about 10 years ago, I was moved by the Lord to write some lengthy gospel tracts which I sent out to a relatively small mailing list. Each message addressed an issue critical to our time, our nation, and the professing church. Before proceeding very far in the writing I realized that these messages were indictments. Not much has changed since I penned them except the increasing judgments against the nation (and against the world.) Within the last few days I began to receive a burden to share them with the Christian community and did some slight editing for the venue of the on-line forums. I chose this particular forum, because the messages are evangelical in nature. The content is somewhat lengthy, 44 pages as it stands, but it stands as a neccessary warning to those concerned about the survival of the nation with regard to the priorities of our Lord. God is not mocked, nor is His Holiness to be held in light esteem. The prophet Amos wrote "Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets." Amos 3:7 There were warnings of impending judgment by His servants prior to 9/11/2001 and that evil day was only a beginning. These things should be understood, especially as the time comes to choose new leaders in our local and federal government. There is no political solution to our current troubles, but a nation gets the rulers that it deserves, according to the hearts of it's people, and this too is according to the judgment of God.
The content to follow is broken into 7 topics: 1 The coming darkness, 2 False religion, 3 The uniqueness of life, 4 Life, Liberty, & the pursuit of happiness, 5 The broken covenant, 6 The Holiness of God, and 7 the return of Jesus Christ. The last topic is similar to another of my postings under the Bible study forum, but predates it by more than a few years, and is included as the completion of the group of messages as they were originally written and delivered.
1
The coming Darkness
And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
And they will pass through it hard pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness. Isaiah 8:19-22
The question is not whether psychics, mediums, card readers, and the like have spiritual powers or contact with spirits and spiritual forces, or are simply charlatans and con artists. No, the question is whether or not their message is true or a lie artfully designed to keep a soul from the truth.
We know beyond a doubt that among men there are those who choose to do great evil and even delight in doing so. If the spirit of a man can be this way, oppossed to good, full of hate, bitterness, and a joy for destruction, then the “spirits” which can’t be seen by us are just as likely to have such dispositions.
Even men with the best of intentions have led people to disaster and death by poor advice, wrong choices, or bad discernment, so how would a “spirit” be less succeptible to error?
Only God knows the end from the beginning. Not even His holy angels have such understanding. The Bible teaches that God chose to reveal the mysteries of heaven through men, things that angels don’t know or understand, and especially through His Son, and to His disciples, who have believed His Son and received the Holy Spirit to communicate the word and the will of God: Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things which angels desire to look into. 1 Peter 1:10-12
The word “angel” means, among other things, “messenger,” and it isn’t necessary that a messenger understand the content of a message. The job of the messenger is to deliver the message.
The Bible also tells us that some angels were cast out of heaven and to the earth for their iniquity (evil) and rebellion against God: How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” Yet you shall be brought down to sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit. Isaiah 14:12-15
These angels would obviously have knowledge of history and of whatever may be observed on the earth, as well as of those things in heaven prior to their fall. These fallen angels, or devils, could tell us many things which have really happened and are in the process of happening, but not one of them could tell you what will happen in the future, except that they have some power to make something happen.
The Bible tells us that God gave great power to angels, for the purpose of ministering to men. The devil, or Satan, was one of the most powerful of the angels and given to be a ruler of this world.
Satan isn’t some ugly looking man in a red suit with a pitchfork in his hand, but was described in the Bible as the most beautiful and perfect creature until evil was found in him: Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre and say to him, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, saphire, torquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created.
You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.
By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones.
Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze at you. Ezekial 28:12-17
The Bible also tells us that Satan is a liar and a murderer, the father of all lies: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” John 8:44
How would we know if a spirit were revealing the truth to us or working through lies to bring us to eternal destruction?
God gave His law to Moses for the children of Israel, for their “good,” to keep them alive and to seperate them from the “gods” of the nations, which the Bible also reveals to us as “demons” or fallen angels.
God was so concerned for the “good” of His people, that He even gave a law condemning mediums and spiritists to death, for the protection of His people and for their good: A man or a woman who is a medium, or who has familiar spirits, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones. Their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:27
The Law of God is harsh, with severe penalties for sin, but this law was given to lawbreakers, people who are prone by their own nature to do wrong, so that in keeping the law, they might have long life and know “good” or God’s blessings.
Everyone desires good from God, but not everyone is willing to do good for God, and the plain truth is that no one could ever do good, unless God taught them what is “good,” and gave to them both the will and the ability to do it.
As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us that the Law was given by God to us, so that we could recognize how far we are from being good in ourselves; that we are evil by nature, being self centered, self serving, and at our very best, self righteous.
If God cast some of His holy angels out of heaven for their iniquity, how could he ever allow people, who begin to do self serving and evil things from the cradle, to ever enter into His presence? Yet, this is what the Bible says was God’s plan from the very beginning; to create man in His own image and likeness, as creatures to worship Him, have fellowship with Him, and to be blessed with all things by Him.
God is Holy and perfect, completely righteous and good. This means that He is perfect in His love and also perfect in His justice. This brings us to the reason that people seek for knowledge of the future. Everyone has a sense of “justice,” a concept of “right and wrong,” but some believe that they can escape justice.
Each one of us knows that we do wrong at times in our lives, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we hurt and do violence, but we justify ourselves by excuses, blame shifting, or even by delusion and denial.
If we believe in a judgement of our lives by God, then we have fear because we know that we do wrong. We try to believe that we can do “right things” to make up for the “wrong,” to come out ahead in the balance, or, we just pretend that God doesn’t exist and that there is no judgment or reckoning for the works of our lives. Either way we still have fear, because the truth of judgment is inescapable in our souls.
The Bible teaches that men are appointed to die once and then to be judged; if this were all that the Bible said, every one of us would be found guilty before God, condemned and seperated from Him for eternity by our sin. The wages of sin is death, and death is seperation from God. Now, some people think that an eternity without God would be one long party of debauchery and perverse pleasure, but God only promises pleasure to those who are brought into His kingdom.
To those who reject Him and what is “good,” He promises eternal destruction and torment. God also promises to bring an end to the world as we know it, to cleanse it with fire, to purge out all evil, at His coming. The book of the revelation of Jesus Christ tells us that one day, when the rebellion against God has reached its peak, that God will satisfy His justice by pouring out His wrath upon the earth.
Since God is perfect and can’t lie, we have to either disbelieve God, which is to make Him to be a liar and to remain an object of His wrath, or we have to consider that we are in desperate straits and without hope, unless God chooses to save us from His own wrath.
If God is perfectly just (and He is), how could we not be condemned for our sin? If we must die for our sin, and we all die according to the flesh, how could we be restored to God, having been seperated from Him by our sin? Our own nature condemns us, so how can we be saved from an eternity of suffering, banned from the presence of God?
God, who created the law which condemns us, also provided a way of escape from His wrath, a way of return to His presence. If our nature is evil, then we need a new nature from God, and He has provided the way to receive this new nature, even a new birth by His Holy Spirit.
By the power of His Holy Spirit, and through the flesh of a woman, God became a man in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, for the one purpose of living a perfect and Holy life, and then of dying a perfect and Holy death upon the cross as a substitute for all of us who would believe Him. God gave His own life, in the person of His Son, to suffer His own wrath in our place, the innocent lamb of God, in exchange for the souls of sinners like us, who deserve death as the just punishment of our sin.
God satisfied His justice upon His Son, keeping His covenant vows to men, so that in believing Him, we would be counted as righteous, because of Christ’s merit and not our own. Then God raised Jesus from the dead, the One who died in our place, to make Him our judge and our High priest, or mediator, between us and God.
Even though Jesus “paid the price” for our sin, we would still be seperated from God by our sinful nature unless God changed our nature. In believing Jesus Christ and accepting Him as our Lord, we are submitting ourselves to His will and asking Him for His Holy Spirit. In receiving His Holy Spirit, we are receiving new life in our own spirit, an immediate restoration to God in His kingdom, a new direction in life, a new purpose in glory.
What’s more, though we still sin at times because of our nature in the flesh, God’s promise is to keep us, if we have believed Him. If we confess our sin and believe Jesus, seeking to do His will, God is “just” to forgive our sin, having laid it upon Jesus at the cross. He is faithful to give us power to turn from sin and to live our lives according to His will. The best part of this is that this gift of God is accomplished by God and not by us. God works out His will by the power of His Spirit in and through us, by faith in His Son.
So, would you escape the day of darkness?
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds. Revelation 16:10-11
Call upon the Lord now. Confess your sin to God and believe in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. If you haven’t the faith to believe Him, then ask Him for faith to believe. God is there and He is ready to receive you with open arms if you believe Him. He wants your love and He loved you enough to suffer His only begotten Son to die as one accursed for your sake. He loves His Son enough to receive you with Him in His presence, in eternal life. Call on Him now and enter into the kingdom of the sons of light.
He is the Way, He is the truth, He is the life, Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Amen.
2
False Religion
There is a way of thinking, prevalent now, which suggests that any religion is “good” as long as it makes us a “better” person. The same thinking suggests that there is no absolute truth, but rather, that which you hold to be true is good enough for you if it serves you and satisfies your own need for faith and purpose. At the heart of this thinking is the notion that God exists for our benefit, or that God doesn’t exist and we may invent Him in the way that best pleases us.
If we really do believe in a God and Creator of all things, then we should realize that the Creator creates to please Himself according to His own character; everything which exists, does so for His purpose and not for its own. If we create a piece of artwork or a work of craft, we create it for our own pleasure, not for the pleasure of the object created.
The only religion which could please God is that religion of His own choice and not of our own. The only way in which we could know the religion of God’s choice is by Him revealing it to us in some manner.
If God desired to reveal His will for us, He could speak to us directly, or He could send messengers of His choice to speak to us concerning it. There have been, and still are, many people who claim to hear the voice of God, or to have heard from messengers, called angels, or to have seen visions from God. As these people often disagree with respect to the content of their message, how could we know which of them were genuine, if any?
God solved this problem for us by letting His prophets give signs of things to come, to predict future events in the world that were not in direct control of the prophet himself. What’s more, since the true God must be eternal, having no creator of Himself, then His will should be eternally true and unchanging.
There is only one collection of writings from “men of God,” which is consistent in its teaching, when properly understood, and also consistent in the fulfillment of prophecy. This book is the Bible, the written word of God.
The Bible asserts that God inspired its writing by moving men of His choosing to do so, through the person of His Holy Spirit: We also have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:19-21
It is easy enough for men to assert that they have had contact with God without this being true, but in the Bible, God has made it His responsibility to prove His word true. He has done this by consistently revealing History before the events occurred. While some prophecy may fit a number of events, most Biblical prophecy has been specific, sometimes even revealing the names of people not yet born, what they would do, and the times when the prophecy would be fulfilled.
The Bible however, was not given to men to prove God’s existence, but to reveal His person, His character, and His plan for His creation. God gave us His word so that we could have a loving relationship with Him, rather than an adversarial one: "Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; Deuteronomy 7:9
The Bible clearly teaches that God’s love is for His whole creation, not for just the physical descendants of Abraham: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16
The Bible teaches us that God is good, Holy, and perfect in character: So He said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.'' Matthew 19:17
This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5
The Bible also teaches us that men are evil by nature, wicked in our imaginations and deceived by our own hearts: And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. Genesis 8:21
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
The Bible teaches us that we are separated from God by our sin, and that if God gave us what we deserved, every one of us would stand guilty and condemned before Him. We can confirm our condition simply by this fact: All of us with normal capacity have been aware of a conscience within us at some time, that told us that we’d done wrong, though this conscience grew silent as we continued in doing what we knew to be wrong.
The Bible also teaches us that it was never God’s intent to leave us to suffer the eternal consequence of our sin, which is death and destruction, but His intent has always been to deliver us from our own evil nature and restore us to Himself, for our good and for His glory. God had a plan from the very beginning of time, to provide a Son for us as a perfect sacrifice for our sin. God sent His own Son, born of the flesh of a woman, but begotten by the power of His Holy Spirit, to live a sinless life and to die the death of the condemned in our place; one perfect and innocent man suffering the penalty of sin in the place of guilty humanity for as many as would receive Him and His testimony.
God gave His own Son to be a shelter to us from His wrath, the execution of His justice, His judgment upon sin and rebellion: Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. A man will be as a hiding place from the wind, and a cover from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Isaiah 32:1-2
The Bible is also very clear as to the fact that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is the only way to God: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6.
Jesus is the only Savior: This is the `stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.' "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'' Acts 4:11-12.
Jesus is the only escape from God’s wrath: "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.'' John 3:36.
Every other pretense at religion is just a deceptive road to destruction: "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13-14
The Bible makes this point clearer in that it declares the gods of the nations to be worthless idols or demons: They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear. Deuteronomy 32:16-17
Don’t be fooled into considering that this only applied to ancient peoples or the Biblical nation of Israel, because the Bible gives prophecy of the wrath of God to come upon all mankind for the same reasons: But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. Revelation 9:20-21
In the Bible, in chapter 58 of the book of Isaiah, God describes for us what He considers to be true religion; things such as helping widows and orphans, freeing people in bondage, feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless. These things are the things which Jesus did and taught that we should do, but even nonbelievers do such things. The Bible makes it clear that the performance of religious works doesn’t save a person from destruction. On the contrary, the performance of works to earn God’s favor is identified as sin: Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.'' Romans 4:4-8
Jesus Himself explained in a parable that God’s servants don’t earn favor for doing what they have been commanded to do by their master, as it is only that which is expected of them: "So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, `We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.' '' Luke 17:10
As we don’t earn merit by doing what is expected of us, all the things which we don’t do but should have done would simply add up against us, and at our judgment we could only be debtors to God, not having done the things which He gave us provision to do.
The Bible teaches us that God saves us, not because of our good works, but to do good works for His glory: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:8-10
So then, how is it that we are saved? The verse above says salvation is by grace (God’s) through faith (ours), so God gives faith to believe Him, to whomever He chooses, as an act of unmerited favor.
Many people believe that they will join God in heaven simply because it’s their birth right, by reason of God’s covenants and their own family lineage, but the Bible says,
"The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Ezekiel 18:20
It would seem that the family and nation of your birth has no relevance to eternal salvation, but Jesus taught of a special family relationship by which a person could be saved: Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. "Do not marvel that I said to you, `You must be born again.' "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.'' John 3:5-8
Jesus was speaking of men being born again, not physically, but spiritually. He was speaking about men, spiritually dead to God, separated from God by our sin, being made spiritually alive by God’s Spirit, like Adam receiving the breath of life from God, becoming a new creation: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3
Jesus was teaching that to be saved, men must be adopted by God, changed into His sons by receiving His Spirit: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father.'' Romans 8:14-15.
This still leaves us with the question of how God accomplishes this. How do we receive His Spirit? What do we have to do?
Jesus instructed that men should labor for eternal things and He was asked what the works of God were so that they could be done: Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?'' Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.'' John 6:28-29
Jesus was speaking of Himself, and we see this in the third chapter of the gospel according to John, in Jesus’ speech to Nicodemus: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. John 3:16-18
It’s important to understand that to believe in Jesus is not simply to agree that He was a man who started a religion, but to believe what He said and what He did, and to act upon it as the truth. The rulers of the Jews that convicted Jesus and condemned Him to the cross, said that Jesus made Himself equal to God, and this is because Jesus taught that He was sent by the Father, that He came from God in glory and would return to God in glory, that He alone knew the Father and was known by Him, that He and the Father are One.
These things must be true if anyone is to be saved by God through faith in Christ. If Jesus were just a man, then according to God’s word, He could only die for His own sin, but as the sinless Son of God, He could die a death of sacrifice for us, to satisfy God’s justice in our place, suffering the penalty that we deserve.
