What sort of Lion was Jesus Christ? He was a Lamb-like Lion. The Lion of Judah conquered because He was willing to act
the part of a Lamb. He came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday like a King on the way to a throne, and He went out of Jerusalem on Good Friday like a Lamb on the way to the slaughter. He drove out the robbers from the Temple like a Lion devouring its prey. And then at the end of the week He gave His majestic neck to the knife, and they slaughtered the Lion of Judah like a Lamb. So He conquered sin and death and Satan not just because He was a Lion, but because He was a Lamb-like Lion.

But not only is He a Lamb-like Lion. He is also a Lion-like Lamb. Revelation 5:6: “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns…”

Notice two things. First, notice that the Lamb is standing. It is not slumped in a heap on the ground as It once was. It had been slain. But now It is standing — standing in the innermost circle next to the throne.

Second, notice that the Lamb has seven horns. A horn is a symbol of strength and power throughout the book of Revelation (12:3; 13:1; 17:3 & 12) as well as in the OT (Deuteronomy 33:17; Psalm 18:2; 112:7). And the number seven signifies fullness and completeness.

So this is no ordinary Lamb. He is a Lion-like Lamb. Look at Revelation 6:16 where men call to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” And look at Revelation 17:14 where the final enemies of God fight against Christ: “they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings.” In other words, He is a Lion-like Lamb.

So I conclude by stressing the main point: since Jesus is not merely a simple thing like a lion or like a lamb, but is a Lion-like Lamb and a Lamb-like Lion, therefore He is admirable and excellent and worthy to take the scroll and open its seals and bring this world to an end for the glory of His name and the good of His ransomed people.

And you can be among that number if you trust Him as your Lamb, and submit to Him as your Lion, and join the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders and the millions of angels to worship the King of kings with all your heart.                                                                       (JOHN PIPER)

In worship, God is our true audience—and He certainly has a right to our very best. As a searcher of hearts, He knows when our performance and motivation are second-rate.

Perhaps we should view Sunday worship as a dress rehearsal for heavenly worship. We know that heaven is our destination— we find that truth comforting when we are in the midst of suffering. But we need to remember heaven as well when we are celebrating with the members of our congregation.

The Bible tantalizes us with its restraint on the subject of our activities in the new heaven and the new earth. What will we be doing for eternity? From the magnificent pictures in the book of Revelation, we are certain of one thing: worship will be among our occupations, and this heavenly worship will surpass any celebrating or praising we do here on earth. While we can’t actually enjoy such heavenly worship here on earth, we should certainly be using that worship as a model. We need to discover all we can about heavenly worship and then to begin “practicing” what we’ve learned in our Sunday “rehearsals.”

Heavenly worship, first of all, is extensive. Everyone participates in heaven. There are no bystanders or nonperformers. All the saints and all the angels join together in musical praise. Nobody says “I can’t carry a tune” or “My voice isn’t good enough.”

Second, heavenly worship is exuberant. Emotions as well as intellect, hearts as well as minds, are employed. The sound is deafening—more like the roar of thunder and waterfalls than the tentative mumbling we sometimes mistake for worship. We can shout to God with a loud voice, as the psalms command us to do, only if everyone present rejoices in the Lord.

Third, heavenly worship is eternal. Worship will become a chief occupation of God’s people. It will be something so wondrous, so thoroughly satisfying to our new natures, that we will never grow weary of proclaiming the glory of God. No cell phones will interrupt our joy. As seraphs never tire of crying “Holy, holy, holy,” saints will never tire of crying “Worthy is the Lamb.”

Fourth, heavenly worship is evangelical. Every word, every note, every heart will speak of the Savior who was slain and is alive—the Redeemer who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Humanistic moralizing will have no place in heaven. The heavenly harps will extol sovereign grace, not secular attainments. Worship there will be magnificent in its Christ-centeredness.

Extensive. Exuberant. Eternal. Evangelical. When these words begin to describe our Sunday worship, we will be doing more than rejoicing in the excitement of a rehearsal for “the real thing” yet to come. Sunday’s worship will truly begin to serve as an appetizer, a brief taste, of the thrill that will soon be ours in heaven’s courts.                                    (LAWRENCE C. ROFF)

Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom. (Genesis 13:12)  Don’t sacrifice your walk with God for money or material possessions. Be careful where you pitch your tent.

