A Cloud by Day, a Fire by Night

When joys surround and pleasures stay

And every piece falls into place

Although I'm on my well-lit way

You guide me Lord, a cloud by day

But other times, I'm filled with fright

For all the world seems full of hate;

When sorrows seem to quench the light

Your Spirit burns, a fire by night

Freedom from the Fear of Death

 

 Days of Darkness

We are in a unique time of the year. The trees have shed their dead leaves, a shroud of snow covers the hard frozen ground, and festivals of death are celebrated around the world. The pagans called this time Samhain and it is still celebrated by some to this day as an optimal time to commune with the spirit world; in Mexico it is Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Right here in North America, the stores devote the whole month of October to Hallowe'en merchandise. From the devils, skeletons and witches marching our streets, to the fake corpses hanging from trees, thoughts of death, doom and the devil dominate our world with darkness (an appropriately amusing alliteration). Pages and pages have been written about the different origins of these holidays, but one thing is for certain. They are quite a difference from the light, life and joy offered by the Only God! I believe that at the heart of these celebrations, there is that common human fear of death!

 

Out of Our Control

King Solomon, one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived, wrote in Ecclesiastes 8:7-8 ‘Since no man knows the future, who can tell him what is to come? No man has power over the wind to contain it; so no one has power over the day of his death.’ This is one reason for the fear of death! Our lives on this earth are incredibly fragile. None of us knows for certain what will happen in the future, even five minutes from now. We have as much power over the day of our death as we have over the wind! That’s not a very comforting thought if we are afraid of death.

A singer/songwriter named Ethan talked about this fear to God in Psalm 89:47-48 ‘Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created all men! What man can live and not see death, or save himself from the power of the grave?’ Life is so short and Death impacts us all. We don’t have to live very long before we lose loved ones in our own families or members of our communities. Though some may live like they are immortal, we often receive wake-up calls when even young children and youth that we love are taken from us. Each one of us is born with an expiration date that none of us knows! No one on this planet will be able to design a cure from death. No matter how many intense surgeries we put our bodies through, we will not be able to escape the grave; you could receive a transplant of all your organs one day and the next day be diagnosed with a terminal, incurable virus.  

 The Hope Offered by God

There is a neat prophecy in Hosea 13:14. This is God’s promise of what he would do for His people: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?’

The Apostle Paul quotes this verse in 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’  If death was just a long warm sleep, giving us permanent rest at the end of our hard days, we wouldn’t be afraid of it (apart from the pain that might accompany the experience). The real sting of death is sin! The reason that death is a fearful thing is the guilt of the sin that we have committed. ‘But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ 

Victory Through Christ!

How is the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ? It is through what He has done on our behalf. Hebrews 2:14-15 “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” This of course is speaking of the Lord Jesus. He became fully human and experienced death for us so that he could destroy the devil’s hold on mankind; so that he could set us free from slavery to the fear of death! Through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, much was accomplished. First of all, He proved that there was hope beyond the grave. He had hung bleeding and broken upon the cross, suffering a form of execution that left the body damaged beyond repair. When He died, a soldier thrust a spear into His side to make sure the deed was done. Even in our day of CPR, defibrillators and blood transfusions, He could not have been revived, and yet three days later, He came back to life again! Through this, He conquered death once for all time. He stands mightily as the one who died and yet lives!

Read the words of assurance given by our Lord in John 11:25-26:“Jesus said…  “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Now that is something worth celebrating.

Be Reconciled!

 “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

Today, I want you to think on one word with me. Reconciliation. Now how many of you have heard that word before? Can anyone tell me what it means? The dictionaries I looked at gave two basic meanings:

1. To reconcile is to restore two or more parties into close friendship. So, reconciliation carries this idea of estranged and alienated friends brought back together.

2. A banking term, to make consistent. To balance the books and harmonize the differences, including paying debts, etc. So as we talk about being reconciled to God, these two ideas are helpful in our understanding: the healing of broken relationships, and the balancing of books.

          As you have likely heard many times here, the state that God created man in, reading from Genesis 1:26-27: ‘God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’

So in the original creation, we were made in God’s image, reflecting His dignity, His ability to govern and rule, and His ability for relationship. So that’s who we were, but what about our relationship with God? I’ll read Genesis 2:8-25.

 ^“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

 So, one aspect of God’s relationship with man was communication. God spoke to Adam freely and told him what he should do and what he shouldn’t do. He also was concerned for Adam’s needs and provided for them, particularly in creating woman and instituting marriage to complete man, supplying the help, support, encouragement and human companionship that he needed. Another aspect was the one of freedom. There was freedom in the garden to eat of any tree except the one which God had forbidden, and Adam and his wife were naked without any shame. Another aspect of God’s relationship with man was one of partnership; God put Adam in charge of the garden that he had made, He put him in charge of the animals He had made, even allowing him to name them all however he chose! So, the relationship of God with man was one of communication, provision, freedom and partnership! That sounds like an incredible friendship doesn’t it? God created man to be in relationship with Him!

