Scripture of the Week
SCRIPTURE Isaiah 51:7 (KJV)
7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the
people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye
afraid of their revilings.
1. Who is God
speaking to? (You who have a heart-hunger and thirst for His Word)
2. Who could know righteousness? (you who know truth from a lie; right from
wrong)
3.There are many voices around us. How will we know it is the Lord’s voice?
4. When we have discerned and know, what is our response?
5. Listen, pay attention to
what is spoken.
6. What is our attitude?
7.
Receive that Word with eagerness, curiosity, a hunger to know.
8.
What is the particular word God has spoken?
9. Do not be afraid of others
who bring a reproach against
you for My sake, or
because of Me.
10. Do not fear their words of contempt.
There
are multitudes of verses in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament
where God has spoken very clearly about
not fearing what man can or will do against
us. We are to continue to walk in faith and confidence in His Word.
Reproach: Charge with a fault; to
upbraid.
A severe expression of censure (trying to shut us up or stop talking about the
things of the Lord.).
To shame or disgrace us for following Jesus.
Accuse us or blame us falsely for the way things are.
Contempt: The act of despising
(hating).
A feeling of disdain toward us.
This verse is a
very prophetic word and speaks of the time to come when God would give us a new
heart and put His Holy Spirit within us.
(Ezekiel 36:26-A new heart also will I give you, and a new
spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your
flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.)
(Jeremiah 31:31-34-But this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their
God, and they shall be my people.
And
they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother,
saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the
greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin
no more.)
(Jesus said, “He that has ears to hear, let
him hear.” Mat. 11:15).
“He that hath an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit saith unto the churches”
Revelation 2:7 Ephesus
Revelation 2:11-Smyrna
Revelation 2:17-Pergamos
Revelation 2:29-Thyatira
Revelation 3:6-Sardis
Revelation 3:13-Philadelphia
Revelation 3:22-Laodicea
Bulletin Notes
“Jesus
Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
In Hebrews 13 the writer is encouraging readers to conduct
themselves in a way that reflects a recognition of the superiority of Jesus
Christ. The writer has already challenged readers to fix their eyes on Jesus and run the race with perseverance. As
long as believers are fixing their eyes on Him, they can run without losing
heart Believers can be encouraged that He will never forsake them or leave them
and believers should imitate the examples of those who have had faith in Him.
But all this encouragement and direction is only helpful if it is truth that
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If God arbitrarily changes His
character, then how can we have confidence that what He has said He will do? If
we can’t rely on Him to do what He has said, then we cannot have confidence and
certainty, and it is impossible to run the race with endurance.
Hebrews 13:8 gives us wonderful assurance
that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This statement
helps us look backward and forward so that we can know He is reliable today and
that the things He has said are reliable. Jesus wasn’t some trendy preacher who
rose in popularity and then faded into oblivion. Jesus had always existed as God.
He came in the flesh as a man in order to pay the human price owed to God for
sin on behalf of all humanity, and He is in heaven working and interceding
until He returns for His people to take them home. One day He will return in
glory for all to see. He will rule as King, and He will dwell with humanity
forever He has had a consistent plan from the start and has been faithfully
executing that plan, always keeping His word, and always completely
trustworthy. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The writer of Psalm 102 communicates beautifully
that God existed always, that He created the heavens and the earth, and that,
even though the creation changes, God does not. Because of those universal
truths, the writer can be confident that God will keep His promises. As Samuel
once put it, “The Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind. He is not a
man that He should change His mind” (1 Samuel 15:29).
Even
when the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, became a man, He did not
lie or change His mind about those things that had been spoken. Jesus remained
faithful to His word, even modeling by example that the means to withstand
temptation and testing is by holding fast to the Word of God. This is further
evidence that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Even in passages of Scripture in
which we read that God “changed His mind,”
those
instances do not reflect a change of character or a rewriting of promises. They
typically relate to conditions that changed. In Genesis 6:6–7 God was grieved at what
mankind had become, and, though He would judge humanity through the flood, He
would not violate His promise of redemption, and humanity would subsist. In Exodus 32:10 God tests Moses, saying that
God would destroy Israel and start again with Moses. Moses remembered that God
had promised to work through a specific lineage and that He couldn’t “start
over” with Moses and still keep His word. When Moses appealed to God to “change
His mind,” God did. It was a key lesson in the life of Moses, that God keeps
His word. In Jeremiah 26:13 God would “change His mind” about judging Israel
because their judgment would be complete. In Amos 7:2–6 Amos sees visions in
which God was about to destroy Israel, but God “changed His mind” when Amos
interceded. This was a lesson for Amos that God keeps His word and would not
allow Israel to be completely destroyed. These are a few examples of how God
uses teaching tools and that He “changes His mind” only in agreement with what
He has already committed to.
Being the same yesterday and today
and forever, Jesus Christ is unchanging and unchangeable. No sin, distress, or
complication will cause Him to abandon us. His love is constant and “as strong as
death” (Song of Solomon 8:6).
We can therefore have full confidence that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to
completion” (Philippians 1:6).