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Episodes
Tuesday Oct 07, 2025
Tuesday Oct 07, 2025
37. Hebrews 12:22–24 Our wonderful destination
The most astonishing two words in these verses are ‘have come’. Not ‘will come’ looking forward to some future date. Not tomorrow; not next year; not when we die; but now. We are already there. Wow! What is it that we have already come to? Our writer’s words form something of a purple patch in his description of it. He does it all with a half-concealed contrast to what happened to the Israelites as they left their slavery and travelled to the promised land so that there they might build the Temple which was to be the resting place of the Lord.
We are already there, on Mount Zion, that is we are living in the city of God - wherever we may be living in this world of ours. So we are at the place where the Lord God will be. There are countless thousands of angels already worshipping all around us even though we cannot hear them or see them. We are surrounded by God’s first-born children - that is by all those with whom we are in fellowship, world wide. We have only ever met the tiniest fraction of them, a few dozen or a few hundred at most. But they are there, all around us, none the less real because we have never met them. We have met with the Lord, or perhaps we should rather say that he has met with us when we were converted and turned to follow him. He is the judge over all things, but that does not frighten us because we have been accepted through the blood of Jesus. At that same time we met the ‘spirits of the righteous ones in heaven’, that is we entered the spiritual world. But above all we met Jesus.
We are, each of us, one tiny bit of Jesus, the Lord of Glory. Paul says in Philippians 3: 3: 9 he (Paul) had become one with him (Jesus). Turning it the other way round Jesus represents us, every one of us who are his. In all this wide world of ours there is nobody and nothing with which we are in closer relationship than we are with Jesus.
This is because we are now members of the Kingdom, the unshakeable kingdom where no earthquake will ever disturb us, as it did the Israelites as they camped round Mount Sinai. We are now present in the very Temple of God, which is Jesus, a far superior temple to those built in Jerusalem.
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Monday Oct 06, 2025
Monday Oct 06, 2025
Psalm 88
If you can, as you read and listen to Psalm 88, feel the agony of the Psalmist and ask the same questions he does, particularly in regards to our recent troubles across the world...
Psalm 88
A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskilof Heman the Ezrahite.
1 LORD, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.
3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
13 But I cry to you for help, LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken from me friend and neighbour –
darkness is my closest friend.
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Monday Oct 06, 2025
Monday Oct 06, 2025
36. Hebrews 12:7 - Discipline
As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? (Hebrews 12:7 NLT )
If we are capable of working everything out for ourselves that means that the way you work things out may be different from the way I do. And the way children work things out may well be different from the way their parents do. So the parents cannot discipline their children for doing something different from what they would. The result is not good. In fact it is beginning to show up in an increasingly chaotic society. So the whole background idea from which the writer is working – (Hebrews 12:7–10) has no basis in our culture! Ouch!
However that does not make what he says invalid. We are not talking about human beings, misled by the philosophy of many centuries ago. We are talking about the Lord God, who is far above and beyond our cultures. He is going to be our judge one day when we meet him face to face. He has every right to try and bring us to a point where we can be accepted by his grace and goodness because of a life of faith in which we have tried as hard as we can to be his good people. He calls that, ‘a peaceful harvest of right living’ (Hebrews 12:11).
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Sunday Oct 05, 2025
Sunday Oct 05, 2025
Psalm 36
36:1 An oracle is within my heart about the disobedience of the wicked:
There is no fear of God before his eyes.”
36:2 For he flatters himself in his own eyes,
too much to detect and hate his sin.
36:3 The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit.
He has ceased to be wise and to do good.
36:4 He plots iniquity on his bed.
He sets himself in a way that is not good.
He doesn’t abhor evil.
36:5 Your loving kindness, Yahweh, is in the heavens.
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
36:6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God.
Your judgments are like a great deep.
Yahweh, you preserve man and animal.
36:7 How precious is your loving kindness, God!
The children of men take refuge under the shadow of your wings.
36:8 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the abundance of your house.
You will make them drink of the river of your pleasures.
36:9 For with you is the spring of life.
In your light shall we see light.
36:10 Oh continue your loving kindness to those who know you,
your righteousness to the upright in heart.
36:11 Don’t let the foot of pride come against me.