The Bible tells us that Jesus rose again from the dead, on the third day after He was crucified, fulfilling God’s word, and proving His testimony true. If we say that we believe Him, we must believe that He lives now and sits upon His throne as our Lord and our judge: Then Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'' Amen. Matthew 28:18-20
The Bible teaches us that we are unable to do anything to please God without faith in Him and that there is nothing we can do to be saved but to believe in Him, but how do we believe in what we haven’t seen and how do we receive faith?
The Bible answers that question as well: So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17. So, to have faith we must hear the word of God and receive it as true. God imparts faith to us by giving us grace to believe His word and specifically the word of His Son.
Many people still will argue that if God is love, as the Bible indeed says, then a loving God will not condemn people to destruction. It is not true that God is vindictive or malicious. God is only good, yet part of being good is being just, and God’s justice is served in allowing people to have what they’ve chosen for themselves. Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s love toward us, giving His life to die in our place, so that we may have eternal life through faith in Him. If we reject the fullness of God, of all that is good, as made manifest to us in Christ Jesus, then there remains nothing for us to receive from God except the consequence of our sin, eternal separation from Him and all that is good: "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. John 3:19
Don’t miss this point or misunderstand it. God, who created us, gave us all good things to enjoy with the giving of thanks to Him. God created us to take pleasure in pleasing Him, but through sin men pervert their pleasure to the doing of evil in rebellion to God’s will, despising His good gifts and His good intention for us. There will be no pleasure in Hell, only anguish and sorrow without comfort, desire and longing without satisfaction, and the awareness that this was one’s own choice in rejecting the love of God made manifest in Christ Jesus.
This is not the working of my own imagination but the revealed word of God as given by the Apostle Paul: since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed. 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10
With our hearts hardened by sin, we choose to disbelieve these things and assign them in our minds to a place of fantasy and imagination, because we know our guilt. Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. God says, “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,'' says the Lord God. "Therefore turn and live!” Ezekiel 18:31-32
If we examine ourselves honestly we realize that we are powerless to change ourselves, although this never prevents us from trying. We may attempt to alter our lives and circumstances by our own strength; We can gather wealth or power, even gain a sense of “spirituality” by attempting to live a life of “peace and quiet” in natural surroundings, but deep within us our own nature remains unchanged and subject to the spirit of this age, dead in transgression and sin, and separated from God.
To really turn from our sinful ways to God, to do His will, we need a change of nature within ourselves that can’t be effected by us, and this is exactly what God promised to do for us through His prophets in the Old Testament of the Bible: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Ezekiel 36:26.
And this is exactly what God accomplishes in us when we genuinely believe Jesus Christ, receiving Him as our Lord and Savior: 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
If you are unfamiliar with what Jesus said, and did, and taught, then you should go to the gospels accounts, of which there are four that are reliable, agree with one another, and add to one another to give you an honest account of the doctrine (teaching) of Jesus Christ. These are found in the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible. If you have a genuine desire to do the will of God, then it is sure that you will be able to tell if Jesus’ doctrine is from heaven or the invention of man, according to the faith that is in Christ Jesus: Jesus answered them and said, "My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. John 7:16-17
You may have even heard or read the gospels and have some familiarity with the teachings of Jesus Christ, but remained unbelieving or failed to understand the implication of His teachings in your own life. Believing Christ and submitting to Him as Lord are not optional things for men (mankind), but a commandment that must be obeyed. The scripture already presented here makes it clear that disobedience to this commandment will leave you to suffer the judgment of God against sin and transgression, to be condemned to hell for eternity without hope or comfort.
There is no salvation, no goodness, no life without Christ. So, if God is working upon your heart, if your soul is hearing the call of God, confess your sin to Him. Agree with Him that you have no hope of saving yourself, and that you know you can only stand guilty before Him if judged for all that you have done in your life. Make your plea to Him. Ask Him to save you from your sin, to change your ways. Tell Him that you believe He has the power to save you, and trust that the shed blood of Jesus was offered for you and for your sin. Ask God for His Holy Spirit, the promise of Jesus Christ to those who believe Him, for power to do His will. Offer yourself to Jesus to do His will instead of your own. Believe that He is risen from the dead, hears you when you call to Him, and stands ready to receive you: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.'' John 6:37-40
God doesn’t require that you clean up your life to come to Him. He requires that you put your trust in Him to lead you to do good, to believe and trust His word, to make you to be what He intended you to be from the very beginning, a son of God made in His own image and likeness. This is what it means to become Christian: To become Christ like, not through our own efforts, but by faith in Him and the working of His Spirit in our lives to conform us to His will by the power of His word.
Seek Him while He may be found. Call upon Him for your salvation: "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” Romans 10:8-11
My hope and purpose in writing this message is that you might receive the truth by the grace of God, and come to know Jesus Christ as your friend and the lover of your soul. It is God’s desire that every man (and woman) be saved, so let today be the day that you believe Him. Amen.
3
The uniqueness of life
When we look at the world with its billions of people, animals, insects, and microorganisms, it seems like life is the most common thing. Even when we examine a drop of pond water with a microscope and strong magnification, we see a tiny world teeming with living things.
Sometimes we feel so bombarded with the living activity all about us, that we can become callous or indifferent toward lives other than our own. Sometimes we may even feel isolated, even in the midst of continuous living activity, to the point that we may despise our own lives.
The branch of science that deals with evolutionary theory wants us to believe that our existence is an accident, the result of random events, under the influence of environment. If the evolutionists are correct, then there simply isn’t any purpose to existence, and life at its best is just a complicated exercise in futility.
The humanist who adheres to evolutionary theory, believes that man can create his own purpose, to serve his own vain ideas of what is noble, or good, or of value. His best hope is to leave behind him a legacy of a good name, a worthy preoccupation; something of absolutely no value to a corpse, incapable of receiving praise or honor for its accomplishments while living.
An evolutionary outlook on life or existence could be called bleak, and philosophy attempts to find meaning where science claims accident, so it is reassuring to realize that the process of life, although apparently common, is highly improbable through chance.
Evolutionary theory is completely dependent upon the notion that the most unlikely events will still occur if given enough time. You don’t have to be a scientist to realize the significance of the fact that the spontaneous formation of a living thing has never been recorded in human history. (Early naturalists believed that worms formed from rotting organic matter, but they were unable to observe the presence of microscopic eggs already in the mixture under observation). Nor is there any real evidence that life began spontaneously, beyond the fact that we exist.
Evolutionary theory addresses the point that life does not now spontaneously appear, by saying that such an event requires very special conditions which no longer exist, but must have at one time in prehistory.
You do have to be something of a scientist, a molecular biologist, to comprehend just how special those special conditions had to be for even the simplest living organism to “spring into being”. Life, when you analyze it physically, is complex chemistry, but not the kind of chemistry performed in test tubes. Even the simplest living cell is highly organized like a microscopic living factory. The cell has different specific parts which serve specific functions, such as trapping energy in complex compounds to be released at a later time in other processes, like moving substances from one structure to another, like controlling the concentration of salts within the cell against the natural forces at work to change those concentrations, like keeping a record of the pattern required to accomplish every process and build every structure, like converting that record from a base 4 mathematical code into the construction of complex proteins which themselves control and regulate the processes which generate them.
Most educated people will have heard of the substance called DNA, and know that it determines the pattern of living things, but most people don’t know that it takes complex proteins to make proteins, and this with the pattern of the DNA (in the structures called ribosomes) and to duplicate the DNA itself. The well trained, or well indoctrinated biologist takes for granted that complex interactive cycles in molecular biology somehow spontaneously evolved, without trying to rationally explain just how.
I’m sure that some enterprising minds have spent a great deal of time, energy, and money, trying to imagine how mutually dependent processes evolved without the process of life to drive the evolution, but the fact remains that the simplest forms of life require complex interactions, which couldn’t evolve independently: evolution can’t occur where life is not present.
If we arrive at the notion, through careful study, that evolution is an impossibility, or at least highly improbable, our only alternative explanation to the existence of life is “Creation,” or the idea that the highly organized and complex single celled organism, like the highly organized and complex human being, was created by a Creator, or God.
You might ask why people intelligent enough to realize that evolutionary theory doesn’t work for the explanation of the origin of life, still reject the notion of a Creator?
People state many objections to the idea of God’s existence, but the only one that counts, the only real objection in anyone’s mind is this: If God is real, then I don’t have any right to anything except that which God has determined. Put another way, if God exists, then I’m not in control.
Some people might admit to the existence of God, but deny that He does anything. There are entire religious systems that hold such a view, but to call God inactive in creation is to deny a part of what defines God to us. A god that is inactive in creation isn’t God at all, but no different from a carved rock or piece of wood, a dumb idol that’s good for nothing, except perhaps to build a fire with, or use as a hat rack. I’m not saying that God must be useful to us to be God, but God is defined, in part, by His omnipotence, Himself being the Creator and definer of all things. In other words, we define God by what He has done and by what He has revealed of Himself through His creation, but the reality of God is that He defined what we are and is not genuinely defined by anyone but Himself.
Evolutionists have traditionally held the premise that life began once, in the past, with some simple organism that evolved into every other living thing, over time. Those who believe in God, hold to the notion that God created all living things at one time in the past, according to His wisdom, and that the similarities between creatures are the result of similar design: If God created the universe, then He created all the rules of existence, and all His creatures had to be made to conform to those rules as well.
The evolutionists site the fossil record as proof of their theories, but this truth remains: If we try to explain the existence of anything which no longer exists, nor has ever existed within our experience, our explanation must be largely conjecture, or what amounts to an educated guess.
The Bible, which I believe to be the word of God revealed through men and inspired by God’s Spirit, does not explain dinosaurs or their fossil remains. The Bible does describe at least two creatures of dinosaurian proportion, called leviathan and behemoth, but doesn’t explain what became of them. The simple reason for this apparent omission is that the Bible was never intended to be a book of natural history, though some natural history is found in it. Nor was the Bible intended to be an historical record, although it accurately records a good portion of human history, including things which haven’t happened yet. The Bible was given to man as a testimony, that of God, as to who we are with respect to who He is, and more specifically to the One person in whom He intended to reveal His own perfect character, as a perfect man made in His own image. He gave a Son to us as the redeemer of mankind, a pattern for us to be conformed to, and as a king to rule over us.
If this is true, then why doesn’t everyone believe God, trust our Lord Jesus with control over their lives, and allow themselves to be conformed to His own character?
First of all, people generally don’t want a redeemer, nor believe that they need one. We naturally think that we are, by nature, free to do as we please, and masters of our own will or choices. Quite often it takes an addiction, or some sudden illness or catastrophe to reveal to us that we aren’t always in control of what we do. Jesus said that anyone who sins is a slave to sin. God’s testimony is that all mankind (which includes women) lives under the dominion of sin according to our “fallen” nature.
God’s testimony is also that even when we do “what is good,” our minds are so self deceived that we cannot always see that our motives are not pure, but remain tainted and self serving, even to the extent that we are motivated to earn favor with God, which is an impossibility. It is God who makes all things possible for us in the first place.
Since God is perfect and completely without evil in His character, we must be redeemed from sin to have a permanent part in Him (that is to be joined to Him in fellowship and allowed in His presence). God redeemed us with His own blood, which He could not do unless He first became a man, even His own Son, Jesus, the Christ, or “anointed One”.
The Bible explains that there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. Only the blood of the perfect man, without sin Himself, could pay the price for an imperfect humanity, wholly tainted by sin.
A second reason for humanity’s rejection of God is our rejection of what is good. God, who created us with senses and emotions, designed us to experience life in its pleasure and pain, sorrow and joys, and He also gave us rules to follow for our own good, to preserve us, extend our joys, and live abundant lives. The problem is that our own human nature prevents us from following rules faithfully. We have a natural bent, or sin nature, toward defiance and the breaking of any rules, to our own convenience or pleasure. Even the most disciplined of us will find that we sometimes break the rules that we set for ourselves. How could we possibly keep God’s rules according to His standard of perfection?
Our nature, by a pure definition of good, is not good itself, but being tainted by sin, is evil. This means that at least some of our choices are evil ones, opposed to God’s good will toward us. Not desiring to consider ourselves to be evil by nature, we actively redefine good as according to what is acceptable to us, regardless of how evil it may be to a good and Holy God.
In order to choose the good and reject the evil, we need a new nature within us. God, who is good and desires good for us, provides this new nature in the person of His good, or Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit, a part of His own being and expressing His own good nature, can enter into our lives and live with us to be our guide and helper, in doing good. God has promised just this very thing to us if we put our trust in His own Son and submit ourselves to His authority and good will for our lives.
You could say we have an issue here of putting our trust in something, or someone whom we haven’t seen. Jesus lived His life on this earth and then died upon a cross of wood. He was unjustly condemned and crucified; an innocent man receiving what we guilty people actually deserve for our sin. None of us alive now actually saw these things happen. We only have the testimony of those who believed Him in the pages of the Bible, and of those who didn’t believe Him and recorded the event of the disappearance of His body to claim it as a hoax or fraud perpetrated against them.
Many of us are able to believe in a theory as “far fetched” as evolution, based upon personally seeing the fossilized bones of presumably ancient creatures. I say presumably, because there remains no absolute way to date a fossil, and the dates accepted as true are based upon relative time scales that were invented by men who assumed a consistency in environmental changes. This assumption is not necessarily true and judging by our historical record and observable rapid changes in our own environment, are not likely to be so.
We have no remains of Jesus’ body to personally examine, because as the Bible says, He rose from the dead and took His seat in authority, in the realm of heaven, until the day when He returns to judge mankind according to our conformity to His gospel. In truth, there is no way for a man to be fully convinced of sin and of God’s person in His Son, Jesus Christ, except by God Himself and through His Holy Spirit.
As a man with formal training in the sciences, I didn’t accept the authority of the Bible as the word of God, until I first accepted the truth of the person of God in Jesus Christ, and asked Him to save me from destruction. I couldn’t have done this on my own; No one can.
God, who created us, is completely able to convince us of His truth, but we must first desire the truth. In our natural state, why should we desire the truth when a lie might appear to be far more pleasing to us in its appeal to our evil nature? God’s testimony is that deception leads to destruction and death, and that death, rather than an end to existence, is in reality a perpetual separation from God and all that is good, leaving nothing for us to experience except sorrow, suffering, pain, and all the consequence of evil. Hell isn’t a party of the ungodly, but complete isolation and torment in the absence of all that is good and of all pleasure.
We might disbelieve in Hell and still say that we believe in God, yet Hell was a large part of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and Jesus remains the true and faithful witness whose testimony was validated by His resurrection.
This document is about the uniqueness of life. What makes life unique is that it is given by God and by Him alone. The life that is unique is Jesus Christ, and in Him alone we may have eternal life, the joy of His presence, and experience the goodness of His good will toward us.
So here is His offer to you. Trust Him! Believe in Him! Call upon His name to save you from the consequence of your own nature. It is not within the character of God to disappoint those who put their trust in Him. God may not give us all that we want, but He has promised to give us all that we need. He alone knows what we need to experience joy and pleasure in His presence, eternal and abundant life together with His Son, Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Amen.
4
Life, Liberty, & the pursuit of Happiness
In the year 1776, the continental congress decided amongst themselves, that the appropriate course of action for the member colonies of North America was to rebel against the government and person of the king of Great Britain. Together, they drafted and signed the document known as the Declaration of Independence. This document made a somewhat unbiblical argument for the justification of rebellion against a tyrannical despot, but called upon the “Supreme Judge of the world,” or God, to validate the right of the colonial citizens to be independent of the British monarchy.
The premise upon which is built the entire argument stated in the Declaration of Independence, is found in the second chapter of the document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These “Rights” are the premise for our form of government, and according to the authors of the document, a cause for the formation of any government.
Now at this time and in this age, our nation is in great crisis, not because of external enemies, although they exist and pose a real threat, but because of the attack upon the original values which were the foundation of our nation, and this by organizations and entities which themselves make the claim that they exist to preserve the same “Rights” which were the basis of the argument for the formation of our government.
