CRUMB 0114 – HEEDING THE INSTRUCTION

FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTION

Part #04 of “IF IT’S NOT THERE WITH PAUL……”

“INSTRUCTION is an integral, invaluable and indispensable part of our everyday lives.”

There is not a single area of our physical, material, educational, financial and spiritual lives that is void of instruction.

When it comes to our material needs, the things we acquire always come with a set of instructions for effective usage.

We follow prescribed instructions when it comes to our physical health and well-being.

However, when it comes to the very person of who and what we are, nothing takes greater precedence.

And we all need sound instruction.

Wisdom, understanding, direction and guidance leading to success, stability and strength finds its source in sound instruction.

Without instruction, life would be like being in a desert with no oasis, like a ship on a turbulent sea without a compass.

Without instruction we will always be a vulnerable and open target for the enemy.

We all know what it means to give heed to an instruction and follow it.

It places value both on the one and through the one whom the instruction comes.

For when it comes to this maze called life, it is instruction that is our most valuable and indispensable companion.

And to heed or not to heed the instruction is a choice we all have to make.

Granted, there is both the sound instruction as well as the deceptive one.

And when the day is done, we all do have an eternal destiny at stake.

Hence the source of instruction must be our Maker, our Creator.

Bringing Out The Truth

Truth matters, for it determines what was, what is and what will be.

Foundations are built on the immovable and unshakeable rock of truth.

For everything else is sinking sand, and will eventually collapse.

Towards the end of our last Crumb 0113, we did mention bringing out the truth of Pentecost, which Christendom celebrates.

And that we are doing, as we write this article to set the background and the stage.

Understanding the foundation of what preceded, of what went before, will enable us to effectively understand of what is today.

And that in turn will effectively prepare us for what will be tomorrow.

“Don’t take life for granted” is a faithful saying and a sound admonition we all know is worthy of acceptation.

And there are times in all our lives when we have and are taking life for granted in one way or another.

As a result, we are all without exception endowed with regrets to varying degrees.

Everybody has regrets, irrespective of what we may outwardly display, which is an irrefutable truth.

Otherwise, we would not be human.

So, let’s face it!

But so long as we have breath in us, all will ‘never’ be lost, subject to the choices we make.

We can yet get there!

So do stay with us as we focus on this whole concept of ‘instruction’.

A Plan Set In Motion

God by His “determinate counsel and foreknowledge” [Acts 2:23] from eternity past had a plan which He set in motion.

And this plan, which began at creation has never even remotely diverted at any point in human history so far.

It is perfectly, well and truly on course to this very day and hour, without a thing out of place.

Knowing that man would cave in and fall, God had His Master Plan of ‘redemptive salvation’ set in concrete.

After the fall of man in [Genesis 3], God set his redemptive salvation plan in motion.

God Himself, instituting the first blood sacrifice, covered Adam and Eve with garments of salvation, imputing His Righteousness to them.

Fellowship between God and man had been restored [Isaiah 61:10].

After all, they were the progenitors of the human race that was to follow.

They didn’t need to hide any longer, even though they were now fallen creatures.

An Instruction Set In Place

Then dealing with the consciences of men, God set an instruction in place, to be carried out by “FAITH ALONE”.

In so many words, this is what it was:

“Whenever your conscience convicts you of sin, bring Me a sacrificial blood offering ‘BY FAITH’. And I will forgive your sins and accept you”.

The Ten Commandments, more than just being the moral law, are the very ‘expression of God’, it’s Who He is.

And man, created in in the ‘image of God’, was always going to have this expression embedded in his heart.

That is why we all without exception, without even being told, know when we’ve done wrong, or not done that which is right.

Caine And Abel Knew

The Sons of Adam and Eve, Caine and Abel knew this Instruction.

And Abel, “by faith” followed the Instruction, while Caine out of rebellion, rationale and personal opinion, did not [Hebrews 11:4].

The result was that Abel was accepted by God while Caine was not.

Much the same goes on today, even within Christendom.

When it comes to instructions from above, rationalizing is walking on extremely thin ice.

People are still rationalizing, following their own personal opinions and ‘fundas’, instead of just taking God at His Word.

After all, that is what Faith is, taking God at His Word, without which it is impossible to please Him.

It’s one of the ‘Absolutes of Scripture’ [Hebrews 11:6].

God through His Personal Sacrifice, has set salvation in place for every human being.

We either take it by faith or not take it at all, there is no other option, there never has been, and isn’t today.

Today’s instruction in this Age of Grace, is summed up in just one single word, “BELIEVE”.

We are called to believe + nothing else in the finished works of Christ Jesus.

“That HE died for our sins, was buried and rose again” [1 Corinthians 15:1-4].

Sixteen Hundred Years Go By

Sixteen hundred years go by after the fall, and men, with the exception of Noah and his family, forsook God’s instruction.

They all went their own way.

Just about everything about them was nothing short of continuous evil [Genesis 6:5].

It had reached a saturation point of no return.

Then out of His great mercy for the future generations, God brought in the flood and destroyed every living thing.

If we think things are bad today, it would be unimaginably worse, if it had not been for the great flood

Noah and his eight-member family, having found Grace in God’s eyes [Genesis 6:8], were the only survivors.

God starts afresh with them, with an instruction to spread across the globe.

About two hundred years went by, and the instruction was ignored.

They all gathered together at Babel instead, under the leadership of a man named, ‘Nimrod’ [Genesis 10:8-10].

It is where the first one world order and religion was established.

So, God had to come and scatter them across the earth, and HE did it by confusing their language.

In other words, God supernaturally gave each of them different languages, so that they wouldn’t understand one another.

They had no choice then, but to break up and scatter.

Man’s Attempt To Reach God

The ‘Tower of Babel’ in [Genesis 11:1-10] is about man’s attempt to reach heaven by his own strength, rationale and opinion.

It’s called religion, and is altogether ‘futile’.

Every man-made religion and cult across the world, till today, finds it roots at the tower of Babel.

The word ‘Babel’ literally means ‘confusion’, from where we get ‘babbling’, which simply put, ‘says it all’.

And the truth is, with all that is going on around us today, we all need to be spiritually ‘street smart’.

There is no greater need of the hour.

Ignorance usually comes with a price and often the price is costly.

It’s a universal law!

And the only way we get ‘street smart’ is by getting to know what the truth really is.

I’m sure we would all agree with that!

The prime admonition that Jesus Christ gave while He was on earth was, “be not deceived”.

Paul the Apostle also gives the same in his epistles.

Two Thousand Years Go By

Two thousand years go by since the fall with all men having gone their own way.

A hopeless race of humanity coming out of Adam, destroyed in the flood, went right back into paganism at the Tower of Babel.

And then God does something new as He initiates the next step of His unfolding plan.

Out of this vast river of humanity, God is going to pull out ‘one man’.

SO, God in so many words, at 2000 B.C. says,

“I’m going to do something totally different.

I’m going to call out ‘one man’.

And out of that one man I’m going to bring to Me a little nation.

Then I’m going to work through that little nation and prepare them.

And then through them I will take Salvation back to the whole main stream of humanity.”

And that of course was basically the Abrahamic Covenant [Genesis 12:1-3].

God promised Abraham a nation of people which He would put in a geographic area of land.

And then at the appropriate time, He would bring them their Messiah King, their Government and their Kingdom.

And Israel could then be the evangelization of the nations.

But Israel rejected all that when they crucified and killed their King, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

However, unknown to them, Israel’s ignorant rejection and crucifixion of their Messiah was perfectly in accordance with God’s eternal purposes.

Scripture testifies of this through Peter, one of the apostles of the Jews in the book of [Acts 2:23].

A Progressive Revelation

The Bible is a progressive revelation, that is God’s plan unfolding in stages.

Keeping that in mind let’s take a look at the Abrahamic covenant once again in [Genesis 12:2].

This is where we have the promise of Israel becoming a nation.

God tells Abraham, “And I will make of thee a great nation”.

“And I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing”.

But in the next [Verse 3], God also promises something for the rest of world, which are the Gentiles.

“And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed”. 

This was regarding our salvation today.

So one way or another God is going to someday reach out to the whole non-Jewish world.

When Israel was fresh out of Egypt, Moses went up to God on Mount Sinai in [Exodus19:3-6].

And God told him that someday ‘the Jews’ (and not the Church) would become a “kingdom (nation) of priests”.

It would be not be just the tribe of Levi, but also all the twelve tribes of Israel.

God gave Israel this wonderful prospect.

The Prospect Not Forgotten

To be certain that the prospect is not forgotten, Isaiah is led by the Spirit to write so in [Isaiah 42:6].

The Jewish people were to be a “light of the Gentiles”.

Again, in [Isaiah 60:3], Isaiah tells Israel that the Gentiles “shall come to thy light”.

And then in [Isaiah 62:2], Isaiah writes that the Gentiles ”shall see thy righteousness”.

But, in order for Israel to attain this goal, God gave them covenants of promise.

After Abraham, they received the covenant of law in [Exodus 19-20], and the land covenant [Deuteronomy 30:3].

God was going to bring them back from all the nations where HE had scattered them.

Then God gave them the Davidic covenant in [2 Samuel 7:16].

“And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever”.

Finally, God gave them the new covenant in [Jeremiah 31:31-35].

All of this was like a highway to the Kingdom.

However, when all this was just about to come to fruition, when Israel’s day of visitation had arrived, they stumbled and fell.

And then God moved in to unfold His final step of redemptive salvation.

It would be a whole new economy with a different set of instructions.

And Pentecost had everything to do with it.

 

……….To be continued in the next Crumb 0115, CLICK [HERE] .

 

 

 

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About Joshua David Mukerji

A life filled with depravity, a conscience hardened and seared as with a hot iron, with eyes filled with tears on a road leading to nowhere, with an amputated spirit, devoid of any meaningful hope or purpose, moving on like a ship on a tumultuous sea without a sail, the author, from out of nowhere, has an encounter with a Living God that would radically change his life. With an infallible Hope imputed into his spirit, he moves on. Not claiming to have got there yet, but one thing he does: forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, he presses on with this Hope that will never fail. If you feel you somehow or in some way connect with any part of this, stick around. There are messages of True and Living Hope coming your way. You ‘will’ get there yet!!!
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