Lot is a prime example of improper priorities in his life; he made decisions based on the well-watered plains of Jordan, and chose for himself all the plain of Jordan.  It was a decision strictly based on economics without considering the spiritual implications.  A long look at the lives of Abraham and Lot gives men an understanding in the importance of “Pitching His Tents and Building His Altars.” There have always been men who walked with God and there have always been men who walked with men.”

Lot was a man who was:
• Weak in his devotions
• Worldly in his desires
• Wrong in his decisions
• Wrecked in his demise

God allows us to choose our own path…but He doesn’t allow us to choose what destination that path will lead to. God will allow us to choose anything we want, except for the consequences, we can’t choose those! As a matter of fact, we have to live with the consequences of our choices.

Every decision we make, to at least some degree, affects the direction of our future. For the most part, our decisions are determined by our desires. We often make life changing decisions based on:
Possessions
Power
Popularity
Pleasure

Instead we need to seek God’s purity and purpose in our lives.

A woman told her unsaved friend after attempting to win the friend to the Lord – “There is only one letter of the alphabet that separates us….I love the WORD while You Love the WORLD!”

What do love the most today?? Do you love the world or the Word of God??? Which direction is your tent pitched – toward Bethel (God’s house) or Sodom (the world)?                                                         (JAMES WEBSTER)

“Dear God, if you should give us a son, grant that he may work for you in China.” That was the prayer of James and Amelia Taylor as they consecrated their first child to the Lord, months before he was even born. That child entered the world on May 21, 1832. His parents named him James Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor would, indeed, grow up to work for the Lord in China. Not only that, but he would be used mightily by God and he would transform the way missionaries worked among the people they ministered to. In his own way he would change the world.

Taylor became a Christian as a teen and was immediately drawn to China, deciding that the Lord was calling him to serve as a missionary. He spent several years studying medicine and the Mandarin language before departing on the long and perilous journey to the Far East. Very quickly he made the radical decision to adopt Chinese dress and hairstyles, understanding that such things could increase his credibility in the eyes of those he loved (even if they would make him a laughing stock among his fellow missionaries). He went on to found China Inland Mission, an organization now known as OMF International.

These are 3 lessons we can learn from this man’s life:

Called to Suffer. Hudson Taylor’s call to take the gospel to a foreign land was a call to suffer. And this man suffered very deeply, eventually burying his wife and four children on the mission field. The call to serve as a missionary may have seemed glamorous to those who sponsored him and it may seem glamorous to us today, but in reality it was a call to suffer and to suffer deeply. Yet it is clear that this suffering was an important forming influence in his life; in many ways it made him the man he was. The Lord did not work in him apart from this suffering, but through it.

God’s Preparation. When God calls a man to serve him, he also prepares him for such service. Hudson Taylor invested a great deal of effort in his own preparation through learning languages and studying medicine. But the Holy Spirit also prepared him by granting him a great love for the Chinese people, by giving him great confidence in the Gospel, and by granting him continued awakening and re-awakening. This man was equipped vocationally, but also spiritually.

God Provides. Taylor had an unshakeable belief in God’s ability and desire to provide for the work He had called him to. Where God had called, God would also equip. For that reason Taylor relied fully upon God, refusing to plead for money in the ways most missionaries did. He would even refuse to have a collection taken up after he spoke at a church, asking everyone to wait and pray about whether the Lord would have them support his work. He would rather people not give at all than have them give out of emotion.
(TIM CHALLIES)

1) THAT YOU DO JUSTLY: While it’s easy to find corporate greed and political corruption in our culture, the truth is that it’s in us as well. We find it in our tax filing, our time clock punching, and even in the deals we make when we sell a car or a house. Doing what is right is fundamentally important to God. That we act with fairness, integrity, and honesty is at the heart of what it is to follow God. How you deal with your neighbor, your boss, or even a stranger is the heart of how you deal with God. You cannot separate behavior from belief. Belief and behavior are integrally linked.

2) THAT YOU LOVE MERCY: To surround ourselves with compassion, empathy, and steadfast love for each other. It’s interesting that this term stands in the center of the triumvirate of Justice and Walking with God. Mercy tempers our justice and it flows from our walk with God. Justice without mercy is barbaric – yet mercy without justice leads to destruction. God calls on His people to love kindness or mercy. We are to be a people who love people with God’s own heart. The heart that has been touched by the love of God is seen to exhibit and flow with the compassion, forgiveness, and love of God for others.

