GODS WORD FOR MAY 21 ~ ~ Jeremiah 31:34 ~ ~ “Nomore shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remembernomore.”
Yesterday was the end of chapter one of John Piper’s book, from which I took excerpts. Today, I’ll sum up the process of thinking that he presented:
God takes pleasure in Himself only because He cannot honor anything that is less than perfect. He is the only perfect being.
We see this in Hebrews 6:13:
“For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swearby no one greater, He swore byHimself,”
Since Jesus is the exact image of the Father, in all perfection, the Father takes pleasure in Jesus as His own image.
This is not vanity, as it would be for us, because God is perfect beyond our comprehension, and “worthy to be praised”. For us it would be vanity because calling us perfect would be a lie. We are NOT worthy to be praised.
So, the Father could not give honor to us without losing His perfection in the process, and then He would cease to be the highest of perfection. He would, in effect, cease to be God.
BUT when we are saved, we accept our position IN CHRIST and thereby our imperfection and sinfulness is hidden from the Father. He only sees Christ. He, of course, has chosen to hide us, for nothing can be hidden from God that He wills to see.
“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christin God.”
So He can and does take great pleasure in us—not because of anything we are or anything we could do—but because He sees His Son’s face in ours, so He only sees the perfection and glory that He shares completely with the Son.
We see that same concept with regard to our sins here:
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 20 ~ ~ 1 John 5:20~ ~ “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and wearein Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”
Continuing in John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”
Mr. Piper’s writings are deep as the ocean, most of us have to read it several times—-even learned theologians have said that. But, the rich harvest will show in your life if you take the time to re-read it and think and pray about it.
Yesterday he asked how God could set His affections on sinners like us, when He cannot take pleasure in anything but perfection.
He goes on ~ ~
But the wonder of the gospel is that in this divine righteousness lies also the VERY FOUNDATION of our salvation. The infinite regard that the Father has for the Son makes it possible for me, a wicked sinner, to be loved and accepted in the Son, because in His death He vindicated the worth and glory of His Father.
Ps 25:11 says, “For YOUR NAME’S SAKE, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great.”
Jesus has atoned for our sin (if we’ve accepted it) and vindicated the Father’s honor so that are sins are forgiven ON ACCOUNT OF HIS NAME.(1John 2:12)
We will see how the fact that the pleasure of God in His Son is pleasure in Himself is not vanity. It is gospel.
Let us then stand in awe of this Great God! Let us turn from all the trivial resentments and fleeting pleasures and petty pursuits of materialism and merely human “spirituality” and let us be caught up into the gladness that God has in the glory of His Son, Who is the radiance of His image.
There is coming a day when the very pleasure that the Father has in the Son will be in us and will be our own pleasure!
May God’s enjoyment of God—unbounded and everlasting—flow into us even now by the Holy Spirit. This is our glory and our joy.
There is only one fountain of lasting joy, and that is the overflowing gladness of God in God.
Without beginning and without ending, without source and without cause, without assistance, the spring is eternally self-replenishing.
From this unceasing fountain of joy flow all grace and all joy in the universe.
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 19 ~ ~ Psalm 8:1 ~ ~ “O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!”
Continuing in John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”~ ~
Yesterday we ended with the statement that God delights in Himself
At first this sounds like vanity. It WOULD be vanity if we humans found OUR deepest joy in looking in the mirror. We WOULD be vain and conceited and smug if we were like God in this regard.
But why? Aren’t we supposed to imitate God (Matthew 5:48, Ephesians 5:1)
Yes in some ways, but not in every way. (Not in ways that are beyond us)
This was the first deceit of satan in the Garden of Eden. He tempted Adam and Eve to try to be like God in a way that God never intended them to be like Him. Namely, SELF-RELIANCE.
We are to be GOD-RELIANT.
In the same way, we were created for the contemplation and enjoyment of God. Anything less than this would be idolatry toward Him and disappointment for us. God is most glorious of all beings. Not to love Him and delight in Him is a great loss to us and insults Him.
But the same is true for God! How shall God not insult what is infinitely beautiful and glorious? How shall God not commit idolatry? There is only one possible answer: God must love and delight in His own beauty and perfection above all things.
For us to do this in front of the mirror is the essence of vanity; for God to do it in front of His Son is the essence of righteousness!
