Present your present times to God

I can write the following, but my prayer is “Lord, now let me live out what I have written.”

Romans 12:1-2 are foundational verses, especially for knowing God’s will.

Paul is “urgent” in the church of Rome, a church which he had never been to, and now he is wanting to put all of the theology from the first eleven chapters into practical application.

“Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (NASB20)

I found an old check the other day and while it was endorsed, it did not say “for electronic deposit”. I wondered if the money was possibly never deposited. That’s the way adults are who say, “I used to do this for the Lord.” God is more interested in the present, than the past performance and resting on the past is like relying on a check that was never deposited.

Also, God is more interested in the present that pending promises. Years ago, I knew a guy who told me, “I’ll serve the Lord when I get out of college,” and then “I’ll serve the Lord when I get married,” and then, “Well, when we get kids, then I’ll get back in church.” Today, his kids are grown, and he is still not in church and not outwardly serving the Lord. Pending promises are like a promissory note never claimed.

So, what about the present time? Now is the time to present yourselves to Him as a sacrificial gift. To know God’s will, we cannot rely on past glories or promissory pledges. What God wants done today cannot be done tomorrow! There is an urgency.

Secondly, to know God’s will, there must be a surrender. Paul calls it a living and holy sacrifice, not living and holy selfishness. Many times, we pray “My will be done,” rather than “Thy will be done.” When we present our bodies to God, that is more than just our flesh and bones, it’s our will, our emotions, our desires. To know God’s will, we must sacrifice our will, if it is different than His will.

Seeking God in prayer for our will is not wrong, but only in the surrender and sacrifice of our will can God truly find that “spiritual service of worship”. Worship literally means “worth”-ship, the declaration of how worthy He is and worth implies cost. God is not our servant, we are His, and in our worship, we declare our sacrifice to Him of all that we are.

God is not interested in our money, our abilities, or our intellect. He wants us. He’s not concerned about your I.Q., but He greatly wants your “I DO”. We think of “I do” in our marriage vows, but we are first and foremost the Bride of Christ. Our capability is not nearly as important as our availability.

Surrender is not just our will, but our worries as well. The “what-ifs” must also laid before the throne of God. The future is not ours but God’s to hold. Job said in chapter 3, verse 25, “that what I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened.” His worry did not cause it to happen, but it caused him to live through it twice, once in dread and again in reality. Live trustworthily in the present and trust God with the future.

Thirdly, to prove God’s will, there must be a transformation. Paul speaks of a conformation to the world. To figure out which way the worldly wind is blowing is conformation. But transformation is the renewing of the Holy Spirit, the mighty rushing wind which comes from within.

We see conformation to the world by seeking to please what is acceptable today. But transformation is what is acceptable to God forever. Conformation is what is good for me. Transformation is what is good for God and His Kingdom. Conformation to the world is performing for the current perceptions. Transformation is allowing God’s perfection to be present in us for His righteousness, not our self-righteousness.

In Exodus, the people would gather Manna each day from the fields for their daily sustenance. We cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot promise tomorrow. We must do today what we know is God’s will for us to prove the will of God for the future.

 

Look for blessings in plain, brown paper packages

Anne Graham Lotz, who lost her father, her husband,

and was diagnosed with cancer in the space of two years,

said at the Texas Governor’s Prayer Breakfast to look
for blessings in “plain, brown, ordinary packages”. 

“Then Job said: ​​‘No doubt you are the wisest of all people, and wisdom will die with you!’ (Job 12:1-2).

 This verse made me laugh out loud today.

Context: Job had suffered so much, and his friends came to “comfort” him. He gets a little annoyed with them (a little? He DOES have the patience of Job!) and says, “when you die, wow, all of wisdom will leave the earth, since you are sooo smart.”

But it’s not just his friends who think that they are all that! Consider the pundits, the evolutionists who believe that LIFE came from nothing.

Job 12 continues, “But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ​​Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. ​​Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this, ​In whose hand is the life of every living thing, ​​and the breath of all mankind?” (Job 12:7-10)

Now obviously you can’t ask a bear or a bird or a big-mouthed bass to teach you about the Creator, but just look at them and ask yourself, “Did this just happen to happen?” Does life come from lifelessness? Look around you, Job is saying, there is a God, and He is in charge. “What you know, I also know. I am not inferior to you,” Job says in 13:2.

