KOA Creations

To Israel, God promised that he would hear the groaning of the prisoner and release those appointed to death, to declare his name in Zion and praise him in Jerusalem. The scene is the gathering of people from all nations to serve the Lord. (Psalms 102:18-22)

The time is future, for God says it is written for the generation to come. Thus, to Israel, God prophesied that he would bring about a generation in the future of his people who would serve and praise him.

It is a specific and particular generation noted by the definite article, “the”. This will be written for “the generation” to come.” (Psalms 102:18) Thus, a particular generation in Israel’s future history would fulfill this Old Testament passage.

Thirdly, this generation was yet to be created. In other words, it would not be the same as the existing generations of Israel. God says, “That “a people yet to be created” may praise the Lord. Whoever this generation is, it is going to be one that God creates, hence a new people to serve the Lord.

The words “groaning” and “release” of the prisoner echo the refrain from Exodus when Israel was in bondage to Egypt. However, as God looks down from heaven he sees an even greater bondage, that of sin. He looks to the time when he would gather his people to himself from all kingdoms to worship and praise him in Zion.

We find the elements of this text completely fulfilled in the message of the New Testament in the finished work of Christ. Jesus, appearing in a synagogue in Nazareth, announced during a Sabbath day service that God had anointed him to release the captives and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:18, 19)

Jesus declared that he would free the captives and those who were oppressed. The comforting of God’s people resulted in their praises and God’s glory. The quotation from Isaiah 61:1-3 also includes the day of vengeance which was the flip side of the coin of the Jubilee year of freedom. Knowing Jesus alluded to their coming destruction, the Jews led him out of the synagogue to the hill on which their city was built to throw him over a cliff but he escaped. (Luke 4:29)

It is Jesus’ death and resurrection which effects the release of Israel in bondage to sin and the law. Hence after receiving the gospel, Paul forbids the church from being entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage, (Galatians 5:1). See also 4:9; 5:13.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul confirms that God had in fact created for himself a new people. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

To the church at Ephesus, Paul wrote, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:9).

The new man of the gospel was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10) This man created in Christ Jesus is put on in baptism, wherein the old man is crucified. (Galatians 3:26, 27; Romans 6:5, 6)

In this new creation, praises continue without ceasing to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generation, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:21).

Peter assures us that those who had been born again, (baptized believers, 1 Peter 1:23; 3:21), were the chosen generation of whom David spoke. “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9, 10)

It is this creation which Isaiah saw as the new people who would rejoice before God. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing, and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, nor the voice of crying. (Isaiah 65:17-19) The new Jerusalem God created is the church, the bride of Christ. (Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 22:1-3).

In summary, the new creation of God’s people consisted of the new Israel created in Christ Jesus. This equates to Jew and Gentile who received and obeyed the gospel in the terminal generation of Old Covenant Israel. God through Christ released them from the bondage and oppression of the law, sin and death setting them free into the liberty of God’s grace in the gospel. Those who rejected Christ, the old creation of Israel, fleshly Jews who held to the Law of Moses were destroyed in God’s day of vengeance upon the land when Rome destroyed Israel in 70 A.D.

Copyright

Once a person is “in Christ,” everything becomes new, refreshing and exciting. That is exactly what Jesus wants for us, to refresh us by making every aspect of our lives new and exciting. An important part of being “in Christ” is to go about our lives the way He has recommended. Jesus said we should love God “… with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31).

Jesus expects us to love God with everything we’ve got and not to be selfish. How does that compare with the way we actually live? More often than not, we are totally engrossed in the pursuit of our own interests, without a thought either for God’s will for our lives or for the harm we do to others in the pursuit of our own interests. What Jesus is recommending for our lives is essentially a shift of focus, from self to God and to others. This recommendation is also an excellent statement of the spirit of the law. Out of the ten commandments, the first four have to do with how we should behave toward God: We should not have any other Gods but Him. We should not make for ourselves any image to worship it. We should not take His Name in vain. We should honour the Sabbath day because on it God rested from the work of creation.

Then the other six have to do with how we should behave toward others: We should honour our fathers and mothers. We should not kill. We should not commit adultery. We should not steal. We should not bear false witness, neither should we covet that which belongs to others. These commandments could be re stated by saying that they require us to pay attention to what God requires of us and to look out for the interests of others. This resonates powerfully with the rest of scripture, where we encounter advice such as: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4), and “If any one says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20).

Our obnoxious self interest has locked us up in a number of serious problems, and it is only by turning away from self interest to pay more attention to God’s interests as well as to the interests of those around us that we can begin to get a handle on how to start finding solutions to these problems. We face serious problems regarding the state of the family. The breakdown of marriages has led to a disintegration of the family unit, which is the basic building block of society. A society can only be as strong as the constituent families that make up that society. Therefore an assault on the quality of the family unit threatens the integrity of the entire nation. The desirable ideal for every family should be a commitment between a husband and a wife to live in faithfulness to each other as a lifetime commitment. We have strayed so far from this ideal that today, practically every other marriage ends in divorce.

