Orange Moon Thursday, August 3, 2023 "The Dynamic Duo"

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

"The Dynamic Duo"

   

"Grace empowers godliness in light of the truth that grace provides no less than God to our hearts.  That is, of all the gifts we receive through Christ, the gift of Himself transcends all."   

   

    "Let us have grace that we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear" (Hebrews 12:28).

     How does grace lead to acceptable service to God, along with the proper attitude toward Him?

     First, we recall that while grace may sometimes be mentioned in Scripture by itself, an inseparable companion always accompanies it.  "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).  God's freely given favor in His Son must ever be known, received, and experienced in the context of Scriptural revelation.  "He that believeth on Me as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38).  We receive the gift of salvation in Christ by believing the truth - "as the Scripture hath said" - and thereafter live by the same dynamic duo in order to love, trust, and obey God as His sons and daughters in Christ.  "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him" (Colossians 2:6).

    Grace empowers godliness in light of the truth that grace provides no less than God to our hearts.  That is, of all the gifts we receive through Christ, the gift of Himself transcends all.  "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).  He made us for this, to serve as His spiritual dwelling place - the "habitation of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22).  Only God Himself could provide such a blessing, and to a race of the rebellious, only grace makes possible the reality of His vital and empowering presence.  First, we must be forgiven, which only the Forgiver can bestow as a gift.  Then, God must indwell us to serve as the Life of our lives, a provision of sublime generosity that certainly we can never merit or earn.  Grace alone, received through faith in the truth of Christ, establishes our potential and empowers the actuality of serving God acceptably in both heart and life.  "By the grace of God, I am what I am" (I Corinthians 15:10).

   Grace - God's freely given favor, presence, and working - moves within the spirits of those who believe the truth "as the Scripture hath said."  Thus, we live by receiving the ongoing benefit of our Lord's presence, just we we made alive in Christ by our initial receiving of such grace (John 1:12).  Indeed, anything less than a life of reception is deception.  To "serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear" requires the promise and provision that "it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure."  Only thereby will we find the means to "work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12-13).  Grace, grace and truth in the Lord Jesus, supplies our hope for the life of faith and faithfulness to which our Heavenly Father calls us.  No other way exists, nor do we need any other way.

"God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work."

(II Corinthians 9:8)

Weekly Memory Verse

     By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."

 (Hebrews 10:14)

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Orange Moon Wednesday, August 2, 2023 "Chords, Strangely Familiar"

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

"Chords, Strangely Familiar"

   

"This gives the believer a strong advantage when sharing the Gospel with those who do not believe.  We serve as a confirming, rather than as an introductory witness."   

   

    "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1).

    The Hebrew root word for  "fool" greatly illuminates our understanding of the Psalmist's indictment of the one who does not believe in God.  "Nabal" means senseless, meaning that the unbeliever denies what his senses so clearly tell him.

    "The invisible things of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead" (Romans 1:20).

   Be it sight, sound, texture, fragrance, or taste, all bear the sounding and resounding message that God exists, and that He constitutes the origin and sustaining power of all things.  Sin, however, clouds and blinds the senses that primarily exist to receive and process the Truth that constantly presses upon them.  The atheist carries this to the extreme.  He rejects the obvious, that is, the patently and plainly revealed reality  of God and His truth.  His senses constantly tell him of his Maker, and that all things are "of Him and through Him, and to Him" (Romans 11:36).  He nevertheless denies the "invisible things… clearly seen" that lie before him and around him.  "Fool" well describes the one who lives moves and has his being in God, but who refuses the evidence of his own senses.

    This gives the believer a strong advantage when sharing the Gospel with those who do not believe.  We serve as a confirming, rather than as an introductory witness.  The voice of God speaks through not only through the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures, but also through the world in which the atheist lives.  "The things that are made" tell such a one in every moment of his existence that God made him, and that he is answerable to the Creator.  Our witness may or may not be received, and it may even be aggressively rejected.  However, somewhere deeply within every hearer, the truth and reality we share strikes chords strangely familiar, and which we must pray and hope will be realized for their Composer.  "There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Psalm 19:3-4).   

  Creation reveals the Creator.  It bears witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom all things were made, and through whom all things consist (John 1:3; Colossians 1:17).  Far too many swim in an ocean, whose very existence they deny.  Indeed, to the unbelieving Athenian philosophers, the Apostle Paul declared, "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).  Thus, we need not fear the bluster of the senseless when we seek to proclaim God and His truth.  Their very senses actually agree with us, although their hearts deny.  Remembering this fact provides the basis for a far more confident witness, which itself will serve as an even more convincing expression of the Gospel that provides…

"The power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."

(Romans 1:16)

Weekly Memory Verse

     By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."

 (Hebrews 10:14)

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Orange Moon Tuesday, August 1, 2023 "I Will Look For Him"

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

"I Will Look For Him"

   

"When opening our Bible, we can do no better than affirming within our hearts, 'I will look for Him.' "       

   "I am… the truth" (John 14:6).

    Every doctrine of the Bible has as its center and circumference the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  "That in all things He might have the preeminence" declared the Apostle Paul of the Savior, who comprises God's reason and intention for all He does, from everlasting to everlasting - "the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 1:11).

    How does the Lord Jesus form and inform the truth of creation?  Of righteousness?  Of grace?  Of holiness?  Of prophecy?  Of salvation?  Of wrath?  Of prayer?  Of election?  Of faith?  Of obedience?  Of joy?  Of peace?  Of light?  Of life?  Of Israel?  Of the church?  Of heaven, of hell, and of "all things" in which He bears  the "preeminence" and the serves as the heart of the "eternal purpose" of God?  We open our Bible to learn and to grow in our understanding of its glorious Subject.  In fact, until we have found how Christ serves as the theme of whatever Scriptural matter we consider, we have not found the proper interpretation.  "In Thy light shall we see light" declared the Psalmist, that is, in the light of the written Word, the Bible, we behold the living Word, the Lord Jesus (Psalm 36:9)

    The Lord Jesus could not have stated the truth we consider more plainly: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me" (John 5:39).  He referenced the Old Testament, wherein He is not directly named, but wherein His light glimmers brightly to the heart that realizes that Genesis to Malachi are no less the book of Christ than Matthew to Revelation.  We may have to search more diligently, and exercise our minds a bit more carefully, but as the Lord said, "Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old" (Matthew 13:52).  Yes, be it the veiled light of the Old Testament, or the brightest of sunlight shining in the New, the Lord Jesus graces every letter, word, sentence, verse, chapter, and book of the Bible.  He serves as the truth of all.  

    "I will look for Him" said the prophet long ago (Isaiah 8:17).  While Isaiah did not directly reference seeking Christ in the Scriptures, the sentiment nevertheless reminds us that when opening our Bible, we can do no better than affirming within our hearts, "I will look for Him."  He awaits us there, in the holy pages inspired by the Holy Spirit, whose determination ever flows with the current of exalting and revealing the Lord Jesus (John 16:14; 15:26).  We seek Christ when seeking truth, and we seek truth when seeking Christ.  Let us then open our Bibles in the awareness of God's primary intention for providing such a gift, that bears such glorious witness to such a Gift…

"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

(Luke 24:27)

Weekly Memory Verse

   By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."

 (Hebrews 10:14)

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