1 Peter 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Watching Yeshua (Jesus) lay down His life to die on the cross was not what His disciples were expecting, but rather a shocking, perplexing, and apparently hopeless ending to what had seemed like a promising fulfillment of Messianic hope. The shattering ordeal of Yeshua’s trials, torture, and horrific death must have left them all feeling bereft, miserable, and uncertain of the future. What would they do now? What would their future hold?
As deep and depressing as their shock was, Yeshua’s disciples had only to wait three days for the restoration of their vision, hope, and joy. A massive inversion of their reality, exactly what He had predicted, His bodily resurrection, was another shock, but this time…indescribable joy, wonder, and phenomenal relief; and a restoration of meaning, purpose, and vision which carried them the rest of their lives.
As His disciples, our life often follows this pattern: trial, testing, perplexity, suffering, despair, etc…..which then yields to the opposite feelings and experiences of hope, healing, restoration, relief, and the faith and character which emerge along with vision and renewed purpose.
As our Lord knew before He died that He would rise again, He also knows the good things which He portends for the future of His disciples, that is, us, who have been passing through a season of stress and uncertainty. He really, truly wants us to believe in the rest of this wild story; to really and truly accept the fact that He will, again, turn the world upside down as “all things work together for good for them that love God and are the called according to His purpose”!
Witnessing and being exposed to the serious and nasty things that are happening around us now, how can we imagine that anything good can emerge from it all? The future seems bleak and downright frightening. But let us remember the Lord’s cross — His disciples’ shock and despair…and the predicted, inevitable resurrection which followed!
Be at peace, remembering the unalterable pattern God has given us in the revelation of His Son. Enter the new year assured in your faith foundation —and the secure expectation that once again, with Him, as the Apostles did 2000 years ago…..we too, will “turn the world upside down”.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Here we have a stark word. Here we see the Lord testing Israel: “He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.” [Deuteronomy 8:16]. Yet Paul says that they put Him to the test. A great irony occurs when God is testing us, and we despise His discipline, thereby testing Him.
Paul exhorts the church at Corinth about grumbling and complaining. He reminds the believers of the judgments that befell the 10 spies who brought a bad report of the land – and were struck down by a plague, and terrible fate of Korah and those aligned with him that came against Moses and Aaron and were swallowed up by the ground under them.
For the past two weeks we’ve been building life lessons derived from the Exodus wanderings and from Paul’s exhortations to the church in Corinth. Notice carefully that Paul says, “these were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”…
…that is, written for us today! – admonitions from Paul to learn lessons from the history of the children of Israel.
For the past two weeks we have examined lessons from the OT account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt in hope of avoiding the errors and attitudes of the children of Israel. This week we will draw connections between the Exodus and the prophecies in the book of Revelation.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve begun a series of devotions based on the Exodus wanderings of the Children of Israel, and their tragic mistakes which we can learn from and avoid. One powerful influence common to their failures was fear.
The Lord spoke to Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt to be desperately cornered with the Red sea before them and Pharaoh’s chariots advancing upon them from behind. Overwhelmed with terror they cry out to Moses, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Having just miraculously escaped from the miserable life of slavery, and only beginning their new life of freedom, the children of Israel were faced with the most dire threat to their existence.
When Peter and John had gone up to the Temple for prayer [Acts 3], they saw a man who was lame from birth, and were moved to heal him in the name of Yeshua (Jesus). Immediately the religious leaders laid hands on them [Acts 4:3] and kept them imprisoned for a day. The following day, with boldness, they declared this miracle was done in the name of Yeshua. I love what the “religious” leaders said next — “they perceived that they were unlearned men and they marveled at their boldness!” Why were they bold? They had been with Yeshua, and the leaders took note of that!