The Divine plumb line

The Divine plumb line

We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, both corporately as a church and also as individuals. If we were to consider the whole church, each person is a stone or brick in the temple of God. If we consider an individual then each day in a person’s life or each new decision in a person’s life is like a brick that goes towards building the temple of God.

Hopefully, none of us came into the church empty handed. We should have carried our Bibles’ with us. God who is here hasn’t come empty handed either. What has he brought along?

Amos 7:7, 8

That’s right. God has brought along a plumb line to see if the walls that signify the church or the walls that signify our lives are built right and straight.

How do you use a plumb line? The newest stone that is placed is referred for correctness against an underlying stone or layer of stones. If the stone that is used as reference isn’t proper (either jutting out or pushed in) then the newest stone would also be placed wrong and eventually, the whole wall would be tilted in the wrong direction.

Something similar is happening in the church and in many of our lives today. The reference point that we are using is wrong and hence our life and the church is slanted in the wrong direction.

We ought to build our lives based on God’s plumb and with Jesus as the reference point.


Worth

How much are we worth? What determines a person’s worth?
How does the world determine a person’s worth?
• Appearance, family background, talents
• Education, career, possessions
• Potential to achieve things in the world

Now the way the world evaluates a person’s worth is subjective and relative. Water is worth almost nothing in normal conditions, but to a person dying of thirst, it’s worth everything. South Indian actor Kamal Hassan is usually seen as light skinned in India. When he traveled to the United States, a black American told him, “Oh dark skinned people like you and I are discriminated by the whites here in this country.”


Can we go about building our lives based on the wrong reference that this world supplies us with? Not if you want your life to be a blessed and joyful.

So then, what are we really worth?
James 3:9
It makes no sense to praise God at one time and then curse man who is made in God’s image at another time with the same tongue. So do you see? Every human’s worth comes from the fact that he/she is made in the image of God.

Mark 8:36,37
What would you pay a kidnapper as ransom to get back your child?
I would pay whatever it takes. I was once kidnapped by the enemy and put in the prison of sin. Satan wouldn’t release me until the ransom was paid. So my Father gave away everything, by giving away Jesus to die on the cross. Jesus shed every last drop of his blood to pay the ransom to get me out into freedom.

That’s how much I’m worth. I’m priceless in the eyes of my Father.


Acceptance

Why do people get into the wrong company? People hang around with the company which values them highly. It could be for the wrong reasons. But, what matters most to an individual is acceptance and acknowledgement of his/her worth.

People would do anything for acceptance. They would do anything to please somebody or anything to prove something to somebody as long as that earns them acceptance.

Instead, if a person were to be told how they could be accepted by God, then they could spend their whole lives in the company of Jesus, who values them most highly and to who they are worth everything.

Well then, the question is, what should a person do to be accepted by God?
The answer is: NOTHING. They just need to believe that they are already unconditionally accepted by God. They can do nothing to earn his acceptance.

Even obedience to God is a consequence of knowing that we are accepted, not a prerequisite. In other words, we don’t obey God to get his acceptance; instead we obey Him because He has already, freely accepted us. Romans 5:8

Doing nothing but simply believing is called Faith in Christian circles and God’s unconditional acceptance is called Grace.

A person who knows the Truth of what he/she is really worth and how they have come to be accepted, spend all their lives, pleasing God and living in His company.




What about others?
Well the Truth that we have just seen is true for every person. In other words, the person sitting next to you or even the beggar on the street or even Osama bin Laden is worth everything to the Father who has created them in His own image, who has paid the ultimate ransom to get them back for himself and has freely forgiven and accepted them.

So we ought to value, accept and forgive others unconditionally. Matt 6:15,16


Action

When all these things that constitute God’s plumb line are in place, we come to the point of action. Our faith is not faith if it doesn’t translate into action.

What stops people from fulfilling the purposes that God has for them? Why does their vision and not become reality. Why do they desire to do great things, but do nothing?

They look at what they are capable of doing, the history of what somebody else like them has been able to achieve, or at the great people who don’t think it can be done and they get discouraged. They conclude: this is impossible.

But what does God think. Luke 1:37. Now you may say, well I know nothing is impossible with God. After all He made everything from virtually nothing.

Well God’s truth is even clearer in Phil 4:13. We can do all things through God who gives us strength.

