Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Voice of God: Your Path to Healing or to Suffering

There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, "If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer." (Exodus 15:25-26)

Since we are created beings, it is only reasonable to expect that the one who created us did so for a specific reason and with a specific plan in mind. Evolution is a lie and teaches just the opposite: that our life is the result of random chance and has no real meaning and purpose outside of ourselves. Evolution teaches that it’s a “dog-eat-dog” world, and that you have to look out for yourself.

Moses was 80 years old when he met God in the burning bush on Mt. Horeb. The first 40 years of his life was spent in the courts of Pharaoh in a life of luxury in Egypt, and the next 40 years were spent in the wilderness as a fugitive after murdering a man. His people were slaves in Egypt and oppressed. So when God appeared to him and told Moses that he was sending him back to Egypt to deliver his people, Moses could hardly believe his ears and began to argue with God. He had no confidence at all that God could do such a great thing as that through him. He was quite sure that God had made a mistake, that he had the wrong man.

But he was the right man. God works best when we put no confidence in ourselves, but instead trust him and his purpose for our life, and his power to see it accomplished. God told Moses that when he was done with Pharaoh, and that when the Israelites marched out of Egypt with all of the gold, silver, and fine clothes of the Egyptians, that they would all come back to Mt. Horeb to serve God as his people: “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

As created beings, we all serve a purpose in God’s grand scheme of events in history. Evolution is the vain imagination of man that tries to believe that there is no God, and no accountability in life. But since we are created beings, everyone is a servant, a slave of someone else more powerful than ourselves. No one is more powerful than God, the Creator of all. So it is obviously best to serve him as a willing slave, and not others or ourselves. And that is just what God was offering to the Israelites. He was offering them the opportunity to stop serving Pharaoh as slaves to Pharaoh’s purposes, and instead to start serving God and his plan for their life. God’s plan and purpose for their lives was based on a promise, a covenant that was made to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It included the land of Canaan as their home, the promised land “flowing with milk and honey”: God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. (Exodus 6:2-5)

Pharaoh also served God’s purposes, but not willingly. He did not know God, so he chose to not obey God and to not listen to the voice of God: Pharaoh said, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go." (Exodus 5:2) The result was disastrous for him and his people. They lost their health, their wealth, and even their firstborn children. God used Pharaoh and his stubbornness to accomplish his purposes: For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. (Exodus 9:14-16)

As created beings, we all serve someone. As the Creator, God has a master plan, and none of his created beings can prevent his purposes from happening. We can get with the plan and listen to his voice to find out where we fit in, serving him willingly and realizing what a wonderful God he is and how much he loves us. Or we can ignore him and his voice, choosing to follow our own selfish desires which lead to slavery in the kingdom of darkness, and face the consequences of standing in the way of God and the carrying out his master plan like Pharaoh did. The Apostle Paul recognized this truth of everyone being a slave to someone also and wrote:

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:16-23)

The Israelites had been slaves to Pharaoh and Egypt for so long, that it was hard for them to serve someone who actually loved them. They didn’t believe it. So when the going got tough, they just expected the worse, and doubted that God really loved them or cared about them. They had a hard time listening to God’s voice and obeying it, because they had ignored him for so long. So God brought them through various tests in the desert, to see if they would respond in faith and trust him. Most of them failed miserably. In Exodus 15, just after God miraculously divided the sea and rescued them from Pharaoh’s army, they find themselves thirsty with no water and doubting God again. So God made a promise, a conditional promise tied to a commandment: saying, "If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer." (Exodus 15:26) (It is interesting to note that this promise and command was given before the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law that was given to Moses on Mt. Horeb later on, suggesting that listening to the voice of God is even more important than the Ten Commandments. After all, if we had a perfect relationship with God and listened to his voice perfectly moment by moment always obeying it, what need would there be for a written law??)

Could God have stated this any simpler? Listen to his voice and obey it, and he will be your healer. Ignore his voice and choose not to obey it, and you have Pharaoh and the Egyptians, along with all their diseases, as your example of those who disobey his voice.

Now while there are many other reasons why we might experience sickness besides disobeying God’s voice, one thing is very obvious: God is our healer! Evolution would deny this, seeing sickness as only a physical problem with man-made drugs and technology as the solution, with no regard for God and his voice in the matter. But the way to health is listening to the voice of God and understanding his will for your life. Are you serving God today by listening to his voice and obeying it? Are you getting your spiritual nourishment by seeking his specific will for your life so that you are following the game plan of the Creator of the universe? Or are you foolishly trying to stand in the way of God, living a life of slavery to your own passions and desires, because you have ignored God? One way leads to health, but the other way leads to misery and suffering. All of us are going one way or the other today. Which way are you going today?

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Words of Jesus in Matthew 7:13-14)

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Necessity of Spiritual Food

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:3)

Forty years had passed since the Lord had led his people Israel out of Egypt, where they had been slaves. Through many miracles and a mighty display of God’s power, the people were led out of Egypt to Mt. Sinai where they received the Law through Moses, and then they proceeded to the land of Canaan, the “promised” land that God had promised to them hundreds of years earlier in the covenant with Abraham. But after serving the Egyptians as a minority people in slavery for many generations, they did not know how to trust God or follow his leading, so the Lord had to wait for a whole generation to die and then lead their children into the Promised Land. It took 40 years of wandering around in the desert before they were ready to enter into the land. The book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ last sermon to the people, the new generation, before they took over the land.

As Moses reviews the past forty years to this new generation, reminding them about the conditions of the Law, he also reminds them about how God humbled them in the desert, where there was not enough natural food to sustain such a large nation of people for forty years. During that time, God miraculously provided a nutritious food for them called “manna” that fell from heaven like dew on the ground. As Moses says in Deuteronomy 8:3 above, this proved to the people that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. There is more to life than physical food – there is spiritual food as well that is needed for people to live their lives in fulfillment of the purpose for which they were created. Moses referred to this spiritual food as “every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

Jesus quoted this same exact verse when he fasted in the desert: Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:1-4) Jesus also acknowledged that there was spiritual food that is necessary to sustain life for man. What the devil asked Jesus to do was not wrong in its essence, after all later on in his ministry Jesus did miraculously create bread (and fish) on a couple of occasions. It was the fact that the Holy Spirit had led Jesus into the desert to fast for those forty days and nights. That leading of the Holy Spirit was “the word that came from the mouth of God.” To create food and eat it at that time would have been an act of disobedience to the word (the specific will of God for his life at that time) that had come from God.

We can conclude also that when Moses was referring to “every word that comes from the mouth of God” in his discourse to the Israelites, that he was not referring to the commandments of the Law which served to teach the people how to live their lives as a holy people before God. They wandered around in the desert for forty years, and the Law did not contain a road map and time schedule for their wanderings, for example. They needed daily specific instructions from the Lord to survive in the desert.

Today, for those of us living in the Kingdom of Light serving Jesus as our King, we too must expect specific instructions for our daily life. This is our spiritual food. If we don’t seek out this food and eat it, by obeying the will of God in our lives, we are not being properly nourished and therefore we cannot have optimal health. Remember the words of King David, who needed daily guidance from the Lord to lead the nation: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalms 139:23-24)

Is that the cry of your heart today? Are you receiving your spiritual food from the Lord with his word for your life today? David’s request above to be led by God came at the end of Psalm 139, which is one of the most eloquent pieces of literature ever written by man acknowledging that God is the Creator and sustainer of life, and that he has a specific plan and purpose for our lives. Physical food is not enough for you to truly live a healthy life. You need spiritual food as well. The contrast to that truth is the belief in evolution, which gives no more meaning and value to man than the meaning attached to an evolved blade of grass, and which leads one down a path of hopelessness and disease resulting in death. It denies the spiritual part of man, and teaches that man can live in the physical realm only, simply on physical food. Remember the promise of Jesus today, and seek your spiritual food!

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

What Should be Our Attitude Towards Government?

In the February 9, 2009 devotional I wrote about how we must not trust in our government to meet our needs, but rather put our trust in Jesus, the ruling King of the Kingdom of God which is the Kingdom of Light. His Kingdom is an everlasting and perfect Kingdom, and Jesus is worthy of our trust and able to meet all of our needs, whereas human governments are not.

So what is our attitude towards these imperfect, temporary human governments supposed to be? We have excellent examples in the Bible, as well as direct New Testament teaching on this subject to help us understand this topic.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

According to the apostle Paul, our first attitude towards government is to be an attitude of prayer, praying that our government leaders would come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved by God’s grace through the forgiveness of sins. This is our starting point. We are to do our best to serve our government and to desire their good welfare. We have just completed studying the lives of the Old Testament believers who lived in Babylon/Persia during the captivity, often serving very ungodly kings who did not follow the law of Moses that the Jewish kings ruled by, and they always served their government wholeheartedly seeking their good welfare. Do you pray for your government officials and desire their good welfare, even if you did not vote for them to be elected, or don’t agree with their policies?

During the days of the apostle Paul there came to be quite a few believers living in Rome, the center of government in those days. Paul had never met these believers face to face, and wrote a letter to them about the Christian faith. In that letter he gives even more specific instruction and teaching about our roles with human government:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. (Romans 13:1-7)

It is important to note that the Roman government was anything but a godly government. And yet this passage makes it quite clear that we are to submit to our government authorities, and respect them, understanding that God, the ruler of the universe, has allowed them to come into power fulfilling his own master plan for the universe. The Roman government would actually go on and become antagonistic towards Christians, persecuting them and even killing them. But it is clear that those of who are born again into God’s kingdom and walking in the light are to be model citizens, giving no cause for being punished for breaking the laws of the land. This is the standard by which we must live our lives in relationship to our government.

So what about instances where the human government directly commands us to worship and serve other gods besides the one true God, our Creator, or to do things God has specifically commanded us to do otherwise? We have very clear examples of this in scripture, and we have already studied quite a few of these cases in the lives of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Mordecai, and Esther. All of these believers at one point were faced with the decision of having to choose to either obey God, or obey their government and its laws, and they chose to obey God and face the consequences of disobeying their government. We see the same thing happen in the early church, where Christ commanded his followers to tell everyone about the gospel message of salvation, and then their government officials told them not to:

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, "What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name." So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." (Acts 4:13-20)

So remembering all of the principles we have covered here, that we are to pray and seek the good welfare of our government officials, and that we are to submit to them and be model citizens, I think we have very clear direction and examples in the Bible about what to do in those situations when we have to choose to obey God rather than men, realizing where our ultimate citizenship is within the Kingdom of God, and who our ultimate allegiance to must be. In those situations where we must make a choice to disobey human government, it is to be with an attitude of submission, even to the point of offering up our lives for the sake of obeying God. This is what Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Mordecai, and Esther all did, and in doing so changed their culture and the world in which they lived. They did not fear death or punishment from human governments, realizing their positions in God’s eternal kingdom. At no point do we see them joining forces with rebels who wanted to oppose the government with physical force.

Jesus, of course, is our supreme example. When the government forces came to arrest him and his disciples tried to defend him he said: "Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" (Matthew 26:52-54) Jesus’ Kingdom is not yet in the physical realm, but in the spiritual realm, and his voluntary death by submitting to the human government of his day accomplished a tremendous victory in defeating once and for all the ruler of the kingdom of darkness, Satan.

Those of us who have been reborn into the Kingdom of Light belong to a kingdom quite different from the kingdoms and governments of the world, but while we still walk this earth temporarily we are to pray for our government officials, seeking their good welfare, and submitting to them and their authority. When we are faced with difficult choices and must choose to obey God over man, we do so humbly without rebellion, even to the point of offering up our physical lives as a sacrifice to God, knowing that our future is secure in the eternal Kingdom of God.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

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Sunday, April 5, 2009

For Such a Time as This

Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king's gate, and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king's treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law--to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days." And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, "Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish." Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him. (Esther 4:6-17)

Much like the stories of Daniel and his three friends, the story of Mordecai and Esther show the incredible testimonies of two minority Jews in a foreign country who trusted in God and his purpose for their lives. The legacy of Daniel and the fruit of his faith and obedience to God culminated during the first year reign of King Cyrus, the Persian king, before Mordecai and Esther came on the scene: In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: "Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. (Ezra 1:1-2) Cyrus, who refers to God by using the Hebrew name and not the Persian name, issued a decree to allow the Jews to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. So here we have the leader of “all the kingdoms of the earth” giving credit to God and wanting to worship him! Daniel’s faith and the faith of other Jews changed the world, and God’s truth was proclaimed everywhere. So God’s purpose in history was accomplished without a temple in Jerusalem, and without his chosen people even living in the promised land. The Abrahamic covenant that Abraham’s seed would be a blessing to all the nations on earth (not just the Jews), was partially fulfilled during this captivity period, just as it was partially fulfilled during Solomon’s reign.

The ultimate fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, and also the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant that his family would always have someone sitting on the throne of the kingdom, was completely fulfilled through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born to the virgin Mary in the line of David. It is interesting to note that at the time of the birth of Jesus, that the only Jews who came to worship him as their king and Messiah were some lowly shepherds tending their flocks in the field, who saw a vision of angels from heaven announce his birth. But there were also some royal officials from outside Israel, Magi from the “east”, the area that used to be part of the Persian empire, that came to worship him and give very rich gifts. They had determined through the stars that this king of the Jews, the Messiah, was to be born at that time. Who were these Magi, and how could they have this kind of knowledge? We don’t have much written text on them available, but it is certainly reasonable to think that they were of Jewish descent from the days of the captivity when Daniel and the others had tremendous influence over the culture, and were schooled in the ways of the Chaldeans and later the Medes and Persians, which included astrology. They were also scholars of the Old Testament writings. So the legacy of Daniel’s obedience, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, of Mordecai and Esther, and probably many other living in captivity in the ancient land of Persia like Nehemiah and Ezra, bore fruit even hundreds of years later as they recognized the signs and times of the birth of Jesus the Messiah even more than the Jews living in Israel did! The gifts of the Magi from Persia allowed Mary and Joseph to leave Israel and move to Egypt for a period of time as King Herod tried to find Jesus and kill him. God's purposes in history were accomplished by people that he created and who understood their purpose in the time in which they lived, and lived a life of simple obedience and faith to their Creator. Most of them could not possibly have foreseen how their simple acts of obedience and faith in their daily lives could be used by God to change the world.

But as we saw in the devotional two weeks ago, the kingdom of darkness will always strike back. We see during the time of Mordecai and Esther, that the Jews have plenty of enemies throughout the Persian kingdom during the days of king Ahasuerus. The book of Esther starts out with Mordecai apparently having some kind of government position under the king, but not the highest one. A man by the name of Haman takes on the highest ranking, and he was an enemy of the Jews. The king had apparently commanded that people bow down and worship Haman, but Mordecai refuses to do so because of his faith as a Jew, and his desire to worship no one except God alone. So much like what we saw in the book of Daniel, this enemy of the Jews, while apparently finding no fault in Mordecai in terms of his service, attacks the Jews and their faith by getting the king to issue a decree to destroy all the Jews throughout the Persian Empire. The king was tricked into this, as he apparently did not know that the people that supposedly constituted a threat to his kingdom, according to Haman, were Jews.

It just so happened that King Ahasuerus had recently taken a new wife as queen: Esther. Esther was the cousin of Mordecai, and as an orphan was brought up by him. He had instructed her in the beginning not to reveal her ethnicity to the king. She continued to be obedient to Mordecai, even after she became queen. So the king himself was married to a Jew, and not even Haman knew this. So when the decree to destroy the Jews goes out, Mordecai tells Esther that it is time to tell the king she is a Jew, and plead for their deliverance from Haman. Esther objects at first, stating that the law did not allow her to approach the king on her own initiative, and that to do so was to risk death. But Mordecai responds: “Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Esther responds by putting her life on the line in an attempt to save the Jews. She did not regard her position and relationship to the king as more important than obeying God and submitting to the request of Mordecai. As a result, the most powerful woman in the world at that time accomplished a great victory for God’s people through her faith and obedience. She recognized her role in life, and the purpose for which God created her, and she did not use her position of power for personal gain, but instead to serve the Kingdom of God and save her people. She understood that she was born for “such a time as this.”

What were you born for during this time here in 2009? Have you considered what God’s plan is for your life in “such a time as this?” Esther apparently had no choice when she was chosen to become part of the king’s harem, but she humbly submitted to those in authority over her, and ended up becoming the most powerful woman in the world. Once she attained that status, she did not use it for personal gain, but even risked her life to obey God as she humbled herself before the cousin that brought her up, who was serving in a position in the government that was below hers. Are you sacrificing your own desires and aspirations today for the sake of serving God and serving others, by putting the needs of others ahead of your own needs, even to the point of being willing to give up everything, even your own life? Esther did, and she changed the world.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)

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