G’day and welcome to Partakers Christian Podcasts! Join us for uplifting Bible teaching, inspiring readings, heartfelt worship, powerful prayers, and fascinating church history. Whether you’re new to faith or growing deeper in your journey, we’re here to encourage and equip you. 🎧 Tune in, interact, and be inspired—wherever you are in the world.
Episodes
Monday Nov 09, 2015
Monday Nov 09, 2015
9th November 2015
David a man after God's own heart
As he made his way to the battlefield where his brothers were fighting in King Saul's army against the Philistines, David's own walk with the Lord would have been focussed on his mission. His father had requested that he take food to his brothers to sustain them in perilous times when the Philistines, the enemies of Israel were trying to dominate and overcome God's people Israel.
He might have been thinking of how his brothers would receive him. Would they would receive him graciously and kindly? Or would they treat him wrongfully. We are given to think there was not complete harmony between the sons especially as we see their response when David does arrive at the Israel camp. (1 Samuel 17:28)
The wonderful thing that I considered about this account the other day was how David was so in tune with God and so alerted, he was ready for anything the Lord required of him to do that day as possibly with every other day, This day was different to his usual sheep watching days. He had to go to a foreign and dangerous place, the valley of Elah a battleground where Israel, God's own people were in combat with the philistines who had many gods, Was David ready for any warfare he might encounter? Had he stopped to think and pray about it that day? What was to take place that day was obviously unknown to him but not to God.
I would suggest from what we read that David was walking and talking with God as he journeyed. He arrives some would say amazingly at the very precise moment that Goliath is bellowing out his daily challenge for a man from the Israel camp to go out and fight him. He had said if any of you win this sole combat with me your side will be deemed the winners and the opposing side side will be subject to them.
You will notice in this boastful statement by Goliath that there was one person missing in all this. The Lord God Almighty. God was being left out of Goliath's life. however he was very much in the mind of David as he travelled and also as he arrived. God was everything to him at this time. He is described in the Bible as a man after God's heart. What a lovely description of him at this time.
David was livid as he witnessed this arrogant giant challenging Israel. "How dare he talk about God's people like he did and what disrespect for God "( Check it out in 1 Samuel 17:) So he determines to do something about it. His brothers were angry at what he suggested. They, the older brothers considered the impudence of David. Weren't they the soldiers he was a mere shepherd boy who looked after a few of Dad's sheep. He was a nobody in their eyes. Soon they would be forced to collect back their thoughts hurriedly at what took place next. The whole situation was changed dramatically because someone, a mere boy, took up the challenge of this moment which affected a great many people, two very strong nations.
Do you realise what a change your prayers can make to a complete world if you have God on your side?
David goes to the king and suggests that Saul send him. The king tries to put him off but David is not going to let this one go. Hr tries Saul's armour at Saul's suggestion but staggering in armour twenty sizes too big for him and says "I will use in this battle only weapons I am used to. The King said "well ok may God be with you" One thing for sure Saul would not be found at his side as he walked and ran towards Goliath of Gath. Saul was probably hiding away in a tent somewhere. That was the kind of man he was turning out to be "Its a foregone conclusion isn't it?. He might have said. He is bound to lose but I will allow this to take place."
Well I am not going to go into the whole story, no time now but simply to mention something which I think is very significant. We do not know what giants we will be called to fight against this day or tomorrow but are we alert as David was and ready for anything to further the work of Christ which we his church should be ready to do.
David shocked King Saul, his brothers and perhaps himself but he didn't shock God. God honoured a boy who lived after God's heart who knew that God was all powerful and would win the battle against this boastful godless character, and he did magnificently defeat the giant. He did something to bring glory to God and victory to God's people. He went out against Goliath not in his own strength and name but in God's name and power. We have no power of our own except to try to get in the way of God using us when we refuse to listen and obey Him. But when we submit to Him and look to Him through faith, amazing victories can be won and many advances into Satan's domain.