Don’t let the hand of the wicked drive me away.
36:12 There the workers of iniquity are fallen.
They are thrust down, and shall not be able to rise.
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Sunday Oct 05, 2025
Sunday Oct 05, 2025
35. Hebrews 12:1-3 Keeping spiritually fit.
If the writer to the Hebrews had known that we all have a mix of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles throughout our body he might have used them as an illustration of what he wanted to say. If, like me, you are short of the fast-twitch type you always come in at the back of all the sprint races. You may, however, do much better at the cross-country races. He would have been asking us to ensure that we develop as much slow-twitch spiritual muscle as possible. Experts in such things tell us our muscles are a mixture. Slow -twitch enable us to keep going for a long time: run in cross country races or marathons, or row across the Atlantic. Fast-twitch are good for sprinting, playing tennis and catching the bus. Different people have different amounts of each of these in the blend in their legs and everywhere else. Chickens have slow-twitch muscles in their legs with the brown meat so that they can walk and run a long way. The white meat of their breasts and wings gives them much better intense activity like flying, but they can’t keep it up for long. You may know some people, there are too many of them around, who become Christians with a great flourish in their early days or their teen years. They are full of enthusiasm rushing around telling us all to follow Jesus, do a lot of evangelising, go to many youth rallies and so on. But where are they a few years later? They seem to have disappeared from the church scene. Oh, dear. They were so concerned with their fast-twitch spirituality they failed to develop any of the slow-twitch sort.
The writer is talking about slow-twitch spirituality. He talks about ‘endurance’ in 12: 1; about not becoming weary and giving up in 12: 3; about getting a harvest in 12: 11; and, of course, the outstanding characteristic of the heroes of chapter 11 - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and all the rest is that they fought their way through many difficulties to reach their barely understood destinations.
Above all there is Jesus, who endured hostility and the shame of the cross, because he knew he was going to a place of honour at the right hand of God on high. We know where we are going - not quite to such an honourable place, but into his immediate presence.
If you want to stay healthy into your old age it is no good waiting until you are old before doing anything about it! It is no good thinking you were fit and healthy at school when you played a lot of football, cricket or netball. Health is something that has to be kept up throughout life.
All that is true of physical health, but it is also true of spiritual health. Don’t think you can turn off your fast-twitch spirituality when you leave your teens, get married, move house to another area with the need to fit into a new church. It will probably slowly decline, as the years pass but it must be replaced steadily by slow-twitch spirituality. That does not mean that you just become one of the too many people who go to church, sit in their pew or their comfortable chair and think that is now their Christian life. After all you would have a job to stay even reasonably healthy physically if you only did anything remotely healthy just once a week. No! You need to join a prayer group, a study group, teach Sunday School, or do something to maintain a reasonable level of spiritual fitness. Come on - get off your backside and do something! (with apologies if you already do.)
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Saturday Oct 04, 2025
Saturday Oct 04, 2025
Hebrews 11:32-40 - Ups and Downs
But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.
This is a long section to be described as a highlight but it is difficult to know where to cut it off. Up to this point this chapter has all been positive. We have been looking at the great heroes of the faith who accomplished much for God. Now we are looking at lesser heroes. Some of them not so small - Gideon, David and Samuel. But then we get to a list, not of names, but of troubles, pain and martyrdom. Why some of us will live largely trouble free Christian lives and some of us will have a difficult, dangerous and even fatal time in following the Lord we will never know. In simplistic terms it depends where we live. Those who live in the Muslim lands of west Asia can expect trouble! Those who live in the Western world can expect to largely avoid it - though things are deteriorating in many lands with the rise of militant secularism.
And then there are the problems that seem to strike so haphazardly in even the calmest environments. One person is healthy and well all their days; the next person struggles with ill health most of their days. One has cancer; the next does not. Once again we note that becoming a Christian is no guarantee that we shall escape the worst parts of the chaos of this life. It can be very hard to accept the premature death of a loved one, but that is what we have to do. There is no point in blaming God, as so many people do in those sorts of circumstances. We do not know what his purposes are. We do not know why he has allowed the world to be the way it is.
Paul knew all about suffering for the Lord. he said, “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. With eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us …. the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved…. we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8: 18 - 28).