Most people who reject God give a reason for their unbelief. Somehow, their view of God did not line up with what they thought God should be or do, so they rejected Him.

Not Job. Life was certainly not turning out like he wanted or how he planned things to go. He lost his job. He lost his 401K. He lost his family. His wife tells him to drop dead.

In the middle of it all, Job still says, ​​“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” (Job 13:15). He only asks two things: “don’t leave me, and don’t let me be horribly afraid of You,” (13:22).  

Anne Graham Lotz, who lost her father, her husband, and was diagnosed with cancer in the space of two years, said at the Texas Governor’s Prayer Breakfast to look for blessings in “plain, brown, ordinary packages”.

“For my birthday one year, my mother sent me a package wrapped in plain brown paper. When I opened it, there was a gaudy, multicolored straw basket inside, stuffed with tissue paper. I actually thought my mother had totally lost her good senses! I tossed out the tissue paper, wondered what in the world I was going to do with the basket, then called to thank her for her ‘gift.’ Mother laughed when I thanked her for the basket then asked what I thought about what was inside it. I told her that nothing was inside except tissue paper and I had thrown that out. She responded urgently, ‘Oh, no, Anne! INSIDE that tissue paper is your real birthday gift!’
“I ran outside, opened up the trashcan and went through the garbage piece by piece until I came up with the wad of tissue paper. Inside was a small gold ring with a lapis lazuli stone that had been taken from the flooring of the Shushan Palace where Queen Esther had lived with King Xerxes!

“I had thrown out a priceless treasure simply because of the way it was wrapped!”

Can you trust God, even in horrible times? Job says yes, even if it is wrapped in the plain brown paper packaging of pain and suffering.

The Big Angel and the Little Bitter-Sweet Book

Think about something that is bitter-sweet. In Revelation chapter 10, we see a big angel with a little book that is sweet and sour to John. And even though the little book is opened and unsealed, we can only guess how bitter-sweet its contents will be.

The Big Angel

¹I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.

The “mighty angel” coming down from heaven has characteristics and descriptions similar to Jesus, but this is not Christ. A rainbow was around God’s throne (Revelation 4:3), Jesus’s face at the transfiguration shined like the sun (Matthew 17:2), and Jesus’s feet were like bronze glowing in a fiery furnace (Revelation 1:15). Jesus Christ, however, does not return to the earth until later so this angel is not Jesus.

If this mighty angel were Christ, the question would arise, why wouldn’t John specifically identify Him as Christ? Many believe that Jesus Christ, the second person of the godhead, appeared in Old Testament times as “the Angel of the Lord.” However, after His incarnation, He was never referred to as such again, and certainly not as merely “another … angel.” Instead, this mighty angel has the attributes and power of heaven, but he is still a messenger and a representative of God.

This vision is spiritually seen by John and it is for John’s benefit. This mighty angel is the second of three “mighty” or “strong” (Greek: ischuros) angels whom John sees in this apocalyptic book (the first is in Revelation 5:2, the second is recorded here in chapter 10, and the third is in Revelation 18:21). In another trilogy of angelic beings, this is the first of three angels who come down from heaven (see also Revelation 18:1 and 20:1).

The clothing of the angel with a cloud identifies power and judgment. The rainbow signifies God’s promise, his face shining like the sun signifies the glory of the Lord and God’s purity. His feet being like pillars of fire indicates the solid foundation of God’s holy judgment.

Being on the sea and on the land signifies God’s total and final judgment which will permeate the entire earth. Artists frequently paint this angel as being huge in stature, but other than the angel standing on both land and sea, John does not indicate this. These descriptions however are secondary to the fact of what the angel holds in his hand: the little book.

The Little Book

²He had a little book open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land,

The “little book” (Greek: biblaridion) is a different word than what was used in the opening of the seven seals. This one is open, not sealed. Just as we do not know the contents of the seven thunders (Revelation 10:3-4) , we do not know the contents of the little scroll. However, we do know the results of it: it is sweet to the taste, but bitter to the stomach. Christians greatly look forward to Christ’s return, which will be sweet, especially for those who become believers during the Tribulation. However, when John begins to truly digest the enormity of the upcoming “days of the voice of the seventh angel,” such calamitous and catastrophic judgment makes John nauseous.

