In This Issue

• "THE FIRST WILL BE LAST AND THE LAST WILL BE FIRST"
• "AND THEY DID NOT REPENT"
• WEARING FREEDOM'S GARMENTS
• MORE INFORMATION...

"THE FIRST WILL BE LAST AND THE LAST WILL BE FIRST"

In Mark 10:31, Jesus said, "Many who are first will be last, and the last first." This statement was proverbial with Jesus. He used variations of it in at least three different contexts.

In Mark 10, a rich young ruler had come to Jesus expressing an interest in eternal life, but he went away grieved when he saw the necessity of setting aside his riches and trusting God. The apostles, on the other hand, had walked away from possessions and careers to follow Jesus. They trusted God to see them through. In the eternal realm, they would be abundantly more wealthy than the rich young ruler. Both Matthew and Mark record Jesus' words, "Many who are first will be last, and the last first."

Matthew 20 relates Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard. The kingdom of heaven is compared to a landowner who went out at various hours of the day to hire workers for his vineyard. At the end of the day, he paid what he had agreed to the workers hired first. He paid the others who had worked fewer hours the same amount. He reasoned with those who complained, Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?" Then Jesus added, "So the last will be first, and the first last." (Matt. 20:16).

In Luke 13:22-30, Jesus was on His last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem and in the last weeks of His earthly ministry. He indicated that many who expect to be saved will be greatly disappointed on the day of judgment. Some will plead, "'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.' But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you… Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.' There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out… Indeed there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last.'" 

A careful examination of this expression in each of its contexts shows it is simply another way of expressing what God had said in Isa. 55:8-9, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'"

By earthly standards, the rich young ruler "had it made." The scribes and Pharisees were shoo-ins. By earthly standards, the apostles of Jesus weren't much to begin with - fishermen, tax collectors, etc. Then they gave up what the did have: their possessions, their careers, their "security" - to follow an itinerant, unschooled preacher. By worldly standards, they were losers. But God is not going to judge men by such worldly standards. Those who "first" in men's eyes will come out last in God's judgment - "and the last will be first."

--Clarence R. Johnson

"AND THEY DID NOT REPENT"

 God is "not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9). Our Father in Heaven is not passive in the working of His will for individuals and nations to repent and do right. He desires that all come to repentance, and He so works as to prod that result along to the fullest extent possible, consistent with man's free moral agency. In spite of the Lord's efforts, sometimes repentance is just not forthcoming.

Jesus rebuked the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida, "because they did not repent" after seeing the evidence of His Sonship, the miracles which proved Jesus' claims about Himself (Mt. 11:20). 

Jesus was benevolent to a woman named Jezebel in the Book of Revelation by giving her time to repent (Rev. 2:21)! Yet, the passage says that this evil woman would not repent. Some folks will just never live long enough to repent and bring their lives into conformity to the Word of God. Peter wrote that the "longsuffering" of God toward us is to affect our salvation, and later in the same chapter the Holy Spirit caused Peter to write that we should consider this "longsuffering" as salvation. That is, it is time, right now, in which to repent…for without repentance, no one can be saved (2 Pet. 3:9, 15; Lk. 13:3, 5).

The Lord, in dealing with the persecutors of His saints in the first century, desired even them to repent. Consider a couple of passages in Revelation wherein the fourth and fifth bowls (vials) of the judgments of God against the remainder of the enemies of Christians are revealed: Rev. 16:9, 11. Here are pictured the enemies of God's people. God sends a "wake up call." To what end? Hear the words penned by inspired John on the Isle of Patmos, "and they did not repent and give Him glory." God wanted even the enemies of His people to repent (something Jonah had to learn the hard way). Earlier in Revelation, even the murderers, idolaters, fornicators and sorcerers were given evidence (punishment) that their current course needed correction, A.K.A., "repentance." The same words are found here, "they did not repent" (Rev. 9:20-21)

