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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
This is what the Lord Almighty says:
“The people of Israel are oppressed, and the people of Judah
as well. All their captors hold them fast, refusing to let them go. Yet their
Redeemer is strong; the Lord Almighty is his name. He will vigorously defend
their cause so that He may bring rest to their land, but unrest to those who
live in Babylon.”
Jeremiah 50:33-34
This ends today’s reading
from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
When we think of God, many things can come to mind.
He is the Maker and Creator of all things.
Given that, He is the Master and Authority over everything,
the King of kings and Lord of lords.
He is omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (in all places),
and omniscient (knows everything).
He is the Great Physician.
and
He is the Strong Redeemer, a fact that He has shown throughout
the Bible in the Old and New Testaments
First, consider the Israelites who were being held by the
Egyptians against their will and oppressed into years and years of hard labor.
On their own, they had no chance to escape the clutches of the powerful Pharaoh
and find their way to freedom.
Enter God, the Strong Redeemer.
Look at these words from the Book of Exodus:
"Therefore, say
to the Israelites: 'I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke
of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem
you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.” Exodus 6:6
God rose up a leader for His people in a man named Moses and
then gave him a message to share with the beleaguered Israelites.
What was the message?
Essentially, God was with them and for them, the One who
would redeem then from the Egyptians with an “outstretched arm” and “mighty
acts of judgment”. You may recall that judgment came in a big way through a
series of plagues that God brought before He actually delivered His people. In
the end translation, the Lord God Almighty brought His people out from “under
the yoke of the Egyptians” and liberated them before setting them on a course
to the land He would give them.
Fast forward to the days of Jeremiah and you’ll once again
see God showing His people that He is the Strong Redeemer. Look at these verses
from Chapter 50:
This is what the Lord
Almighty says:
“The people of Israel
are oppressed, and the people of Judah as well. All their captors hold them
fast, refusing to let them go. Yet their Redeemer is strong; the Lord Almighty
is his name. He will vigorously defend their cause so that He may bring rest to
their land, but unrest to those who live in Babylon.” Jeremiah 50:33-34
Note here that God’s people were once again under oppression
but this time it was at the hands of the Babylonians. Unlike their ancestors
who were rescued out of Egypt, the generation of Israelites in Babylon had
ended up their due to their sinfulness. You’ll recall they chose to worship
false gods, willfully violating God’s command to worship only Him, and so God
imposed punishment on them in the form of a seventy year exile to Babylon.
Scripture tells us that the Israelite’s captors held them
fast and refused to let them go but the Babylonians were no match for the Lord
Almighty, the Strong Redeemer who defended the cause of His people. First, the
Lord facilitated their release from Babylon and then their return to Judah in
order to rebuild their homes, their lives, and their relationships with Him.
So what can we glean from this today? Is the Lord still our
Strong Redeemer today?
The answer is found in the New Testament and Paul’s letter
to the Ephesians. Look at his words here:
Praise be to the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms
with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the
creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, He
predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with
His pleasure and will— to the praise of His glorious grace,
which He has freely given us in the One He loves. In Him, we have redemption
through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of
God’s grace that He lavished on us. Ephesians 1:3-8
Did you catch that?
God, seeing that His people were held captive in their sins
without hope of release on their own, freely gave His one and only Son Jesus to
die in our place. His crucifixion on Calvary’s cross brought us redemption
through His blood, the shed blood of the Lamb of God who came to take away the
sins of the world, the blood that cleanses every single Christ-believer and
washes them white as snow. Through Christ, we are justified before God, which essentially
means we are made just as if we had never sinned and thus free from God’s final
judgment.
Through the Strong Redeemer, we are saved from death and given
a life that will never end, all “in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
that He lavished on us.”
It’s the essence of the good news of the Gospel and a truth
we need to rejoice and be glad in every day.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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