Zephaniah 1:14 describes the noise of the Day of the Lord. Those days, which I believe are the final three and a half years of the Tribulation, will be “a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers.” Because of the horrendous sins of the world, “their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like refuse. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy, for He will make speedy riddance of all those who dwell in the land.” (Zephaniah 1:15-18)

The Loud Cry

³ and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. ⁴ Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.” ⁵The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven ⁶ and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer, ⁷ but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.

The loud cry of this angel is compared to a lion’s roar. Amos 3:8 says, “A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?”

Proverbs 19:12 says, “The king's wrath is like the roaring of a lion, But his favor is like dew on the grass.”

Isaiah 31:4 proclaims, "As a lion roars, and a young lion over his prey…so the Lord of hosts will come down to fight for Mount Zion and for its hill.”

This loud voice is a signal for great terror. The seven thunders, which some refer to Psalm 29:3-9 as the thunderous voice of the Lord, and its seven attributes were revealed to John, but a voice from heaven (the first of seven times that John will hear the voice from heaven as he did in John 4:1) commands John not to write them.

The Seven Thunders

The seven thunders apparently utter seven things which will be revealed in the end times but is not for us to know now. The mighty angel swears by God (again, another affirmation that this is not Jesus Christ) that there should be no more delay. (Now, in the King James version, this word “chronos” is translated as “there should be time no longer” but this does not mean that chronological time itself shall end, but rather like the phrase we use today, “time is running out.”)

Notice that the sounding of the seventh angel will take place for several days and at the sounding, God’s mystery will be finished. That mystery is said to have been “declared” to His servants. A mystery in the Bible frequently means “truth hidden to the world but revealed to His servants the prophets and to the church.”

The mystery is to be “evangelized” or declared (the Greek is “euengelisen,”; the same word from which we get the word “gospel” and “evangelism”. Thus, the mystery of salvation is not yet completed, but it is drawing to a close. The evangelistic word is used again in Revelation 14:6, when another angel flies in heaven and has the “everlasting gospel” (euangelion) to preach (euangelisai). God is still longsuffering, wanting people to be saved. 

Some, most notably Marvin Rosenthal, have used this text and other places as evidence of a supposed “pre-wrath rapture”, a recent theory which emerged in the late 1980s. In other words, some believe that the church, or God’s mystery, has been in the world through this part of the book of Revelation, but would soon be taken out, at the final trumpet judgment. If this were so, the church would only be spared of God’s final wrath or the seven bowl judgments. However, this “pre-wrath rapture” is not likely, because we see that the “sounding” will take place over several days (Revelation 10: 7). Like the seventh seal which contained the seven trumpets, the seventh trumpet will include the seven bowl judgments.

 

⁸ Then the voice which I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, “Go, take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth.” ⁹ So I went to the angel and said to him, “Give me the little book.” And he said to me, “Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.” ¹⁰ Then I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter.
¹¹ And he said to me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.”

                                                            

The same voice, presumably God’s voice since it speaks from heaven, which he heard in verse 4 speaks again. Up until this point, John has apparently been observing these events from the perspective of heaven, but now he is on the earth as he goes to the angel who is standing on the land and sea. John later states in chapter 13 that he was standing on the sand of the sea. These two passages are significant when John measures of the temple, which strongly indicates he is measuring the earthly temple and not a heavenly temple.

The example of eating a scroll was also used in Ezekiel 2:8-3:14. In Ezekiel’s case, the scroll was filled with lamentations, expressions of mourning and woe and though it was sweet to the taste, it resulted in Ezekiel’s bitter prophecy against his own people of Israel.

Whether John and Ezekiel literally ate the scrolls is not nearly as important as the fact that they spiritually digested God’s message and then prophesied to the people. The last part of this chapter uses the phrase “peoples, nations, tongues” but adds the word “kings”. The “peoples, nations, tongues” phrase was used seven times in Revelation 5:9, 7:9, 11:9, 13:7, and 14:6, adding the word “tribes” (that is, the 12 tribes of Israel), and in Revelation 17:15, adding the  word “multitudes”.

But here, God and possibly also the angel tell John that he will prophesy again. There is no record of John ever testifying “before” kings. However, this book of Revelation has been read by peoples, nations, tongues, and kings for nearly 2,000 years.

Numerous charts like this one have been made to help diagram the events of Revelation and coincide it with Daniel’s 70^th week. Revelation 10 and 11 are seen as the mid-point of the book.