There is active argument as to whether or not the framers of the constitution were Christian or held to Christian ideals, but the 1st article of the Amendments to the Constitution, suggests that they were. It is a Christian belief that the last government instituted by men upon the earth, will enforce a state religion, the acceptance of which will bring eternal damnation upon the human soul: And it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:7-8.
Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, "he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. "And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.'' Revelation 14:9-11.
The 1st Article of the Amendments to the Constitution prohibits any “law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” which is to say, from the prospective of the God fearing authors of the Constitution, that it protects the right of an individual to refuse to accept the mark of the beast or to worship him.
Jesus Christ stated that it is a relationship with God and not membership in, or performance of religion that ensures eternal life and salvation: "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3.
Regardless of their faith, the author’s of the Declaration of Independence recognized our “Rights” as being endowments or natural gifts of our Creator. If we do not accept the existence of our Creator, then it is clear that we have no basis for “unalienable Rights,” there is no such thing as equality between races, men, or sexes either, no right to life, liberty, or happiness.
A natural understanding of the world says that life, liberty, and happiness is the exclusive possession of the strong, the swift, the powerful of this world, and that “Rights” are only what the powerful grant to others based upon their own “right of might.”
The name of “Almighty” as applied to God, comes from the Biblical accounts of God showing Himself more powerful than the most powerful of kings and nations, as a defender and avenger of the weak and the helpless, and of the cause of the poor of this earth. Omnipotence is part of what defines His being. This is the God to whom the authors of the Declaration of Independence made appeal, as “the Supreme Judge of the world.” They didn’t define life as an accident in a cosmic test tube, but as a gift of God, the Creator. They didn’t define liberty as lawlessness, or the right to do whatever they pleased, but rather defined law as the means to preserve freedom from oppressive government that would institutionalize life and enslave all men to government service, as well as to ensure that the state existed for the common good.
It is more difficult to arrive at how the founders of the United States defined the “pursuit of Happiness.” In general, what makes men happy is obtaining that which they value, but having done so is no guarantee of retaining happiness, hence there remains the “pursuit of happiness.” It would seem that the authors of the Declaration of Independence believed that we have the natural right to constantly pursue the fleeting emotion of happiness.
If these men were indeed Christian, then they would have defined “happiness” in somewhat different terms than the natural, because Christianity is largely concerned with spiritual existence rather than what we would call natural existence. Life, liberty, and happiness would all be understood to mean something somewhat different from the understanding of the natural man.
A Christian definition of life would have to include existence in the presence of God, as death is understood to be separation from God through sin. In a Christian view, as based upon the Bible as the word of God, all men are born with a corrupt nature and are naturally separated from God by that nature, which is a nature of sin: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3
A Christian definition of liberty would have to include dying to “self” and living for Christ, as this is the only way to be free from the bondage of sin: Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. "And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8:34-36
A Christian definition of happiness would probably be the furthest from the natural definition, although it remains in obtaining that which is most valued by the Christian. Jesus taught a sermon in which he proclaimed who are genuinely happy: And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.
"Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:1-12
The word translated as Blessed in this passage from the gospel according to Matthew, is a Greek word “makarios,” which conveys the meaning of supremely blessed, happy as in the sense of being smiled upon by God. The people that Jesus described as “happy” are not what the world would generally consider to be in happy conditions, but Jesus was speaking of an eternal happiness that would be a gift to those people whose temporary conditions were not necessarily happy. He spoke of people who were chosen by God to believe in Him and to know Him, to serve Him and to suffer for His sake.
This puts a different spin on the meaning of “pursuit of happiness.” In this light, it would suggest that all humans have a natural right to seek to know God and to have eternal life. I realize that this is not what most men would want to hear. It isn’t natural for men to seek God or to desire to know Him. Most men, even if they know nothing at all about God as He is revealed in the Bible, know what the word “sin” means, or have some idea that certain behavior is called “sinful.” That same behavior is what most men find their pleasure in. Most men have the mistaken idea that seeking God and knowing God would deny them of all pleasure. What they don’t understand is that God created us in such a way that we can experience pleasure, but set limits upon our taking of pleasure, for our own good, and that the greatest pleasure that we can experience comes from intimate relationship with God, and that He withholds no good thing from His children.
Now to get back to the crisis at hand, I’ll say that this nation has endured other crises, perhaps the most prominent of which was the civil war. Our president at that time, Abraham Lincoln, brought the nation into a war for the cause of preserving it as a whole. He gave a speech upon the battlefield of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at a dedication of a part of that battlefield as a cemetery for those who died in the battle. It was Lincoln’s assertion that the American people should dedicate themselves to the purpose for which the many soldiers died. In ending his short address he said, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
President Lincoln spoke in terms of a noble aspiration to preserve the nation, but its clear that he recognized that the existence of the nation was dependent upon the God who is Sovereign over all nations. The crisis facing our nation is our rejection of God and all that is good. In rejecting God, we forfeit all of our “unalienable Rights” as these come down directly from Him. We will not stand as a nation if we attempt to stand alone and out from “under God.” The Almighty will show Himself to be Almighty if we continue to oppose Him with our words and with our deeds. He will show Himself mighty in justice. He has shown Himself mighty in grace. A nation is changed when the hearts of its people are changed, and God alone has the power to change hearts.
If you love the nation, then seek God and learn to love Him more. If you love Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then seek the One who can guarantee that you’ll have it and keep it, not just for the brief span of our lives, but for an eternity.
God’s word says that we are by nature, enemies of God. God’s word also says that God loves us, and for this reason, our reconciliation and redemption, He sent His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be born of human flesh, so that He could suffer and die in our place, an innocent man paying with His own blood for the sin of humanity. God also raised Him from the dead as a sign that all He said was true, and seated Him in authority over all men, both living and dead. If you can believe these things in your heart and can confess them before men, then God’s word says that you will be saved.
I can fear for the nation, because I love the land that I’ve grown up in, and the ideals upon which the nation was founded, but I have no fear for myself, as I have another citizenship which remains for eternity, and can’t be lost to conquerors, destroyers, or saboteurs working under the pretense of preserving our liberty. Our nation was conceived in hope by people who shared my own hope. This is a land that we live in, but our home is with God, regardless of what happens here, so my own plea to you is that you turn to Him and know the hope that founded a nation, and the hope that makes a people truly free.
5
The Broken Covenant
“I do take thee to be my wedded spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
Most people would recognize the last statement as a generic wedding vow, and most people eventually make such a vow at least once in their lifetime. In our times and in our nation, about one of every two such people break the same vow.
People have many reasons for breaking their marital vows. It’s clear from scripture that God has said that there is one legitimate reason to break the bond of marriage. That reason is sexual immorality: "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. Matthew 5:32.
Its also clear that God hates divorce: Yet you say, "For what reason?'' because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. "For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one's garment with violence,'' says the Lord of hosts. "Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.'' Malachi 2:14-16
This passage from the book of Malachi gives one obvious reason that God hates divorce, that it “covers one's garment with violence.” That is, divorce commonly brings out anger and bitterness in the hearts of those who experience it, which often results in evil and violent thoughts, words, and deeds. As God made mankind in His own image, any evil done to another person is evil done against God, and is sin.
Another reason for God’s hatred of divorce, though less obvious, is that it involves the breaking of a covenant. In our times, most people would not understand what a covenant actually is. Some people would understand a covenant as being like a contract or legally binding agreement, but a covenant is actually more than that. In our times, marriage is generally viewed under law as a contract. A contract is binding, but may be broken by either party if that party is willing to pay the consequence agreed to, or understood to be the price of forfeiture.
In a covenant, however, the price of forfeiture was understood to be too high for one of the parties to willingly break. In a covenant, a vow is made to an agreement between two parties, with God as witness and judge, making a demand for divine justice, which would be understood to include a forfeiture of one’s life as a penalty. In other words, a covenant is a “blood oath” for the purpose of establishing an agreement, or peace, between two parties. To willingly break a covenant is to surrender your right to your own life. This being understood, how is marriage a covenant?
It should be obvious enough from the example of the “generic” wedding vow, that we commonly promise to take someone as husband or wife for life, or until death do us part. Whether people realize it or not, when they make that promise, they are making a covenant to establish a “peace” with another person for “life,” with God as their witness, and this is how we’ve defined a covenant. In ancient times, and we see examples of this in the Bible, the parties making a covenant would sometimes sacrifice the life of an animal, cutting it in two, and would walk between the two divided halves as a symbol of the solemn oath “May God do so and more to me as to this animal if I break my word.” This is why a covenant was seen as an end to any dispute, as a person can’t vow anything greater or as final to them as their own life.
Like it or not, there is competition between the sexes, and there is natural tension and a kind of aggression because of sexual desire, and the natural differences between men and women. Marriage is meant to be a union of the flesh, a relationship of mutual benefit, peace between two people to become one in purpose, a safe place to meet the emotional need to be a close and an integral part of another person’s life. In the wedding vow, there is the intent to accept the bad along with the good, to provide security in the knowledge that you are free of being abandoned, even when you have done wrong, or are rendered by incident or by time, unable to return good for good.
The marriage covenant is as strong as any covenant that man can make in that it is based upon the natural order of the union between male and female, the natural desire to procreate and leave something of ourselves behind us when we die. In this it is in accordance with God’s will: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:24-25
Groom and bride don’t pass between the parts of a slaughtered animal in our modern day wedding ceremonies, yet the intent of the vow remains the same: "Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.'' Mark 10:9
While we may not take vows, or our given word, seriously, God does. Jesus taught that we shouldn’t swear to our word and that it was better to respond to people simply with yes or no: "But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; "nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. "Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. "But let your `Yes' be `Yes,' and your `No,' `No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. Matthew 5:34-37
This isn’t the easiest verse to understand, especially in light of the fact that the Bible does say that we should make vows and keep our oaths to God. If we understand that God is Sovereign over all creation and that nothing happens except that He allows it to happen, then to promise to do anything at all is presumptuous of us: Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit''; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'' But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. James 4:13-16
If God expects us to make and keep vows, we should also understand that these vows must be in accordance with His will and in reliance upon His faithfulness to keep those vows for us. We may be unable to keep a promise because of our circumstance, simply because God had something else in mind, but its much worse to make a vow lightly, or to give your word without the intention of keeping it. This is simply another form of lying and the furthest thing from the character of God: "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. John 17:17
I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John 2:21
Jesus Himself taught that lying is of the devil’s character: "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. John 8:44
Jesus also taught that we would be judged according to our words: "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.'' Matthew 12:36-37
The more that we know of Jesus’ teachings and the will of God for mankind as revealed in the Bible, the more we realize how far we fall short of the standard that God has set for us. Some people believe that they keep the law and put their trust in this, but even the teaching of the prophets reveals that God is concerned with what is in the hearts and minds of men, and that no man can meet His standard of purity: For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Ecclesiastes 7:20
You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. You are indeed angry, for we have sinned in these ways we continue; and we need to be saved. But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Isaiah 64:5-6
The prophet Isaiah pointed out this most significant point, which is true for every person alive, regardless of how good they may think themselves to be, we need to be saved. The good news is that God has always known this and planned from the very beginning to provide a way for our salvation by His own power and through His grace. This brings us back to our example of a marriage covenant. God promised, through the prophet Hosea, that there would come a day when He would betroth His people to Himself: "I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. Hosea 2:19-20.
In other words, God promised a new covenant, which would be like a marriage covenant between Himself and His people. Since people are unable to demonstrate the perfect righteousness of God on their own, nor perfectly keep a covenant that requires a perfect righteousness, how would God accomplish this? God declared through the prophet Isaiah that this righteousness of His people would indeed be His own: no weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me,'' says the Lord. Isaiah 54:17
If God planned to establish this covenant in justice, as He said through Hosea, how could he declare righteous, those who were by their own nature, guilty and condemned by their sin and inability to obey His law? God answers this question also through Isaiah: For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth. Isaiah 54:5
It was the common practice in Israel, as well as in other parts of the world, for the groom, or groom’s family to pay a bridal price to the father of the bride. Now as the Creator of mankind, God has always been the rightful owner of us all, but through disobedience we have been sold to another master, sin: Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. John 8:34
For this reason it was necessary for God to purchase us back, or redeem us from sin. The purchase price of our redemption, the bridal price of God’s redeemed, was also revealed by God through Isaiah: He shall see the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. by His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Isaiah 53:11-12
Here God spoke of His righteous servant who came to His people as a man of sorrows, rejected by His own: He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:3
Though this servant came as a man, to sacrifice His life for the redemption of God’s people, He clearly had to be more than an ordinary man, as God’s word says that each man can only bear his own sin or righteousness: "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Ezekiel 18:20
God also testifies through the psalmist that there are none righteous among the sons of men: The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. Psalms 14:2-3
Even Isaiah, when he wrote of God’s righteous servant declares that men are all given over to corruption: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6
Clearly, God’s righteous servant is more than a man, and in the same chapter we read that in His resurrection, the pleasure of God will prosper by Him: Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. Isaiah 53:10
So, what is the pleasure of the Lord spoken of? God had declared this by Isaiah early in the scroll written by him, saying: For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Isaiah 9:6-7
God promised to give a Son, to the lineage of King David, to sit upon an eternal throne as the messiah, and this same Son, declared equal to God by His own word, was intended from the very beginning to be rejected by His people and to die for their sins: "And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. the end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined. Daniel 9:26
So it is the blood of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, the man who is declared equally God, which has paid the price of redemption for His people, and has made atonement for their sin. God satisfied His justice by dealing the penalty of sin out against Himself, in the person of His Son, on behalf of His people. But who are His people, and how do they receive the righteousness of God to their credit? Jesus put is simply, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.'' John 3:36
As God accounted Abraham righteous for his faith, so God also imputes His own righteousness to those who believe Him through faith in His Son, an exchange which the Apostle Paul eloquently describes in his 2nd preserved letter to the Corinthian church: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21
That this was God’s new covenant as promised through the prophets was testified to by Jesus Himself when He celebrated the Passover with His closest disciples, and on the night that He was betrayed to an unjust arrest, trial, and execution: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body.'' Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Matthew 26:26-28.
That Jesus understood that His relationship with His disciples was like that of a marriage was evident in the way He spoke about His death to prepare His disciples: Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?''
And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. Matthew 9:14-15
In our modern times we generally don’t have the same understanding of a man’s responsibility to his wife in marriage, as did the ancient Jews. Under the law of the scriptures, a man even had responsibility over the vows and oaths made by his wife, to approve or abrogate them. If a husband heard his wife’s vow and didn’t negate the vow, but later caused the vow to be void, the husband was to bear the guilt of his wife (Numbers chapter 30).
Given that God gave the law to Israel, through Moses, we should understand that God promised to take full responsibility for His bride, the people of His new covenant, to bear their guilt and to preserve them as His own. Because God knows our human weakness and frailty, He promised to give His Holy Spirit to dwell with and in those people who received Him through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ: "If you love Me, keep My commandments. "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, "even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. John 14:15-17
The Holy Spirit is the presence of God with us, as teacher and guide, comforter and friend, and most significantly to us, as the seal of our redemption. He is proof that we have been purchased with a price, even the precious blood of our Redeemer Himself. We receive Him by faith, like a wife putting her trust in her husband to love her and keep her.
That God’s love for us is true is evident in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners and separated from God: For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:7-8
That God is able to keep us follows from the fact that the One who created all things and calls them into being, is able to give life even to the dead and is pleased to do so for the sake of the praise of His grace and the glory of His name.
The Apostle Paul taught that husbands should love their wives, even as Jesus loved the church: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27
If we believe that Jesus was sinless and always did what was pleasing to God the Father, as the Bible teaches, we should also know that as sinners we fall short of His perfect character and are unable to do what He has commanded on our own. For this reason He has said that if we believe Him and are faithful to confess our sin to Him, then He is faithful and Just to forgive our sin. He has also promised us power to overcome our own worldly nature, through a new nature born of His Holy Spirit. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is able to raise us up from spiritual death to a new life in Him, by which we live to give Him the glory that is due Him.
