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Pobierz w wersji PDFHuman history – part 2
We talked about the choices and that Lot chose what his eyes showed him – lush grasses and wonderful hydrated places whereas Abraham chose more difficult lands, but that is where he was with God and where he grew up.
And this is how we come to Jacob who is 130 years old when he comes to Egypt. He dies at the age of 147. Thus, Jacob is for 17 years in Egypt with his family and he can still tell of the God of his fathers, tell of his experiences with God – how God moved him, how He took care of him, how He protected and watched over him.
Jacob dies in 2256. You can find it in the Bible. I’ve written out the places in the Bible where you can find it. And then, according to this, you can add up the given years.
Jacob has been in Egypt for 17 years. Israel leaves Egypt after 430 years. When 413 years have passed since Jacob’s death, Israel leaves Egypt. In 2669, on the 15th day of the first month, Israel leaves Egypt. On the 14th day of the first month there was Passover and the following day Israel leaves Egypt. God decides: “This is the first month from which you will count and it will be your calendar.”
The Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai on the first day of the third month (Exodus 19, 1-3). They spend nine months at Mount Sinai (Numbers 10, 11). In 2671, they move on. In 2709, in the fortieth year after they set out, Aaron dies (Numbers 33, 38-39).
Also in the fortieth year after they left Egypt, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses passes the lead to Joshua (Deuteronomy 1, 3). Now, Joshua becomes the one who takes the lead of Israel. Then, they enter the Promised Land.
Finally, God leads this nation to the Promised Land where He wants to spend a beautiful time with them. He promises them that if they obey Him, they will neither get sick nor will the enemy attack them, nor will they lack anything. They will be able to be with their God all the time and they will be able to walk with Him. As long as they obey God, no one will even think of attacking Israel. God guarantees them total peace so that they could be with Him.
He also guarantees us total peace so that we could be with Him. What is our Promised Land? Jesus Christ. This is where we are to have the peace of being with God now. He says to us: “Whatever comes out against you, it won’t come out of me. You will defeat everyone, you will overcome all the adversities because I am with you.” Rest and be happy that God has brought you to the place of rest – in Jesus Christ. We rest in the Lord just as God rested to have such a wonderful opportunity to be with God today, to comfort one another, to forgive one another, to support one another so as not to waste time creating conflicts unnecessarily or demonstrating our independence. If these things happen, it means that the man isn’t on the Promised Land and he has no rest.
Let’s remember – God gave us that we have all been baptized and that we have all been given the right and obligation to build each other into a home for God. That’s why, I remind you that if someone doesn’t want to build himself into the home for God, such a person objects God. God gave us His son so that today, in the mood of love and in the mood of mutual desires to help each other, we would build ourselves into the home for Him. You aren’t an independent part because then you would die. We are God’s family in Jesus – the family that is supposed to support each other, cheer each other up and strengthen each other. God brought us to life for His glory.
I’ve also written out a little from the story of the judges when God dared judges to help His people while they turned away from God. He dared judges to bring these people back to drive the enemy out. God dared people He had inspired with His Spirit so that they could do it and so that His people would know again that God wants to give them the best and He doesn’t want them to be in trouble. He wants them to be able to win and to enjoy God. He wants them to see that He punished them not to kill them, but to teach them that they don’t need to be punished if they aren’t going to fool with God. “Be obedient and it will be all right.”
The beginning of the Book of Judges shows Israel in captivity. They’ve been in captivity for 8 years and then Othniel is raised up by God. And peace lasted for forty years (Judges 3, 8-11). God shows them something again. Even if they taunted Him earlier, He gives them 40 years to endure. After these 40 years of peace, they fall again under the subjection for 18 years (Judges 3, 14). They are oppressed and God says: “If you don’t want to listen to Me and do what I want when I come to you in love, you will listen and do what your enemy wants; you will do it out of fear and to save your life.” God says: “What you don’t want to do when I come to you in love, you will do it in captivity, under pressure and in fear. Isn’t it better to do it when I come to you in love? Why wait for the enemy to force you to do what the enemy likes?” Do what God pleases.
So again, God gives them 18 years of captivity so they can learn something.
Then, God sends them Ehud and there is peace for 80 years (Judges 3, 30). When Ehud died, the Israelites continued to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.
See how much people in Europe are happy that there has been no war there for a long time – 68 years of peace after 1945. The Israelites have 80 years of peace without war.
What can we learn from this? “Be in fellowship with Me and I will give you rest from all your enemies.” What is our worst enemy? Sin! God says: “Be in fellowship with Me and I will give you peace for your life. You will live in peace, you will have victory over sin and sin won’t reign over you.” If we don’t listen to God, sin will reign over us and it will force us to do what sin wants us to do. God acts in love, He reaches out to us, He gives His words and He wants us to obey Him in love. Not in gloom, but to obey Him in peace. It’s better to give ourselves to God, to humble ourselves and then love comes to us.
Why wait for sin to break and smash us? People often provoke God: “We won’t bend our necks until You turn us in to our sins.”
“So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan” (Judges 4, 2). Israel’s captivity lasts 20 years. Then, Israel is judged by a woman named Deborah. Israel lives in peace for 40 years (Judges 5, 31).
Then again, Israel disorganizes itself and it stays in captivity for 7 years. After seven years, Gideon is raised up by God. In Gideon day, the earth found its peace for 40 years (Judges 8, 28).
Next, there is internal friction. Abimelech, who was the usurper, ruled over Israel for 3 years (Judges 9, 22).
Then, Israel was judged by Tola for 23 years (Judges 10, 2). Next, there was Jair for 22 years. And then, there was the captivity for 18 years.