Even upon His Own erring people, God would sent compelling reasons for reconsideration of their errant ways. God wanted Israel to repent and He sent hard judgments (read, "punishments") upon them to induce better thinking about their course of action. God gave a famine to Israel, then a drought, then blight and mildew, then a plague as He had done to Egypt. God even overthrew some of them as He had done at Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, at each occasion of this punishment from God, the recorded result is, "Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord" (Amos 4:6, 7, 9, 10, 11). What was it to "return" to the Lord if it was not to "repent"? Ultimately, God ordered the prophet to tell Israel, "prepare to meet your God" (v. 12).

Among individual Christians, God sends chastisement from time to time, for our good. "My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son He receives" (Heb. 12:5-8).

So, what is the point? God wants His whole creation, and every nation and every person, to operate according to His righteous standard and His will. He is Sovereign. He is Creator. He is God. Everything that has been made has been created for His glory. The trouble is, nations and peoples have forgotten God and His righteous Word and principles from therein. He wants, desperately for nations and individuals to walk humbly before Him. He issues "wake up" calls for a purpose, to achieve repentance from a hardened world that seemingly cannot be aroused any other way. Oh yes, the love of God is displayed for the whole world to see in Jesus Christ, the way of repentance and redemption. The gospel, the Word of salvation has gone, and is going, forth. God is shouting at His creation through both megaphones: His Word, His judgments upon nations/individuals. 

What is His message? "Wake up, come and hear…repent and live." Yet, though God is not willing that any should perish, we need not think that doing justice regarding unforgiven sin's due penalty is something over which God will be in a state of pining. Or, as some think, that He will relent and allow sin to be in His presence in Heaven. Those who say such do not know the Scriptural character of Jehovah, that He cannot countenance sin in His presence. But, think of this shocking passage of Scripture, "Just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you" (Deut. 28:63). God wants our hearts in repentance. But, should we fail to give our hearts to him in obedience, He will not be at a loss to send wake up calls until he sees that our arousal from sin is impossible. God will send such chastisements until He sees that we are re-made, or that our re-making is not possible.

In the end, if we cannot be cleaned up, we will be cleaned out. Our choice. God Almighty means business. He is not a plastic god with a tinker toy church. Prepare to meet your God, now while we have the time, through His gracious longsuffering.  

--Keith E. Clayton

WEARING FREEDOM'S GARMENTS

When Clyde Thompson was 17 years old, he was sentenced to the electric chair. He thus became the youngest man in Texas to be sentenced to death for murder. He spent six months on death row, was served his "last meal." Six hours before his scheduled date with death word came that the governor had commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.

"Eight men are in their graves because I lived," he said in a speech in chapel. But many more are alive because he lives. Brother Thompson heard a sermon preached by P.D. Wilmoth and after further study was baptized into Christ. He spent the last of his 28 years behind prison bars preaching Christ to his fellow prisoners. He led many of them to the new life in Christ.

One of the most significant statements he made had to do with the difficulty he encountered in trying to put on the clothing he was given to wear out of the prison the day he became a free man. He was able to walk through doors he had tried unsuccessfully to break through for so many years. Some of those being released with him had no friends or loved ones to meet them. But the woman who had corresponded with him so faithfully and who was soon to become his wife had sent him a suit, a shirt with French cuffs, cuff links, a tie, shoes, socks, and underwear. Some of those items he had never worn before.

"I had to have help to put on my new clothes," he said. "You see, I didn't know how to wear freedom's garments." What a statement!

The thought occurred to me that not only do men released from the penal system of our state require help in putting on the garments of free men, but this is also the problem faced by the new convert to Christ, who just gained his freedom from the bondage of sin. He now wears garments never worn before. They are strange to him. He may feel still and awkward in his new "robes of righteousness."

They need help to know how to wear freedom's garments. Do they have your encouragement and mine? 

--Cline R. Paden

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