          If it had ended there, there would be no need for reconciliation, would there? But Adam and Eve were led into temptation. They doubted God and gave place to the devil! That one forbidden action of eating from the tree took place and as a result, human friendship with God was tarnished and damaged by sin. Chapter 3:23-24 “So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” The image of God was tarnished; relationship was shattered! We all are born with that shattered image and broken relationship. None of us are born with that relationship we were intended for, the relationship of communication, freedom and partnership!

          We also need to be reconciled in a debt kind of way. We all personally add up a lifelong list of sins, that weigh against us, making us worthy of God’s judgement and unworthy of approaching God or going to Heaven when we die! Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death!” When we die and the billing period hits, the only payment we can offer on our own is eternal separation from God, the punishment of Hell!

          There is hope! This is our message; the message of reconciliation. You can be born again, created anew to live for God! You can be made right with Him! You can have that debt of sin crossed out and balanced with the true goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself credited to your account! How was this done? Let me read 2 Corinthians 5:21 again for you: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus took our sin upon Himself and died in our place so that He could credit His righteousness to our account!

This is the message that reconciles us to God! The message that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Almighty Creator God, that He has made the Only way to God by dying on the cross for all of our sins, that He rose again from the dead so that He could be our Lord and Saviour and give eternal life to all who will turn from their sins and believe in Him! On the cross, Jesus has made the way for you to be right with God, to be restored to relationship with Him, to live as you were intended and be changed from the inside out as He works within you. On the cross, He has accomplished the accounting that needs to be done so that your debt can be crossed out and replaced with incredible righteousness! Will you receive that gift today? Will you turn from the empty life without God and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour? Be reconciled to God! He longs for you to come home, to become his child. He wants to make you a new creation and He will do it if you will respond to Him in faith!

Turn and Live

“Son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what you are saying: “Our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?”’ Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’
“Therefore, son of man, say to your countrymen, ‘The righteousness of the righteous man will not save him when he disobeys, and the wickedness of the wicked man will not cause him to fall when he turns from it. The righteous man, if he sins, will not be allowed to live because of his former righteousness.’ If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done. And if I say to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right— if he gives back what he took in pledge for a loan, returns what he has stolen, follows the decrees that give life, and does no evil, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.
“Yet your countrymen say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, he will die for it. And if a wicked man turns away from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he will live by doing so. Yet, O house of Israel, you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to his own ways.” (Ezekiel 33:10-20 NIV 1984)

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked! He wants us all to repent, to turn from our sins and come to Him, so that we can have eternal life with Him! We need to understand this. Sometimes we picture God as a killjoy and a fun-wrecker, but this is not what Scripture teaches. Our God is Holy! He is utterly good and utterly wise. He sees the causes and effects of sin, which I believe even we would find hateful if we were capable of comprehending them. 
But, even with His extreme hatred for sin, God takes no pleasure in destroying sinners! In fact, He wants every single person on this earth to put their faith in Him and become righteous.  

And this is the good news for all of us: that if we repent of our sins and put our faith in Jesus, He will forgive our sins and give us life. As Jesus said in John 3:16-18 “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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
   
The Gospel in brief is this: that God, the creator of everything, came down from heaven and became one of us, a man. He lived like us and understands our pain. He faced the same temptations, weaknesses, pain and conflict, yet never committed any sin. And then after all of that, He gave Himself up for us, taking the punishment that you and I deserve for every evil thing we’ve done. He was whipped and beaten, mocked and spit on, and painfully nailed to a tree to suffocate and bleed to death, though it seems a broken heart killed Him first. In all of this he took our sin upon Himself, so that we could be forgiven of our sins and come close to God. His death was not the end. He didn’t suffer and then stay to rot in a grave, but three days later, He rose again, conquering death. He proved that sin had no power over Him, and that His sacrifice was an acceptable payment for our sins. By that same power over death, he offers eternal life to those who believe in Him. 

Jesus has made the way for you to be right with God. Will you receive that gift today? Will you repent of your sins and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour? 

"Whoever believes in Him is not condemned;" what a comfort and a glorious promise! But he who does not believe stands condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

If you desire to be saved, then you can pray to the Lord today. It is not the words that are important; God is looking at your heart and He will lift you up if you humble yourself before Him! God Bless,
Pastor Carter. 

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.®