Isaiah did not say on behalf of the Lord: I will let you avoid deep waters, you will not have to go through rivers of difficulty, or walk through the fire of oppression.
What he did say was: When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.
(Isaiah 43: 2)
We are to walk, hand in hand with the Lord through all the difficulties and dangers that may come our way.
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Friday Oct 03, 2025
Friday Oct 03, 2025
Psalm 128
A Song of Ascents.
For you will eat the labor of your hands.
You will be happy, and it will be well with you.
Your wife will be as a fruitful vine,
in the innermost parts of your house;
your children like olive plants, around your table.
Behold, thus is the man blessed who fears Yahweh.
May Yahweh bless you out of Zion,
and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
Yes, may you see your children’s children.
Peace be upon Israel.
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Friday Oct 03, 2025
Friday Oct 03, 2025
Hebrews 11:23-28 - One like Moses
Moses said that, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the Lord your God .... And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.” (Deuteronomy 18: 15, 18, 19)
Jesus was not very much like Moses! One of the defining factors about Moses was the way he was able to talk to the Pharaoh of Egypt because, in the amazing providence of God, he had been brought up as a prince of Egypt. The average, ordinary Jewish slave would have had no chance of securing an audience with the Emperor and, even if he had, would not have known what to say. The Jewish nation, the Israelites, looked back to those days as the founding events of their nation. Our writer says he preferred to suffer for the sake of Christ. Of course, he did not know who the Christ = Messiah would be. Instead he will have had a vision of an eventual Kingdom of God. That came with Jesus.
Mentions of the Passover and the sprinkled blood are interesting. Jesus chose to bring his ministry to its climax at the feast of Passover, not the Day of Atonement. He was setting his ministry firmly into a historical perspective, not one of a more doctrinal nature. It is yet another reminder that we are on a journey, a Way, as we seek to follow him. We too are bound for a promised land. We are to be careful not to ‘harden our hearts’ as they did, and suffered by so doing.
When we use the word ‘follow’ in relation to us and Jesus, we are implying that we will be on a journey. It is not the sort of ‘following’ that is implied in talking about following a sports team, which is a purely passive occupation. No, we are to up and go wherever he wants us to go. There is no greater or more exciting prospect in this life for any but to follow the Lord of Glory - wherever he may take us.
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Thursday Oct 02, 2025
Thursday Oct 02, 2025
G'day and welcome to Partakers! Today we hear a testimony of how Partakers began! May 2007, in the final week before final dissertation submission at Moorlands College, I collapsed while at the GP. While unconscious I said "Dad, can I come home now?"
To which I was told by God, "No. Get up. We have a job for you to do." So I sat up, and the emergency paramedics came in, almost fainted and said: "You aren't supposed to be sitting up..." Collapse caused by sepsis due to ingrown hairs on my leg... Because of these events, we now do what we are doing, thanks be to God, reaching over 150 countries a year via social networks, paperbacks, ebooks, Podcasts and YouTube... Thanks for being part of our life, and I hope that I have shown in some way, that God loves you...
Come on in, listen to what happened next, how we began. By listening, you are sharing in the work that God has been doing through us!
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Thursday Oct 02, 2025
Thursday Oct 02, 2025
Psalm 32
32:1 Blessed is he whose disobedience is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
32:2 Blessed is the man to whom Yahweh doesn't impute iniquity,
in whose spirit there is no deceit.
32:3 When I kept silence,
my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
32:4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me.
My strength was sapped in the heat of summer.
Selah.
32:5 I acknowledged my sin to you.
I didn't hide my iniquity.
I said, I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh,
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Selah.
32:6 For this, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found.
Surely when the great waters overflow,
they shall not reach to him.
32:7 You are my hiding place.
You will preserve me from trouble.
You will surround me with songs of deliverance.
Selah.
32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go.
I will counsel you with my eye on you.
32:9 Don't be like the horse, or like the mule, which have no understanding,
who are controlled by bit and bridle,
or else they will not come near to you.
32:10 Many sorrows come to the wicked,
but loving kindness shall surround the one who trusts in him.
32:11 Be glad in Yahweh, and rejoice, you righteous!
Shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart!