačit emoce dětí, ale spíše je nasměrovat k produktivnímu projevu.“

„Stabilita a struktura jsou nezbytnými složkami funkčního rodinného prostředí.“

„ScreamFree Parenting (výchova bez křiku) nepředstavuje model řešení problému či výchovy; je to model růstu.“

„Jedinou cestou, jak být klidným rodičem, je mít rád sebe sama, protože to je jediný způsob k nalezení vnitřního klidu. Je to jediný způsob jak skutečně prospět svým dětem, aniž byste je zatěžovali potřebou být ku prospěchu vám.“

Jak kniha ovlivnila mé rodičovství…

Po přečtení této knihy jsem zjistila, že jsem klidná, když můj dvouletý syn říká „ne“ nebo napřahuje ruku jako projev vzdoru vůči mým požadavkům. Dávám mu vybrat, zda poslechne či neposlechne a pocítit přirozené důsledky svého jednání. Výběr nechávám na něm a poté klidným způsobem vymáhám důsledky, aniž bych se nechala zneklidnit jeho výběrem. Zjistila jsem, že stačí, abych se ovládala a dokáži si najít více času pro sebe, takže mám více energie a má duševní a emocionální kondice je podstatně lepší, takže se mohu lépe starat o svého syna.

14. Recenze knihy -- Rodičovství zaměřené na srdce

Autor: Dr. Scott Turansky, Joanne Millerová

Rok vydání: 2005

Vydavatel: David C. Cook

Počet stran: 256

Webová stránka autora: http://www.effectiveparenting.org

Jazyk vydání: anglický

Tuto knihu byste si měli přečíst v případě, že…

Chcete pomoci svým dětem změnit se nejen navenek, ale i uvnitř. Takové změny jsou trvalé a vedou k rozvoji svědomí. To dětem pomůže v průběhu jejich života rozhodovat se mezi dobrem a zlem.

„V kostce”…

Většina rodičovských strategií se zaměřuje na chování. Děti tak mohou změnit své vnější projevy, ale skutečně se mohou změnit pouze tehdy, když rodiče spolu s Bohem pracují na jejich srdci.

Hlavní myšlenky…

Změna chování vašeho dítěte často funguje jen krátkodobě, aniž by však vedla k proměně jeho srdce do budoucna. Když se rodiče zaměří v disciplíně dětí na srdce, změny v jejich životě budou trvalé.

Bůh mění naše srdce prostřednictvím spasení. Naše chování se mění v důsledku toho, co dělá Bůh v našem srdci.

Děti potřebují vědět, že: Bůh je Stvořitel; Bůh má plán; Bůh všechno ví; Bůh dal svého Syna, aby za nás zemřel; Bůh bude soudit svět.

Děti se učí od rodičů, jak vypadá víra v každodenních situacích, kdy různé tlaky, nepříjemnosti a povinnosti narušují jejich pokoj a radost.

Většina dětí potřebuje pomoci se zpracováním důsledků, které jsou vyústěním jejich nesprávného chování. Pokaždé, když musíte dítě napomenout, si s ním zároveň promluvte a to i v případě drobných přestupků. To učí děti mluvit o problémech. V určitém bodě byste se jich měli zeptat: „Co jsi udělal špatně?

Kroky…

Rodiče potřebují udržovat silný vztah s Bohem. To jim umožní být efektivnější ve vztahu k jejich dětem.

Začněte sledovat srdce svého dítěte. Věnujte pozornost jeho hlubším problémům. Proste Boha, aby vám ukazoval skutečné problémy, kterým váš syn nebo dcera čelí. Obětujte svůj čas a mluvte s Bohem o tom, co vaše dítě v srdci prožívá.

Když vaše dítě zlobí, buďte si vědomi toho, že se něco děje v jeho srdci. To, co se v něm odehrává, se můžeme naučit rozeznávat na základě toho, že mu budeme naslouchat a pochopíme, co je pro něj důležité.

Dejte si za cíl strávit s každým svým dítětem o samotě 10 minut denně nebo jednu až dvě hodiny týdně.

„Až budete naslouchat tomu, co prožívá vaše dítě v srdci, identifikujte cílové oblasti, které vnímáte jako problematické. Chování naznačuje, co se odehrává dítěti v nitru, a proto až rozpoznáte konkrétní slabost, zapište si ji. Můžete si poznamenat projevy, jako je otálení, pýcha, strach, melancholie a pocit zmaru nebo nedostatek sebedůvěry.“ (str. 132)

Každý týden se učte zpaměti biblické verše. Vybírejte si je na základě potřeb, které podle vás vaše rodina má, a diskutujte o nich se svými dětmi.

Citace…

„Děti potřebují rodiče, kteří jsou ochotní hájit, co je správné, vědí, jak vést, a jsou schopní vymezovat pevné hranice. Potřebují maminky a tatínky, kteří jim ukáží správnou cestu a povzbudí je, aby z ní nesešly.“ (str. 52)

„Trest se zaměřuje na spravedlnost; disciplína se zaměřuje na učení. Zatímco trest je třeba si prostě odpykat, disciplína je příležitostí k růstu.“ (str. 184)

„Často se za své děti modlete. Bůh používá vaše modlitby nejen k tomu, aby změnil vaše děti, ale také aby ve vás probudil větší citlivost vůči tomu, co dělá v jejich srdci. Během svého modlitebního času dbejte na to, abyste naslouchali i mluvili.“ (str. 18-19)

„Adolescentní vzpoura nezačíná ve třinácti letech; začíná už mnohem dříve, v srdci malého dítěte.“ (str. 43)

Různé…

„Když selžete, uznejte to. Buďte ve svém růstu příkladem pokory. Totéž požadujte od svých dětí.“ (str. 107-108)

Je důležité být ve vztahu k dětem pevní, ale pokud budete tvrdí nebo rozzlobení, zabrání to vaší vzájemné blízkosti.

Jak kniha ovlivnila mé rodičovství…

Kniha nám říká, že když má vaše dítě zlost, neměli byste se nechat unést svými emocemi a místo toho byste měli být ochotní mu naslouchat. Myslím, že to je důležité, protože je velmi snadné se rozzlobit nebo propadnout frustraci, když děti neuposlechnou. Kniha uvádí, že takové chování je kontraproduktivní. Nasloucháním se ke svým dětem přiblížíte a také vám to umožní řešit danou situaci racionálněji.

Příliš rychlé řešení problémů místo projevené empatie brání rozvoji hlubších vztahů. Často chceme jen vyřešit daný problém a přejít k další věci, ale tím se můžeme ochudit o vzácnou příležitost promluvit si se svými dětmi o tom, co se děje. Pokud vaše dítě zlobí, je důležitější s ním diskutovat než ho pouze napomenout a jít dál.

Je pozoruhodné, jak děti dovedou být transparentní, když si uděláte čas a aktivně nasloucháte tomu, co vám potřebují říct. Většina z nás je velmi zaneprázdněných, a proto pro mě bylo užitečné si připomenout, že bych měla zpomalit a praktickým způsobem se učit aktivně naslouchat svým dětem. Díky tomu se můžeme hodně dozvědět o tom, co se odehrává v jejich životě a srdci.

10. Recenze knihy -- Jak děti vychovávají své rodiče

Autor: Dan B. Allender, Ph.D.

Rok vydání: 2003

Vydavatel: WaterBook Press

Počet stran: 217

Webová stránka autora: http://www.thepathlesschosen.com

Jazyk vydání: anglický

Tuto knihu byste si měli přečíst v případě, že…

Máte pocit, že dobré rodičovství je nedosažitelné, nebo se toužíte zbavit neefektivních rodičovských návyků.

„V kostce“…

Naše děti nás vychovávají prostřednictvím toho, jak my vychováváme je.

Hlavní myšlenky…

Rodiče spoléhají na pravidla a principy a horlivě se snaží dělat všechno správně. Metody však nedají vašim dětem to, po čem touží nejvíc: vědomí, že jsou jedinečné, hluboce milované a že z nich máte vy i Bůh radost.

Kroky…

Uznejte, že vaše děti vás ve skutečnosti naučí víc než vy je.

Buďte vděční za své děti i za zralost, které díky nim dosáhnete. Využijte toto období, smiřte se se svou vlastní nedostatečností a skutečně naslouchejte hlasu svých dětí.

Místo abyste se neustále snažili aplikovat na své děti nějaká pravidla, při řešení složitých situací usilujte o to, své dítě „přečíst“. Každé z dětí bude vyžadovat v rámci svých jedinečných zápasů vaši flexibilitu.

