Passing by

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Category: Teachings & Articles
Published: Wednesday, 11 September 2019 01:29
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Passing by

By Augusto A. Kho

Sucat, Paranaque ; 30 August 2019; 1:21 am

for Sunday Preaching: September 01, 2019

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I couldn’t sleep on the wee hour of early morning on that Friday. That was August 30, 2019 at 1:21 A.M.

 

What was on my thoughts are dreadful concerns that needs immediate considerations like a prayer, accurate forecast, strong political determination; and realistic preemptive measures and decisive actions.

 

In just less than 24 hours three untoward incidents took place last August 21-22, 2019. One, our office was “ransacked.” Second, my business associate is being detained by Interpol police. Third, an employee-manager of ours earning six (6) digits figures threatened to resign. Was it an “act of God” (AOG) or merely lapses of judgment or it is man-made?

 

Sometimes God has to press the brake pedal for us so that we may slow a bit and think about Him. And from there to depend lon Him alone. “Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God,” the Scriptures says.

 

We are not alone in such a dreadful and very unbearable journey. It can happen anytime at any place to any person. But sometime we ask this question, “Why me?” Can’t God just spare us and let it happen to someone else and not me? Yet when everything is alright, we seemingly don’t give God a space in our lives.


While contemplating those scary and nearly unbelievable events, a particular thought, a verse from the Scripture came to my mind – the journey of Israel.

 

“Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?” - Jeremiah 2:6/ KJV

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Please notice the underlined words. Those are terrifying places like wilderness, pits, drought-stricken place, a land of death, land that no one passes by and a forsaken place.

 

And I’ve been there on a desert that no one lives. I saw the place myself personally in 2017. But sometimes what appear to be real in our eyes differs from what we see beyond today for what we hope to be.

 

And whenever you asked this question:

 

“Where is the Lord?”

 

That question sow unbelief, doubts, uncertainty and fear of unknown. It beclouds your hope and undermine your sense of focus paralyzing your determination to live.

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Hysterically historical

God can rant us over and over again. We don’t normally want to be always nagged neither that we like people who are hysterically historical who keep reminding us the same things over and over again. Yet how about God? At times God is like that who becomes historical to us.

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God often reminds us that He was there when we were alone. Often God will always remind us that He was with us in our most difficult times. That He had never forsaken us. God does that to Israel as well who is the apple of His eyes.

 

But tracing back the lives of the Jews from the time God renamed Jacob as Israel, historical became a great issue. God as if ranting but actually reminding the Jews of what He have done have been repeatedly mentioned in Psalm 106:

  • Psalm 106:7, “Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.”

  • Psalm 106:9, “He rebuked the Red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the depths, as through the wilderness. “

  • Psalm 106:22, “Wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red sea.”

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Yet if you read the next verse after Jeremiah 2:6, what does it tell us?

 

“And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof..” (Jeremiah 2:7/ KJV).

 

 

Here are they now

The Jews who just passed by in the terrible wilderness is here now on a place they called “home, the Canaan land.

 

And the photo below shows, the country which is now called “Israel” where God brought the Jews through the wilderness after 40 years of journey.

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Passing by

Let us read again Jeremiah 2:6/ KJV then digest it deeply.

Jeremiah 2:6/ KJV, “Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?”

And notice the underlined words. What is that word? Yes! the word “through.” What is the word “through” mean to you?

 

On pilgrimage

Have you been in pilgrimage? How long have you been in that journey of life that makes you wander, lonely and in pain?

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Genesis 47:9, “And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. ”

1Peter 2:11, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.”

Our pilgrimage is only right here where we are standing at. Pilgrimage is only earth-bound where there is pain, suffering, sorrow, loss and death. We as believers of the Lord does not see ourselves on permanent status on those life’s misgiving. We are merely passing by as strangers in the journey of suffering, pain or death.

When you are a pilgrim on a very difficult situation you don’t dwell or live there. Pilgrim in Greek word “parepidemos” means “a stranger” or “alien.”

 

Five (5) times the word, “through” is mentioned on that single verse alone. The word, “through” in Hebrew “abar” (aw-bar) means “to pass over,” or “passing by.”

So let us read again Jeremiah 2:6/ NKJ in the very simple and direct translation from the word “through.”

“Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us passing by the wilderness, passing bya land of deserts and of pits, passing by a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, passing by a land that no man passed PASSING BY , and where no man dwelt?”

On that very early morning on wee hours when I could not sleep, the Lord is like telling me that I am merely PASSING BY on some difficult path in my life journey. And in the same way that you are merely passing by in the most difficult time of your life.

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Passing by

Fear will merely pass by. Hunger will merely pass by.

  • Tears

  • Sorrows

  • loss

  • pain

… will soon ease away. The present earth is only a place where we are passing by. Final home awaits us. This is the hope to what we believe in today otherwise we will not place our unfaltering faith on God.

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