Prof Zebulon No E08

E) Israel (God's desire for Israel)

What God really wanted Israel to do was that they be His voice to the rest of the world; they, of course, failed miserably, as we know. As a matter of fact, not only did they not do it, they refused to do it even when God Himself had given the order. Two examples are Jonah and Peter.

Jonah, as we all know did not want go to Nineveh and it took a large fish to convince him. Why didn't Jonah want to go there? He knew that if Nineveh repented, God would forgive them and he didn't want to share God with anyone who was a pagan. He was even mad after their conversion (Jonah 4:1) "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry".

Peter? Same thing! He did not want to go to see Cornelius (a pagan) because he was impure and it took a table-cloth of unclean animals to prove to Peter that what God has made clean, no one is to consider unclean or common (Acts 10:15) "And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common".

Basically, what god wanted from His people is summarized in the following verse: Isaiah 41:20 "That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it". The Lord, here, was referring to the nations who had persecuted His people but this applies to everyone. The Lord has been very patient with Israel over the centuries and He has never completely forsaken them. He has always made sure that there be a remnant of His people and, one day, they will all turn to Him, as a nation, and recognize Him (Romans 11:1-7)

F) Christian Living (Acceptable true spiritual worship)

God has devoted more space in the Bible to worship than any other topic; so it goes without saying that we, as His people, should consider worship as top priority. We were saved for worship: (Heb 12:28, 29) "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear; For our God is a consuming fire." The key word in this passage is “acceptable”. So how do we go about doing this?

The Bible gives many examples of how to worship God in an acceptable, true, spiritual way. It all began in the Pentateuch where His people needed to have object lessons (slaughtered lambs) in order to worship God in a true manner; that has all been changed now.

We are now able, because of Jesus Christ, to worship God in a true spiritual manner in our everyday lives and the Bible shows us how: a) Our treatment of fellow believers - Rom 14:18 b) Winning someone to Christ - Rom 15:16 c) Giving money to meet needs - Phil 4:18 d) Living a righteous life - Eph 5: 8 - 10 e) Being honest - 1 Tim 2:2, 3 f) Praising and glorifying His name by hymns and spiritual songs - Heb 13:15, 16.

In all these verses, the word "acceptable" is either directly stated or implied. Our lives must honor God and everything we do must be directed toward Him; any deviation of this is either sin or uselessness; it's as simple as that.