It’s spring here in Georgia. Daffodils are blooming, temperatures are rising, we get daily rain showers. And the birds are back. I love the cycle of the earth’s seasons, and how the Lord sustains their rotation. Genesis 8:22 says
While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease
John MacArthur and Abner Chou, among others, spoke about the newly published Legacy Standard Bible. They discuss in this video why the group felt another translation was necessary, and what is different about the Legacy Standard Bible: here.
Many translations these days translate the Greek word doulos as servant, or bond-servant. The word actually means slave. We are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness, according to Romans 6:15-17. It makes a subtle difference in our minds as we read, read and re-read in the Bible the words that tell us who we are. Slave is powerful. Servant less so. We complain about the same thing in conversation and in modern books, when we constantly read or hear “broken” as a synonym for sin. Sin is a powerful word. Broken, less so.
In the same vein, God is particular about His name. As we read, read, and re-read the word Lord, or even LORD, it doesn’t quite capture who he is. Lord is a title, not a name. He has identified Himself as YAHWEH (Hebrew), or I AM (Greek). God said who He is. He declared the name He wants to be remembered by- His memorial name (Exodus 3:15).
Don’t you get irritated when someone you’ve met recently continues to misidentify you, or misuses your name? I introduce myself as Elizabeth, and it irks me when someone immediately says, ‘Nice to meet you, Liz’! Don’t we see on TV shows time after time, when someone wants to mess with a character or passively aggressively mock them, they change their name on purpose or mispronounce it? There’s a reason for that. We all understand the irritation shown by the character to attempts to correct the person who misuses their name.
We are protective of our names. It’s who we are, how we present to the world. The Legacy Standard Bible translates the memorial name of God as noted above, YAHWEH or I AM. And the word doulos as slave, too. It is because of these and other reasons, that this new translation that isn’t new, it just reverts closer to the authorial intent, has been published.
This is a short clip of an explanation, and at the Legacy Standard Bible channel on youtube there is a lot more explanation as to the uniqueness of the Legacy Standard Bible and the translation process.
If you’d like to acquire one, the Legacy Standard Bible New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs is available for pre-order in 3 colorful, faux leather covers, along with Goatskin and Cowhide options. Use code LEGACY for $10 off each edition.
Is taking some time to refresh yourself on the weekends dropping the ball on our biblical duty to care for others, first? This was a discussion with a reader. I know I sometimes feel like I’m failing my Lord if I’m not using every single minute for His name, to be busy doing something. I feel guilty on Saturdays when I use the day to do home chores, take a nap, and refresh myself alone. I am busy as per 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-11,
But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to excel even more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we instructed you, (1 Thessalonians 4:10-11).
I even named my other blog The Quiet Life because I take this verse so seriously.
I think it is wise to know your limits, and what you need. We aren’t doormats. We do pour out our lives for others but not in ways that leave us nothing to pour. Mindful busy-ness is the key.
Let’s look to the scriptures for an example- “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.” (Luke 5:16)
Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, on Luke 5:16 “And he withdrew himself into the wilderness – Or rather, He frequently withdrew into the desert. This I believe to be the import of the original words, ην ὑποχωρων. He made it a frequent custom to withdraw from the multitudes for a time, and pray, teaching hereby the ministers of the Gospel that they are to receive fresh supplies of light and power from God by prayer, that they may be the more successful in their work; and that they ought to seek frequent opportunities of being in private with God and their books.”
Jesus withdrew often, to think, recharge, pray. Once you see it in the Gospel, it’s everywhere. “Jesus withdrew”…
Alternately, it’s good not to let a short period of refreshment turn into a pattern of laziness. I find that listening to or reading Reagan Rose’s Redeeming Productivity podcast & blog helps keep the idea of productive productivity in the forefront of my mind. Overstressing ourselves or constant busy-ness for the sake of being busy is more tiring than intentional productivity punctuated with short periods of refreshing.
However you take your re-charging, by walking or hiking, playing a sport, quiet alone time in nature, reading, I do think it’s important to combine those times with prayer and quiet contemplation amid the busy pouring out the Bible calls us to do.
The monthly letter to subscribers of Grace To You (Grace Partners) by John MacArthur is so incisive, convicting, and pertinent, I thought I’d share it here:
“One of the unhealthy effects of living in a prolonged era of relative comfort, convenience, and acceptance is that it curbs our appetite for heaven. When the sailing is smooth, heaven loses some of its luster. People who are satisfied by temporal things and content with the here and now don’t find the glories of heaven very compelling.”