How is this done? The answer, though simple, is still impossible without faith. We must surrender our own will to God’s perfect will. We must call upon Jesus, the lover of our souls, to save us from the destruction that we deserve, and to be our Lord and Master. If we believe that God is only good and wants only good for us, then it shouldn’t be so hard to submit to what He wants, but even this is not ours by our nature. This is why Jesus said that no one comes to Him accept that he is called by the Father. It is God’s irresistible will that calls us to Himself, so today, if you hear His voice, if you feel the tug upon your heart of the beloved, then call on Him. Offer to exchange your life spent in vain pursuits, for an eternal life that celebrates His glory. Give up your sin by confession to the One who is able to bear it and ask Him to give His own righteousness in its place. He promised, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. John 6:37 So, if you have not known Him, come to Him and know the love of God.
6
The Holiness of God
I believe that most people, even in our largely secular world, understand something of what the word “Holiness” means. Many would scoff at the notion and consider “Holiness” to be an evil invention of the mind of man. I think that such a view of “Holiness” is born out of misunderstanding, especially as it relates to the Holiness of God.
The Holy Scriptures are full of examples of wrath being unleashed upon men for transgressing the Holiness of God. The harsh punishments for transgressions against God’s commandments, the law given to the Hebrews through Moses, are all expressions of justice rendered for lawless acts which profane or ignore God’s Holiness and His intent for His people, that they be Holy: "Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: `You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Leviticus 19:2
Generally, a theologian would define “Holiness” as “separation”, or to be “Holy” as to be “separate.” This follows directly from biblical verses such as: `And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine. Leviticus 20:26
God’s Holiness is the definition of His purity. In the book of Habakkuk we read: You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. (from Habakkuk 1:13); This verse says something of God’s purity, but doesn’t define it as clearly as the Apostle John does in one of his epistles: This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5 This verse itself isn’t clear unless we understand that the language of the Bible uses the word light as symbolic of all that is good, and darkness as that which is evil (or lacking goodness). With this in mind, we say that God is complete in His purity. He alone is Holy in the strictest sense of the word for He alone is perfect in His purity.
One of the things which define God as God is that He is Eternal and unchanging. Most peoples have understood that God must be eternal, but as change is a normal part of our experience in the world, people have commonly imagined that God must be subject to change. The word of God, however, testifies to God’s unchanging or eternal character:
"For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. Malachi 3:6
James, the brother of Jesus, expressed the same truth in language like that of the Apostle John: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17 Again, using symbolic language common to the biblical texts, James is identifying God as the progenitor of those who shed light, the source of every good thing which we receive, and completely consistent and unchanging in His character.
To put it another way, God is not defined by what is good, but God defines what is good by His person. That which is not godly or according to what pleases God, is not good, and can be called evil.
The Bible tells us that when God made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, before the existence of sin, that everything was good: Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 1:31 It was sin, or willful disobedience to God, that caused the world to become impure or unholy.
Jesus, speaking of men, said that only God is good, which defines mankind as evil. He spoke to His own disciples in these terms: "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Luke 11:13
This last statement by Jesus also tells us how God makes someone who is evil by nature into someone who is holy. While rebuking the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus taught about the sanctification of the temple and of the things within it, explaining that it is the presence of God which sanctifies, not the objects themselves: "He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. "And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it. Matthew 23:21-22
The temple was holy because it was the place set apart by God for His people Israel to come to offer sacrifice and to seek mercy from Him through the intermediaries of the priesthood. The inner sanctuary, called the “holy of holies,” or “most holy place,” was holy because that is the place where God manifested His glory over the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, revealing His divine presence. In other words, a holy place is one in which God manifests His presence and it is His presence that makes the place holy. When God called Moses to send him back to Egypt, to bring Israel out, he met with Moses on a mountainside. This place was known as mount Horeb, the mountain of God, but was still a mountain like many others, and the burning bush which Moses witnessed was like other bushes scattered about the terrain, except that this one burned and was not consumed by the flame: And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.'' Exodus 3:2-3
God took the ordinary and made it extraordinary by His presence. He also made it holy by His presence, as revealed by Him to Moses: Then He said, "Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.'' Exodus 3:5
Jesus made it clear that blaspheming the Holy Spirit was unpardonable sin, equating the Holy Spirit with God the Father: "And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. Luke 12:10 This same equality is taught by the Apostle, John: For there are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 1 John 5:7
So the presence of the Holy Spirit, being the presence of God, makes one holy: Nevertheless, brethren, I have written more boldly to you on some points, as reminding you, because of the grace given to me by God, that I might be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:15-16
Now we can say that God makes that which is not good or holy by nature, into that which is holy by His presence, in the person of His Holy Spirit. I have to add here that the Holy Spirit is a person, not some force or energy that can be manipulated, as some cults teach. Jesus called Him the Helper, or comforter, and speaks of Him in personal terms: "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. "He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. John 16:13-14
This same “Spirit of Truth” was identified earlier in the same gospel as the Holy Spirit: "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, "even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. John 14:16-17
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit who makes a believer Holy, not anything that people might do on their own. The gospel by which men are saved, is a gospel of repentance from sin, but it is clearly the presence of the Holy Spirit which allows men to live repentant lives: Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Romans 8:12-14
The call to live holy lives, for believers, is a choice to seek obedience to God through the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit, but is simply impossibility to those without the Spirit of God. Its true that people can do works that are “good” and endeavor not to do things that are evil, but by God’s standard, by Him who judges the heart and mind and motives too deep for us to fully understand ourselves, our best works are tainted by sin: But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Isaiah 64:6
The Holy Spirit sanctifies genuine believers and allows them to live sanctified lives, but more significantly to us, identifies believers as belonging to God and Christ Jesus, as it is only by faith in Jesus Christ that we may receive the Holy Spirit: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit in believers which is their guarantee that they have a place in God’s kingdom: In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:13-14
Having said these things about the Holy Spirit, I should add that there is some controversy in the modern church as to how a person receives the Holy Spirit. The last passage quoted, from the letter to the Ephesian church, makes it clear enough that receiving the Holy Spirit was the result of believing, while other passages make it clear that believing is also the work of our being convinced of the Truth by the Spirit of Truth. Most of the modern churches would say that the moment of belief is the moment of salvation and therefore also the moment of receiving the Holy Spirit. The dilemma that this creates is how we define belief.
Jesus defined belief through obedience to His word: "But why do you call Me `Lord, Lord,' and do not do the things which I say? "Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: "He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. "But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.'' Luke 6:46-49
Yet Jesus said that He came to save sinners, not the righteous, so His gospel is for people who are not obedient to His word by their nature.
The Apostle Paul tells us how people are saved in very explicit terms: But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, `Who will ascend into heaven?' '' (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, " `Who will descend into the abyss?' '' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. Romans 10:6-10
Here Paul talks about confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, which is to say that He is our righteous God, Master, and judge, and believing that He is risen from the dead (with the understanding that He is glorified). Yet this passage still doesn’t explain how the Holy Spirit is received or just when.
Jesus said that God would give the Holy Spirit for the asking: "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!'' Luke 11:13
Given the other scriptures relating to salvation, and what I have experienced in my own confession, I believe that the Holy Spirit is received at the moment of genuine belief when a soul surrenders its own will to God’s will and submits to the rule of God in Christ Jesus, asking Him for His Spirit and trusting Him for eternal life. It follows that asking Jesus to be your Lord is more than just calling Him Lord, and asking for His Spirit is the only way to know Him as Lord.
If this is not your own experience, then I suggest that you need to ask yourself if you really know Him (not know about Him) and belong to Him. If this is your fervent desire, to know Him and be called His own. Then I say, “Ask Him to be your Lord and to reign in your life. Ask Him for His Holy Spirit to be your teacher and guide, the seal of your redemption.” Trust Him, for He has promised to receive all that come to Him and will by no means cast them out. He lives and He hears and He waits for His own to call upon His name. Amen.
7
The return of Jesus, called the Christ
Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.'' Acts 1:9-11
In a world where beliefs vary according to the vain imaginations of man, all arguments, all contrary beliefs, all vain imaginings will be settled in an instant, in one moment of time, when the Lord, Jesus Christ, returns to the earth in person, in power, and in glory.
The unbelieving world scoffs, asserting that the man, Jesus, called the Christ, is dead and will never return, or never truly lived to begin with. Even among His professing church there are those who do not believe that He will return, or are not willing to think about the idea of His return in any kind of immediate sense, when we would all be required to give an account of our time, spent in His service or in vain pursuits to our own shame.
The Christ of the gospels is seen in truth as humble and lowly, a gentle lamb prepared for slaughter, ready to pay the price for the sin of His people with His own blood. While those who love Him await His appearing in hope, knowing Him and His love for them, we don’t like to think of the unusual act to come. This thing which is hard to receive in the light of His character, which we know to be only good, is His righteous judgment of the earth. The scriptures say that the Lord will return in judgment, rendering vengeance against His adversaries. The day of the Lord is one of darkness and not of light: I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! "For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'' Revelation 6:12-17
Those who profess to believe in Jesus Christ, yet disbelieve in His righteous indignation, interpret passages like this one from the book of the Revelation in a manner which spiritualizes the meaning, to remove or minimize the truth that God will judge the nations with fury. Jesus taught about the judgment and His own involvement. He spoke about the return of the “Son of Man,” a term which He used to refer to Himself: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, "and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. John 5:26-27
Jesus also spoke specifically about the nature of the final judgment: "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. "All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. "And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.
"Then the King will say to those on His right hand, `Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: `for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; `I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.'
"Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, `Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? `When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? `Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
"And the King will answer and say to them, `Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'
"Then He will also say to those on the left hand, `Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: `for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; `I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.'
"Then they also will answer Him, saying, `Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?'
"Then He will answer them, saying, `Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' "And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.'' Matthew 25:31-46
There are many passages about the day of the Lord in the Old Testament scriptures, but Isaiah chapter 13 gives little room for doubt that God will bring a terrible judgment against the entire world:
I have commanded My sanctified ones; I have also called My mighty ones for My anger those who rejoice in My exaltation.'' The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like that of many people! A tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together! The Lord of hosts musters the army for battle. They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord and His weapons of indignation, to destroy the whole land. Wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will be limp, every man's heart will melt, and they will be afraid. Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them; they will be in pain as a woman in childbirth; they will be amazed at one another; their faces will be like flames.
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. "I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger. Isaiah 13:3-13
Again, many of us would like to divorce Jesus from the acts of God’s righteous judgment, but Jesus spoke more than once of His own return: Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.''
He answered and said to them: "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. "The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. "Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, "and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. "Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Matthew 13:36-43
If we can accept and believe that Jesus Christ will return, when will that time be? It’s been about 2000 years since the birth of Jesus and He still hasn’t returned. This is reason enough for some people to assume that His return is in some distant time, not a concern for the present. Jesus, said that no one would know the time of His return: "But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. "But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. "For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, "and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Matthew 24:36-39
It is the testimony of Jesus that people will not be expecting His coming, but will be living their lives as always, with no concern for the future. This, however, makes us no less accountable: "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
"But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him.
"Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? "Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. "Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.
"But if that evil servant says in his heart, `My master is delaying his coming,' "and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards, "the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of, "and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:42-51
Jesus exhorted us to watch for His coming so that we are not caught unawares. This would be pointless if He was speaking of the exact moment of His coming, as it would then be too late to do anything to prepare for Him. No, Jesus intended that we be prepared for Him, doing His will, and watching the signs of the times for His coming. We see Him speaking in these terms when he entered Jerusalem, before His crucifixion: Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. "For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, "and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.'' Luke 19:41-44
We see in this passage, the heart of God, knowing that He must judge sin, but sorrowful for those who are judged because they would not hear His voice or heed His word.
Again we may ask, when are the times of His coming and what are the signs of it?
His disciples asked Jesus these very same questions and his answer is found in chapter 24 of Matthew’s gospel: Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?''
And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. "For many will come in My name, saying, `I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
"All these are the beginning of sorrows. "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. "And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. "Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. "But he who endures to the end shall be saved. "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:3-14
Scoffers like to point out that the things which Jesus called the “beginning of sorrows” have been happening throughout history and are natural occurrences or, in the case of human interactions, the results of natural behavior and inclinations. The word translated as “sorrows” is actually from a Romanized Greek word “odin”, which might be better translated as “throes” and refers to the pains of child birth prior to the actual delivery, or “birth pangs.” The Apostle Paul, used similar language when speaking of creation awaiting the time of the revelation of the sons of God: For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Romans 8:22
What these verses suggest is that the trials of the earth grow in frequency and in intensity as the time grows near for Christ’s return. Again, unbelievers claim that things go on as they always have been since the formation of the earth, but in my own short life span, I would say that things have indeed gone from bad to worse.
I frequently hear scoffers deify nature when they refer to the way that “Mother nature” seems to be going out of control, yet can’t give a reason for the changes that they themselves have noticed in the world’s “natural” events. I’ve even heard people go as far as to attribute an anger and vengefulness to nature, as though these events were a response to environmental damage caused by human carelessness and abuse. People can sense a response in the world around us to the sin that is in us, but are unable or unwilling to name sin for what it is, or acknowledge mankind’s guilt in rejecting our creator.
Then there are also those who say that they believe in God, yet refuse to hear what He has said, or to do His will, preferring to believe their own vain imaginations about God, rather than what He has chosen to reveal to man and proven through prophecy and its fulfillment, as found in the Holy Scriptures. These same are unable or unwilling to admit what the signs of the times say about themselves and their own rebellious hearts.
Yet, God’s grace remains what it is, a free gift of forgiveness and the offer of eternal life in His good presence, through acceptance of His Son and submitting to His will. What has He said about His salvation? But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, `Who will ascend into heaven?' '' (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, " `Who will descend into the abyss?' '' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.'' Romans 10:6-11
God’s gracious offer remains to this day and for all who will receive it, a gift by His word and in His covenant through the shed blood of His Son, given freely to pay the price of our sin and to redeem us to Himself. It is this good news that He will forgive the sin of all who believe Him and turn from their sinful ways to follow Him, which must be preached throughout the world prior to His return.
You might say, if God has predetermined to judge the world for transgression, why should the gospel be preached throughout the world, seeing that faithless men largely reject it? The Apostle Peter, explains it simply: For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which now exist are kept in store by the same word, reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:5-9
This scripture does not say that all will come to repentance, nor does it say that God is waiting for all to come to repentance, but only says that it is not God’s will that men should perish. Put another way, the scripture also says that God takes no pleasure in the death of those that are dying, so repent and live.
The scriptures tell us that there will be a time when “the cup of God’s wrath” will be full and then poured out upon the earth. They say that the Lord will cleanse the earth of all things which offend (His righteous character) and establish His kingdom for eternity, dwelling among His elect (those that He has chosen to believe in Him). The Apostle Paul wrote at some length of the rejection of Christ by the Jews and of the eventual restoration of Israel, with a hint of when this all will take place: For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that hardening in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; Romans 11:25-26
The term “fullness of the Gentiles,” has been misinterpreted to mean a number of things, but what Paul was actually referring to was a prophecy from the book of Daniel: "And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, having fierce features, Who understands sinister schemes. His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power; he shall destroy fearfully, and shall prosper and thrive; he shall destroy the mighty, and also the holy people.
"Through his cunning he shall cause deceit to prosper under his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart. He shall destroy many in their prosperity. he shall even rise against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without human hand. "And the vision of the evenings and mornings which was told is true; therefore seal up the vision, for it refers to many days in the future.'' Daniel 8:23-26
Daniel was a prophet that God raised up during the Babylonian captivity, when the inhabitants of Jerusalem were carried away as captives to the kingdom of Babylon. Daniel lived most of His life in Babylon and is sometimes called “the prophet to the gentiles,” because much of the prophecy which he spoke was given to gentiles or given in reference to the gentile kingdoms.