There is the judge Jephthah later on and Israel had 6 years of peace. Then, there is Ibzan for 7 years, Elon for 10 years and Abdon for 8 years. And again, there was 40 years of living in captivity.
Then, Samson is raised up by God and he judges Israel for 20 years.
If we count these years of the reign of judges, we come to a period of 410 years from the reign of the first judge to the point when Samuel is appointed judge. These are times of peace and captivity alternating.
It’s like a Christian lives sometimes: up and down, up and down. This life is unsteady and God likes the unchanging life. However, when the Christian gets along with God, he begins to let it go. He stops reading the Bible, stops praying, stops serving God; he is more and more interested in the things of the world and then God puts him into captivity. Then, he suddenly wakes up and is astonished: “Why is this sin stronger than me? After all, it’s written in the Bible that sin won’t rule over me.” This is captivity. Then, the Christian wants to break away from this sin and he can’t do it until he humbles himself before God and until he admits to God that he neglected the time when God gave him freedom. How did you use the time when you had the freedom to walk with God and to enjoy God?
Then, it seems that life is so simple, you don’t have to read the Bible, you don’t have to pray, everything is fine, the enemy is far away and the sin is very weak. And then, the man wonders what happened.
We can read a lot about Samuel in the Book of Judges. This is an interesting person in the Bible. No word that this man got was left without fulfilling. Samuel walked with God. As already mentioned here, his mother Hannah had a great and holy experience of seeing her son live for God during her lifetime. It’s good to see your sons live for God and it’s good to see them honest and real. We don’t know why it happened that this man of God, holy and walking with God, had two sons who didn’t walk with God at all. We can see that walking with God isn’t passed on from generation to generation like inheritance and everyone needs to have a personal fellowship with God. The father was holy, but his sons didn’t follow his ways. They listened to him, they saw God speak through their father and they had tangible proof that God was in their home, and yet they walked their way and sin ruled over them. They didn’t come to God for personal holiness for themselves, for personal separation from dreams, for the lusts of this world. To experience God’s salvation, you need to come to God in person. You won’t obtain inheritance because of your bloodline.
We can see all this bloodline going all the way to our Lord Jesus Christ. But from the moment Jesus Christ of the lineage of David is born, our birthday comes – a new birthday thanks to which we can make our way towards eternity and thanks to which we are aware of the fact that whoever remains in this lineage of Christ will never die. This lineage is eternal. The lineage of Christ is eternal! Even if someone dies in this lineage of Christ, he will live. This is our happiness!
If we take only from the bloodline, we would always just read: he died, he died, he died. Only Enoch and Elijah were taken to God alive, but apart from them it’s only death, death, death. We have the guarantee in Christ that whoever keeps His word won’t see death for all time.
If we took the lineage of Christ and of those who are born of Christ and if we saw their life, their love for God, their sacrifice, their willingness to suffer, we would see a different character. That’s why Jesus said that unless someone was born of water and the Spirit, he couldn’t see or enter the kingdom of God.
We need to know how to see those who broke away from the bloodline to be in Christ. They broke away from the line of handed down inheritance of giving in to sin. They broke away from it and endured to the end so as not to go back to old dreams, old desires, old objectives and old way of functioning.
This is our happiness that there is another Father of the house and we have Him as long as we abide in Christ. This is the eternal Father who gives life to His children. Let’s abide in the Lord and let’s stick to it. Let’s not leave it in order to get lost somewhere in the lines of the flesh.
We have a lot of experiences. People who live physically on earth are of the same bloodline – of Noah and his family. There is no one else on this earth. However, we need to eliminate ourselves and evacuate from this family every day to be in Jesus Christ. We can’t live like them in their sins. We can’t talk like them, we can’t think like them, we can’t live like them. We have another role model – Jesus Christ. Different words come to us from the One who was in heaven and who brought us information. The eyewitness, Jesus Christ, brings us information and delivers us a message straight from heaven.
Adam could tell his descendants about Eden and Jesus tells us what the Father is like, what heaven is like and what eternity is like. Let’s listen to Jesus and let’s not get over what He says to us. Jesus says that His words give life. They strengthen us to endure until the end and to go to eternity in Him. They also strengthen us to support each other today and to help each other with this history of Christ in us and with this experience of Christ in us.
The devil will try to put a wedge between us so that the peace that Jesus left us wouldn’t be visible in us. He will try to catch us by this or that. If we love Christ seeing these various adversities, let’s remove them, but let’s not allow to be destroyed by them. In the world, people often change their friends and, after some time, these friends become enemies. We need to remember that there is nothing like that in Christ. We need to be close to each other in Christ.
May God help us to have strong encouragement by gaining from this history, by seeing those people who were taken by God from this corporeality and who experienced many wonderful things with God. We also experience it and have the witnesses of His greatness and glory. We have the witness of God who calls us down when we neglect life with Him and when we neglect God who pulls us through our weaknesses to show us His mercy and grace, and to give us opportunities to beat the odds. We experience God who wants us to be able to tell His good words. It seems sometimes strange that the man can’t say good words and when it comes to bad words, he doesn’t even have to try to tell them because they come out by themselves. And this is what we got to be able to say good words. At some point, when we begin to say these good words, these divine words that God wants to speak to our brothers and sisters, we are very impressed that God fills our lips with good Word of God which satiates us, cheers us up, strengthens us and indicates us.
Praise the Lord that our birth no longer has the history of Adam, but has the history of Jesus. Let’s learn this history by watching Peter, Paul and those Old Testament figures in whom the Spirit of Christ acted and who triumphed. Let’s learn this and let’s experience together this beauty of Christ in us. Amen.