The essence of righteousness is to place supreme value on what is supremely valuable, and isn’t the opposite of righteousness to set our highest affections on things of little or no worth?
Thus, the righteousness of God is the infinite zeal and joy and pleasure that He has in what is supremely valuable, namely His own perfection and worth. If He were ever to act contrary to this eternal passion, He would be unrighteous. He would be an idolater!!!
This is not irrelevant speculation. It is the foundation of all Christian hope (faith in our future eternity) In this God-centered, divine righteousness lies the greatest obstacle to our salvation. For how shall such a righteous God ever set His affection on sinners like us, who have scorned His perfections?
This sounds like a contradiction, but we’ll see tomorrow.
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 18 ~ ~ John 17:22~ ~ “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we areone:”
Continuing with John Piper’s book: The Pleasures of God
From all eternity, before creation, the one reality that has always existed is God. This is a great mystery, because it is so hard for us to think of God having absolutely no beginning, and just being there forever and ever, without anything or anyone making Him be there—just absolute reality that every one of us has to reckon with whether we like it or not.
But this ever-living God has not been “alone”. He has not been a solitary center of consciousness. There has always been another, who has been one with God in essence and glory, and yet distinct in personhood so that they have had a personal relationship for all eternity.
The Bible teaches that this eternal God has always had a perfect image of Himself (Colossians 1:15)
A perfect radiance of His essence. (Hebrews 1:3)
A perfect stamp or imprint of His nature (Hebrews 1:3)
A perfect form or expression of His Glory (Philippians 2:6)
We are on the brink of the ineffable here, but perhaps we may dare to say this much; as long as God has been God (which is eternally) He has been conscious of Himself; and the image that He has of Himself is so perfect and so complete and so full as to be the living personal reproduction (or “begetting”) of Himself. This living, personal image or radiance, or form of God, IS GOD, NAMELY GOD THE SON. Therefore God the Son is coeternal with God the Father and equal in essence and glory. (Thus Jesus many times said that He is one with the Father)
We may conclude that the pleasure of God in His son is pleasure in Himself. Since the Son is the image of God and the radiance of God, and the form of God, equal with God, He is INDEED GOD.
Therefore, God’s delight in the Son is delight in Himself. He sees His own perfections reflected in the glory of His Son. Paul speaks of the “Glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6) From all eternity god had beheld the panorama of His own perfections in the face of His Son.
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 17 ~ ~ John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Continuing in John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”
(Because Jesus is all God and all man) This is why Jesus’ friends and enemies were staggered again and again by what He said and did. He would be walking down the road seemingly like any other man, then turn and say something like, “Before Abraham was, I am” Or, If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.” Or, very calmly, after being accused of blasphemy, he would say, “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” To the dead He might simply say, “Come forth” or “Rise up” And they would obey.
To the storms on the sea He would say, “Be still” And to a loaf of bread He would say, “Become a thousand meals: And it was done immediately. To the water, He’d say, “become wine” and it would become the best wine.
In response to the high priest’s question, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” He said, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven:” No man ever spoke like this man. No man ever lived and loved like this man. For in this man God Himself had made all the fullness of deity dwell bodily.
The NIV paraphrases like this, “God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him (Christ).” In other words, it was God’s pleasure to do this.
We have seen that God loved Him before the foundation of the world (John 17:24) and that He loved Him in His incarnate state (humanity) (John 10:17).
Now we see that, when God the Father and God the Son engaged to unite deity and humanity in Jesus, the Father rejoiced over this act. He delighted in His son’s readiness to redeem the world. Therefore it says, “It pleased God for the fullness of deity to dwell in Christ”
So the Son in whom the Father delights is the image of God and the radiance of the Glory of God. He bears the very stamp of God’s nature and is the very form of God. He is equal with God and, as John says, is God. John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(So, if anyone comes to your door and tries to tell you that Jesus is “a god” or that He is “wisdom”, and that He was created—–it is NOT true. He is “VERY GOD of peace” according to Paul in 1Thessalonians 5:23~ ~ “And the veryGodof peace sanctify you wholly;….”
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 16 ~ ~ Romans 1:20 ~ ~ “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,”
“It is impossible to overstate the greatness of the fatherly affection God has for His one and only Son. We see this unbounded affection behind the logic of Romans 8:32…
“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not also with him freely give us all things?”