Like the adidas slogan: “Impossible is nothing”


May we construct our lives with Jesus as reference according to God’s plumb line

May we live by His grace, through His power and for His glory. Amen

ABC of the Bible

ABCs of the Bible

The Bible is divided as the Old and New Testaments and is a compilation of several separate books. Tell me, how many books does the Bible have? Yes, 66. Now the Book of Isaiah consists of 66 chapters and there is a distinct mood shift from chapter 40 onwards. A sense of a new hope and salvation dominates the second portion of the book of Isaiah, pretty much like the New grace covenant between God and man through the cross of Jesus Christ replaced the old law covenant that was given to Moses.

The book of Isaiah is the first of the four Major Prophets and is more quoted in the New Testament than all the other prophets put together. So it is by narrowing down our perspective to the book of Isaiah that I hope to present the ABCs of the Bible to you.
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Isaiah 1:1-9 Can you hear the agony of God’s heart in the verses that we just read?

If you’ve watched the animation movie “The Prince of Egypt” I wonder if you remember the part where the firstborn of every house in Egypt where slain by the LORD, a cry was heard in all of Egypt like never before. After this judgment had befallen the Egyptians, Moses comes away from the presence of the Pharaoh who finally allows the Hebrews to leave. He doesn’t come out pumping his fist for the victory. Instead he is pictured as groaning because of the judgment that the people had to face because of the stubbornness of their heart. When I heard Moses crying I could hear the voice of Val Kilmer who lent his voice to the character of Moses but could I hear the anguish in the heart of God that resonated through that voice.

Oh, how familiar Isaiah was to the agony of the Father’ heart! When God’s heart raced, Isaiah’s heart raced as well. When God groaned, Isaiah groaned. Isaiah’s heart no doubt bled with God’s very own agony.

- Here was Isaiah trying to establish his career as the spiritual adviser to the King of Judah, almost having cemented his place as the undisputed conscience of a nation. But somehow thoughts of his own success had failed to cloud his thoughts from sensing God’s heart. I thought of how the busyness of my business plans often numbed my sensitivity. His career wouldn’t serve as an anesthetic for Isaiah.
- I remember one night when I watched the “Just for laughs gags” program on the POGO channel for a whole hour just to distract myself from something that was disturbing me. I wonder what would have been the equivalent of that in Isaiah’s times. Hey, did you know that TV hadn’t caught up yet in Isaiah’s time? It wasn’t so popular yet. He’d probably go the King’s court and watch the court jester or the clown. Imagine Isaiah watching the exciting donkey race for sport fun, instead of the Indian Premier League or the Barclay’s Premier league.

Nothing could numb Isaiah, and nothing ought to numb us either.

A- Agony of an angered Father

Isaiah 3:18-24

Doesn’t the whole passage swell with abundance? What great blessing!! But beneath the veneer of affluence lies the extreme poverty of the soul.

Oh what good times God’s people are experiencing but what’s Isaiah’s weather forecast? He could see beyond the present prosperity to a time of slavery under the Babylonians. But thankfully he didn’t stop with that but he spoke of a more distant future, one of hope and restoration.

I know of another person who looks beyond.
“The Power Office accident, incident”
He was so interested in his own promising tomorrow to afford time to consider the death that will befall him one day.

B – Beneath and Beyond


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Isaiah 6:1-4

That however was the turning point of Isaiah’s life. He saw the Lord. He saw the Christ who became Jesus 750 years later in Bethlehem. He saw the image of the invisible God. He saw the one has made the Father known. The Son reflects God's own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly.

How many of have seen the sun, the sun that rises in the east and sets in the west? Well that’s because you’ve got light in your eyes, to see the light that emanates from the surface of the sun. So if you’ve the light of the sun, then you have seen the sun. Jesus said he who has seen me has seen the Father; I am the light of the world. So when Isaiah saw Christ, he had seen God.

What that did to him, we read in Isaiah 6:5. He fell down before this God aware of his inadequacy, his insufficiency.

Onto verses 6 and 7, we see that his sin is atoned for, his guilt removed. God is sufficient to make up for our insufficiency.

And verse 8, Isaiah say’s Lord I’ll go, send me, because he realized whose merit and power he was to thrive on, not his own but that of Christ.

C- Christ, the Cross and the Commission