God is looking for alerted people who love Him, treasure His Word and use prayer affectively. Aggressiveness is allowed in serving God if we rename it, passion for His glory! Using every ounce of our being to trust Him to work in and through us to bring people to the point of knowing it is with God that they have to do. Goliath fought in his own strength and lost. We always win when we fight in God's strength and are not forgetful to give Him the total glory. Paul the apostle wrote "He always causes us to triumph." Praise His wonderful name!!.
Joys Prayer.
How important it is that we start the day with You Lord. We do not know what any day is going to bring forth.Lord, You know everything as you are omniscient. We know we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us but we also know we do have someone whispering in our ears "You cannot do this thing you are too weak ". The devil , the world and our flesh contest against us continually and we are on a battleground of our own but God You are able to break through all this. We hear your voice saying Trust in Me alone. Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will answer you."
Lord help us to develop a 24/7 relationship with You. We know you but want to know You more Lord.
"Lord make me useful for Thee, Send thou thy Spirit to me. Your perfect will in me fulfil, Lord make me useful toThee."
Amen
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Saturday Nov 07, 2015
Saturday Nov 07, 2015
Part 11 - John 2:1-12
Extravagant Grace
Now we are into chapter 2 and we find that it contains two very remarkable and very different stories. The second must wait until next time, but this one is quite extraordinary by itself. Here it is:
“On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.”
Jesus turned water into wine – and not just a reasonable amount, but about 600 litres or 150 gallons. Was it really such a good idea to produce so much extra booze halfway through the wedding celebrations? One gets a mental picture of many villagers reeling home thoroughly sozzled at the end of the day! Even if we guess, as we reasonably may, that this was a major wedding, that everyone in the village was invited, and so were many people from the surrounding villages (including Jesus, his mother and his disciples) so that there were hundreds of people there, this was still an amazing amount of wine.
All of which raises one huge question: why did John, who structured his Gospel so carefully, choose this story as the first to tell us about? OK, I know that he says this was the first one Jesus did. He says, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” But that still does not answer the point. John did not have to start with this episode. Matthew, Mark and Luke didn’t start there. They all started with his temptation in the wilderness and then his teaching and healing ministry round the villages. The obvious conclusion we must draw is that John saw something very special in what happened in Cana and wants to make it a starting point for his whole Gospel. What was it?
I think he wanted to emphasize the generosity of Jesus. Nothing else he did was so unnecessarily generous. Nothing, that is, of the obvious things he was doing. But what about the gifts of new life, and of the Holy Spirit that he was going to give so liberally to everyone he met. You couldn’t see those, but you could see the wine. You could even drink it and it would cheer you up. Those great jars of wine stood for the extravagant generosity of Jesus, his extravagant grace to all he would meet in the rest of the story of the Gospel.
There is one other extravagant moment in the continuing story that we should perhaps link this one up with and that is the feeding of the vast crowd of people, 5000 men, plus women and children, by the Sea of Galilee. Remember that there were 12 baskets of pieces of bread left over when they had all finished. Extravagant bread, extravagant wine. Do they remind you of anything? Yes, of course: that so simple meal that Jesus told us to remember him by. In all probability you get only a small piece of bread or a thin wafer, and a small sip of wine, or perhaps not even that if you belong to the wrong church. Small bread, small wine, but from the same person who was so extravagantly generous on these two occasions. Remember that next time you take part in a communion service, breaking of bread, Eucharist or Mass.
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Friday Nov 06, 2015
Friday Nov 06, 2015
Partakers Friday Prayers!
6th November 2015
We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!
Order of Prayer Service
Opening Prayer
1 John 1:8-10
Confession
Lord's Prayer
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Prayers for those facing challenging situation
Prayers for those grieving & in despair
Prayers for those imprisoned
Prayers for Churches Worldwide
Prayers for the world
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Time for your own prayers
The Creed
Benediction
Closing Prayer
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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Monday Nov 02, 2015
Monday Nov 02, 2015
2nd November 2015
G'day and welcome to Partakers ThinkSpot! Play the audio and see how you are challenged to live your faith out this week!
The most famous verse in the Bible is probably this one. I wonder if you have heard or read it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Isn’t that simply amazing! Love! God is love! Every exhibition of love, even by those who deny His existence, is an example of God’s love. God’s love is also seen in all tenses – past, present and future. Past - God has loved you. Present - God is loving you. Future - God will love you! Amazing! WOW!
Moreover, God's love in the Bible is seen as unfailing, everlasting, intimate, sacrificial, unbreakable, all-conquering, personal, great, immeasurable and all-knowing. This is seen supremely in the Cross of Jesus Christ. When Jesus died for the sins of the world on the cross, it was supreme love overcoming all that is not love. Even when great acts of evil are committed in the world, love is all around. Love continues despite such acts.
How are we to respond to this love of God?
The Apostle John in 1 John 3:16 says “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
Further on in 1 John 4:15-16, John writes “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”
Our motivation as Christians is to love and to be love. This is a love, which is sacrificial and self-less. It is tough love which is of service to other people. Loving and serving others, sacrificially, are the primary ways of showing you love God! It is easiest to love your friends. But Jesus commanded that his followers also love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-45)! Now that is very radical and can be difficult! We see constantly in the media and elsewhere, that regards our enemies, we are to be confrontational or at best to just ignore them!
Love and serve everyone
How is it possible to love our enemies? It is only with the help of God and His abundant grace towards us! We depend on the Holy Spirit who lives inside all Christians to empower and guide! To only love those who love you is what is expected by people everywhere as normal behaviour. But as a Christian, if you are one, you are to do more! You are to be seen to love more than other people. You don't have to like others as friends, but you do have to love them as fellow human beings!
Go!
Go into this week, being prepared to show your love of Jesus Christ, remaining close to Him and serving other people generously with abundant grace-filled love! By loving and serving others, you become God's arms and legs in a physical world. Give people a smile! If you are happy, let your face show it to others! Help that work colleague! Help that unemployed person to find work. One of the greatest limitations you face in loving and serving other people is a severe lack of imagination! Ask God to expand your imagination to love and serve; as well as asking for the opportunities to do them. Loving and serving are hallmarks of an authentic Christian life. Love continues even amidst chaos and turmoil all around. Go and be part of the continuing of love.
Prayer
Father, we thank you, that you are love! We thank you Jesus, that you demonstrated great love by going to the cross and showing your love for the world by dying on the cross! Holy Spirit enflame our imagination and cause us to desire to show love to others – even others who we think don’t deserve it! As we go into this week, O God, remind us to love you wholeheartedly and to love others sacrificially.
For we ask this, O Father of Love, in the name of the Son of Love, Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit of Love.
Amen.
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Saturday Oct 31, 2015
Saturday Oct 31, 2015
Part 10 - John 1:29-51
Names and guys
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).
The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote —Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.
“Come and see,” said Philip.
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”
Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
Have a go yourself. How many names and titles can you find? I put my list at the bottom of the page – don’t look until you have had a go yourself.
They range from the bottom of the pile, which is surely ‘son of Joseph’, son of his step-father, to ‘Son of God’ at the top of the pile. Some have deep Old Testament connections like ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of Man’, while others are simply derived from what John the Baptist knew first hand.
The really interesting thing is what we see if we compare what is said here with what is said in the other Gospels at the call of the twelve disciples. Without exception the other Gospels are less detailed except they all say that the disciples were called to ‘fish for people’ or, in the older versions, to be ‘fishers of men’.
Why the difference? What does it mean?
The answer has to be that John is solely concerned with Jesus. The rest is incidental. As we shall find as we work through the rest of the Gospel John is completely Jesus centred, or Christo-centric as it is called. Because Jesus was, and is, God He could be all those things at one and the same time. He could meet each one of the men listed here: John, Andrew, Andrew’s companion, Simon Peter, Philip and Nathanael, and meet them at their point of need. That is what John is telling us. And he is going to go on and tell us that Jesus would meet many other people, all at their point of need, no matter how way out that might be. Before long we shall be in chapters 3 and 4 where Jesus meets at their points of need a senior professor in Jerusalem and a slightly dodgy woman in a country village. Rather different people. I wonder how successful any of us would be at being equally effective in conversation with such different people. Not many, I am sure. Certainly not me!
But turned round and looked at from the other direction this is enormously encouraging for us. It does not matter who we are, what our problems may be, what is our point of need, Jesus, because He is the Son of God can speak to us encourage us, forgive us, save us, for this life and the next. Hallelujah and hooray – many times over.
Names and titles: Lamb of God/the Surpasser/the One to be revealed/ the One on whom the Spirit had come/the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit/God’s Chosen One/Rabbi=teacher/ the Messiah=the Christ/Jesus of Nazareth/the son of Joseph/Son of God/king of Israel/the Son of Man.
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Monday Oct 26, 2015
Monday Oct 26, 2015
26th October 2015
Reading in my Bible this morning following a pattern of reading through the Bible in a year I am not always aware till I open my accompanying Bible notes of what I am about to read. This morning I needed to read a portion of the Old Testament concerning Israel and Judah and sadly their disobedience towards God after He had blessed them so much. It was a wake up call for all of us who profess to know Christ to “Count every blessing” as the song goes then we will not forget His abundant kindness towards us Whom He loves dearly.
To make sure you are constantly doing this without having to think about it why not share your blessings with others you meet during the course of the day? I find that is a refreshing way in serving our Lord is giving praise and glory to Him by passing your blessings on.
Try it and see I am sure you will find it to be true and you will receive a measure of joy in your heart as well. In psalm 23 we read of the believer’s daily walk with the Lord and even though we walk through the vale of death we need fear no evil.
Why? The Lord is with us giving us reassurances He will never leave us. Note the joy in David the psalmist’s voice as he perhaps shout “My cup runs over” Oh the joy there is to be found in knowing Jesus. Then the climax of the ages as we move towards the day when we see our wonderful Lord face to face. Psalm 23:6; “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever!”
Have a nice day and may you be blessed in all your circumstances and remember “Count your blessings name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done?”
Joy’s Prayer
Dear Loving Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the wonder of knowing You as our Heavenly Father and the One who supplies our every need on every occasion we require help and surprises us with unexpected blessings which delight us. Forgive us if we ever take You for granted or forget to thank you for your regular daily blessings. Help us to remember just how dependant we are on You. We sometimes find ourselves asking even for the seeming impossible and although we may have to be patient and wait.
You have never let us down. As the hymn writer reminds us “We are coming to a King, large petitions with you bring we can never ask too much...You have amazing resources Lord and we can never out ask your provision. Thank you for that knowledge and help us to be wise in our asking and swift in our thanksgiving. We love You for loving us so much and making sure our cup is never empty.
In Jesus Name
Amen
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Saturday Oct 24, 2015
Saturday Oct 24, 2015
Part 9 - John 1:40
The Lamb of God
Part 9 - John 1:40
Following The Lamb of God
John 1:43 we read “The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”
One or other of the ‘follow’ words appears more than 70 times in the Gospels, nearly always as ‘follow me’ or ‘follow him’. So following is a very important and significant word about our relationship to Jesus.
There has been a very distinct and valuable turn by many people towards talking in terms of ‘following’ rather than any of the possible alternatives recently. Not so long ago the common term was ‘deciding for Jesus’ and before that it was ‘born-again’. But the first of these is a very imprecise and somewhat wooly term to use while the second has been taken over by all sorts of people just to mean somebody taking up again a sport or an activity that they used to take part in but had not done so for some time.
Instead of those terms many people are talking about those who are converted (yet another old and Biblical term that is no longer much used) as having set out ‘to follow Jesus’ and those who are going to church but have made no profession of faith as those ‘who are not yet following Jesus’.
There is considerable merit in this. ‘Following Jesus’ indicates not only the starting point of making a profession of faith but the setting out on a journey which will last for a long time – in fact the rest of life – and will include a commitment, therefore a life-long commitment, to following Jesus.