The point of this unspeakably precious verse is that if God was willing to do the hardest thing for us, give up His cherished Son to misery and death, then surely that which looks hard, giving Christians all the blessings that heaven can hold, will not be too hard for God! (therefore we can trust Him for every need that we have)
What makes this verse work is the immensity of the Father’s affection for the Son. Paul’s assumption is that “not sparing His own Son” was the hardest thing imaginable for God to do. Jesus, as Paul put it simply in Colossians 1:13, is “the Son of His Love.”
If there ever was a passion of love in the heart of God it is a passion for His Son.
A.W.Tozer, said, “God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm” If there is any enthusiasm in God of which this is true, it is for His Son. So It will never change; it will never cool off. It burns with unimaginable fervency and zeal. Therefore, I affirm with Jonathon Edwards:
“The infinite happiness of the Father consists in the enjoyment of His Son.”
(He is looking at the type of love the Father has for the Jesus, because the Word affirms that He loves us with the same love as He does for Jesus, so we need to understand how that can be. We can see that we have every reason to believe He will always do well by us in this life and the next according to His infinite Wisdom.)
When we say that God loves His Son, we are not talking about a love that is self-denying, sacrificial, or merciful. We are talking about a love of delight and pleasure. (A love extended to a peer, not to a lower being)
(In other words:)
God is not stooping to pity the undeserving when He loves His Son.
That is how God loves us (the undeserving creatures) It is not how He loves His Son. He is well-pleased with His Son. His soul delights in Him. When He looks at Jesus, He enjoys and admires, cherishes, prizes and relishes what He sees.
To avoid a harmful mistake about God’s love for His Son, we need to go further now and show that the Son of God has the fullness of deity.
A person might agree with the affirmation that God has pleasure in the Son, but then make the mistake of thinking that the Son is merely an extraordinarily holy man that the Father somehow adopted to be His Son, because He delighted in Him so much.
Colossians 2:9 gives us a very different angle on things. “In Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
(this is an important verse)
The Son of God is not merely a holy and faithful man. He has the FULLNESS of deity. (Godhood). God did not look for a holy man whom He could somehow take up into the Godhead by putting deity in Him. Rather, “the Word became flesh” in an act of incarnation (John 1:14)
God sought a humble, faithful woman, and, through the virgin birth, united the fullness of His deity with a child of His own conceiving.
“And Mary said to the angel, “how can this be, since I have no husband?” And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow ypu; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:34-35)
God did not take a holy man up into deity. He clothed the fullness of deity with a virgin-born human nature, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God—-the God-Man, in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
(He was fully God AND fully Man at the same time—otherwise He could not have fulfilled salvation. More from Mr. Piper tomorrow.)
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 15 ~ ~ John 17:24 ~ “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
Continuing with excerpts from John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”
Co-Creator:
Although the qualities of lowliness and meekness were not manifest until the incarnation,(when Jesus became a man) they were nevertheless part of the Son’s character from all eternity. He did not undergo a conversion before he submitted to the Father’s will that He die for sinners.
This is why the love that the Father has for the Son goes back to before creation. “Father, You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24) There never was a time when the Father was denied the pleasure of delighting in the glory of His Son.
God also loved His son in the very act of creating the universe. He enjoyed His Son as His own Word of Wisdom and creative Power in the act of creation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-3).
The Son was the wisdom of God creating, with God, all that is not God. And, as Proverbs say, “A wise son makes a glad father” (Proverbs 10:1; 15:20) God was glad in the wisdom of His creative Son.
I wonder if there was a faint resemblance of this creative camaraderie between Father and Son when Joseph and Jesus worked together in the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth. I picture Jesus about fifteen years old, humming as He worked. The plank is cut with masterful strokes, carved with three small posts protruding in their appointed places, and then fitted perfectly into the joining board to make a solid bench. Jesus smiles as He smacks the wood with pleasure.
All the while Joseph has been standing at the door watching the hands of his (step) son. He sees the image of his own workmanship and his own life. The skill of his (step) son is evidence of the joy. And when they put their energy together to lift a finished table for the synagogue, their eyes meet with a flash of delight that says, “You are a treasure to me, and I love you with all my heart.”
