For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
It takes wisdom to build a place to call home. It is by carefully following our knowledge of God’s will that we fill it with the things we will treasure long into the future.
Our God is awesome in His power. He will display His power and cause all nations to bring tributes of praise to Him. People and nations may rebel against God, but He will smash His enemies and force them to submit to His will. God will save those people who submit to His will and make them His own. He give them power and strength to carry out His will.
Paul calls on us to work towards unity in Christ, being bound together in peace. He does make it clear that this will not always be possible. I have noticed that when controversy stirs and divides the Church it is often those who are causing the division who cry the loudest about maintaining unity. What they forget is that there is only one body and one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father over us all. If we fail to be true to the will of that one God, we cannot have unity.
Paul goes on to tell us that Christ gave the Church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work in order to build up the body of Christ. Those five categories of people are to continue their work (and God will continue to provide us with more of them) until we all come to unity in faith and knowledge of Christ. And here Paul makes the comment that should be devastating for those who cry unity while causing division. We will achieve such unity when we are no longer tossed and blown by every new teaching that comes along. True unity will arrive when the people of the Church are not fooled by lies cleverly crafted to sound like truth. Instead we will speak the truth in love and thus grow to truly become the adult body of Christ. The truth is that while God will forgive our sins and loves us despite our sins, those sins bring harm to us and our fellow man. It is not love to tell people that sin is not sin and that it is OK to continue to practice such behaviors which bring harm to themselves.
Isaiah predicted that people from all over the world would seek to serve and follow God, recognizing that He, and He alone, is God. Those who make idols and those who encourage others to worship them will be disgraced. God’s instructions to us are not hidden, He does not speak in obscurity. We do not need to listen to some Grand Master to whom God has revealed His secrets. God has made spread knowledge of Him far and wide. He is there to be found by those who seek Him. There is no path to salvation but through Him, for there is no other God.
The day will come when all of humanity will acknowledge that God is sovereign and Lord. We can wait until we have no choice. I will choose to submit to Him now. There is nothing that compares to Him. I look at the wonders He has done in the past and the things He has promised to do in the future and it leaves me in awe of His greatness. God is prepared to set things right, not in the far future, but now. God is offering us salvation, not because we have done something worthy of salvation, far from it. God will rescue us in order to bring glory to His name, not because we deserve it. Will we be grateful for the grace He has shown us by doing His will? Or will we turn from Him once more?