But the obvious question is ‘what does following Jesus’ or following anyone actually mean. We use ‘following’ in much the same sense when we talk about following a team in some sport, such as football. (Apologies here to American friends who have the curious idea that a game in which foot is seldom applied to ball is football! I am talking about what you call ‘soccer’ where foot and ball often meet up.) Those who ‘follow’ a team such as Manchester United act in certain fairly well defined ways. They go to meet – well, watch – their team as often as possible; they worship – well, cheer them on – as vigorously as they can; they rejoice visibly and audibly when they do something good, like score a goal; they identify themselves with the team by wearing their colours in a scarf or a shirt; they spend considerable sums of money to support their team and in various ways assert that support to their friends and other people.
We can parallel all those things in what we should do as we ‘follow Jesus’. We should meet with him, at church, in small groups, in our private prayer as often as possible; we should worship Jesus and the Lord God in our singing etc. ; we should identify with Jesus in many subtle ways – the ways we behave, the things we say, perhaps too the words we do not use, where appropriate in the wearing of small emblems indicating our allegiance; we will be prepared to use our resources to support the Lord’s work in many different ways.
Certain words have sneaked into those last paragraphs, almost without me noticing. Words such as: cheering on, vigorously, identify, support, assert, allegiance, use of resources. All those words have a place in our thinking about how we are to follow Jesus.
Not all of them can be found in this passage in John 1, but many of them can. Andrew was quick to identify himself with Jesus, to support him, to give him his allegiance, and to use his resource of time. Philip did exactly the same things in his search for Nathaniel. It seems likely that Philip was a rather ordinary sort of guy with no great leadership qualities yet evident, whereas Nathaniel was probably the village wise man. That did not stop Philip sharing his discovery of Jesus with a man he probably looked up to as very much his superior.
I’m sure I don’t need to labour the lessons for us that are so clear in this passage. Follow Jesus – it is by far the best way to journey through life and arrive at a worthwhile destination.
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Friday Oct 23, 2015
Friday Oct 23, 2015
Partakers Friday Prayers!
23th October 2015
We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!
A prayer of Aquinas
Creator of all things,
true source of light and wisdom,
origin of all being,
graciously let a ray of your light penetrate
the darkness of my understanding.
Take from me the double darkness
in which I have been born,
an obscurity of sin and ignorance.
Give me a keen understanding,
a retentive memory, and
the ability to grasp things
correctly and fundamentally.
Grant me the talent
of being exact in my explanations
and the ability to express myself
with thoroughness and charm.
Point out the beginning,
direct the progress,
and help in the completion.
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
(Aquinas 1225 – 1274)
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Monday Oct 19, 2015
Monday Oct 19, 2015
19th October 2015
The best Connexion
Recently a relative warned me of a scam where someone pretending to be a BT representative was informing BT Customers that they had outstanding bills to pay and if they did not comply they would have further bills trebling the amount they were supposedly owing.
The conversation proceeded with a demonstration of the so called rep saying he would prove that he was official. He then told the person to put the phone down and try to phone a friend. The person did try and found the phone had gone dead. However not being vulnerable they refused to pay with cheque card details given which the man was requesting and the man rang off. The number he had given was given to the police and discovered to be untraceable. He had wanted to get details of the persons credit card details to gain a great deal of money that way. “Be warned”, the offended person told me.
Yes we have to be careful in this world of wrongdoing where selfishness, greed and dishonesty are prevalent in a broken society as many have turned away from the Lord.
Talking of disconnection's many do not know anything of the wonderful, beautiful and safe connexion that God wants to make with each one of us. We are all switched off and disconnected until God responds to our cry to be connected through realising our switched off connexion (Read Ephesians chapter 2:1; where disconnection is described as either being dead or alive).
The Good News (Gospel) is that God wants to be in the very centre of our lives (the power house) controlling and leading us in a way of peace joy and contentment through the amazing connections in reading the Bible and through the equally amazing connexion through prayer, where we communicate with Him and He with us in a very troubled world.
He is more than willing to connect us to Jesus our Saviour and Lord who
died for us to remove our wrongdoing justly held against us.
