Friday, October 4, 2024

Orange Moon Friday, October 4, 2024 "How Shall We Escape?"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…



"How Shall We Escape?"



    The Jewish believers to whom the epistle of the Hebrews was written were tempted to return to the ritual of Moses' law, turning away from the reality of God's grace and truth in the Lord Jesus Christ.  The writer communicates dire warning to believers regarding such a detour:


    "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:1-3).


   Hebrews served as a stark warning to believers of the first generation that neglecting "so great salvation" provided by the grace of so great a Savior would inevitably result in God's loving discipline.  The warning stands for us.  "Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth" (Hebrews 12:6).   To escape such discipline, we must be careful and prayerful to not "turn away from Him that speaketh from Heaven" back to codes or rituals that speak from earthly voices of deception (Hebrews 12:25).  


    Of course, most believers are not Jewish and have never lived under the law of Moses.   Before salvation through Christ, however, every human being constructs some way of life by which to survive and hopefully thrive.  After we believe, our spiritual enemies tempt us to "turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage" (Galatians 4:9).  If we succumb, seeking to live the Christian life by vain philosophies, protocols, and practices that do not align with grace and truth in the Lord Jesus, our Father loves us enough to make our way difficult in order to direct our way back to His throne of grace.  "Thou hast shown Thy people hard things" (Psalm 60:3).


   The Christian life can only be lived by the "grace and truth" of the Lord Jesus (John 1:17).  God calls us to "walk even as He (Christ) walked" (I John 2:6).  No possibility exists for such a life apart from God's freely given favor received - grace - in accordance with the light of Scripture in how to live accordingly - truth.  We must "know the grace of God in truth" (Colossians 1:6).  This requires vigilance regarding any theology, philosophy, or practice of life that supplants our only hope for genuine godliness.  We do well to maintain an ongoing discourse of prayer with our Heavenly Father regarding so vital a matter, making possible so vibrant a life.  Thereby, we avoid His necessary discipline applied when we exchange reality for illusion and delusion:


    Heavenly Father, show me where I am living from the grace and truth You have so freely given in the Lord Jesus.  Show me where I am not.  I ask You to confirm, defend, and enhance the former, and expose, reprove, and correct the latter.  In the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen."


   "Hard things" administered and allowed by our Heavenly Father occur for many reasons.  One may be that we have veered from grace and truth in Christ by succumbing to devilish distractions that tempt us to live by former futilities of vanity.  God loves us enough to redirect us by chastening and scourging if we so wander.  We will not escape His discipline if we succumb to the temptation to escape His grace and truth.  Let us therefore consistently seek His confirmation and correction, and as the writer of Hebrews requested…


"Let us have grace, that we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear."

(Hebrews 12:28)

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth."

(John 1:14)

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"

(Galatians 3:1-3)


Memory Verse

    Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves."

(Psalm 100:3).


       

































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