When God Laughs! Part 4

Psalm 2:7-8, “I will declare the decree: ‘The Lord has said to Me, You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.’”

In between teachings I began looking at this Psalm a little differently, not really through a different prism, but merely from a different angle. If we analyze this Psalm we realize there are a lot of parties doing a lot of talking, and just from a rudimentary reading we can discern four distinct voices trying to get our attention, trying to teach us something, or trying to distract us. 

As we've already discussed, the first voice is the voice of the nations who rage, the nations who counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed One.

One thing that I found interesting and even pertinent to our current situation as a nation is that it was the leaders and the men of authority in these nations who were encouraging the people to ‘break the bonds and cast away the cords’.

It was the leaders of the nations encouraging the people to lawlessness, and rebellion. It was those in authority who shook their fist at God and incited others to do likewise.

The voices rage to this day, the voices of kings and princes and presidents and judges, and all manner of men who have some sort of authority or wield some sort of power.

If we give these voices half the chance, it is very probable we will grow discouraged and dour in our outlook, rather than retain the joy of the Lord which is our strength. As a side note, you know that you have the joy of the Lord when everyone else around you is on the edge of despair, yet you still have an unexplained yet very real and tangible joy in your heart.

It’s one thing to have joy when everyone else has it; it’s another to have joy when few others do.

The second voice we saw as the Psalm continues to progress was the voice of the Father who declared that He had set His King on His Holy hill of Zion. We saw the Father declaring the immutability of His Son’s place, and though the nations raged and the kings plotted, Jesus is still upon the throne the Father has given Him.

The third voice we begin to hear now is the voice of the Son.

It is the Son declaring the decree of the Father, who promised Him the nations for His inheritance and the ends of the earth for His possession if He so desired and asked.

The one profound thing we must understand from this Psalm above all others is how much God the Father loves His Son!

The nations and the ends of the earth were His if He so asked, yet God so loved the world, that  He sent this Son He loved so much to  die upon a tree so His rebellious, disobedient, duplicitous and indifferent creation might be reconciled unto Him.

In order to fully understand the love God has for His creation, for you and me and all who breathe and walk this earth, we must understand the love God has for His Son first.

If God the Father and the Son were at odds, if they'd been arguing or they didn't see eye to eye, then perhaps we could reason that having sent Jesus was not such a monumental thing.

But this was not the case. God loved His Son to the point of offering Him everything if He so desired it, and it would not have seemed burdensome or extravagant to Him.

It’s as though Jesus was saying, ‘this is what My Father promised me, even offered if I so desired it.’

By the same token we can also understand why God grows wrathful and shows His deep displeasure when the Son He so loves is mocked and ridiculed and belittled and ignored and marginalized by both the world and the church.

Imagine having a son whom you loved with all your heart, whom you would do anything for, then seeing that selfsame son being maligned and spat upon and vilified though there was no evil in him.

Would you get angry? Would you grow wrathful? 

Even if we got angry and grew wrathful there isn't much we could do about it, but God can, and yet He tarries. Perhaps longer than some of us think He ought. 

It’s in the layered complexity of God’s emotions and attributes that we begin to realize the depth of the multidimensional God we serve, a God who loves, a God who forgives, a God who restores and receives, but also a God who is capable of exhibiting wrath, and bringing forth justice.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

When God Laughs! Part 3

Psalm 2:5-6, “Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure: ‘Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.’”

Even though God holds those who plot against Him in derision, it does not mean He does not grow angry when men repeatedly attempt to circumvent His will and authority. God’s displeasure is deep, and He even grows wrathful when rebellion is the order of the day, and those who ought to humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways and seek His face, instead choose to rebel against Him all the more, and incite others to similar action.

Ever notice how the godless attempt to convince others that godlessness is a good and noble and desired ideal? Ever notice how they attempt to belittle anyone who believes in God, or make them out to seem unbalanced and odd?

It’s because they are not content with having become reprobate themselves, they are not content with having surrendered to godlessness and walking in rebellion, they desire others to follow suit and do as they have done.

Within these two verses we also discover why nations are distressed, why things are going from bad to worse, and why every remedy seems to backfire and make the situation even direr than it was before.

Once again, it is an issue of causality…of cause and effect. Because the nations rage and the people plot against the Lord, the Lord grows wrathful and in His deep displeasure distresses the selfsame nations and kings which were plotting against Him.

Depending on the prism through which one sees the world, it would be easy to grow despondent if not outright terrified of what is happening and what is likely to happen based on the pieces which have moved into place on the global chessboard.

Just seeing the world as it is through natural eyes, seeing how the nations plot and scheme and with each bluster and threat come closer to actual, literal war, it would be easy for someone to conclude that we are spinning out of control, and eventually we’re going to come to that culminant point wherein even if we wanted to walk back the rhetoric and be a little less dire in our wording, it will be too late.

As children of God however, we do not see through the prism of the natural. We do not see through natural eyes, but through the prism of the Word of God, and His promises to His children.

No matter how dark the times, no matter how dire the days, we must remember the words of God, and not be swayed or caused to tremble.

“Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.”

These are not the words of any mere man; they are the words of God. Though you might see distress of nations, though you might see wars and rumors of wars, though you might see trials and famines and all manner of things, remember, God has set His King on His holy hill of Zion, and no matter what the world might go through, Jesus is still upon the throne.

God made a declaration. He declared something He had done – not something He would do – and there was no shadow of doubt as to His having done it. God never hinted he would ‘try to set His King upon His holy hill,’ or ‘if everything worked as it should He would set His King upon His holy hill,’ He had already done it. It was a declaration in the past tense of something which had already come to pass, and this knowledge ought to enliven our wearied souls and give us a new and fresh hope. Jesus is on the throne!

Although God laughs at the lawless and rebellious, and distresses them, He has long made provision for His sons and daughters. He has long prepared their place of safety upon His holy hill of Zion with His beloved Son Jesus. He is the place of refuge and safety. He is the place where all worry melts away and fear for tomorrow fades into nonexistence.

We can either be among those whom God laughs at, mocks, and distresses, or among those whom God protects, comforts, and keeps. We can either be true sons and daughters of the Kingdom, submitting to the will of our Father, or rebellious, ungrateful, illegitimate sons and daughters who have somehow grown tired of the Father’s love and mercy.

Depending upon our choice, we reap either God’s goodwill and abundant blessing or His derision and distress.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

When God Laughs! Part 2

What more can be learned from these first handful of verses of the second Psalm?

It is clear upon reading the first four verses of Psalm 2 that the kings and rulers of the earth raged and plotted and conspired because they no longer wanted to be accountable to God, and desired to declare their independence from Him. Whether consciously or unconsciously many an individual is guilty of the selfsame plotting and scheming against God as the rulers of the earth are.

Just look around, and you’ll see this spirit taking hold not only of nations, but of churches, and individuals, wherein they no longer want to be associated with the Christ, they no longer want to declare their loyalty to Him, they just want to be free to do as they desire.

In the end, this is what declaring one’s independence from God really means. It means that the decision was consciously made to remove oneself from beneath God’s covering and protection, just so they could do as they please, live as they please, and act as they please without that nagging feeling of God’s eye upon them.

Seeing as this pertains to those who desire independence from God, I wanted to look at this verse from a different angle to see how it might pertain to those of us who will choose faithfulness, and obedience, and devotion to God no matter how many choose to attempt to do away with Him.

It is inevitable and logical that life for those of us desiring to live for truth will grow harder and harder, because the more men hate God and turn their hearts against Him, the more they will persecute His true servants and do what they can to do away with them as well.

The world cannot hate God and love us. If God’s nature is in us, if the Spirit of God is indwelling in our hearts and as servants of the most High we strive to be more like Jesus, the world will inevitably associate us with the God they hate and hate us just as passionately as it hates Him.

This is why I find it troublesome when the world falls in love with one or another of our preachers and embraces him and elevates him and praises him as an oasis of reason amidst a sea of irrationality.

Men today will try anything except for submitting to God and obeying Him. Even the most outlandish plans are tried by those desperate enough to resort to desperate measures, but when someone has the insight to say that perhaps the remedy for what ails us lies in turning back toward the God we abandoned, the reaction is swift and violent.

What the world today fails to understand is that true freedom is achieved through submission and not through rebellion.

Other than seeing that God hears, is engaged, and is neither indifferent nor too busy to care, what more can we perceive and understand of His nature and His glorious attributes?

Even though God laughs, it is not because someone told a funny joke, or because He saw something amusing, his laugh is not one of mirth, but one of derision and irony as He beholds the rulers of the earth attempting to counsel together against Him.

God is not perturbed by the noises of the squeaky wheels, or by their exaggerated fist shaking at His expense. Seeing how animated some people get protesting the notion of God, or trying to convince others of God’s nonexistence, you’d think they thought they were hurting God’s feelings by how angry they are.

God laughs when kings and rulers plot against him, never mind some infinitesimally less relevant twenty something who thinks they are edgy because they hold up some sign or another. They scream and wave and shake their fists, and God laughs holding them in derision.

In his rebellion man desires to make God in his own image, and in a vivid show of madness begins to demand that the one true God act and react in accordance with the image they created. Many do the same with the Word of God, not seeing what it says, but seeing what they want it to say, and when you hear some men try to explain a simple, straightforward Biblical passage that they've reinterpreted through the prism of their own understanding, you can’t help but stand there and scratch your head wondering just how they were able to get to where they got based on the verses they’d just quoted.

Have you ever, perchance heard an individual say ‘I don’t feel that’s really a sin,’ even though the Bible clearly says it is? If you have, then you've just witnessed someone declaring their independence from God.

We submit to God in all things not just some things. We obey His Word not only when it suits our interests or when it is in harmony with how we’d like God to act in a certain instance, but even when it’s detrimental to our flesh or we might suffer loss because of it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Who Do You Love?

I preached the following message earlier this month in Michigan, and since the church put it on the internet, I thought I'd share it with you.

It's not a long message, but I believe it is a timely one.

We will continue with the teaching on Psalm 2 sometime later this week, as I have to film some new programs, as well as do some radio interviews during the next couple days.

Thank you, to all those who came to the meetings. It was lovely meeting everyone of you, and thank you as well for your prayers. Yep, we drove 1600 miles in 2 days. I guess if God ever releases me from ministry I could always become a truck driver.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

P.S. Since I can't seem to get the video imbedded onto the post, you'll just have to click on the link and a new page will pop up. God bless.

Who Do You Love? Sermon

When God Laughs! Part 1

Psalm 2:1-4, “Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.”

With everything that’s been happening in this nation and the world as of late it is easy to lose sight of certain inescapable and absolute truths. When we lose sight of these truths, we can’t help but allow fear to creep into our hearts, and if not fear, in the least, concern for the future in general, and concern for the future of our children and grandchildren in particular depending on our age bracket.

Upon doing any sort of study in regards to the book of Psalms one quickly realizes that although the first Psalm was geared toward individuals, and had individuals in mind, the second Psalm is geared toward nations, and has entire nations in mind.

The first Psalm gave us counsel as individuals, highlighting the difference between the blessed and the cursed, between the righteous and the lawless, and although many believe the second Psalm is a continuation of the first, the message of it broadens and begins to include nations as well.

Another way of looking at the first and second Psalm – by the way, neither of which were written by David but by an anonymous source – is that the first Psalm deals with the law, and the second Psalm deals with the Prophets, or prophecies concerning a future time, and events not yet manifested in the present.

If in the first Psalm the accent and predominant central theme was man, in the second Psalm, the accent and predominant central theme is God.

It is in this second Psalm that we discover certain attributes of God’s nature, and the way He beholds those who resist, rebel, and defy Him.

Given everything that’s happening in the world today, the first verse of the second Psalm poses a very apropos and timely question: ‘Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain?’

Granted, none of those who are currently plotting and planning and raging and fuming believe that they are doing so in vain - their actions amounting to nothing more than attempting to empty out the ocean with a thimble - but the Word of God tells us that all their machinations are hollow, futile, and pointless.

Although we will get deeper into this Psalm as I am planning on making it a multi-part teaching, the first thing that stuck out and as such the first thing I want to share with you, is that regardless of what we see with our physical eyes, regardless of everything our senses are telling us and contrary to what the natural man is trying to imply, God is in control!

There has not been a second since the beginning of creation that God has not been in control. There has never been a circumstance, there has never been a situation that God did not foresee, or that somehow caught God by surprise and unaware.

Even the best laid plans of men turn to ruination when the God of heaven is against them. Even the most thought out, meticulous, infinitesimally detailed plots are stillborn when God’s plan differs from the plans of men.

It is when we forget that God is in control, it is when we forget that though the nations rage and the kings and rulers of the earth plot together they do so in vain that we grow despondent and concerned regarding a future which looks bleaker with each passing day.

Men plan, God laughs. Men work themselves up into a tizzy, thinking they can outmaneuver God, thinking they can go against His will and still prevail, and all God does in response is laugh and hold them in derision.

As this Psalm begins to unfold, we notice that the kings of the earth and the rulers thereof are not plotting and planning a war or a skirmish against a third party, they are not uniting under one banner to vanquish a foe, they’ve gathered together against the Lord and against His anointed.

In essence, the kings and rulers of the earth take counsel together to determine how they can do away with God and His anointed who is none other than Christ Jesus our Lord.

This ought to open our eyes to the reality that though we’re told by every media outlet that no one’s got anything against Christians and Christianity, the Word of God forewarned us even during the times of King David that rulers and kings would plot to break the bonds and cast away the cords of God from them.

