Hello fellow sojourners. Welcome back to the Saturday Newsletter! This is where you can find prayers, promises, and treasures on the narrow way.
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This newsletter is for the sojourners. The ones weary on the dirt road. The thirsty in need of a drink from the wells of living water.
A sojourner is someone who is passing through a land that is not their own. Peter calls us “sojourners” and “exiles”— meaning this present evil age is not our home.
When we know how temporary this life is, we are given courage to stay the course and run the race set before us. A vision for eternity brings maturity to our walk with God. We are training to reign with Jesus in the ages to come (2 Tim. 2:12). We are laboring for the day we stand face-to-face with our Creator. If our citizenship is in heaven, oh how we long for the day we get to go home.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11).
The narrow way is war. The narrow way is the path of eternal life. May we march onwards until He comes, and see, He is worth the fight.
Enjoy this week’s newsletter.
MATTHEW 6:5-15
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Jesus gave one of the most foundational messages on the kingdom of God in Matthew 5-7. This is also known as the Sermon on the Mount. His disciples came and sat before Him to listen. The crowd was astonished. They had never heard a teacher speak with such authority.
The contents of His message were not of promised prosperity in the world. It was how to get rich in the kingdom of God by doing everything opposite as one would naturally do.
He proclaimed that the blessed were the meek, the poor, and the persecuted. Greatness is achieved not through outward achievement, but private, inner devotion to the Word of God. He said that being angry with your brother is just as bad as murder. If someone takes your T-shirt, give them your jacket too. If they hit you on one cheek, give them your other one.
The most staggering of all, Jesus said that He didn’t come to abolish the Law given to Moses but to fulfill it. He established that righteousness is no longer about what to do or not do, but faith in the One who fulfills all righteousness.
Our lives with God are behind closed doors. They are nothing more than child-like faith, simple prayers with simple words, and an open Bible. This is what is rewarded before God.
It is easy to complicate obedience to only be impossible leaps of faith and bold declarations. But at the heart of it all, obedience is a life lived before the audience of One and in turn produces the impossible that only the Holy Spirit can do.
When I hear about people in the faith who have done heroic things for God, I often ask: What did their prayer lives look like? What did they know about God that gave them the confidence to obey in such a costly way?
One of my favorite leaders to learn about is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you have read this newsletter for any length of time you will surely hear much about him. His life was fascinating. He was a pastor during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s. He called the Church to stand with the Jewish people during the Holocaust. He said that the Church was only the Church if Jews and Gentiles were standing side by side. This was incredibly controversial during this time. Everyone else was bowing to the Aryan rhetoric that strips the Bible of its “Jewishness” to appease Hitler’s satanic ideology.
One of the marking moments in Dietrich’s prayer life was the Sermon on the Mount. These Scriptures were a turning point in his faith. He described them as freeing him from himself and finding a depth in his prayer life for the first time. Later on, he built an entire seminary around the Sermon on the Mount.
“Then something happened, something that has changed and transformed my life to the present day. For the first time I discovered the Bible . . . I had often preached. I had seen a great deal of the Church, and talked and preached about it—but I had not yet become a Christian. . . . I know that at that time I turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage for myself . . . I pray to God that that will never happen again. Also I had never prayed, or prayed only very little. For all my loneliness, I was quite pleased with myself. Then the Bible, and in particular the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from that. Since then everything has changed.”
—Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas
You can read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. This is a great place to start and revisit often on the narrow road. I can’t get enough of these chapters.
As always, the doodle of the week.
PSALM 2
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
The Psalmist is beholding a future sight. It concerns the Son of God and His throne in Zion (Jerusalem). As he is seeing the days we are yet to live, he is asking why—why are the nations raging?
There is an unprecedented, demonically charged rage that will dominate the nations of the earth and their kings. The Psalmist is peering into boardroom conversations where political leaders and rulers are conspiring on how to “break the bonds” of the Word of God off of them. They are taking a direct stand against God and against His anointed Son Jesus.
Jesus spoke of the same hatred: “But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: They hated me without a cause.’” (Jn. 15:25) There is something about the world’s hatred of Jesus that goes beyond all reasoning and sense. There is no reason to justify such a violent response.
We know this Psalm is speaking of the future when it says the nations will be in the possession of Jesus. He will be Lord over all of them. We have yet to see all nations come under the kingdom of God, both for judgment and dominion.
There is only one response appropriate for all mankind in the face of God’s glorious Son. That is to bow low under the Lordship of Jesus and kiss the Son. We must take refuge in the merciful work of the cross. If not, we will perish in the way.
The Gospel isn’t only that Jesus came and saved us from our sins.
He is coming back to be enthroned in Jerusalem, to rule and reign for all of eternity. This has been decreed by God Almighty and secured by the blood of the Lamb. Jesus is the Jewish King who will rule the world. He will be enthroned on Zion and every eye will see this happen.
What a prophecy Psalm 2 is for this hour.
I wanted to include a few journal notes from the week. I am not sure where to put these other than food for thought.
The deeper you go in God, the more you lose yourself. The more you lose yourself, the more you find it.
There is a lie that the deeper you go in God, the more disconnected from reality you become. But the truth is, the deeper you go in God, the more you see reality clearly.
God enables you to see. And hear. The further away from God you are, the more disconnected from reality you become. Everything becomes about ourselves and the life we want.
Persecution fuels the proclamation of the Gospel.
I imagine that after the Psalmist wrote Psalm 2, he closed up his notebook and laid his head to sleep. I wonder what his secret life before God was like.
One of the most profound verses about insane prophesies like Psalm 2 is 1 Peter 1:10-12. It says the prophets “searched” and “inquired” of their own writings about Jesus… meaning they didn’t even know what they just wrote. Their journal pages were filled with mysteries about Jesus and they didn’t understand it. They had to search and inquire like we do. Or as I like to call it, “Do Proverbs 2.”
One of our TSN readers suggested Resilient by John Eldredge as a “practical for replenishing our reserves.”
If you are looking for a movie to watch this weekend, Covenant and Controversy is a must! It unpacks the controversy over the land of Israel and the Jewish people from the beginning of time. This is essential for the days we are living in. God is faithful to His covenant people. This conflict is not staying on Israeli soil but will impact all of our lives. This topic is a worthy investment for every believer to dig into.
Send us any of your “Jesus” recommendations at intheupcoming@gmail.com. We would love to hear them!
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Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Matt. 4:4)