***** *************
Infinite Intimacy:
No other relationship comes close to this one. It is utterly unique. The Son is absolutely unique in the affections of the Father. He is the “only begotten” (John 1:14&18; 3:16&18)
There is THE Son by eternal generation, and there are other “sons” by adoption. “ When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son…..to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive “adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5)
Jesus often referred to God as “My Father” or “The Father” but He never referred to Him as “Our Father” except once, when He was teaching the apostles to pray.
Once He used a remarkable expression, “My Father and your Father….My God and your God” (John 20:17) The relationship between God the Father and His eternal Son is utterly unique! (They alone truly know one another and truly love one another)
It is impossible to overstate the greatness of the fatherly affection God has for His one and only Son.
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 14 ~ ~ Matthew 3:16-17 ~ ~ “ When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Continuation of excerpts from the book by John Piper, “The pleasures of God”. The Chapter is about the Father taking pleasure in the Son.
Again the Father speaks words of endearment and delight about His son on another occasion. At Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit of God descends like a dove while the Father says from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” Matthew 3:17. The image is very different. Not a flaming sun of intolerable brightness, but a soft, quiet, vulnerable dove—the kind of animal poor people offered for sacrifices in the temple God’s pleasure in His Son comes not only from the brightness of His majesty but from the beauty of His meekness.
The Father delights in His Son’s supremacy and in His servanthood. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand” (John 3:35) “Behold My servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights (Isaiah 42:1). Matthew quotes this Old Testament testimony of the Father’s joy and connects it with the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the meekness of Jesus’ ministry.
Matthew 12:18-20 ~ ~ “Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, And He will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory;”
When a reed is bent and about to break, the Servant (Jesus) will tenderly hold it upright until it heals. When a wick is smoldering and has scarcely any heat left, the Servant will not pinch it off, but cup his hand a blow gently until it burns again. Thus the Father cries, “Behold, My Servant in whom my soul delights!”
The worth and beauty of the Son come not just from His majesty nor just from His meekness, but from the way these mingle in perfect proportion. When the angel cried out in Revelation 5:2, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break the seals?” the answer came back, “Weep not; look, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that He can open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev. 5:5) God loves the strength of the Lion of Judah. This is why He is worthy in God’s eyes to open the scrolls of history and unfold the last days. But the picture (still) is not complete. How did the Lion conquer? Jesus is worthy of the Father’s delight not only as the Lion of Judah but also as the slain Lamb.
In Jesus Christ, meet:
Infinite highness and infinite condescension;
Infinite justice and infinite grace;
infinite glory and lowest humility;
infinite majesty and transcendent meekness;
deepest reverence toward God and equality with God;
worthiness of good and the greatest patience under the suffering of evil;
a great spirit of obedience and supreme dominion over heaven and earth;
absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation;
self-sufficiency and an entire trust and reliance on God.”
(These beautiful attributes of our Savior, when we meditate on them, will speak to us in many ways.)
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 13 ~ ~ Matthew 17:5 ~ ~ “While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!”
For a while, I’m going to be quoting excerpts from John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God ~ Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God.”
These will be excerpts, not continuous reading, and the only additions will be possibly additions by myself for clarification and marked (*)
I pray it blesses you as it does me, and I pray that you either have received Christ, or will be led to Him by this, and that you’ll be able to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying, and benefit from it in all areas.
Today ~ ~ “The Pleasure of God in His Son.” Part 1
“…the happiness of God is first and foremost a happiness in His Son. Thus when we share in the happiness of God we share in the very pleasure that the Father has in His Son. This is why Jesus made the Father known to us. In His prayer in John 17:26, He prayed: ‘I made known to them Your name, and I will make it known, THAT THE LOVE WITH WHICH YOU HAVE LOVED ME MAY BE IN THEM, AND I IN THEM’
He made God known so that God’s pleasure in His Son might be in us and become OUR pleasure also!!!
Imagine being able to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever. This is not now our experience. Three things stand in the way of our complete satisfaction in this world.
1) Nothing has a personal worth great enough to meet the deepest longings of our hearts.
2) We lack the strength to savor the best treasures to their maximum worth,
3) The third obstacle to complete satisfaction is that our joys here come to an end. Nothing lasts.