“While we are right to preach against the prosperity gospel and the ‘your best life now’ philosophy of Joel Osteen and others like him, believers sometimes slip into a similar mindset that views political, social, and economic stability as rights guaranteed by God, expecting nothing less than heaven on earth.”
“But by His grace, God is using these unprecedented circumstances to correct and sanctify people’s thinking. As the moral decline of our culture accelerates, political foundations crumble, the fleeting nature of material wealth becomes more apparent, and cultural and social pressures against true Christianity mount, the world is losing its allure and heaven is becoming more and more appealing.”
“If the trials of the past year accomplish nothing else in believers except to redirect our affections and hopes toward the eternal home God is preparing for us—and preparing us for—we should consider them a profound blessing.” —John MacArthur
In January of this year, after Joe Biden was inaugurated and it was clear that Washington DC would get clear of President Trump, the purge began. Social media was expelled of conservative voices, organizations, and accounts – wholesale. Many people reported their accounts were suddenly and without warning suspended. It was as if a rock was thrown onto an ant pile and the ants had to scurry for a new home. Religious and conservative voices were no longer welcome, this much was clear.
Lots of people, including me, were not only shocked at the simmering hatred that oozed to the top of the bottle and overflowed, but were chagrined at how we had taken social media for granted. It was as if we thought it would always be there. We’d become so used to the gift of being able to exchange spiritual concepts, discuss theology, and proclaim Jesus’s excellencies on all these free public platforms, we felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under us. How would we get the word out if we were denied opportunity to Facebook, Tweet, or Instagram?
We see with our own eyes how serious it’s getting for Christians, not only in the places it’s always been hard, but now in the places where Christianity has been accepted, or at least, tolerated. The United States, Canada, Australia, these places are becoming increasingly hostile to Jesus people.
There are massive legal battles, soft persecution in the form of banks denying business or trade with Christian companies, and now in Canada, a pastor is jailed and might remain so until his trial, months away.
The lessons here are many, but one thing I’d like to encourage us ladies right now:
As time in your walk with Jesus goes on, after months and years and perhaps decades, don’t let the wonder diminish. The awe-inspiring, breathtaking generosity of a God who hates sin but redeems sinners. Don’t let yourself forget the depravity in which you lived, before salvation. The horror of sin and its ruin on earth. The abhorrence of it to God. The wages of it- death.
But God. But God loves His people and chose to save some. He not only justifies. He not only sanctifies. He not only adopts. He not only feels compassion for us while we were yet sinners. He brings us to His HOME to live in, cleaned, loved, fed, and made righteous. He opens His door to us without hesitation, without reservation, if we repent and fall on His Son Jesus.
I’ve been wrestling with whether to give the Gospel “one more time” to a person who resists and in fact, had blasphemed the other times I’ve shared. I looked up the verse from Matthew 7:6, “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”
Though everyone needs the Gospel, when someone has repeatedly rejected it, I think it’s important to choose not to give them further opportunity to blaspheme, nor entrench themselves in further sin at my cause. It’s a hard decision to make in these days of ‘love love love’ and ‘let go and let God’ but God is holy too, and His word warns us to be discriminating about sharing holy things with dogs and swine.
Here is the commentary that helped me clarify what to do, and when-
As the time draws nigh, people less and less look to prophecy as a legitimate study of the Bible. They dismiss the prophetic, are skeptical of it, or simply ignore it. The silence of the pulpits is resounding, and the ignorance of the people is disheartening.
I’d like to spend a bit of time in encouraging us all to study the word, and not to ignore the prophetic. Lambert Dolphin wrote,
“A major portion of both the Old and New Testament is devoted to prophecy- nearly one third of the Scripture. Only four of the 66 books of the Bible are without prophecy-Ruth, the Song of Solomon, Philemon, and 3 John. Even the shortest book of the Bible mentions prophecy (Jude 14, 17-18, which refers to Enoch and the second coming of the Lord). Out of the Old Testament’s 23,210 verses, 6,641 contain predictive material, over twenty eight percent. Out of the New Testament’s 7,914 verses, 1,711 contain predictive material, over 21 percent.”
Illustration above, “God judging Adam” Genesis 3, William Blake, C. 1795
“Unfortunately, many pastors, priests and ministry leaders here in the U.S. and around the world are not teaching Bible prophecy — as I see it, there are four major reasons for this.”
–First, many pastors don’t teach prophecy because they have a lack of belief in the power of God’s Word. –Second, many pastors don’t teach prophecy because they have a lack of knowledge of — and sound training in — Bible prophecy.
–Third, many pastors don’t teach prophecy because they have a fear of being lumped in with “prophecy nuts” and those who peddle sensationalism. –Fourth, many pastors don’t teach prophecy because they have a lack of understanding of the times in which we live and the increasingly close return of Christ.
Rosenberg fleshes out each of the points.
Prophecy is the very Word of God, spoken by His mouth to His servants. (Revelation 1:1, Luke 1:70). Before the Word was written, He spoke it. The first prophecy was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden as He related to them the curse of the Fall from Grace, but promised a Messiah. (Genesis 3:15).
Habakkuk 2:2, “I will stand upon my watch” Illustration, James Shaw Crompton, of
Poor Jeremiah. God spoke to Him and Jeremiah spoke to the people. Then God told Jeremiah to write the words down. Jeremiah did. However, Jeremiah’s words from God were so ill-received that King Jehoiakim burned the scroll of everything that had been written. The King burned it bit by bit as Baruch read it. The LORD then told Jeremiah to write it all over again, a monumental work, and this time God added words that cursed the king. (Jeremiah 30). God’s word will not be denied.
So prophecy was and is the word of the Lord, whether spoken as it was in the Old Testament or written as it was then and it is now. It will be spoken again, in the Tribulation, when God sends His Two Witnesses to prophesy for 1,260 days. (Revelation 11:3).
Prophecy is extremely important, we are told many times. 1 Thessalonians 5:20 warns us not to despise prophesyings. For example, in 2 Peter 1:19 we are told it is “a sure word.” This is because almost nothing else illustrates His sovereignty more than prophecy. How so?
“And the LORD said to Moses, “Is the LORD’s hand shortened? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.” (Numbers 11:23). He delivers His word and tells us to test it, watch for it. This is because His Word is sure and God knows it will come true.
Pastor Jim McClarty discussed the Irresistibility of God in his 2009 sermon delivered at the Sovereign Grace Bible Conference. He made several wonderful points during his exciting 1 hour sermon, but his second point is the one I’d like to bring to you now. He said,
“God’s irrestibility is demonstrated in prophecy. Prophecy is a risky venture. There are no other major religious pieces of literature in the world that contain the amount of prophecy that the bible does. It’s one of the most unique characteristics of the bible, and it is chock full of prophecy. The reason it’s risky is, you can check it.” (Numbers 11:23, Deuteronomy 18:22).
People often think that the Old Testament times were heavily prophetic all the time. They believe that miracles happened every day and that God talked to the prophets every minute. It is not so. The miracles we read about in the Old Testament were spaced far apart, years, decades, centuries, even. After Micah, there were no prophets for 400 years, until John the Baptist came, and John performed no miracles as Elijah or Moses did. For most of the generations in the OT, they read the scrolls, listened to the priests, and lived lives in submission to Holy God and were waiting for their Messiah to come.
In our day, we read the pages of the Bible, listen to the pastors, and live lives in submission to the Messiah who has come- and will soon come again!
I love prophecy. Now, it is true that people can get carried away with the doctrine of prophecy and/or look at the newspaper and back-date prophecies into news articles. Mr Rosenberg was right that there are nuts who run away with prophecy predictions and claim to hear a word from the Lord as Jeremiah or Elijah did. Fortunately, as Jim McClarty said, we can check the prophecies in the bible. We can rejoice that our Holy God not only is the creator of the universe and the author and architect and finisher of our faith, but His word is sure. He is sovereign and that means, according to Rev. Matt Slick at CARM, “Sovereignty in relation to God means that God has the absolute right to do with His creation as He desires.”
Some verses that support this are as follows: Psalm 115:3, “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.” Isaiah 46:10, “Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure;”
Faith in God is always trustworthy, even when answers to life’s issues and traumas do not always arrive. We must trust God in spite of what we see. But when we do see, as in prophecy coming true as written in the pages of His word, we rejoice that He is in control and our faith will prosper us.
“And they rose early in the morning, and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa: and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.” (2 Chronicles 20:20).
Back to Basics: What is Hell? Back to Basics: What is the Rapture? Back to Basics: How to Study Your Bible Back to Basics: What is Justification? Back to Basics: What is a miracle? Back to Basics: All about Angels Back to Basics: What is “The Lamb”? Back to Basics: Who is Satan?
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