Signs of His Coming

Posted on June 15, 2020 by drgause@agause.com

No words I wrote seemed appropriate with all that has happened around the world this past week. Believers increasingly ask if this is the end and is Christ about to appear? The answer is simple—no one knows. At His ascension Jesus told His disciples, It is not for you to know the times or epochs (Acts 1:7 AMP) but they were to be filled with the Holy Spirit and be witnesses across the world. Yet, scripture repeatedly warns us,  Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour (Matt 25:13). Allow these study notes to guide you and give you hope this week. Apply them to current events.

As He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age” (Mat 24:3)? 

  1. Sign: Deception—Mat 24:4, 5; Mat 24:11; Mat 24:24
  2.  “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect (Mat 24:24).
  3. Sign: Disturbances in Nature— Mat 24:7; Luke 21:11 
  4. There will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven (Lk 21:11).

[earthquakes:  the original word Jesus uses is the word [seismos] which means: a commotion, that is, (of the air) a gale, (of the ground) an earthquake: – earthquake, tempest and by implication (of water).

So the sign is NOT confined to just a disturbance in the ground. It can be also refer to a hurricane, a tornado, a tsunami, a volcano, etc.

  • Sign: Persecution—Mat 24:9
  • But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you. They will hand you over to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of My name (Lk 21:12 HCSB).
  • Sign: Apostasy & Loss of Love—Mat 24:10; Mat 24:12 
  •  “At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another (Mat 24:10).
  •  “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold (Mat 24:12).
  • Sign: Complacency—Mat 24:38; Mat 24:39; Luke 17:26

For in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah boarded the ark (Matt 24:38 HCSB). They were just going about life and business as usual.

  • Sign: Terror—Luke 21:26; Luke 21:9, 11

“When you hear of wars and disturbances, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end does not follow immediately” (Lk 21:9)

There will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven (Lk 21:1).

People will faint from fear and expectation of the things that are coming on the world, because the celestial powers will be shaken (Lk 21:26 HCSB).

  • Sign: Gospel Preached—Mat 24:14 

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come (Matt 24:14).

  • Sign: Lack of Peace

“You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end (Matt 24:6).

When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, don’t be alarmed; these things must take place, but the end is not yet (Mark 13:7 HCSB).

Then another horse went out, a fiery red one, and its horseman was empowered to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another. And a large sword was given to him (Rev 6:4 HCSB).

Sustaining Word for the Week:  “But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Lk 21:28).

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Looking in All the Wrong Places

Posted on June 8, 2020 by drgause@agause.com

David wrote, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence (Ps 139:7)? Through Jeremiah, God confirmed no such place exists. “Am I a God who is near,” declares the Lord, “And not a God far off? “Can a man hide himself in hiding places So I do not see him”(23:23, 24)? One cardinal attribute of God is His omnipresence, meaning He is everywhere at once. He has zero spatial limitations. We do not experience an awareness of this aspect of His presence. This is a truth we accept by faith. A second aspect is His manifest presence when the Lord makes Himself known. It becomes clear and convincing He is with us. Sadly, a study by George Barna concluded that fourteen percent of adult believers say they have never experienced God’s presence. Add to that, people who limit encountering His presence as an event taking place only within the church.

Traditions and ignorance lead us to such misconceptions. Scripture assures that the Lord longs for us to have encounters with Him. Seek the Lord and the strength he gives. Seek his presence continually (Psa 105:4 NET). The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God (Psa 14:2). The Hebrew word for ‘presence’ literally means ‘face’. Hebraic thinking indicates this means having access to God and a presence before his face. The locations and ways believers experience His manifest presence varies. Without this understanding, we can overlook God’s attempt to reveal Himself in our daily life.

Note a few examples. Moses was going about his daily work tending his father-in-law’s sheep, certainly not expecting an encounter with the Lord. Then a burning bush caught his attention. This was not an uncommon occurrence in the wilderness; however, the flames weren’t consuming this bush. At first, Moses thought it was merely a marvelous sight. But as he approached, God called to him from the midst of the bush (Ex 3:4). After forty years away from Egypt, the Lord manifests Himself to commission Moses to lead Israel out of bondage.

Elijah provides an example of someone who had limited God’s manifestations to a loud, showy display. After he killed the prophets of Baal and Jezebel threatened to kill him, Elijah was afraid, got up and fled for his life. After forty days of travel, Elijah entered a cave at Mt. Horeb, the same place or near where Moses experienced God’s glory. The Lord would manifest His presence but not in the way Elijah thought. A very powerful wind went before the Lord, digging into the mountain and causing landslides, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the windstorm there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire, there was a soft whisper (vs 11, 12 NET). Elijah instantly knew this soft whisper, still small voice (KJV), gentle blowing (NASV) was God and wrapped his face in his mantle. The lesson for us is we can miss His presence if we limit His manifestation too loud, emotional, and dramatic experiences.

Jesus manifested who He was through miracles, healings, and raising people from the dead. He also revealed His greatness in the everyday events of His disciple’s lives. Early in Jesus’ ministry, He came to Peter who had fished all night but caught nothing. He was washing his nets, preparing to go home. Jesus came and told him “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch” (Lk 5:4). Peter as an experienced fisherman thought he was wasting his time, but to appease Jesus he put down one net. They enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their net began to break. This communicated to Peter. He recognized Jesus was not an ordinary man. He fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man” (v8).

The third aspect of God’s presence is His indwelling or covenant presence. Through the Holy Spirit, He dwells in our hearts forever. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever (Joh 14:16). But there are also seasons when we have absolutely no indications of His presence. Often, we refer to them as ‘dry spells’. It seems He has left. David who wrote “Where shall I go from your Spirit? also cried out, My God, my God, why have You forsaken me (Ps 22:1)? When going through these times, we must rest in faith, He is the omnipresent God and made a covenant through Christ that His presence is dwelling in us and He never leaves or forsakes us.

In those times we have no awareness of His presence in our lives, we bring glory to His name when in faith we praise Him and continually seek His presence. Known or unknown, He is working in the smallest details of our life—even in this time of world crisis.Stop limiting His manifest presence to places and feelings.

Sustaining Word for the Week: “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the Lord. God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. 

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Nuggets of Gold

Posted on May 25, 2020 by drgause@agause.com

The longer I study the Bible, the more I learn, and the more I understand, the more I realize how little I really know about God’s Word. Imagine for a moment a drawing I used as an illustration in class. You are walking in a field and spot a nugget of gold laying on the ground. Excited, you reach down to pick it up, but you can’t move it. “It must be bigger than I imagined,” you think. So, you run grab a shovel. When you begin digging you realize it’s not a small nugget but a massive chunk of the precious metal. The more you dig, the larger it gets. My last picture is a man in a hole about fifty feet deep looking up at a pyramid of gold. With every shovel of dirt, the breadth and length and height and depth of the gold increases (Eph 3:18). As a lifelong student, this pictures God’s Word. It may begin as a small nugget but grows and grows and continues growing the more we dig.

Occasionally, the Holy Spirit leads us to a single word that is a golden nugget in itself. In Psalms 136 the Psalmist ends all 26 verses with the stanza, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. We still sing the song written in the 50s by Hugh Mitchell, “Thy Loving Kindness Is Better Than Life”. But what does lovingkindness actually mean? How does His lovingkindness assimilate into our practical daily living? I recently discovered this nugget. Old Testament writers used the Hebrew word hesed over 250 times. Lovingkindness is only one of the many ways it is translated. Bible scholars say it is one of the most important theological concepts in scripture, but the most challenging word in the Bible to translate. The meaning of hesed is multi-dimensional with no one English word or even a parallel Hebrew thought that can bring out the complexity, depth, and richness of its significance.

Other ways it is translated include kindness, mercy, steadfast love, unfailing love, favor, and goodness. Translators struggle with all 251 uses to express the best meaning. Hesed conveys more than a characteristic of God or merely a truth about Him; hesed (lovingkindness, steadfast love, mercy, etc.) is who He is. In the New Testament, John reaffirms this, God is love (1Jn 4:8). Because God is infinite, and He is hesed—love, full comprehension of all that implies, is beyond human language, and understanding. His lovingkindness is not an emotion, or a feeling, or an intellectual fact, but hesed is God’s love in action. Paul wrote the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. His love or lovingkindness is something we experience. The Lord’s entire relationship to us is rooted in His hesed. It is ‘covenant’ love, established first through His covenant with Israel and again His covenant with believers through the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the cross.

I know this has covered a lot of technical information, but with that foundation let’s examine how God’s lovingkindness affects His relationship with us. Grace is God giving us something we do not deserve, i.e. salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life. Mercy, hesed, is God not giving us what we do deserve. It is His act of withholding punishment we deserve. Lovingkindness never depends on whether we’re good enough. We never are good enough or can we do enough. Hesed is God’s unmerited favor, His unfailing kindness, and His steadfast love which He gives because of the covenant He made when we received grace by our faith in Christ. His lovingkindness has no limit; there is no place it does not exist. This not only includes physical situations, but places as the depth of depression, our worst failures, or when we are overwhelmed with doubt. His lovingkindness is deeper than our deepest pain. “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” Says the Lord who has compassion on you (Is 54:10).

Many of you, myself included, grew up in homes where complete love was attached to what you did. You were always striving to do enough for love. But nothing was ever quite good enough. I still hate the four words etched in the back of my mind, “You can do better”. The worst result happens when as believers we transfer this mentality to God. We believe He created us for a lifetime of testing in order to prove if we are good enough. ­But, like fantasy, pleasing Him was always one arm’s length out of reach with one more hoop to jump through. When you find the nugget of lovingkindness, you can’t dig fast enough with each scoop revealing more and more about His hesed— lovingkindness, mercy, unmerited favor, steadfast love, unfailing love, kindness, favor, goodness, and His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Satan tells you, “You blew it this time. You’ve gone beyond the boundary. You will never do enough now.” His lovingkindness doesn’t depend on us. Instead, He has given us His everlasting covenant of love.

Sustaining Word for the Week: The moment we receive Christ into our life, God says, “it is enough”. Keep digging, you haven’t reached the bottom.

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“Why Mommy?”

Posted on May 11, 2020 by drgause@agause.com

“No, we can’t go to the park and play.” “Why mommy?” “We have to stay in the house.” “Why?” “It’s a new rule.” “But why, mommy?” “We might get sick if we go out.” “Why?” If you are a parent with toddlers and have been confined to your house for weeks, you probably feel like your brain will explode if you hear “why” one more time.  

Yet, whether in a pandemic or everyday life, ‘why’ is an inherent element of the human nature. By the time children can make complete sentences, they have integrated ‘why’ into their development process. As they grow, it leads to new questions—how, when, who, what, where, etc. One child psychologist says between the ages of two and five children will ask around 40,000 questions. However, they don’t stop, nor should they stop at a certain age. Instead, our questions become more advanced and complex. All formal education programs should stimulate curiosity that leads the student to ask more questions in some form or another whether to a person, a book, or their own reasoning abilities.

But then you come into the church and someone hears you ask, “Why God?” In some circles you might receive a severe reprimand by some well-meaning saint. “You don’t dare ask God ‘why’. That’s a terrible sin. You have to trust and never question Him!” Such a statement comes out of ignorance from someone who obviously hasn’t carefully studied the Bible. They could begin by reading Jesus’ question to the Father (Matt 27:45). “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Questioning the Lord is not wrong. However, we must always come with respect and honor, remembering who God is. He is the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient creator knowing the beginning to end. He is long-suffering with our sinful world. Yet, we can’t forget His righteousness includes justice. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne (Ps 89:14). The Lord’s warns sinful people and gives many chances to repent. But His patience will run out. We don’t know when that point will come, and He pours out His justice and wrath on people, cities, or nations. We must remember in His wisdom He works out his plan according to his timetable. A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy (Pro 29:1 NIV).

Note a few Bible characters who asked God ‘why’. Moses, Why have you given me this burden to carry these people (Num11:9-11)? Joshua, Why, if you are so Sovereign, did you bring us here only to have us face this hardship (Josh 7:7)? David, Why do you seem to stand afar off and hide Yourself in times of trouble (Ps10:1-2)? [rf. Psalm 42:9-10; 43:2; 44:23; 74:1, 11; Jeremiah 14:19; 15:18]. No book illustrates better that it is permissible to question God than the Book of Habakkuk. In fact, the entire book is a dialogue between Habakkuk and the Lord with the prophet asking God why He is using a heathen nation like Babylon to punish His people. But the backdrop is the apostasy of the nation. Jehoiakim the king of Judah had led the people back into idolatry and away from the Lord.  After repeated warnings and opportunities to repent, God was preparing to judge the nation.

Already Judah was suffering hardships from the first two invasions by Babylon. Their crops, the figs, grapes, and olives, had been taken or destroyed. Annual crops, wheat, oats, and barley were gone. Their sheep and cattle were dead. The prophet wrestled with the appropriateness of God, using a wicked nation to judge his own people. In his first prayer he asked, O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you Violence! and you will not save? (1:2 ESV)? His second complaint, You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he (2:13 ESV)?

The Lord never answers Habakkuk questions but reminds him, the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him (2:20 NIV). The prophet didn’t lash out at God in anger: He does not say, “God, you have no right to destroy your people!” Habakkuk reminds himself of who the Lord is and responds, I heard, and I trembled within; my lips quivered at the sound. Rottenness entered my bones; I trembled where I stood. Now I must quietly wait for the day of distress to come against the people invading us (3:16 ESV).

In an act of worship and commitment to God, Habakkuk comes to a powerful conclusion. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength (3:17-19 NIV).

Sustaining Word for the Week: Why mommy? Why daddy? And it’s OK in reverence to ask, “Why God?” He may answer, but if He doesn’t, worship the Lord and rejoice in the Lord, be joyful in God your Savior.

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