Jesus, Himself referred to one of the prophecies from the book of Daniel, when speaking of the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the tribulations of the last days of this age: "Therefore when you see the `abomination of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place'' (whoever reads, let him understand), "then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Matthew 24:15-16
So, what is the fullness of the gentiles, or the fullness of transgression? The Jews were given a covenant of law by God and through Moses. The Apostle Paul, said that the law was added “because of transgressions”: What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Galatians 3:19
Paul’s writings show us that the law is good in that it reveals God’s will for us. It also reveals our sinfulness, through our inability to faithfully keep the law. Moses said that the law would be a witness against the rebellious children of Israel: "Take this Book of the Law, and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there as a witness against you; "for I know your rebellion and your stiff neck. If today, while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the Lord, then how much more after my death? Deuteronomy 31:26-27
Although the gentiles were not “under the covenant of law,” the sinfulness of their nature is still revealed by the law, in that we see the same things at work in them and in their response to civil law. The issue with the Jews though, as under law, was that they would be judged for their transgressions, not just individually, but as a nation; God promised this at the time that the tribes of Israel were actually entering into the promised land to take possession of it.
The prophets of the captivity recognized that God had indeed brought judgment against the nation of Israel for their transgression against His law. We also find in the same writings that God would one day judge all the nations of the earth for their transgressions as well, but the nations were not given “the law” as the nation of Israel was. The nations were given something far greater than the law. The nations were given Jesus and His church, a light to the gentiles and a standard for all the nations. The world is given the gospel.
Jesus, after His resurrection from the dead, instructed His disciples to spread the gospel and make disciples of men: Afterward He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. Mark 16:14-16.
What Jesus said should make it clear enough, but the Apostle Peter also proclaimed, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that there is no other name by which we may be saved: "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'' Acts 4:12
Jesus said, "And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. John 12:47-48
Israel was judged, collectively, for rebellion and transgression against the law. So also, the world will be judged, collectively, for rebellion and rejection of the gospel, which is itself a deliverance from the judgment of the law, and specifically for rejecting Jesus, the Son of God, who came to fulfill the law and redeem us from sin.
As there was a terrible judgment for transgression against the law, there will be a greater judgment for rejection of the gospel, for this is the free gift of God, paid for with the blood of His beloved Son: Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? Hebrews 10:28-29
The book of the revelation of Jesus Christ tells of the terrible and eternal consequence of rejecting Christ: "He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.'' Revelation 21:7-8
Should we be tempted to call God unfair for His righteous judgment against sin, because we all should recognize the fact that we ourselves have sinned and will most likely do so again, we need to remember that God, in His mercy, has prepared a way of deliverance from judgment and condemnation. The scripture calls Jesus, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. From the very beginning, God, understanding what the consequences of evil choice would be, had the plan of shedding His own blood, in the person of His Son, to satisfy the righteous requirements of His own law, for as many as would receive Him and trust Him for their salvation.
This was not some immense cosmic exercise in futility, but the perfect plan of God to create children, renewed in His own image, as revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ.
How are those children created? When a person recognizes their sin, and rejecting it, turn to God for salvation, putting their faith wholly in the gift of Jesus Christ, God seals such a person with His own Spirit, making one alive to Him, who was dead in trespass and sin. His Spirit, like the breath of life in the story of creation, transforms the spirit of man, and creates anew from what was spiritually dead and headed for destruction. A man’s spirit is given life in an instant of time and his mind may be renewed through obedience and the hearing of God’s word. The greatness and wonder of His new covenant is that the living God Himself, takes up permanent residence in His creation, and by His own will teaches us, guides us, and reshapes us into His desire for us, which is only good. He does not leave us to our failures and weak attempts to satisfy His requirements, but instead meets them on His own, through our surrender to Him and conformation to His image.
The extreme wickedness of man is not that he lives for pleasure, because God designed man to be able to experience pleasure. No, the wickedness of man is that he wills to take his pleasure in his own way, without regard to what is good or pleasing to God, and in direct rebellion to God’s will for him. Since God intends only good for us, in rejecting His will, we intentionally choose evil along with its consequence. God, because He is good, can not allow the pain and suffering of our evil choices to continue indefinitely, but will come to put an end to it, once and for all.
We don’t know the exact time that Jesus will return, but now is the time to reject sin. Now is the time to cry out to Him for His salvation and to experience His love and His goodness first hand. Those who reject Him can never experience peace with God, nor can they ever experience the good that He has planned for them, not in this life, nor for eternity. When He does return, it will be too late for anything but judgment to those who chose to ignore His call to faith. Seek Him while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. He is as close as the word of your mouth and the belief of your heart. Turn to Him and know your God, now and forever. Amen.
The content to follow is broken into 7 topics: 1 The coming darkness, 2 False religion, 3 The uniqueness of life, 4 Life, Liberty, & the pursuit of happiness, 5 The broken covenant, 6 The Holiness of God, and 7 the return of Jesus Christ. The last topic is similar to another of my postings under the Bible study forum, but predates it by more than a few years, and is included as the completion of the group of messages as they were originally written and delivered.
1
The coming Darkness
And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
And they will pass through it hard pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness. Isaiah 8:19-22
The question is not whether psychics, mediums, card readers, and the like have spiritual powers or contact with spirits and spiritual forces, or are simply charlatans and con artists. No, the question is whether or not their message is true or a lie artfully designed to keep a soul from the truth.
We know beyond a doubt that among men there are those who choose to do great evil and even delight in doing so. If the spirit of a man can be this way, oppossed to good, full of hate, bitterness, and a joy for destruction, then the “spirits” which can’t be seen by us are just as likely to have such dispositions.
Even men with the best of intentions have led people to disaster and death by poor advice, wrong choices, or bad discernment, so how would a “spirit” be less succeptible to error?
Only God knows the end from the beginning. Not even His holy angels have such understanding. The Bible teaches that God chose to reveal the mysteries of heaven through men, things that angels don’t know or understand, and especially through His Son, and to His disciples, who have believed His Son and received the Holy Spirit to communicate the word and the will of God: Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things which angels desire to look into. 1 Peter 1:10-12
The word “angel” means, among other things, “messenger,” and it isn’t necessary that a messenger understand the content of a message. The job of the messenger is to deliver the message.
The Bible also tells us that some angels were cast out of heaven and to the earth for their iniquity (evil) and rebellion against God: How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” Yet you shall be brought down to sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit. Isaiah 14:12-15
These angels would obviously have knowledge of history and of whatever may be observed on the earth, as well as of those things in heaven prior to their fall. These fallen angels, or devils, could tell us many things which have really happened and are in the process of happening, but not one of them could tell you what will happen in the future, except that they have some power to make something happen.
The Bible tells us that God gave great power to angels, for the purpose of ministering to men. The devil, or Satan, was one of the most powerful of the angels and given to be a ruler of this world.
Satan isn’t some ugly looking man in a red suit with a pitchfork in his hand, but was described in the Bible as the most beautiful and perfect creature until evil was found in him: Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre and say to him, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, saphire, torquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created.
You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.
By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones.
Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze at you. Ezekial 28:12-17
The Bible also tells us that Satan is a liar and a murderer, the father of all lies: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” John 8:44
How would we know if a spirit were revealing the truth to us or working through lies to bring us to eternal destruction?
God gave His law to Moses for the children of Israel, for their “good,” to keep them alive and to seperate them from the “gods” of the nations, which the Bible also reveals to us as “demons” or fallen angels.
God was so concerned for the “good” of His people, that He even gave a law condemning mediums and spiritists to death, for the protection of His people and for their good: A man or a woman who is a medium, or who has familiar spirits, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones. Their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:27
The Law of God is harsh, with severe penalties for sin, but this law was given to lawbreakers, people who are prone by their own nature to do wrong, so that in keeping the law, they might have long life and know “good” or God’s blessings.
Everyone desires good from God, but not everyone is willing to do good for God, and the plain truth is that no one could ever do good, unless God taught them what is “good,” and gave to them both the will and the ability to do it.
As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us that the Law was given by God to us, so that we could recognize how far we are from being good in ourselves; that we are evil by nature, being self centered, self serving, and at our very best, self righteous.
If God cast some of His holy angels out of heaven for their iniquity, how could he ever allow people, who begin to do self serving and evil things from the cradle, to ever enter into His presence? Yet, this is what the Bible says was God’s plan from the very beginning; to create man in His own image and likeness, as creatures to worship Him, have fellowship with Him, and to be blessed with all things by Him.
God is Holy and perfect, completely righteous and good. This means that He is perfect in His love and also perfect in His justice. This brings us to the reason that people seek for knowledge of the future. Everyone has a sense of “justice,” a concept of “right and wrong,” but some believe that they can escape justice.
Each one of us knows that we do wrong at times in our lives, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we hurt and do violence, but we justify ourselves by excuses, blame shifting, or even by delusion and denial.
If we believe in a judgement of our lives by God, then we have fear because we know that we do wrong. We try to believe that we can do “right things” to make up for the “wrong,” to come out ahead in the balance, or, we just pretend that God doesn’t exist and that there is no judgment or reckoning for the works of our lives. Either way we still have fear, because the truth of judgment is inescapable in our souls.
The Bible teaches that men are appointed to die once and then to be judged; if this were all that the Bible said, every one of us would be found guilty before God, condemned and seperated from Him for eternity by our sin. The wages of sin is death, and death is seperation from God. Now, some people think that an eternity without God would be one long party of debauchery and perverse pleasure, but God only promises pleasure to those who are brought into His kingdom.
To those who reject Him and what is “good,” He promises eternal destruction and torment. God also promises to bring an end to the world as we know it, to cleanse it with fire, to purge out all evil, at His coming. The book of the revelation of Jesus Christ tells us that one day, when the rebellion against God has reached its peak, that God will satisfy His justice by pouring out His wrath upon the earth.
Since God is perfect and can’t lie, we have to either disbelieve God, which is to make Him to be a liar and to remain an object of His wrath, or we have to consider that we are in desperate straits and without hope, unless God chooses to save us from His own wrath.
If God is perfectly just (and He is), how could we not be condemned for our sin? If we must die for our sin, and we all die according to the flesh, how could we be restored to God, having been seperated from Him by our sin? Our own nature condemns us, so how can we be saved from an eternity of suffering, banned from the presence of God?
God, who created the law which condemns us, also provided a way of escape from His wrath, a way of return to His presence. If our nature is evil, then we need a new nature from God, and He has provided the way to receive this new nature, even a new birth by His Holy Spirit.
By the power of His Holy Spirit, and through the flesh of a woman, God became a man in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, for the one purpose of living a perfect and Holy life, and then of dying a perfect and Holy death upon the cross as a substitute for all of us who would believe Him. God gave His own life, in the person of His Son, to suffer His own wrath in our place, the innocent lamb of God, in exchange for the souls of sinners like us, who deserve death as the just punishment of our sin.
God satisfied His justice upon His Son, keeping His covenant vows to men, so that in believing Him, we would be counted as righteous, because of Christ’s merit and not our own. Then God raised Jesus from the dead, the One who died in our place, to make Him our judge and our High priest, or mediator, between us and God.
Even though Jesus “paid the price” for our sin, we would still be seperated from God by our sinful nature unless God changed our nature. In believing Jesus Christ and accepting Him as our Lord, we are submitting ourselves to His will and asking Him for His Holy Spirit. In receiving His Holy Spirit, we are receiving new life in our own spirit, an immediate restoration to God in His kingdom, a new direction in life, a new purpose in glory.
What’s more, though we still sin at times because of our nature in the flesh, God’s promise is to keep us, if we have believed Him. If we confess our sin and believe Jesus, seeking to do His will, God is “just” to forgive our sin, having laid it upon Jesus at the cross. He is faithful to give us power to turn from sin and to live our lives according to His will. The best part of this is that this gift of God is accomplished by God and not by us. God works out His will by the power of His Spirit in and through us, by faith in His Son.
So, would you escape the day of darkness?
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds. Revelation 16:10-11
Call upon the Lord now. Confess your sin to God and believe in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. If you haven’t the faith to believe Him, then ask Him for faith to believe. God is there and He is ready to receive you with open arms if you believe Him. He wants your love and He loved you enough to suffer His only begotten Son to die as one accursed for your sake. He loves His Son enough to receive you with Him in His presence, in eternal life. Call on Him now and enter into the kingdom of the sons of light.
He is the Way, He is the truth, He is the life, Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Amen.
2
False Religion
There is a way of thinking, prevalent now, which suggests that any religion is “good” as long as it makes us a “better” person. The same thinking suggests that there is no absolute truth, but rather, that which you hold to be true is good enough for you if it serves you and satisfies your own need for faith and purpose. At the heart of this thinking is the notion that God exists for our benefit, or that God doesn’t exist and we may invent Him in the way that best pleases us.
If we really do believe in a God and Creator of all things, then we should realize that the Creator creates to please Himself according to His own character; everything which exists, does so for His purpose and not for its own. If we create a piece of artwork or a work of craft, we create it for our own pleasure, not for the pleasure of the object created.
The only religion which could please God is that religion of His own choice and not of our own. The only way in which we could know the religion of God’s choice is by Him revealing it to us in some manner.
If God desired to reveal His will for us, He could speak to us directly, or He could send messengers of His choice to speak to us concerning it. There have been, and still are, many people who claim to hear the voice of God, or to have heard from messengers, called angels, or to have seen visions from God. As these people often disagree with respect to the content of their message, how could we know which of them were genuine, if any?
God solved this problem for us by letting His prophets give signs of things to come, to predict future events in the world that were not in direct control of the prophet himself. What’s more, since the true God must be eternal, having no creator of Himself, then His will should be eternally true and unchanging.
There is only one collection of writings from “men of God,” which is consistent in its teaching, when properly understood, and also consistent in the fulfillment of prophecy. This book is the Bible, the written word of God.
The Bible asserts that God inspired its writing by moving men of His choosing to do so, through the person of His Holy Spirit: We also have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:19-21
It is easy enough for men to assert that they have had contact with God without this being true, but in the Bible, God has made it His responsibility to prove His word true. He has done this by consistently revealing History before the events occurred. While some prophecy may fit a number of events, most Biblical prophecy has been specific, sometimes even revealing the names of people not yet born, what they would do, and the times when the prophecy would be fulfilled.
The Bible however, was not given to men to prove God’s existence, but to reveal His person, His character, and His plan for His creation. God gave us His word so that we could have a loving relationship with Him, rather than an adversarial one: "Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; Deuteronomy 7:9
The Bible clearly teaches that God’s love is for His whole creation, not for just the physical descendants of Abraham: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16
The Bible teaches us that God is good, Holy, and perfect in character: So He said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.'' Matthew 19:17
This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5
The Bible also teaches us that men are evil by nature, wicked in our imaginations and deceived by our own hearts: And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. Genesis 8:21
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
The Bible teaches us that we are separated from God by our sin, and that if God gave us what we deserved, every one of us would stand guilty and condemned before Him. We can confirm our condition simply by this fact: All of us with normal capacity have been aware of a conscience within us at some time, that told us that we’d done wrong, though this conscience grew silent as we continued in doing what we knew to be wrong.
The Bible also teaches us that it was never God’s intent to leave us to suffer the eternal consequence of our sin, which is death and destruction, but His intent has always been to deliver us from our own evil nature and restore us to Himself, for our good and for His glory. God had a plan from the very beginning of time, to provide a Son for us as a perfect sacrifice for our sin. God sent His own Son, born of the flesh of a woman, but begotten by the power of His Holy Spirit, to live a sinless life and to die the death of the condemned in our place; one perfect and innocent man suffering the penalty of sin in the place of guilty humanity for as many as would receive Him and His testimony.
God gave His own Son to be a shelter to us from His wrath, the execution of His justice, His judgment upon sin and rebellion: Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. A man will be as a hiding place from the wind, and a cover from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Isaiah 32:1-2
The Bible is also very clear as to the fact that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is the only way to God: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6.
Jesus is the only Savior: This is the `stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.' "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'' Acts 4:11-12.
Jesus is the only escape from God’s wrath: "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.'' John 3:36.
Every other pretense at religion is just a deceptive road to destruction: "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13-14
The Bible makes this point clearer in that it declares the gods of the nations to be worthless idols or demons: They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear. Deuteronomy 32:16-17
Don’t be fooled into considering that this only applied to ancient peoples or the Biblical nation of Israel, because the Bible gives prophecy of the wrath of God to come upon all mankind for the same reasons: But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. Revelation 9:20-21
In the Bible, in chapter 58 of the book of Isaiah, God describes for us what He considers to be true religion; things such as helping widows and orphans, freeing people in bondage, feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless. These things are the things which Jesus did and taught that we should do, but even nonbelievers do such things. The Bible makes it clear that the performance of religious works doesn’t save a person from destruction. On the contrary, the performance of works to earn God’s favor is identified as sin: Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.'' Romans 4:4-8
Jesus Himself explained in a parable that God’s servants don’t earn favor for doing what they have been commanded to do by their master, as it is only that which is expected of them: "So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, `We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.' '' Luke 17:10
As we don’t earn merit by doing what is expected of us, all the things which we don’t do but should have done would simply add up against us, and at our judgment we could only be debtors to God, not having done the things which He gave us provision to do.
The Bible teaches us that God saves us, not because of our good works, but to do good works for His glory: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:8-10
So then, how is it that we are saved? The verse above says salvation is by grace (God’s) through faith (ours), so God gives faith to believe Him, to whomever He chooses, as an act of unmerited favor.
Many people believe that they will join God in heaven simply because it’s their birth right, by reason of God’s covenants and their own family lineage, but the Bible says,
"The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Ezekiel 18:20
It would seem that the family and nation of your birth has no relevance to eternal salvation, but Jesus taught of a special family relationship by which a person could be saved: Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. "Do not marvel that I said to you, `You must be born again.' "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.'' John 3:5-8
Jesus was speaking of men being born again, not physically, but spiritually. He was speaking about men, spiritually dead to God, separated from God by our sin, being made spiritually alive by God’s Spirit, like Adam receiving the breath of life from God, becoming a new creation: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3
Jesus was teaching that to be saved, men must be adopted by God, changed into His sons by receiving His Spirit: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father.'' Romans 8:14-15.
This still leaves us with the question of how God accomplishes this. How do we receive His Spirit? What do we have to do?
Jesus instructed that men should labor for eternal things and He was asked what the works of God were so that they could be done: Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?'' Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.'' John 6:28-29
Jesus was speaking of Himself, and we see this in the third chapter of the gospel according to John, in Jesus’ speech to Nicodemus: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. John 3:16-18
It’s important to understand that to believe in Jesus is not simply to agree that He was a man who started a religion, but to believe what He said and what He did, and to act upon it as the truth. The rulers of the Jews that convicted Jesus and condemned Him to the cross, said that Jesus made Himself equal to God, and this is because Jesus taught that He was sent by the Father, that He came from God in glory and would return to God in glory, that He alone knew the Father and was known by Him, that He and the Father are One.
These things must be true if anyone is to be saved by God through faith in Christ. If Jesus were just a man, then according to God’s word, He could only die for His own sin, but as the sinless Son of God, He could die a death of sacrifice for us, to satisfy God’s justice in our place, suffering the penalty that we deserve.
The Bible tells us that Jesus rose again from the dead, on the third day after He was crucified, fulfilling God’s word, and proving His testimony true. If we say that we believe Him, we must believe that He lives now and sits upon His throne as our Lord and our judge: Then Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'' Amen. Matthew 28:18-20
The Bible teaches us that we are unable to do anything to please God without faith in Him and that there is nothing we can do to be saved but to believe in Him, but how do we believe in what we haven’t seen and how do we receive faith?
The Bible answers that question as well: So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17. So, to have faith we must hear the word of God and receive it as true. God imparts faith to us by giving us grace to believe His word and specifically the word of His Son.
Many people still will argue that if God is love, as the Bible indeed says, then a loving God will not condemn people to destruction. It is not true that God is vindictive or malicious. God is only good, yet part of being good is being just, and God’s justice is served in allowing people to have what they’ve chosen for themselves. Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s love toward us, giving His life to die in our place, so that we may have eternal life through faith in Him. If we reject the fullness of God, of all that is good, as made manifest to us in Christ Jesus, then there remains nothing for us to receive from God except the consequence of our sin, eternal separation from Him and all that is good: "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. John 3:19
Don’t miss this point or misunderstand it. God, who created us, gave us all good things to enjoy with the giving of thanks to Him. God created us to take pleasure in pleasing Him, but through sin men pervert their pleasure to the doing of evil in rebellion to God’s will, despising His good gifts and His good intention for us. There will be no pleasure in Hell, only anguish and sorrow without comfort, desire and longing without satisfaction, and the awareness that this was one’s own choice in rejecting the love of God made manifest in Christ Jesus.
This is not the working of my own imagination but the revealed word of God as given by the Apostle Paul: since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed. 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10
With our hearts hardened by sin, we choose to disbelieve these things and assign them in our minds to a place of fantasy and imagination, because we know our guilt. Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. God says, “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,'' says the Lord God. "Therefore turn and live!” Ezekiel 18:31-32
If we examine ourselves honestly we realize that we are powerless to change ourselves, although this never prevents us from trying. We may attempt to alter our lives and circumstances by our own strength; We can gather wealth or power, even gain a sense of “spirituality” by attempting to live a life of “peace and quiet” in natural surroundings, but deep within us our own nature remains unchanged and subject to the spirit of this age, dead in transgression and sin, and separated from God.
To really turn from our sinful ways to God, to do His will, we need a change of nature within ourselves that can’t be effected by us, and this is exactly what God promised to do for us through His prophets in the Old Testament of the Bible: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Ezekiel 36:26.
And this is exactly what God accomplishes in us when we genuinely believe Jesus Christ, receiving Him as our Lord and Savior: 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
If you are unfamiliar with what Jesus said, and did, and taught, then you should go to the gospels accounts, of which there are four that are reliable, agree with one another, and add to one another to give you an honest account of the doctrine (teaching) of Jesus Christ. These are found in the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible. If you have a genuine desire to do the will of God, then it is sure that you will be able to tell if Jesus’ doctrine is from heaven or the invention of man, according to the faith that is in Christ Jesus: Jesus answered them and said, "My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. John 7:16-17
You may have even heard or read the gospels and have some familiarity with the teachings of Jesus Christ, but remained unbelieving or failed to understand the implication of His teachings in your own life. Believing Christ and submitting to Him as Lord are not optional things for men (mankind), but a commandment that must be obeyed. The scripture already presented here makes it clear that disobedience to this commandment will leave you to suffer the judgment of God against sin and transgression, to be condemned to hell for eternity without hope or comfort.
There is no salvation, no goodness, no life without Christ. So, if God is working upon your heart, if your soul is hearing the call of God, confess your sin to Him. Agree with Him that you have no hope of saving yourself, and that you know you can only stand guilty before Him if judged for all that you have done in your life. Make your plea to Him. Ask Him to save you from your sin, to change your ways. Tell Him that you believe He has the power to save you, and trust that the shed blood of Jesus was offered for you and for your sin. Ask God for His Holy Spirit, the promise of Jesus Christ to those who believe Him, for power to do His will. Offer yourself to Jesus to do His will instead of your own. Believe that He is risen from the dead, hears you when you call to Him, and stands ready to receive you: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.'' John 6:37-40
God doesn’t require that you clean up your life to come to Him. He requires that you put your trust in Him to lead you to do good, to believe and trust His word, to make you to be what He intended you to be from the very beginning, a son of God made in His own image and likeness. This is what it means to become Christian: To become Christ like, not through our own efforts, but by faith in Him and the working of His Spirit in our lives to conform us to His will by the power of His word.
Seek Him while He may be found. Call upon Him for your salvation: "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” Romans 10:8-11
My hope and purpose in writing this message is that you might receive the truth by the grace of God, and come to know Jesus Christ as your friend and the lover of your soul. It is God’s desire that every man (and woman) be saved, so let today be the day that you believe Him. Amen.
3
The uniqueness of life
When we look at the world with its billions of people, animals, insects, and microorganisms, it seems like life is the most common thing. Even when we examine a drop of pond water with a microscope and strong magnification, we see a tiny world teeming with living things.
Sometimes we feel so bombarded with the living activity all about us, that we can become callous or indifferent toward lives other than our own. Sometimes we may even feel isolated, even in the midst of continuous living activity, to the point that we may despise our own lives.
The branch of science that deals with evolutionary theory wants us to believe that our existence is an accident, the result of random events, under the influence of environment. If the evolutionists are correct, then there simply isn’t any purpose to existence, and life at its best is just a complicated exercise in futility.
The humanist who adheres to evolutionary theory, believes that man can create his own purpose, to serve his own vain ideas of what is noble, or good, or of value. His best hope is to leave behind him a legacy of a good name, a worthy preoccupation; something of absolutely no value to a corpse, incapable of receiving praise or honor for its accomplishments while living.
An evolutionary outlook on life or existence could be called bleak, and philosophy attempts to find meaning where science claims accident, so it is reassuring to realize that the process of life, although apparently common, is highly improbable through chance.
Evolutionary theory is completely dependent upon the notion that the most unlikely events will still occur if given enough time. You don’t have to be a scientist to realize the significance of the fact that the spontaneous formation of a living thing has never been recorded in human history. (Early naturalists believed that worms formed from rotting organic matter, but they were unable to observe the presence of microscopic eggs already in the mixture under observation). Nor is there any real evidence that life began spontaneously, beyond the fact that we exist.
Evolutionary theory addresses the point that life does not now spontaneously appear, by saying that such an event requires very special conditions which no longer exist, but must have at one time in prehistory.
You do have to be something of a scientist, a molecular biologist, to comprehend just how special those special conditions had to be for even the simplest living organism to “spring into being”. Life, when you analyze it physically, is complex chemistry, but not the kind of chemistry performed in test tubes. Even the simplest living cell is highly organized like a microscopic living factory. The cell has different specific parts which serve specific functions, such as trapping energy in complex compounds to be released at a later time in other processes, like moving substances from one structure to another, like controlling the concentration of salts within the cell against the natural forces at work to change those concentrations, like keeping a record of the pattern required to accomplish every process and build every structure, like converting that record from a base 4 mathematical code into the construction of complex proteins which themselves control and regulate the processes which generate them.
Most educated people will have heard of the substance called DNA, and know that it determines the pattern of living things, but most people don’t know that it takes complex proteins to make proteins, and this with the pattern of the DNA (in the structures called ribosomes) and to duplicate the DNA itself. The well trained, or well indoctrinated biologist takes for granted that complex interactive cycles in molecular biology somehow spontaneously evolved, without trying to rationally explain just how.
I’m sure that some enterprising minds have spent a great deal of time, energy, and money, trying to imagine how mutually dependent processes evolved without the process of life to drive the evolution, but the fact remains that the simplest forms of life require complex interactions, which couldn’t evolve independently: evolution can’t occur where life is not present.
If we arrive at the notion, through careful study, that evolution is an impossibility, or at least highly improbable, our only alternative explanation to the existence of life is “Creation,” or the idea that the highly organized and complex single celled organism, like the highly organized and complex human being, was created by a Creator, or God.
You might ask why people intelligent enough to realize that evolutionary theory doesn’t work for the explanation of the origin of life, still reject the notion of a Creator?
People state many objections to the idea of God’s existence, but the only one that counts, the only real objection in anyone’s mind is this: If God is real, then I don’t have any right to anything except that which God has determined. Put another way, if God exists, then I’m not in control.
Some people might admit to the existence of God, but deny that He does anything. There are entire religious systems that hold such a view, but to call God inactive in creation is to deny a part of what defines God to us. A god that is inactive in creation isn’t God at all, but no different from a carved rock or piece of wood, a dumb idol that’s good for nothing, except perhaps to build a fire with, or use as a hat rack. I’m not saying that God must be useful to us to be God, but God is defined, in part, by His omnipotence, Himself being the Creator and definer of all things. In other words, we define God by what He has done and by what He has revealed of Himself through His creation, but the reality of God is that He defined what we are and is not genuinely defined by anyone but Himself.
Evolutionists have traditionally held the premise that life began once, in the past, with some simple organism that evolved into every other living thing, over time. Those who believe in God, hold to the notion that God created all living things at one time in the past, according to His wisdom, and that the similarities between creatures are the result of similar design: If God created the universe, then He created all the rules of existence, and all His creatures had to be made to conform to those rules as well.
The evolutionists site the fossil record as proof of their theories, but this truth remains: If we try to explain the existence of anything which no longer exists, nor has ever existed within our experience, our explanation must be largely conjecture, or what amounts to an educated guess.
The Bible, which I believe to be the word of God revealed through men and inspired by God’s Spirit, does not explain dinosaurs or their fossil remains. The Bible does describe at least two creatures of dinosaurian proportion, called leviathan and behemoth, but doesn’t explain what became of them. The simple reason for this apparent omission is that the Bible was never intended to be a book of natural history, though some natural history is found in it. Nor was the Bible intended to be an historical record, although it accurately records a good portion of human history, including things which haven’t happened yet. The Bible was given to man as a testimony, that of God, as to who we are with respect to who He is, and more specifically to the One person in whom He intended to reveal His own perfect character, as a perfect man made in His own image. He gave a Son to us as the redeemer of mankind, a pattern for us to be conformed to, and as a king to rule over us.
If this is true, then why doesn’t everyone believe God, trust our Lord Jesus with control over their lives, and allow themselves to be conformed to His own character?
First of all, people generally don’t want a redeemer, nor believe that they need one. We naturally think that we are, by nature, free to do as we please, and masters of our own will or choices. Quite often it takes an addiction, or some sudden illness or catastrophe to reveal to us that we aren’t always in control of what we do. Jesus said that anyone who sins is a slave to sin. God’s testimony is that all mankind (which includes women) lives under the dominion of sin according to our “fallen” nature.
God’s testimony is also that even when we do “what is good,” our minds are so self deceived that we cannot always see that our motives are not pure, but remain tainted and self serving, even to the extent that we are motivated to earn favor with God, which is an impossibility. It is God who makes all things possible for us in the first place.
Since God is perfect and completely without evil in His character, we must be redeemed from sin to have a permanent part in Him (that is to be joined to Him in fellowship and allowed in His presence). God redeemed us with His own blood, which He could not do unless He first became a man, even His own Son, Jesus, the Christ, or “anointed One”.
The Bible explains that there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. Only the blood of the perfect man, without sin Himself, could pay the price for an imperfect humanity, wholly tainted by sin.
A second reason for humanity’s rejection of God is our rejection of what is good. God, who created us with senses and emotions, designed us to experience life in its pleasure and pain, sorrow and joys, and He also gave us rules to follow for our own good, to preserve us, extend our joys, and live abundant lives. The problem is that our own human nature prevents us from following rules faithfully. We have a natural bent, or sin nature, toward defiance and the breaking of any rules, to our own convenience or pleasure. Even the most disciplined of us will find that we sometimes break the rules that we set for ourselves. How could we possibly keep God’s rules according to His standard of perfection?
Our nature, by a pure definition of good, is not good itself, but being tainted by sin, is evil. This means that at least some of our choices are evil ones, opposed to God’s good will toward us. Not desiring to consider ourselves to be evil by nature, we actively redefine good as according to what is acceptable to us, regardless of how evil it may be to a good and Holy God.
