July 13, 200910:00 am
So this won’t come with any great thoughts about what this means, it simply struck me as odd and something that I have never really thought of.
For my entire 20+ years of going to church, I pretty sure that I have always been taught that God is in heaven and that Satan is in Hell or at least not in Heaven with God. But this last Sunday our Pastor brought up a few interesting passages that seem to contradict this. The first come from Job.
Job 1:6 says, “One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.” (Verse 2:1 says the same thing and if you continue to read through Job you realize that God and Satan have an ongoing conversation).
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Zechariah 3:1-2a ”Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, ” The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem ,rebuke you!
Revelation 12:10 “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ”Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.”
Like I said this doesn’t have any life changing application, just something I found interesting.
p.s. all the verses are from the NIV
June 24, 20093:57 pm
Ok so this feels a little weird. I am typically not the type of person that preaches. In fact, I am usually a man of few words. (I am not sure how I got roped into this blogging thing). Plus most of these words and thoughts are not my own, but here we go anyway.
In Revelation 8:6 there are seven Angels with seven trumpets, each trumpet blast means bad things happen. Death and destruction are everywhere and then in verse 13, after the fourth trumpet, we take a brief pause. Seemingly out of nowhere, we find an eagle flying calling out “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!” In a moment of honesty our pastor admitted he had no idea what to do with this verse. Death and destruction everywhere and then a bird telling us it is only going to get worse. Awesome.
So we took a little journey over to Matthew 20 and the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire men to work his field. He then goes out in the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour to hire more workers. (There were twelve hours in a work day) We focused on the landowner because he does something a little odd. Typically in that day landowners would go out in the morning hire people and that was it. But this landowner is always going to out to find more workers.
Then we took a look at all of the prophets sent to Israel. They came with the message of “Woe to you!” Now this wasn’t a message of lookout destruction is coming and there is nothing that you can do about it. These were messages of look out destruction will come if you do not change your ways. Repents and return to the Lord.
So we added all these thing up and go back to Revelation and with all of this in mind, the eagle reads a little different. Woe to you, destruction is coming, but it doesn’t have to be for you. Repent and come to the Lord. He is here even in this eleventh hour searching for more people who want and need his salvation. Even in the midst of God’s righteous anger and judgement of the earth, he is still searching for people who want his love.
That is our God.
May 30, 20098:00 am
At church we are going through a seemingly endless series (that is a good thing) on the book of Revelation. Throughout this study I have got the impression that God is trying to teach me something. At least I have been struck with this thought most sermons. The thought is this:
The God that I/we serve is completely incomprehensible. Who he is goes beyond anything that the human brain can understand. It simply cannot be done. Don’t believe me? Try imagining something with no beginning or end. Yet through and because of his love, he reveals himself to us in a way that we can understand. We can look at creation and see a design. He draws us to him through life experiences and circumstances. Look into the face of a smiling baby and tell me there is no God, that all of this was just random chance.
I know this isn’t something deep. To me it is a reminder of God’s love. We all need those from time to time.