His glorious resurrection assures us of eternal life here begun on earth below when we become connected and a marvellous existence with Him in Heaven where we remain connected for evermore. Wow !! Isn't that amazing?
So next time you are disconnected from electricity, gas or phone (when you move house or phone) remind yourself , if you are connected to God that connexion will never change as God's power to keep is eternal. Hallelujah!! ps. The telephone line to heaven is always open and …...... is free!! I would encourage you to try it if you have never tried before .
Joys Prayer
Dear loving Heavenly Father,
Thank you for reminding us today of the wonderful relationship we can have with You and the certainty that the power line will never be broken as we continue to read our Bibles and pray every day. Not out of habit but delighting ourselves in You.
Help us to do this especially when things begin to go wrong when illness, or a sudden loss or change takes place that can alarm or cause us to be tempted to panic.
Please enable us to remain calm and to persevere knowing that whatever happens we are connected to You and that Your power is always there for us to tap into because of your wonderful love, grace and passion towards us.
You love us so much so help us to love you in return by trusting and believing that You can make everything work for good on our behalf as we bring everything to you in prayer.
“Oh what peace we often forfeit oh what needless pain we bare because we don't bring everything to You in prayer.
Lord we love you, keep us strong when trials come and keep us ever looking upwards to You and believing and trusting You in all our comings and goings.
In Jesus Name
Amen
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Saturday Oct 17, 2015
Saturday Oct 17, 2015
Part 8 - John 1:29-31
The Lamb of God
John 1:29–31, “ The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, “A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.’”
John, John the Baptist that is, must have used an expression that would be meaningful to those who heard him but we cannot be sure what that meaning was. Nowhere in the Old Testament is a lamb said to be ‘of God’. That John said a striking, important and memorable thing we cannot doubt – but what did he mean.
There seem to be 4 main possibilities. In Biblical order, but not necessarily order of importance, these are that he was thinking of:
- the near sacrifice Abraham made of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. When Isaac asked, “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham replied, God himself will provide the lamb.”
- the lambs that were sacrificed on the night of the Passover at the exodus from Egypt. The Lord told Moses, “it is the Lord’s Passover” and Paul uses the same expression in 1 Corinthians 5:7 when he said, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”
- the lambs that are frequently mentioned as sacrificial offerings in passages such as Exodus 29:38, 41 where we read, “This is what you are to offer on the altar regularly each day: two lambs a year old …a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the Lord.”
- Isaiah 53, which clearly lies behind so much of what happened in the life of Jesus. It says, “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
Which of these, or other possibilities, John had in mind as he called Jesus the Lamb of God – or all of them – we cannot tell. Rather amazingly these 4 possibilities point us to 4 distinctly different concepts. They are in order: obedience to the call of the Lord, determination to set out on a difficult journey, the forgiveness of sin and the complete provision made for us on the Cross.
They are not in sensible or logical order. What is that logical order? Stop for a moment and think it through for yourself before reading on. (This sentence is a simple place filler to ensure you don’t see what my answer is too quickly!)
I think: the last one must come first, Jesus is in all and through all that happens; then we have forgiveness of sins, the promise of new life as we embark on the journey of faith and finally we must learn to be obedient in all that happens.
What is really striking is what happened when he said the same thing the next day in the hearing of two of his (John’s) disciples. It is recorded that, “When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God!’
When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’ They said, ‘Rabbi’ (which means ‘Teacher’), ‘where are you staying?’ ‘Come,’ he replied, ‘and you will see.’”
Is it possible to do a really good job of explaining something you don’t fully understand yourself? The answer has to be yes – when you are driven by the Holy Spirit of God. Because that is what happened to John the Baptist. He must have done a wonderful job explaining the Old Testament passages promising a Messiah, even although we know he was not himself fully convinced about Jesus at this time (Matthew 11: 2,3).
We too will never have complete knowledge, nor will we ever be sure that we are completely obedient, but like John we can have the key that unlocks all the best things in life: here is the Lamb of God – follow Him.
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