In order to choose the good and reject the evil, we need a new nature within us. God, who is good and desires good for us, provides this new nature in the person of His good, or Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit, a part of His own being and expressing His own good nature, can enter into our lives and live with us to be our guide and helper, in doing good. God has promised just this very thing to us if we put our trust in His own Son and submit ourselves to His authority and good will for our lives.
You could say we have an issue here of putting our trust in something, or someone whom we haven’t seen. Jesus lived His life on this earth and then died upon a cross of wood. He was unjustly condemned and crucified; an innocent man receiving what we guilty people actually deserve for our sin. None of us alive now actually saw these things happen. We only have the testimony of those who believed Him in the pages of the Bible, and of those who didn’t believe Him and recorded the event of the disappearance of His body to claim it as a hoax or fraud perpetrated against them.
Many of us are able to believe in a theory as “far fetched” as evolution, based upon personally seeing the fossilized bones of presumably ancient creatures. I say presumably, because there remains no absolute way to date a fossil, and the dates accepted as true are based upon relative time scales that were invented by men who assumed a consistency in environmental changes. This assumption is not necessarily true and judging by our historical record and observable rapid changes in our own environment, are not likely to be so.
We have no remains of Jesus’ body to personally examine, because as the Bible says, He rose from the dead and took His seat in authority, in the realm of heaven, until the day when He returns to judge mankind according to our conformity to His gospel. In truth, there is no way for a man to be fully convinced of sin and of God’s person in His Son, Jesus Christ, except by God Himself and through His Holy Spirit.
As a man with formal training in the sciences, I didn’t accept the authority of the Bible as the word of God, until I first accepted the truth of the person of God in Jesus Christ, and asked Him to save me from destruction. I couldn’t have done this on my own; No one can.
God, who created us, is completely able to convince us of His truth, but we must first desire the truth. In our natural state, why should we desire the truth when a lie might appear to be far more pleasing to us in its appeal to our evil nature? God’s testimony is that deception leads to destruction and death, and that death, rather than an end to existence, is in reality a perpetual separation from God and all that is good, leaving nothing for us to experience except sorrow, suffering, pain, and all the consequence of evil. Hell isn’t a party of the ungodly, but complete isolation and torment in the absence of all that is good and of all pleasure.
We might disbelieve in Hell and still say that we believe in God, yet Hell was a large part of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and Jesus remains the true and faithful witness whose testimony was validated by His resurrection.
This document is about the uniqueness of life. What makes life unique is that it is given by God and by Him alone. The life that is unique is Jesus Christ, and in Him alone we may have eternal life, the joy of His presence, and experience the goodness of His good will toward us.
So here is His offer to you. Trust Him! Believe in Him! Call upon His name to save you from the consequence of your own nature. It is not within the character of God to disappoint those who put their trust in Him. God may not give us all that we want, but He has promised to give us all that we need. He alone knows what we need to experience joy and pleasure in His presence, eternal and abundant life together with His Son, Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Amen.
4
Life, Liberty, & the pursuit of Happiness
In the year 1776, the continental congress decided amongst themselves, that the appropriate course of action for the member colonies of North America was to rebel against the government and person of the king of Great Britain. Together, they drafted and signed the document known as the Declaration of Independence. This document made a somewhat unbiblical argument for the justification of rebellion against a tyrannical despot, but called upon the “Supreme Judge of the world,” or God, to validate the right of the colonial citizens to be independent of the British monarchy.
The premise upon which is built the entire argument stated in the Declaration of Independence, is found in the second chapter of the document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These “Rights” are the premise for our form of government, and according to the authors of the document, a cause for the formation of any government.
Now at this time and in this age, our nation is in great crisis, not because of external enemies, although they exist and pose a real threat, but because of the attack upon the original values which were the foundation of our nation, and this by organizations and entities which themselves make the claim that they exist to preserve the same “Rights” which were the basis of the argument for the formation of our government.
There is active argument as to whether or not the framers of the constitution were Christian or held to Christian ideals, but the 1st article of the Amendments to the Constitution, suggests that they were. It is a Christian belief that the last government instituted by men upon the earth, will enforce a state religion, the acceptance of which will bring eternal damnation upon the human soul: And it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:7-8.
Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, "he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. "And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.'' Revelation 14:9-11.
The 1st Article of the Amendments to the Constitution prohibits any “law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” which is to say, from the prospective of the God fearing authors of the Constitution, that it protects the right of an individual to refuse to accept the mark of the beast or to worship him.
Jesus Christ stated that it is a relationship with God and not membership in, or performance of religion that ensures eternal life and salvation: "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3.
Regardless of their faith, the author’s of the Declaration of Independence recognized our “Rights” as being endowments or natural gifts of our Creator. If we do not accept the existence of our Creator, then it is clear that we have no basis for “unalienable Rights,” there is no such thing as equality between races, men, or sexes either, no right to life, liberty, or happiness.
A natural understanding of the world says that life, liberty, and happiness is the exclusive possession of the strong, the swift, the powerful of this world, and that “Rights” are only what the powerful grant to others based upon their own “right of might.”
The name of “Almighty” as applied to God, comes from the Biblical accounts of God showing Himself more powerful than the most powerful of kings and nations, as a defender and avenger of the weak and the helpless, and of the cause of the poor of this earth. Omnipotence is part of what defines His being. This is the God to whom the authors of the Declaration of Independence made appeal, as “the Supreme Judge of the world.” They didn’t define life as an accident in a cosmic test tube, but as a gift of God, the Creator. They didn’t define liberty as lawlessness, or the right to do whatever they pleased, but rather defined law as the means to preserve freedom from oppressive government that would institutionalize life and enslave all men to government service, as well as to ensure that the state existed for the common good.
It is more difficult to arrive at how the founders of the United States defined the “pursuit of Happiness.” In general, what makes men happy is obtaining that which they value, but having done so is no guarantee of retaining happiness, hence there remains the “pursuit of happiness.” It would seem that the authors of the Declaration of Independence believed that we have the natural right to constantly pursue the fleeting emotion of happiness.
If these men were indeed Christian, then they would have defined “happiness” in somewhat different terms than the natural, because Christianity is largely concerned with spiritual existence rather than what we would call natural existence. Life, liberty, and happiness would all be understood to mean something somewhat different from the understanding of the natural man.
A Christian definition of life would have to include existence in the presence of God, as death is understood to be separation from God through sin. In a Christian view, as based upon the Bible as the word of God, all men are born with a corrupt nature and are naturally separated from God by that nature, which is a nature of sin: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3
A Christian definition of liberty would have to include dying to “self” and living for Christ, as this is the only way to be free from the bondage of sin: Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. "And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8:34-36
A Christian definition of happiness would probably be the furthest from the natural definition, although it remains in obtaining that which is most valued by the Christian. Jesus taught a sermon in which he proclaimed who are genuinely happy: And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.
"Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:1-12
The word translated as Blessed in this passage from the gospel according to Matthew, is a Greek word “makarios,” which conveys the meaning of supremely blessed, happy as in the sense of being smiled upon by God. The people that Jesus described as “happy” are not what the world would generally consider to be in happy conditions, but Jesus was speaking of an eternal happiness that would be a gift to those people whose temporary conditions were not necessarily happy. He spoke of people who were chosen by God to believe in Him and to know Him, to serve Him and to suffer for His sake.
This puts a different spin on the meaning of “pursuit of happiness.” In this light, it would suggest that all humans have a natural right to seek to know God and to have eternal life. I realize that this is not what most men would want to hear. It isn’t natural for men to seek God or to desire to know Him. Most men, even if they know nothing at all about God as He is revealed in the Bible, know what the word “sin” means, or have some idea that certain behavior is called “sinful.” That same behavior is what most men find their pleasure in. Most men have the mistaken idea that seeking God and knowing God would deny them of all pleasure. What they don’t understand is that God created us in such a way that we can experience pleasure, but set limits upon our taking of pleasure, for our own good, and that the greatest pleasure that we can experience comes from intimate relationship with God, and that He withholds no good thing from His children.
Now to get back to the crisis at hand, I’ll say that this nation has endured other crises, perhaps the most prominent of which was the civil war. Our president at that time, Abraham Lincoln, brought the nation into a war for the cause of preserving it as a whole. He gave a speech upon the battlefield of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at a dedication of a part of that battlefield as a cemetery for those who died in the battle. It was Lincoln’s assertion that the American people should dedicate themselves to the purpose for which the many soldiers died. In ending his short address he said, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
President Lincoln spoke in terms of a noble aspiration to preserve the nation, but its clear that he recognized that the existence of the nation was dependent upon the God who is Sovereign over all nations. The crisis facing our nation is our rejection of God and all that is good. In rejecting God, we forfeit all of our “unalienable Rights” as these come down directly from Him. We will not stand as a nation if we attempt to stand alone and out from “under God.” The Almighty will show Himself to be Almighty if we continue to oppose Him with our words and with our deeds. He will show Himself mighty in justice. He has shown Himself mighty in grace. A nation is changed when the hearts of its people are changed, and God alone has the power to change hearts.
If you love the nation, then seek God and learn to love Him more. If you love Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then seek the One who can guarantee that you’ll have it and keep it, not just for the brief span of our lives, but for an eternity.
God’s word says that we are by nature, enemies of God. God’s word also says that God loves us, and for this reason, our reconciliation and redemption, He sent His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be born of human flesh, so that He could suffer and die in our place, an innocent man paying with His own blood for the sin of humanity. God also raised Him from the dead as a sign that all He said was true, and seated Him in authority over all men, both living and dead. If you can believe these things in your heart and can confess them before men, then God’s word says that you will be saved.
I can fear for the nation, because I love the land that I’ve grown up in, and the ideals upon which the nation was founded, but I have no fear for myself, as I have another citizenship which remains for eternity, and can’t be lost to conquerors, destroyers, or saboteurs working under the pretense of preserving our liberty. Our nation was conceived in hope by people who shared my own hope. This is a land that we live in, but our home is with God, regardless of what happens here, so my own plea to you is that you turn to Him and know the hope that founded a nation, and the hope that makes a people truly free.
5
The Broken Covenant
“I do take thee to be my wedded spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
Most people would recognize the last statement as a generic wedding vow, and most people eventually make such a vow at least once in their lifetime. In our times and in our nation, about one of every two such people break the same vow.
People have many reasons for breaking their marital vows. It’s clear from scripture that God has said that there is one legitimate reason to break the bond of marriage. That reason is sexual immorality: "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. Matthew 5:32.
Its also clear that God hates divorce: Yet you say, "For what reason?'' because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. "For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one's garment with violence,'' says the Lord of hosts. "Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.'' Malachi 2:14-16
This passage from the book of Malachi gives one obvious reason that God hates divorce, that it “covers one's garment with violence.” That is, divorce commonly brings out anger and bitterness in the hearts of those who experience it, which often results in evil and violent thoughts, words, and deeds. As God made mankind in His own image, any evil done to another person is evil done against God, and is sin.
Another reason for God’s hatred of divorce, though less obvious, is that it involves the breaking of a covenant. In our times, most people would not understand what a covenant actually is. Some people would understand a covenant as being like a contract or legally binding agreement, but a covenant is actually more than that. In our times, marriage is generally viewed under law as a contract. A contract is binding, but may be broken by either party if that party is willing to pay the consequence agreed to, or understood to be the price of forfeiture.
In a covenant, however, the price of forfeiture was understood to be too high for one of the parties to willingly break. In a covenant, a vow is made to an agreement between two parties, with God as witness and judge, making a demand for divine justice, which would be understood to include a forfeiture of one’s life as a penalty. In other words, a covenant is a “blood oath” for the purpose of establishing an agreement, or peace, between two parties. To willingly break a covenant is to surrender your right to your own life. This being understood, how is marriage a covenant?
It should be obvious enough from the example of the “generic” wedding vow, that we commonly promise to take someone as husband or wife for life, or until death do us part. Whether people realize it or not, when they make that promise, they are making a covenant to establish a “peace” with another person for “life,” with God as their witness, and this is how we’ve defined a covenant. In ancient times, and we see examples of this in the Bible, the parties making a covenant would sometimes sacrifice the life of an animal, cutting it in two, and would walk between the two divided halves as a symbol of the solemn oath “May God do so and more to me as to this animal if I break my word.” This is why a covenant was seen as an end to any dispute, as a person can’t vow anything greater or as final to them as their own life.
Like it or not, there is competition between the sexes, and there is natural tension and a kind of aggression because of sexual desire, and the natural differences between men and women. Marriage is meant to be a union of the flesh, a relationship of mutual benefit, peace between two people to become one in purpose, a safe place to meet the emotional need to be a close and an integral part of another person’s life. In the wedding vow, there is the intent to accept the bad along with the good, to provide security in the knowledge that you are free of being abandoned, even when you have done wrong, or are rendered by incident or by time, unable to return good for good.
The marriage covenant is as strong as any covenant that man can make in that it is based upon the natural order of the union between male and female, the natural desire to procreate and leave something of ourselves behind us when we die. In this it is in accordance with God’s will: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:24-25
Groom and bride don’t pass between the parts of a slaughtered animal in our modern day wedding ceremonies, yet the intent of the vow remains the same: "Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.'' Mark 10:9
While we may not take vows, or our given word, seriously, God does. Jesus taught that we shouldn’t swear to our word and that it was better to respond to people simply with yes or no: "But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; "nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. "Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. "But let your `Yes' be `Yes,' and your `No,' `No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. Matthew 5:34-37
This isn’t the easiest verse to understand, especially in light of the fact that the Bible does say that we should make vows and keep our oaths to God. If we understand that God is Sovereign over all creation and that nothing happens except that He allows it to happen, then to promise to do anything at all is presumptuous of us: Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit''; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'' But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. James 4:13-16
If God expects us to make and keep vows, we should also understand that these vows must be in accordance with His will and in reliance upon His faithfulness to keep those vows for us. We may be unable to keep a promise because of our circumstance, simply because God had something else in mind, but its much worse to make a vow lightly, or to give your word without the intention of keeping it. This is simply another form of lying and the furthest thing from the character of God: "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. John 17:17
I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John 2:21
Jesus Himself taught that lying is of the devil’s character: "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. John 8:44
Jesus also taught that we would be judged according to our words: "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.'' Matthew 12:36-37
The more that we know of Jesus’ teachings and the will of God for mankind as revealed in the Bible, the more we realize how far we fall short of the standard that God has set for us. Some people believe that they keep the law and put their trust in this, but even the teaching of the prophets reveals that God is concerned with what is in the hearts and minds of men, and that no man can meet His standard of purity: For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Ecclesiastes 7:20
You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. You are indeed angry, for we have sinned in these ways we continue; and we need to be saved. But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Isaiah 64:5-6
The prophet Isaiah pointed out this most significant point, which is true for every person alive, regardless of how good they may think themselves to be, we need to be saved. The good news is that God has always known this and planned from the very beginning to provide a way for our salvation by His own power and through His grace. This brings us back to our example of a marriage covenant. God promised, through the prophet Hosea, that there would come a day when He would betroth His people to Himself: "I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. Hosea 2:19-20.