But if the aim of Jesus in John 17:26 comes true, all this will change. If God’s pleasure in the Son becomes our pleasure, then (*and He means that for this life, not only eternity)
the object of our pleasure, Jesus, will be inexhaustible in personal worth. He will never become boring or disappointing or frustrating…
Our ability to savor this inexhaustible treasure will not be limited by human weaknesses. We will enjoy the Son of God with the very enjoyment of His Father. God’s delight in His son will be in us and it will be ours.
This will never end, because neither the Father nor the son ever ends. Their love for each other will be our love for them and therefore our loving them will never die.
When God declares openly that He loves and delights in His Son, He gives a visual demonstration of the Son’s unimaginable glory. His face shown like the sun, His garments became translucent with light, and the disciples fell on their faces (Matthew 17:6) the point is not merely that humans should stand in awe of such a glory but that God Himself takes full pleasure in the radiance of His Son.
He reveals Him in blinding light and then says, “This is My delight!”
Who can look upon the sun shining in full strength? The answer is that God can. The radiance of the Son’s face shines first and foremost for the enjoyment of His Father. “This is the Son whom I love; He is MY pleasure. You must fall on your face and turn away, but I behold My Son in His radiance every day with love and never-fading joy.”
I thought to myself, surely this is one thing implied in John 17:26—that the day is coming when I will have the capacity to delight in the Son the way the Father does. My fragile eyes will get the power to take in the glory of the Son shining in His full strength just the way the Father does. The pleasure God has in his Son will become my pleasure, and I will not be consumed, but enthralled forever.”
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 12 ~ ~ Revelation 21:5 ~ ~”Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, Imakeallthingsnew.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
The book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ is the last book of the Bible. It is the book we are living in at this time. In the news we can see some of the things already happening.
Looking back over the entire Bible, this Word is true: 1Kings 8:56 “…There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised through His servant Moses.” All of the promises He gave in the Old Testament are for us in the New, if we belong to Him. He never fails. His promises always come true.
Let’s see what He has promised us if we are in Him:
Revelation 21:1-4 ~ ~”Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
In your quiet moments, it’s good to read that again, and contemplate how that would be. No more drudgery. Our work will be joyful. No more relationship issues. We will all be perfect in Christ because we’ll be remade in His image. No more accidents, injuries, depression, cold, heat, separation. No one will die—-not even the animals, or trees, or anything living, so there will be no more sadness or crying, or loneliness. It’ll be the way the Garden of Eden was before Adam and Eve sinned. Only it’ll be the whole world……….the new earth, which will be connected to heaven, which is the Throne of God!!!
Jesus will be with us constantly, and we will each have our own home, but we will be able to travel the universe, apparently. We can talk with many people, or be alone with Jesus. Think about all that.
Revelation 21: 6-7 “ And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.”
We will have the Water of Life that Jesus told about while He was on earth:
He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of livingwater.”
Here’s more about our eternal home:
Revelation 21:22-27 “ But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
The constant presence of Jesus (the Lamb—remember He was the sacrifice) will be a beautiful, soft light that’ll be perfect. The gates of New Jerusalem will be always open, and it will be always daytime because of the Glory of the Lamb shining. Only re-created people will be there. When we are saved, our name goes into the Lamb’s Book of Life. When we die, if our name is in there, we will live in this beautiful place forever with our Savior.
Next, the angel showed John this:
Revelation 22:1-5 ~ ~ “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (this is again that living water that gives us eternal life and no sickness, because it comes from God Himself.
“In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month.” We will eat there, even though we will have different type of bodies. It seems like we will eat for pleasure rather than out of necessity.
We have been talking about the church being the Bride of Christ, and showing that we are in the waiting time between the betrothal ceremony and the wedding ceremony and banquet. In these verses, the bride is living with the Bridegroom in the beautiful home He has been making for her. These are the things that we, as the Bride of Christ, will have when we (she) resides forever with her Husband!!!
As we go through this life, Jesus gave us the Beatitudes. These all show the effects of salvation, when He changes our hearts to line up with His so that we will be able to share our home with Him. We can see the description of our eternal home on the New Earth and New Heavens, in the rewards of the beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Thank You, Lord! You not only give us the reward of eternal life with You but You give us the means of obtaining that righteousness to earn it!!!! We will praise You forever both in this life and in eternity!!!
