Posted on 10/23/2006 6:34:48 PM PDT by ROTB
I also like :b'shem Yah'shuaIsaiah 12:2 Behold, Yah is my salvation;
I will trust, and will not be afraid;
for Yah, YHvH is my strength and song;
and He is become my salvation.'
IMHO, this is how I would approach your article. Balance your studies with how we are to respect legitimate authority.
As a simple check on your thinking and actions, consider love as the most important commandment, but also consistent with His divinely established institutions.
Will (volition), marriage, family and national governance were all divinely established institutions for believer and unbeliever alike.
Freedom without authority is anarchy. Authority without justice is tyranny. Freedom exists in those institutions insofar as legitimate authority remains just.
Our number one priority in the Church Age is to remain faithful to Him through faith in Christ. In this fashion He indwells us with the Son, Holy SPirit and the Father.
By remaining in fellowship with Him in all things, His plan is accomplished by our good works. Those good works might indeed be the defense of legitimate authority.
Adversity in death and in life is inevitable. Stress is optional, through our remaining faithful and in fellowship with Him through faith in Christ.
In the last days some will persevere and others will go into captivity. Vengeance is the Lord's, but this doesn't keep us from remaining obedient to legitimate authority of the institutions He has provided.
If those institutions become corrupted to the point that living within those corruptions removes one from fellowship with God, then we must persevere with Him.
Many times we might be faced with apparant solutions to problems by worldly or carnal mechanisms which are independent of Him. These are to be avoided. Likewise, the Lord never disallowed force to be used in the enforcement of legitimate authority through the will of Him. Even in the Garden of Gethsemanie (sp?) when the sentry had his ear cut off and our Lord healed it, note that our Lord and Savior was remaining obedient to the Father and acted through faith with the Holy Spirit healing the body. The import was not of a pacifist, but of a perfect man, in body, soul and spirit, who discerned where others were acting from soulish perspectives, yet in His perfect body soul and spirit, had already discerned spiritually He had been destined to submit to the Judgment of the Father.
So much of what our Lord endured was merely efforts by adversarial spirits to attempt to sidetrack our Lord from remaining faithful, but even those efforts telegraphed the lack of faith of those tempting Him, believing their soulish conditions independent of the Living God were a modus operendi for problem solving.
The violence of unrighteous evil must be met by righteous violence to enforce justice. The power and force to implement that justice might not always be at our disposal immediately, but through faith in Christ all things are counted for good.
We should always be good and faithful servants anticipating His immenant return, but that might imply good works with force, not impotent of His will.
Remember, the most violent act of all human history was performed on our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. Violence is a conflict of will and the most violent act was the obedient will of the perfect Son, seeking to remain obedient to the Father and retain fellowship with Him, while the Father in His perfect Righteousness, immutably had to mete out perfect justice on the Son when the sins of all humanity were imputed upon Him, resulting in the separation of the Body, soul and spirit of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus on the Cross. He has already performed that sacrifice. None other is required other than us to sacrifice the old man when we are reborn in Him.
Our mandate is to remain in fellowship with Him, not to be pacifists. Pacificism is one of the most carnal and worldly methods for unbelievers to follow. A believer who fails to remain in fellowship with God when faced by adversity, simply looks for something the individual can think, decisde, act or behave to influence events independent of God through faith in Christ. That frantic search might be by bodily violence or it might be in complete cowardly submission. Neither, if performed out of fellowship with Him are righteous.
Hope this might offer edification of your spirit, but only through Him and not myself.
While enduring suffering, remember that while in fellowship with Him, for every cursing there is a blessing. Most of all do not allow the temptation to avoid adversity remove you from fellowship with Him. That would only turn a blessing into a cursing.
Be thankful for the testing, for as we persevere our rewards in heaven being handled by our Lord and Savior will be met with good favor and rewarded us when the bride joins the groom.
If we lack the power to influence events, place faith in Him and let Him handle the situation, Thank You Lord. If we are tied up, facing a beheading by Muslim extremists, with no allies nearby, Thank You Lord. If we face being mutilated and loss of everything we own without recourse, Thank You Lord. Nothing can remove us from the love of God and our fellowship with Him through faith in Christ.
Well said.
I doubt if you attend a “mainline evangelical” church today you are going to find out much. I mean this kindly but your pastor is probably going to fumble around a lot, say how the word of God is inspired, and give some pretty good explanations on some things. But on the verses like Psalms or Jeremiah he will probably scratch his head and say it requires further research.
Psalms 35 is not in conflict with the rest of scripture. Many in the churches today believe that God loves all men and then you come across something like Psalms 35 and they can’t explain it. I would refer you to John Gill’s commentary on Psalms 35. There is nothing as good as some old time teaching.
Jesus was a good rabbi.
There's one thing missing from the above teaching. The responsibilities that God gives government differs from the responsibilities given to the individual. In the New Testament, believers are to overcome evil with good, and to bless those who curse. Government's responsibility is to execute wrath on the disobedient. Liberals like to swap these responsibilities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.