Friday, 2nd October, 2.00pm
Theme:
Hope
Verse:
Ezekiel 36:26-27
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.
Background:
When looking at last week’s reading on the peoples’ response to the gospel of the kingdom, I wondered what their outlook was like, what made them so eager to hear the good news from Jesus?
They were aware our world was created by God as a paradise where everything was perfectly good. But mankind’s unceasing tendency to sin turned every best laid plan astray, the world was full of grief and suffering, under the curse of sin and death. Although they had been given a record of God’s intervention in their history, that didn’t seem to change their plight, and their religious leaders were either joined in league with the harsh rulers, or buried in unhelpful rules and “thou shalt not”s. Where was there any basis for hope?
And their situation was not so different to ours. Our western world now largely ignores the record of God’s intervention in our history, advances in technology don’t seem to have brought peace and contentment, large sections of society seem to have become irrational. And grief and suffering, sin and death, still seem to rule. Where is our source of hope?
But the Old Testament shows that while man’s choice of sin brought despair, God’s promises brought hope, a hope that was ignited when people heard the gospel from Jesus. So, let’s look at God’s Old Testament promises and your response to them.
I have chosen as a key verse Ezekiel 36:26-27, but also listed other verses, and there are many more you could choose to focus upon.
Question:
What is your response to these promises? Do they bring hope into your life? Have the promises, or their fulfilment, had an impact on you? What is your personal experience of these promises, and their impact now?
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