The estranged marriage partners try to pacify their distraught children by telling them that “this is between me and your father (or mother)”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children suffer irreparable harm when they are torn between two parents. Their lives are damaged in such ways that few things can deliver redress that can be regarded as acceptable. Those with parents who have stayed together over the years will testify to the degree of stability their lives have enjoyed just by knowing that their parents live together as one team. This is a major benefit that is denied children whose parents separate. In many cases the resulting instability stays on to wreak havoc in the lives of the children. And in any case there can be little doubt that children who have had to live through the breakdown of their parents’ marriage would have enjoyed a much better quality of life had their parents stayed together.

Having observed how unpredictable most marriages have become, an increasing number of young women now prefer to bring up children on their own. No one can tell what kind of deprivation these children suffer by not having both parents in their lives. This deterioration in the state of marriage and the family has come about as a direct result of selfishness in the partners. Each partner insists that things must go their own way, failing which they are quite happy to destroy a union that was their own treasured creation in the first place.

In a survey of 104 divorce petitions at the High Court in Nairobi, Kenya, I found that the most frequently cited grounds for which petitioners seek to end their marriages are Cruelty, Desertion, Adultery and Nullity, in that order. There is an undeniable streak of selfishness in the first three of these. Cruelty involves an individual who not only insists that things must go their way in the marriage, but is also prepared to mete out various kinds of retribution should the other party step out of line. People in marriages have been beaten black and blue by their own spouses. People have had to be hospitalized with broken bones. The story is always that they fell down the stairs, because they are still determined to salvage whatever is left of the marriage. Do not imagine it is only women who find themselves at the receiving end of such violence. There are mighty amazons out there whose terrorized husbands have to run and find a place to hide as soon as their wives enter through the front door. Such husbands suffer in silence because of course no one would expect such a thing to happen in a home, since it is usually the women who suffer physical abuse from men.

Furthermore, physical violence is not the only form of abuse, or cruelty. “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts” (Proverbs 12:18). When it comes to utilizing words to hurt, women surpass men by far. Actually it is partly because men have a deficiency in effectively putting words together to impact on another person that they result to physical violence, poor things! Verbal abuse can be so damaging that one would actually wonder which is worse, physical abuse or verbal abuse. They both fall into the category of cruelty, which the most commonly cited grounds for divorce in legal petitions. A curious thing occurred to me just now while I was writing: Take the word “words”, take the “s” and put it at the beginning of the word and see what happens! Use your words to heal, not to hurt. The selfishness in these matters is obvious. The solution is the same one we started off with, to be less mindful of our own interests and more mindful of God’s interests and the interests of others.

We in Africa have also suffered serious complications in the area of heath over the last twenty five years that have never been seen before. Humankind’s obnoxious self interest has invited the monster known as HIV/AIDS that is killing people in their millions throughout the world. Unfortunately, this monster has decided to establish its headquarters right here in Sub Saharan Africa, where it is having a field day killing millions of people and generally wreaking havoc in people’s lives. This monster has revived diseases such as Tuberculosis that for a long time had ceased to be significant threats to human health. Others are diarrhea due to Cryptosporidiosis and pneumonia due to Pneumocystis, both protozoan microorganisms that would not normally cause disease in an individual whose immune response is intact. Now, thanks to the general immunosuppression caused by HIV/AIDS, these diseases are back with a vengeance.

In South Africa, this monster is wiping out a thousand people every single day. And generally in Africa, where emerging states were just beginning to establish effective health care programs for their people, most hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from HIV/AIDS and its attendant opportunistic infections, making it very difficult for these young nations to attend to other health problems facing their people. Given that the most effective mode of spread of HIV/AIDS in a population is by venereal transmission, you can begin to see how selfishness is an important aspect in this tragedy. Marriage partners go out there and meet third parties whom they find attractive. And they are determined to satisfy their own desires, never mind what the will of God is in such matters, or what damage their actions will visit on the other partner in the marriage. It is nothing but our own selfishness that has made it so easy for this monster to gain a foothold among us.

If today we in Sub Saharan Africa could agree that unmarried people will not engage in sex, and that every married person will remain faithful and true to their partner in this regard, we would stop this monster dead in its tracks overnight, once for all! We have it in our power to do it. But, unfortunately, although such boundaries are not only well known to be the will of God but are also what every married person legitimately expects of their spouse, we are far too selfish to live by them. Ladies and gentlemen of Sub Saharan Africa, come to your senses, put this obnoxious self interest aside and stop this senseless waste of lives! How can we allow this deplorable tragedy to continue wiping our people out when we have it in our power to stop it dead in its tracks?

That’s not all. We have another major problem in the area of safety and security. Here in South Africa, although figures for housebreakings, car hijackings and violent robbery had gone down by 2003 when compared to those of 1998, the percentage of people who said they felt insecure in surveys increased over the same period of time from 25% in 1998 to 58% in 2003. 25% of all South Africans have been victims of this kind of crime, and it is not any better in other countries here in Africa, either.

An obnoxious self interest is again a critical factor for this problem as well. People who perpetrate such crimes think only of their own benefit. They don’t care how God would have them behave. If they did, they would discover that a good number of the handful of commandments God has given to humankind forbid precisely the kind of behavior they are engaging in: The sixth commandment says not to kill people, and the eighth not to steal. The tenth says not to covet anything that belongs to someone else. If we simply obeyed these commandments instead of indulging our obnoxious self interest in such blatant ways, everyone would enjoy a much better quality of life. And then of course there is the readiness to completely ignore the interests of the victims against whom such crimes are perpetrated. When we turn from obnoxious self interest to pay more attention to the interests of others, we can no longer continue to visit such senseless suffering on others.

We are new creations in Christ. Jesus expects us to be mindful of how God expects us to behave and seek to apply ourselves to relieve the suffering of other people. You can see how many problems that simple idea would eliminate from our midst.

To help you get started scheming and designing your ghoulish confections, here are a few Halloween Cake Design Ideas. Try these or create your own spin-off’s!

Haunted House – Sheet, Novelty Pan or Sculpted Castle

This Halloween cake can be made in many ways.

1. Trim a sheet cake into the shape of an old Victorian house with gables. Then pipe icing windows, doors, and other details, including cobwebs. Ghostly shapes are easy to pipe and fill in with snow-white buttercream icing. Add bats and other easy to pipe Halloween creatures.

2. Or you can use a novelty cake pan with the haunted house theme. Many of these come with decorations and instructions.

3. For a really exciting Halloween cake, try a haunted castle cake! Butter cakes works well. Stack two or more cakes, being sure to place supportive plates in between the layers. If the cake is large like a wedding cake, add cake dowels.

Towers can be created with upside down ice-cream cones or paper towel rolls, shortened to fit proportionally to your cake.

For edible towers, bake a pound cake in a jelly roll pan, and then using a cookie-cutter or glass, cut our circular pieces of uniform size. Skewer these, and then stick the skewered towers into the cake. Then ice them and pipe designs and windows.

For an amazing haunted house castle – think detail. For example, you could cut out windows and place inside kooky ghosts or other ghoulish figures (modeled with rolled buttercream, created with gum paste molds, or store-bought).

You might even want to add a moat and drawbridge! Tuck green miniature lights behind the turrets and under the drawbridge for an eerie glow.

A basic set of confectionary tools will help you model your Halloween cake creatures. You can find these and all sorts of decorating supplies at www.CandylandCrafts.com

If you model your Halloween cake figures with gum paste, creations will dry hard and last for years, but the children won’t enjoy the taste much. Marzipan’s expensive, and this almond paste isn’t as much of a hit with kids as grown-ups. Your best bet for your Halloween cakes is Rolled Buttercream. It’s a great tasting icing dough that can be easily modeled or molded.

Frankenstein’s Bride – Vintage Halloween Cake

Here’s a spin off from our charming doll cake that is made with a Barbie type doll and a cake dress. Use a doll with black hair. Tease the hair so it’s all puffed up and then paint the lightening stripes up each side of her hair do. (For a humorous version, you could make her hair stand straight up).

Paint her face a pasty white, add make-up (search online for “Bride of Frankenstein doll” and “Bride of Frankenstein costumes” for ideas. Cover the negligee dress with smooth, white buttercream and maybe add some black spiders and lacy impressions.

Another idea: A vintage 60′s Halloween doll cake could be fashioned after the Adam’s Family’s Mortisha.

Jack o’ Lantern Bundt Halloween Cake

This is an easy Halloween cake for cake decorators new to cake sculpting.

Young children will adore a Jack o’ Lantern cake with a cute or goofy expression, while most older kids will get a kick out of an outlandish or spooky face.

Start with 2 bundt cakes (butter, pumpkin and pound cakes work well). Then after leveling and icing the bottom of the cakes, fit them together to form the pumpkin. Cover the pumpkin with smooth, orange buttercream. Then pipe and/or use rolled buttercream to model the facial features. Pipe green leaves on top and add a stem made of rolled buttercream or an upside-down ice cream cone, iced with green.



Last, but not least, here’s an important Halloween Cake tip. The amount of liquid food coloring needed to create black or dark brown icing will probably give your icing a bitter taste. To avoid making a Halloween cake that tastes creepier than it looks, try one of these ghoulishly clever tips: