Good Morning, Meetpastordan Readers…As you know from previous blogs, I am particularly inspired today by the lyrics of some of the oldie-but-goodie hymns. The memories of belting out these timeless classics in the Evangelical United Brethren Church, is a wonderful flash-back to my childhood experience in Crooksville, Ohio. But as I have confessed in previous writings, at that time I was much more interested in singing the alto or tenor parts than I was in listening to the lyrics. Truth be told, the words got in the way of my “personal musical experience”, because my love for music was blossoming, and following the flow of the inner voices, (or as I thought of them at the time, the “real color notes” that accentuated the melody), was much more challenging, yet totally enthralling.
Today those wonderful old hymns still rattle around in my head, and quite frequently I find myself humming them. Such was the case last week when “How Great Thou Art” took root in my mind and wouldn’t go away. After a few days, I had even recalled the first two verses: O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder; Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made; I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder; Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
(Refrain) Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee; How great Thou art; how great Thou art; Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee; How great Thou art; how great Thou art.
And when I think of God, His Son not sparing; Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing; He bled and died to take away my sin. (back to Refrain)
Wow! The first verse is an incredible tribute to our majestic God, THE Creator of the Universe. It is those majestic qualities that cause us to stand in “awesome wonder”, and those qualities include being God-head of the Trinity, the omniscient One, the omnipotent One; the immutable One; the omnipresent One, or the Alpha and Omega. We may be able to define these words, but beyond that, how can anyone actually relate to what it means to be omnipresent or Alpha and Omega (timeless). That is so far beyond our/my paradigm of thinking, “I scarce can take it in.”
In the second verse, we see the personal God of Christianity, the One who unconditionally loves us, the One who was willing to pay our sin-ransom through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. God is described with only one word in 1 John 4:8: “…God is LOVE.” The very essence of God is LOVE; He is either loving or being loved. 1 John 4:19 tells us, “We love because He first loved us.”
He showed His immeasurable love for us by creating us, even though His majestic quality of omniscience revealed our impending disobedience to His plan. But irregardless, the pinnacle of His plan, as stated in Ephesians 1, was always to send a Redeemer to save us from ourselves. You see, He already knew that we could never overcome our sin-nature; that is what makes this Gift of Grace so awe inspiring. And, it is also why we love Him back. This is our way of saying, “Thank You, God, for what you did for us. You saved us from eternal damnation!”
No wonder our souls sing, “How great thou art; how great thou art”. When we commit to being in line with His will (meaning…when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior), we step into a spiritual realm that provides blessings that could never be achieved through our human effort. Only by being in Christ can we receive forgiveness of our sins; we can now inherit eternal life; we are now worthy and acceptable in His eyes – not because of anything we did or didn’t do – but because Jesus paid our sin-ransom on the cross. We are grafted into God’s family as His children; we are now Saints rather than sinners, meaning that when we fall short of God’s glorious standard, which we will, it is not counted against us as sin. (Ref. Romans 8:1) He just wants us to get up and continue growing in our relationship with Jesus. We are also heir to every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm, and we are heir to all of the promises in the Bible. That, my Friends, is hitting the spiritual jackpot!
What I have written about so far is the truth about God’s love and His Grace. He created us for a relationship with Himself, and not just a here-and-now relationship, but an eternal relationship. And because this eternal relationship will be in Paradise (the New Jerusalem), God set the bar very high for getting through the pearly gates. The standard set was/is perfection, as revealed in Leviticus 20:26; “You must be holy (without sin) because, I the Lord, am holy. I have set you apart from all other people to be my very own.” Since Man proved himself to be “utterly helpless” (Ref. Romans 5:6) to overcome the dilemma of Sin through his best effort, God gave us the incredible Gift of Grace so we could qualify to spend eternity in Paradise with Him, Jesus, and all other Christians. Apostle John clarified this process in Revelation 21:27: “Nothing impure will ever enter in (Paradise), nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful; only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life may enter.” Jesus presented that same truth with these words: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me!”
This last statement by Jesus is probably the most controversial Scripture in the Bible. To those of us being saved by that very truth of Christianity, we proclaim that statement to be the perfect example of God’s power and love for His proudest creation. To those who reject this very same message as being too selective, or not all-inclusive, I would remind you that without Jesus’ willingness to be the sacrificial lamb, shedding His blood as payment for “the sins of the world” (Ref. 1 John 2:2), there would be no hope of salvation for anyone. Romans 6:23 drives that point home: “For the wages of Sin is death.” (NB 1) Again, Apostle John clarifies that statement with Revelation 21:8: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and the liars – they will be thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.”
God gave each of us the gift of free-will. We make our choices, then we reap what we sow; we can either chose to honor God, or we can walk away from Him. Jesus came to proclaim, “the Kingdom has come” (Matthew 12:28), yet His own people, even the Pharisees, did not recognize that He fulfilled the prophecies concerning the Messiah. When He spoke to the multitudes that followed Him, not everyone believed that He was who He said He was, or some just couldn’t accept the truth of His message. Unfortunately, the same, is true today.
The conception of God’s plan for our salvation is so far beyond human reasoning, many believe it has to be a fairy-tale, or a myth, or – even worse – a joke! But the truth is, His plan, as outlined in Ephesians 1: 3-14, is totally rooted in love – Agape love, which is unconditional, unending and unfailing love. This love is also beyond our human capacity. (If you doubt that, visit 1 Corinthians, 13:4-7 and check it out.)
I have talked about God’s love and His grace, but I would like to close by talking about His mercy. Even though God is LOVE, He also has to be a just God. Proverbs 11:21 tells us “the evil man (a sinner) shall not go unpunished.” “Why”, you ask? Because sin contaminates, spreads, kills and destroys. The Book of Jeremiah is resplendent with examples of God’s anger burning against the people of Judah for their disobedience and their idol worship. For numerous paragraphs He proclaimed His wrath against them, even outlining in detail the horrors they would have to endure. But then would come the mercy paragraph that is so common in these stories. “But if they will just come back to Me, I will forgive their sins. They will again be My people, and I will be their God.” This scenario is evident throughout the Old Testament, and it clearly shows that God prefers mercy over judgement. No doubt He will deliver judgement if sin is unrepented, but His love and mercy will prevail if there is repentance.
All of this is a testimony to the magnificence of our God Jehovah! This is why I stand in awesome wonder of His unfathomable glory and greatness, and it is also why my soul proclaims “How Great Thou Art; How Great Thou Art!”
(NB1: I want to complete Romans 6:23. When I used it five paragraphs above, I used only the first half of the Scripture. This Scripture is like a coin that has “the bad news”, God’s judgement, on one side, but the love and grace of God on the flip side: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift from God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!) It’s all about the choice each of us has to make; we either choose life, or we choose (by default) death.
Feel free to “like” this message, and please feel free to share it with other social media friends.
May God Bless You,
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
Leave a Comment