3) THAT YOU WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD: To walk humbly with God means…
• MATCH HIS COURSE – walking in the same direction as Him. To walk with God we have to know what direction He is going and match our course to His. We have to acknowledge who is in control of setting the course for our lives. You cannot go your own way, do your own thing, and be your own person and expect God to bless it. The blessing is in walking with God not asking Him to walk with you.
• MATCH HIS PACE – we are called to walk with God – to accompany Him – not to run ahead or lag behind. Running ahead always leads us down wrong paths. Lagging behind we loose sight of the one we are following and often get lost. If you walk with the One who knows the path you will never get lost.
• MATCH HIS PURPOSE – become His disciple: We are not coequals with God. We are the creation – He is the creator. We are the disciples – He is the Teacher. We are the servants – He is the master. We are the children – He is the Father. Understand the relationship. Too often we act with God like rebellious teens act with their parents – struggling for control – struggling to be number one – God’s requirement is that we walk humbly with Him – acknowledging His sovereignty, His leadership and His Lordship. The wonder is that He has invited us into that relationship.

God’s requirements for us are simple …
Live right – with integrity and justice
Love right – with compassion and mercy and steadfastness
Walk with Him – live as disciples of the Most High God                (DAN CALE)

To whom did Christ give the Great Commission? Jesus gave the Great Commission not only to His eleven disciples, but to every one who has believed in Him through the centuries. Therefore, every Christian should be vitally and continually involved in helping to fulfill the Great Commission as a way of life through the investment of their lives, their talents and their treasure.

Shortly after Jesus gave the Great Commission, God the Holy Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, transformed and empowered the lives of the same disciples who, during His trial and crucifixion, had denied our Lord and for the most part had deserted Him. Following Pentecost, they went out boldly and courageously, willing to risk their lives to proclaim the message of God’s love and forgiveness in Christ. In fact, all of the disciples died as martyrs preaching the gospel, except for John who died in exile on the Isle of Patmos after he survived being burned in a vat of oil for his faith.

Somehow we have gotten the idea that the early Christians were different from us – that they possessed a quality of life to which we cannot attain. But it is a fact of history that the people to whom Jesus gave His Great Commission were common, ordinary, working people plagued with the same weaknesses that we have. The only difference between most of them and the majority of us is that two outstanding things had happened to them.

First, they had complete confidence in a resurrected Lord triumphant over death, one who lived within them and was coming again to reign on the earth.

Second, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Today, if enough Christians were completely committed to our resurrected and returning Lord and were controlled and empowered by His Spirit, we would turn our world upside down and experience a mighty spiritual revolution like that in the first century.
(DR BILL BRIGHT)

God’s word comes to Jonah telling him to “go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before Me.”   This is a tall order  for any man,  but
one we would expect for a prophet of God.  And we would expect, like any other prophet, for him to go.  But Jonah does something unexpected and fascinating.  He runs!  He actually tries to run away “from the presence of the Lord.”  This is a man who knew God.  He knew God’s character.  He knew God’s word and he certainly would have known Psalm 139 which says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?”  Everyone knows you can’t run from God.  Yet Jonah runs.  Why?  The bottom line is that Jonah runs from God for selfish reasons.

Are you running from God?  Maybe a better question is, are you trying to run from God?  Are you like Jonah, knowing the things of God but ignoring them because of selfish reasons?  Jonah couldn’t see the foolishness of his actions, and neither do we.  So often we think there is a better way.   A happier way.  A  way
that leads to real peace, hope, love, and joy.  But running from God never takes us where we want to go.  Jonah thought he could take a ship, even pay the fare for a ship, to get away from God.  He never got to where he was going, and neither will we.  Donald Barnhouse wrote, “It is always that way.  When you run away from the Lord you never get to where you are going, and you always pay your own fare.  On the other hand, when you go the Lord’s way you always get to where you are going, and He pays the fare.”

God’s way is always the best way.  Even when the world around you is screaming for you to go another way, don’t believe them.  Jesus, who is the true and greater Jonah, told us that He is the way, the truth and the life.  Trust in Him, His ways, His plans, His truth, and He will carry you to where you are going.  And He will pay the fare!                                       (ADAM GREENFIELD)