Zralosti nelze dosáhnout bez zkoušek. Pokud pochopíme, že naše utrpení bude řídícím faktorem života, můžeme své děti učit tím, že jim upřímně odhalíme své zápasy. Dávejte si pozor na nutkání předstírat radost coby cestu k úspěchu a na vštěpování postoje, že nejvyššími hodnotami v životě jsou štěstí a produktivita.

Nemůžeme se držet falešné představy, že správné působení nám zajistí pozitivní výsledky. Místo toho musíme dovést své děti na rovinu, na které budou moci zahlédnout Boží charakter, zejména Jeho milosrdenství a sílu.

Všechny děti se přirozeně ptají: „Jsem milovaný/-á?“ a „Mohu si dělat věci po svém?“ Na tyto otázky nemůžeme odpovědět správně, pokud jsme na ně sami nenašli odpověď. Jestliže se obrátíte na Boha, odpoví vám: „Ano, jsi milovaný/-á, víc než můžeš kdy pochopit“ a „Nemůžeš si dělat věci po svém. Pokud ale půjdeš po mé cestě, najdeš to nejhlubší uspokojení, jaké může tvé srdce kdy poznat.“ (Za mnoha záchvaty hněvu a vzteku našich dětí se v podstatě skrývá jedna ze zmíněných otázek, a proto se musíme soustředit a dětem naslouchat.)

Autor v souvislosti se dvěma základními otázkami našich dětí „Mohu si dělat věci po svém?“ a „Jsem milovaný/-á?“ poukazuje na nejčastější odpovědi rodičů. Tyto odpovědi bývají nebezpečné a ponižující, upjaté a hloupé, přezíravé a rezervované nebo se za nimi skrývá síla a radost. Autor zdůrazňuje, že právě posledně jmenované odpovědi prospějí vašemu dítěti nejvíc.

Hlasy našich dětí bývají překřikovány dalšími dobře míněnými hlasy našich rodičů, médií, školy, církve a přátel. Mnohé z nich odkrývají naše vlastní nezhojené rány a zatemňují naši vděčnost a radost. Musíme zapojovat své děti do dění, aniž bychom se cítili nuceni opravovat svou minulost.

V případě rodičovství nelze vždy uplatnit rychlé nápravné postupy. Musíme najít způsob, jak se smířit s tajemstvím protikladných sil demonstrovaných Bohem: intimity a individualismu, síly a milosrdenství. Dokonce i navzdory naší bezprostředně hrozící neschopnosti odrážet Boží charakter se setkáváme s Jeho něžností, a tak rozvíjíme svou jedinou naději, jíž je obrátit svou tvář k Tomu, který nás dokáže dokonale milovat.

Tím, že pobýváme v hlubší realitě Boží milosti, Jeho charakter nám začíná poskytovat rámec bezpečí a svobody. Právě v tomto pravém bezpečí budou naše děti schopné směle spočinout a poklidně si hrát.

Tím, že si se svými dětmi hrajeme, vštěpujeme jim schopnosti, charakter a kontext potřebný k tomu, aby prakticky prožívali své Bohem dané povolání. Proces, kdy si spolu správně hrajeme, je důležitější než výsledek.

Citace…

„Jedním z problémů je, že se soustřeďujeme na děti až příliš. Utrácíme příliš mnoho peněz a věnujeme příliš mnoho času aktivitám v jejich zájmu, soupeřícím s jednoduchou a skutečnou vděčností, kterou bychom měli ve vztahu ke svému dítěti cítit. Peníze a čas věnovaný tomu, že vláčíme děti na [různé akce] a mnoho dalších zpropadených aktivit, v nich vyvolávají dojem, že na to mají nárok, a v rodiči probouzejí pocit, že jeho dítě z něj vysává veškerou energii, čas a peníze.“ (str. 7)

„Ze surovin, které nám předali naši rodiče, potřebujeme vytvořit něco naprosto nového. Naše děti žijí v jiném světě, a pokud se máme naučit, jak je dobře vychovávat, musíme naslouchat jejich hlasu.“ (str. 69)

Různé…

I když autor nenabízí řešení v postupných krocích, uvádí, že jeho rodičovský záchranný systém spočívá ve formulaci zřejmé skutečnosti. Například když jeho dospívající dcera plakala, zaklepal na dveře jejího pokoje se slovy: „Slyšel jsem pláč. Dveře byly zavřené. Teď nepláčeš, ale mračíš se. Vím, že soukromí je pro tebe důležitější než jídlo. Teď děláš obličeje a vystrkuješ spodní ret dál, než kam ti sahá nos.“ To ji nakonec odzbrojilo. Už jsem to zkusila se svým čtyřletým synem a obvykle to dopadne tak, že se začne usmívat a je otevřenější.