In layman’s terms, these kings and rulers were plotting how they could acquire their independence from God. Certain truths begin to break away as we continue to meditate on this passage, and one of the most glaring ones is that in order to desire independence from God, one must have, at some point, been dependent upon Him.

One cannot desire independence from something or someone unless they were dependent to begin with.

These kings and rulers had decided they no longer wanted to submit themselves to God’s authority, and as such they began looking for ways and means by which they could break the bonds, and cast away the cords of God altogether.

The thing we must not lose sight of, is that God is not ignorant of these plans. God is not ignorant of the plots and counsels of kings and rulers, far removed from what goes on here on earth. He listens, He sees, and taking into account all they venture to do, He laughs.

We begin to see a portrait of an engaged God emerging from just these four verses, a God who is present, and involved, a God who has not removed Himself nor lost interest in His creation.

This gives us hope and joy and peace, because contrary to the vociferous declarations of some, God is still implicated in His creation’s existence, He still watches over the righteous, and yes, He still judges the ungodly.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Speaking in Nebraska and Iowa

It looks like this weekend I'll be doing more than my fair share of driving as we will be in Nebraska on Saturday evening, and in Iowa on Sunday morning.

Please keep us in your prayers, and pray for good weather as the past few days have been very unpredictable as far as rain, sleet, and other natural phenomenon are concerned.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Saturday April 20, 2013, 6:30 pm
Hastings Nebraska Holiday Inn Express Conference Room
3605 Cimarron Plaza
Hastings Nebraska 68901

Sunday April 21, 2013, 10:00 am
Cresco Iowa Assembly of God Church
317 3rd W Ave
Cresco, Iowa 52136

The Times We Live In

There have always been evil men. Since the beginning of creation when Cain slew his brother Abel and watched the life seep out of him, violent men have committed violent acts, often without rhyme or reason.

Most of us never come close to the viciousness of the evil some men are capable of. We live our lives in relative safety, sheltered to a certain degree, yet once in a while something gruesome and bloody takes center stage and once again we are reminded of the times we are living in.

Try as we might to ignore the realities taking shape around us, it has become nigh to impossible not to acknowledge that our perceived safety is just an illusion. More and more, we are seeing the evil lash out, whether by randomly stabbing individuals on a college campus, gunning down innocent children in a school, or detonating bombs meant to maim and kill all within their blast radius regardless of age, gender, or nationality.

True evil, the evil that is being manifest in this country as of late is an equal opportunity destroyer. Try as it might to hide under the umbrella of religious zealotry, the face of evil is easily recognizable if we would only have the strength of character to see it for what it is, and call it by its name.

The defining paradox of our age is that we have marginalized, condescended, and trivialized the only hope we have to stem the tide of evil, believing there would be no negative effects to our abandonment of God. The further one draws from the message of Jesus, the further one gets from the truth of God’s Word, the darker and more prone to evil the heart becomes.

A society protects what it values, and the fact that so many nowadays have no qualms or resentments about taking a human life, proves we no longer value the concept of life as a people.

I fear that we’ve always thought of as isolated incidents and something out of the ordinary will become the norm as long as we continue to treat the preciousness of life with contempt and disdain.

Soon enough we will be in a perpetual state of shellshock, no longer able to process or react in an appropriate manner to the things happening around us.

We will try – as we always do – to rationalize recent events, and find another explanation for their occurrence than the one staring us in the face. We will dig in our heels as a people and harden our hearts and shake our fists and reassure ourselves that these things aren’t happening because we abandoned God, but because the world hates us for our freedom. Look around. The freedom you once had is no longer the freedom you have presently, and with each passing day we are being corralled, and forced into the mold our betters believe we ought to be.

We knew these days were coming. Jesus warned of them, Paul warned of them, even Old Testament prophets warned of them. So if these times have caught us unaware, it was not for lack of trying to warn us on God’s part. We read what Jesus said about the last days, but in the back of our minds we always think it’s talking about another time, off into the future. A time perhaps our great grandchildren will have to contend with, but certainly not us.

We’ve gotten used to all of this. We’ve grown comfortable and made a permanent residence out of what was to be a temporary stay, willfully choosing to ignore the gnawing feeling that this isn’t home try as we might to make it seem so.

The times are not changing. The times have already changed. We can sense it and feel it and see it, and no matter how much we try to pacify this constant feeling of unease, it just won’t go away.

In times such as these we either draw closer to God, or allow fear to paralyze us. We either learn to trust Him unequivocally, or we allow hopelessness to sink its claws into our hearts.

One thing is certain: indifference is no longer an option, nor is pretending we are not living in the times we are living in.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.