Sister Teri Sunday School 5/10/15

Sister Teri Sunday School 5/10/15

Coram Deo is the big idea of the Christian life: to live in the presence of God, under the authority of God and for the glory of God.

We don’t want to have our life compartmentalized into “Religious” and “Temporal”.  But we want every aspect of our life to be spiritual.

When we look at God’s remote purpose it helps us to understand some things.  When we question 

why God allows some bad thing to happen, we are looking for His purpose. 

Because we know that God is all powerful we assume that He could have prevented it.  The enemy uses this to hinder people from seeking God and trusting Him. 

We know that He is good, always good, His pleasure and His will are always good, and His intentions are always good.

Psa 25:8  Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

Psa 34:1  A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed. I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Psa 34:2  My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad.

Psa 34:3  O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

Psa 34:4  I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

Psa 34:5  They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.

Psa 34:6  This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.

Psa 34:7  The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.

Psa 34:8  O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

We know that God is good because of how He was so good to us.  When bad things happen we can look at the good things that God has done for us, it will help us.

Psa 119:65  TETH. Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O LORD, according unto thy word.

Psa 119:66  Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments.

Psa 119:67  Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.

Psa 119:68  Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.

Afflicted means looking down or brow beating, to depress, humble, submit, chasten, or submit self, become low. 

Circumstances may humble us.  But to receive the good, we must humble ourselves before God.  When we just struggle under it then we will miss the good.  But if we will humble ourselves before God then we will get the good under it.

Luk 20:17  And he beheld them, and said, What is this then that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?

Luk 20:18  Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

Instead of humbling themselves before God they resist and resist and it grinds them to powder.  We don’t have to be ground to powder.  If we humble ourselves, bring ourselves to the state of Coram Deo in the bad situations that happen, we will receive the good. 

Sometimes bad things happen because of our bad choices or actions, but sometimes bad things happen even though we are going the right way. 

Even when we are not doing things right, God still works the bad things for our good.  If people will humble themselves in the bad things, they will get the good that God intends.

Nah 1:2  God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

Nah 1:3  The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

Nah 1:4  He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth.

Nah 1:5  The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.

Nah 1:6  Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.

Nah 1:7  The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.

Nah 1:8  But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

He is a good God but will not just let wickedness go because of His goodness.  There is nothing strong enough to stand against God when He chooses to move. 

There is a goodness and a severity of God.  Because of His goodness He looks for a repentance.

Rom 11:21  For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.

Rom 11:22  Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

Rom 11:23  And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again.

God did not spare the rebellious, disobedient Jews just because they were Jews.  He also opened a way that the Gentiles could be saved.

None of us gets to the place where we are grafted in and will be there no matter what we do.  We must continue in faith and obedience.  This is how we continue in the vine. 

God wants everyone to be saved.  Anyone that will turn can be grafted back in.  A Jew can be saved if they will accept Christ.  Circumstances in a life can cause a life to throw themselves on the rock rather than be crushed. 

This rabbi had turned from being Jewish to being an atheist.  It was a part of the path of coming to God.  I also had to come out of the religious traditions of men to come out to where God wanted me to be.  I went into a depths of sin and God used that route to get me here.

The prodigal had to leave the fathers house to pursue the world and waste his inheritance.  Sometimes people leave the church of God and are not right in their experience yet are still sitting in the pews.  They must come to the realization, “I am out; I am not in.  I need to repent.  I need to return to the father.  Not to the church pew, but to the father.”

These days, people want to come into our midst and just continue in their lost condition.  They want to think they are alright and live however they want.  We want to have enough love of God, “The goodness and severity of God,” to tell it like it is: “God has a better way than that.  Get to the rock.  Humble yourselves before God and He will help you have a better life.”

My son would get saved and endeavor to do right.  Things were wonderful when he was endeavoring to do right.  I needed wisdom from God to know where to draw the line when he started turning away from God.  There was always something open and clearly wrong.  I would think, “If I call him on this, then we will go back to where things were terrible again.”  I knew that I had to though, because I wanted him to be saved. 

We need wisdom to know how to exercise the goodness and severity of God.  We need His Spirit in all we say and do.  We ultimately want souls to be saved.

Deu 29:10  Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

Deu 29:11  Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water:

Deu 29:12  That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this day:

Deu 29:13  That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Deu 29:14  Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;

Deu 29:15  But with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

Deu 29:16  (For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;

Deu 29:17  And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

Deu 29:18  Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;

Deu 29:19  And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

Deu 29:20  The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

Deu 29:21  And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

Deu 29:22  So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;

Deu 29:23  And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

Deu 29:24  Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

Deu 29:25  Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

Deu 29:26  For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:

Deu 29:27  And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

Deu 29:28  And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

Deu 29:29  The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

God wants us to be Coram Deo; this is the covenant.  This is that we put ourselves in the presence of God.  Not just an awareness of His presence but dwelling before His face, “I am here, what do you want me to do.”  Actively in His presence, because He actively wants to be involved in our life.

The reason that the secret things belong to us is that we may do all the words of His Law.  There needs to be consequences of disobedience.  It is because of the mercy of God that He sets those boundaries.  He doesn’t want those that are saved to go astray, he wants future generations to be aware, he wants those that have gone astray to turn from their evil way. 

He sets before us life and good; He wants life for those that choose good.