Jak kniha ovlivnila mé rodičovství…

Danova upřímnost, co se týče jeho vlastních selhání, je působivá a osvěžující. Motivuje mě k tomu, pokorně hledat Boží pomoc, zatímco poznávám mnoho nových skutečností o Jeho lásce a milosrdenství vůči mně. Kniha obsahuje řadu dalších příběhů a anekdot.

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The Rescue - Why Did Jesus Come?

Introduction

The Rescue

From the series: 1 Thessalonians PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 14: Hope and Comfort in Christ’s Coming (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

1. The promise of Christ’s coming is certain because He was raised from the dead and because we have His direct word on it.

A. The promise of Christ’s coming is certain because He was raised from the dead.

B. The promise of Christ’s coming is certain because we have His direct word on it.

2. Christ’s glorious coming will reunite us with deceased loved ones in Christ, will give us all new resurrection bodies, and will bring us to be with the Lord forever.

A. The return: Lord’s return will be in power and great glory.

B. The resurrection: First, our deceased loved ones in Christ and then we will receive new resurrection bodies.

C. The rapture: We who are living will be caught up to meet the Lord and deceased saints in the clouds.

D. The reunion: We will be reunited with departed believing loved ones and we all will be forever with the Lord.

3. The practical value of Christ’s coming is hope and comfort now in times of grief.

Conclusion

Application Questions

From the series: 1 Thessalonians PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Hymns PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

6. God’s Comfort: It is Well With My Soul

Dawn

Conclusion

From the series: Hymns PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Hymns PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

1. God’s Pursuit: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Introduction

Singing is a Scriptural Theme

A Hymn

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Singing the Song

A Verse by Verse Look

Verse 1

Verse 2

Verse 3

Conclusion

From the series: Hymns PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Estudos sobre a Vida de Josué PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lição 2: Preparação para a Entrada na Terra (Josué 2:1-24)

Introdução

Josué Envia os Espiões (2:1a)

Os Espiões Recebidos por Raab (2:1b)

O Rei É Informado e Questiona Sobre os Espiões (2:2-3)

Raab Mente e Esconde os Espiões (2:4-7)

A Declaração de Fé de Raab (2:8-13)

A Resposta dos Espiões (2:14)

O Cordão de Escarlata (2:15-21)

O Retorno e Relatório dos Espiões(2:22-24)

Relativamente a Israel:

Relativamente a Jericó:

Relativamente aos discípulos:

Relativamente a nós:

From the series: Estudos sobre a Vida de Josué PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: 1 Thessalonians PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 15: Are You Ready for That Day? (1 Thessalonians 5:1-8)

1. The day of the Lord is certainly coming or God’s Word is not true.

2. The day of the Lord will be sudden, unexpected, and inescapable for those in spiritual darkness.

3. The day of the Lord is an expected event for us who are children of light and day.

4. Since we know that the day of the Lord is coming, we should be alert and sober, putting on the armor of faith, love, and hope.

Conclusion

Application Questions

From the series: 1 Thessalonians PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Family Resource Library - Články v českém jazyce PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

20. Recenze knihy -- Výbuch na spadnutí!

Tuto knihu byste si měli přečíst v případě, že…

„V kostce“…

Hlavní myšlenky…

Kroky…

Citace…

Jak kniha ovlivnila mé rodičovství…

Mých pět hlavních strategií:

From the series: Family Resource Library - Články v českém jazyce PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Family Resource Library - Články v českém jazyce PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

19. Recenze knihy -- Rodičovství bez křiku

Tuto knihu byste si měli přečíst v případě, že…

„V kostce“…

Hlavní myšlenky…

Kroky…

Citace…

Jak kniha ovlivnila mé rodičovství…

From the series: Family Resource Library - Články v českém jazyce PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

O Rei É Informado e Questiona Sobre os Espiões
(2:2-3)

Raab Mente e Esconde os Espiões
(2:4-7)

A Declaração de Fé de Raab
(2:8-13)

O Cordão de Escarlata
(2:15-21)