In other words, God promised a new covenant, which would be like a marriage covenant between Himself and His people. Since people are unable to demonstrate the perfect righteousness of God on their own, nor perfectly keep a covenant that requires a perfect righteousness, how would God accomplish this? God declared through the prophet Isaiah that this righteousness of His people would indeed be His own: no weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me,'' says the Lord. Isaiah 54:17
If God planned to establish this covenant in justice, as He said through Hosea, how could he declare righteous, those who were by their own nature, guilty and condemned by their sin and inability to obey His law? God answers this question also through Isaiah: For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth. Isaiah 54:5
It was the common practice in Israel, as well as in other parts of the world, for the groom, or groom’s family to pay a bridal price to the father of the bride. Now as the Creator of mankind, God has always been the rightful owner of us all, but through disobedience we have been sold to another master, sin: Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. John 8:34
For this reason it was necessary for God to purchase us back, or redeem us from sin. The purchase price of our redemption, the bridal price of God’s redeemed, was also revealed by God through Isaiah: He shall see the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. by His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Isaiah 53:11-12
Here God spoke of His righteous servant who came to His people as a man of sorrows, rejected by His own: He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:3
Though this servant came as a man, to sacrifice His life for the redemption of God’s people, He clearly had to be more than an ordinary man, as God’s word says that each man can only bear his own sin or righteousness: "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Ezekiel 18:20
God also testifies through the psalmist that there are none righteous among the sons of men: The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. Psalms 14:2-3
Even Isaiah, when he wrote of God’s righteous servant declares that men are all given over to corruption: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6
Clearly, God’s righteous servant is more than a man, and in the same chapter we read that in His resurrection, the pleasure of God will prosper by Him: Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. Isaiah 53:10
So, what is the pleasure of the Lord spoken of? God had declared this by Isaiah early in the scroll written by him, saying: For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Isaiah 9:6-7
God promised to give a Son, to the lineage of King David, to sit upon an eternal throne as the messiah, and this same Son, declared equal to God by His own word, was intended from the very beginning to be rejected by His people and to die for their sins: "And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. the end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined. Daniel 9:26
So it is the blood of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, the man who is declared equally God, which has paid the price of redemption for His people, and has made atonement for their sin. God satisfied His justice by dealing the penalty of sin out against Himself, in the person of His Son, on behalf of His people. But who are His people, and how do they receive the righteousness of God to their credit? Jesus put is simply, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.'' John 3:36
As God accounted Abraham righteous for his faith, so God also imputes His own righteousness to those who believe Him through faith in His Son, an exchange which the Apostle Paul eloquently describes in his 2nd preserved letter to the Corinthian church: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21
That this was God’s new covenant as promised through the prophets was testified to by Jesus Himself when He celebrated the Passover with His closest disciples, and on the night that He was betrayed to an unjust arrest, trial, and execution: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body.'' Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Matthew 26:26-28.
That Jesus understood that His relationship with His disciples was like that of a marriage was evident in the way He spoke about His death to prepare His disciples: Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?''
And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. Matthew 9:14-15
In our modern times we generally don’t have the same understanding of a man’s responsibility to his wife in marriage, as did the ancient Jews. Under the law of the scriptures, a man even had responsibility over the vows and oaths made by his wife, to approve or abrogate them. If a husband heard his wife’s vow and didn’t negate the vow, but later caused the vow to be void, the husband was to bear the guilt of his wife (Numbers chapter 30).
Given that God gave the law to Israel, through Moses, we should understand that God promised to take full responsibility for His bride, the people of His new covenant, to bear their guilt and to preserve them as His own. Because God knows our human weakness and frailty, He promised to give His Holy Spirit to dwell with and in those people who received Him through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ: "If you love Me, keep My commandments. "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, "even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. John 14:15-17
The Holy Spirit is the presence of God with us, as teacher and guide, comforter and friend, and most significantly to us, as the seal of our redemption. He is proof that we have been purchased with a price, even the precious blood of our Redeemer Himself. We receive Him by faith, like a wife putting her trust in her husband to love her and keep her.
That God’s love for us is true is evident in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners and separated from God: For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:7-8
That God is able to keep us follows from the fact that the One who created all things and calls them into being, is able to give life even to the dead and is pleased to do so for the sake of the praise of His grace and the glory of His name.
The Apostle Paul taught that husbands should love their wives, even as Jesus loved the church: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27
If we believe that Jesus was sinless and always did what was pleasing to God the Father, as the Bible teaches, we should also know that as sinners we fall short of His perfect character and are unable to do what He has commanded on our own. For this reason He has said that if we believe Him and are faithful to confess our sin to Him, then He is faithful and Just to forgive our sin. He has also promised us power to overcome our own worldly nature, through a new nature born of His Holy Spirit. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is able to raise us up from spiritual death to a new life in Him, by which we live to give Him the glory that is due Him.
How is this done? The answer, though simple, is still impossible without faith. We must surrender our own will to God’s perfect will. We must call upon Jesus, the lover of our souls, to save us from the destruction that we deserve, and to be our Lord and Master. If we believe that God is only good and wants only good for us, then it shouldn’t be so hard to submit to what He wants, but even this is not ours by our nature. This is why Jesus said that no one comes to Him accept that he is called by the Father. It is God’s irresistible will that calls us to Himself, so today, if you hear His voice, if you feel the tug upon your heart of the beloved, then call on Him. Offer to exchange your life spent in vain pursuits, for an eternal life that celebrates His glory. Give up your sin by confession to the One who is able to bear it and ask Him to give His own righteousness in its place. He promised, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. John 6:37 So, if you have not known Him, come to Him and know the love of God.
6
The Holiness of God
I believe that most people, even in our largely secular world, understand something of what the word “Holiness” means. Many would scoff at the notion and consider “Holiness” to be an evil invention of the mind of man. I think that such a view of “Holiness” is born out of misunderstanding, especially as it relates to the Holiness of God.
The Holy Scriptures are full of examples of wrath being unleashed upon men for transgressing the Holiness of God. The harsh punishments for transgressions against God’s commandments, the law given to the Hebrews through Moses, are all expressions of justice rendered for lawless acts which profane or ignore God’s Holiness and His intent for His people, that they be Holy: "Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: `You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Leviticus 19:2
Generally, a theologian would define “Holiness” as “separation”, or to be “Holy” as to be “separate.” This follows directly from biblical verses such as: `And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine. Leviticus 20:26
God’s Holiness is the definition of His purity. In the book of Habakkuk we read: You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. (from Habakkuk 1:13); This verse says something of God’s purity, but doesn’t define it as clearly as the Apostle John does in one of his epistles: This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5 This verse itself isn’t clear unless we understand that the language of the Bible uses the word light as symbolic of all that is good, and darkness as that which is evil (or lacking goodness). With this in mind, we say that God is complete in His purity. He alone is Holy in the strictest sense of the word for He alone is perfect in His purity.
One of the things which define God as God is that He is Eternal and unchanging. Most peoples have understood that God must be eternal, but as change is a normal part of our experience in the world, people have commonly imagined that God must be subject to change. The word of God, however, testifies to God’s unchanging or eternal character:
"For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. Malachi 3:6
James, the brother of Jesus, expressed the same truth in language like that of the Apostle John: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17 Again, using symbolic language common to the biblical texts, James is identifying God as the progenitor of those who shed light, the source of every good thing which we receive, and completely consistent and unchanging in His character.
To put it another way, God is not defined by what is good, but God defines what is good by His person. That which is not godly or according to what pleases God, is not good, and can be called evil.
The Bible tells us that when God made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, before the existence of sin, that everything was good: Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 1:31 It was sin, or willful disobedience to God, that caused the world to become impure or unholy.
Jesus, speaking of men, said that only God is good, which defines mankind as evil. He spoke to His own disciples in these terms: "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Luke 11:13
This last statement by Jesus also tells us how God makes someone who is evil by nature into someone who is holy. While rebuking the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus taught about the sanctification of the temple and of the things within it, explaining that it is the presence of God which sanctifies, not the objects themselves: "He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. "And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it. Matthew 23:21-22
The temple was holy because it was the place set apart by God for His people Israel to come to offer sacrifice and to seek mercy from Him through the intermediaries of the priesthood. The inner sanctuary, called the “holy of holies,” or “most holy place,” was holy because that is the place where God manifested His glory over the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, revealing His divine presence. In other words, a holy place is one in which God manifests His presence and it is His presence that makes the place holy. When God called Moses to send him back to Egypt, to bring Israel out, he met with Moses on a mountainside. This place was known as mount Horeb, the mountain of God, but was still a mountain like many others, and the burning bush which Moses witnessed was like other bushes scattered about the terrain, except that this one burned and was not consumed by the flame: And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.'' Exodus 3:2-3
God took the ordinary and made it extraordinary by His presence. He also made it holy by His presence, as revealed by Him to Moses: Then He said, "Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.'' Exodus 3:5
Jesus made it clear that blaspheming the Holy Spirit was unpardonable sin, equating the Holy Spirit with God the Father: "And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. Luke 12:10 This same equality is taught by the Apostle, John: For there are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 1 John 5:7
So the presence of the Holy Spirit, being the presence of God, makes one holy: Nevertheless, brethren, I have written more boldly to you on some points, as reminding you, because of the grace given to me by God, that I might be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:15-16
Now we can say that God makes that which is not good or holy by nature, into that which is holy by His presence, in the person of His Holy Spirit. I have to add here that the Holy Spirit is a person, not some force or energy that can be manipulated, as some cults teach. Jesus called Him the Helper, or comforter, and speaks of Him in personal terms: "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. "He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. John 16:13-14
This same “Spirit of Truth” was identified earlier in the same gospel as the Holy Spirit: "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, "even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. John 14:16-17
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit who makes a believer Holy, not anything that people might do on their own. The gospel by which men are saved, is a gospel of repentance from sin, but it is clearly the presence of the Holy Spirit which allows men to live repentant lives: Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Romans 8:12-14
The call to live holy lives, for believers, is a choice to seek obedience to God through the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit, but is simply impossibility to those without the Spirit of God. Its true that people can do works that are “good” and endeavor not to do things that are evil, but by God’s standard, by Him who judges the heart and mind and motives too deep for us to fully understand ourselves, our best works are tainted by sin: But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Isaiah 64:6
The Holy Spirit sanctifies genuine believers and allows them to live sanctified lives, but more significantly to us, identifies believers as belonging to God and Christ Jesus, as it is only by faith in Jesus Christ that we may receive the Holy Spirit: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit in believers which is their guarantee that they have a place in God’s kingdom: In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:13-14
Having said these things about the Holy Spirit, I should add that there is some controversy in the modern church as to how a person receives the Holy Spirit. The last passage quoted, from the letter to the Ephesian church, makes it clear enough that receiving the Holy Spirit was the result of believing, while other passages make it clear that believing is also the work of our being convinced of the Truth by the Spirit of Truth. Most of the modern churches would say that the moment of belief is the moment of salvation and therefore also the moment of receiving the Holy Spirit. The dilemma that this creates is how we define belief.
Jesus defined belief through obedience to His word: "But why do you call Me `Lord, Lord,' and do not do the things which I say? "Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: "He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. "But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.'' Luke 6:46-49
Yet Jesus said that He came to save sinners, not the righteous, so His gospel is for people who are not obedient to His word by their nature.
The Apostle Paul tells us how people are saved in very explicit terms: But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, `Who will ascend into heaven?' '' (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, " `Who will descend into the abyss?' '' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. Romans 10:6-10
Here Paul talks about confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, which is to say that He is our righteous God, Master, and judge, and believing that He is risen from the dead (with the understanding that He is glorified). Yet this passage still doesn’t explain how the Holy Spirit is received or just when.
Jesus said that God would give the Holy Spirit for the asking: "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!'' Luke 11:13
Given the other scriptures relating to salvation, and what I have experienced in my own confession, I believe that the Holy Spirit is received at the moment of genuine belief when a soul surrenders its own will to God’s will and submits to the rule of God in Christ Jesus, asking Him for His Spirit and trusting Him for eternal life. It follows that asking Jesus to be your Lord is more than just calling Him Lord, and asking for His Spirit is the only way to know Him as Lord.
If this is not your own experience, then I suggest that you need to ask yourself if you really know Him (not know about Him) and belong to Him. If this is your fervent desire, to know Him and be called His own. Then I say, “Ask Him to be your Lord and to reign in your life. Ask Him for His Holy Spirit to be your teacher and guide, the seal of your redemption.” Trust Him, for He has promised to receive all that come to Him and will by no means cast them out. He lives and He hears and He waits for His own to call upon His name. Amen.
7
The return of Jesus, called the Christ
Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.'' Acts 1:9-11
In a world where beliefs vary according to the vain imaginations of man, all arguments, all contrary beliefs, all vain imaginings will be settled in an instant, in one moment of time, when the Lord, Jesus Christ, returns to the earth in person, in power, and in glory.
The unbelieving world scoffs, asserting that the man, Jesus, called the Christ, is dead and will never return, or never truly lived to begin with. Even among His professing church there are those who do not believe that He will return, or are not willing to think about the idea of His return in any kind of immediate sense, when we would all be required to give an account of our time, spent in His service or in vain pursuits to our own shame.
The Christ of the gospels is seen in truth as humble and lowly, a gentle lamb prepared for slaughter, ready to pay the price for the sin of His people with His own blood. While those who love Him await His appearing in hope, knowing Him and His love for them, we don’t like to think of the unusual act to come. This thing which is hard to receive in the light of His character, which we know to be only good, is His righteous judgment of the earth. The scriptures say that the Lord will return in judgment, rendering vengeance against His adversaries. The day of the Lord is one of darkness and not of light: I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! "For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'' Revelation 6:12-17
Those who profess to believe in Jesus Christ, yet disbelieve in His righteous indignation, interpret passages like this one from the book of the Revelation in a manner which spiritualizes the meaning, to remove or minimize the truth that God will judge the nations with fury. Jesus taught about the judgment and His own involvement. He spoke about the return of the “Son of Man,” a term which He used to refer to Himself: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, "and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. John 5:26-27
Jesus also spoke specifically about the nature of the final judgment: "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. "All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. "And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.
"Then the King will say to those on His right hand, `Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: `for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; `I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.'
"Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, `Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? `When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? `Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
"And the King will answer and say to them, `Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'
"Then He will also say to those on the left hand, `Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: `for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; `I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.'
"Then they also will answer Him, saying, `Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?'
"Then He will answer them, saying, `Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' "And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.'' Matthew 25:31-46
There are many passages about the day of the Lord in the Old Testament scriptures, but Isaiah chapter 13 gives little room for doubt that God will bring a terrible judgment against the entire world:
I have commanded My sanctified ones; I have also called My mighty ones for My anger those who rejoice in My exaltation.'' The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like that of many people! A tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together! The Lord of hosts musters the army for battle. They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord and His weapons of indignation, to destroy the whole land. Wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will be limp, every man's heart will melt, and they will be afraid. Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them; they will be in pain as a woman in childbirth; they will be amazed at one another; their faces will be like flames.
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. "I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger. Isaiah 13:3-13
Again, many of us would like to divorce Jesus from the acts of God’s righteous judgment, but Jesus spoke more than once of His own return: Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.''
He answered and said to them: "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. "The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. "Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, "and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. "Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Matthew 13:36-43
If we can accept and believe that Jesus Christ will return, when will that time be? It’s been about 2000 years since the birth of Jesus and He still hasn’t returned. This is reason enough for some people to assume that His return is in some distant time, not a concern for the present. Jesus, said that no one would know the time of His return: "But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. "But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. "For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, "and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Matthew 24:36-39
It is the testimony of Jesus that people will not be expecting His coming, but will be living their lives as always, with no concern for the future. This, however, makes us no less accountable: "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
"But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him.
"Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? "Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. "Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.
"But if that evil servant says in his heart, `My master is delaying his coming,' "and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards, "the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of, "and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:42-51
Jesus exhorted us to watch for His coming so that we are not caught unawares. This would be pointless if He was speaking of the exact moment of His coming, as it would then be too late to do anything to prepare for Him. No, Jesus intended that we be prepared for Him, doing His will, and watching the signs of the times for His coming. We see Him speaking in these terms when he entered Jerusalem, before His crucifixion: Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. "For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, "and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.'' Luke 19:41-44
We see in this passage, the heart of God, knowing that He must judge sin, but sorrowful for those who are judged because they would not hear His voice or heed His word.
Again we may ask, when are the times of His coming and what are the signs of it?
His disciples asked Jesus these very same questions and his answer is found in chapter 24 of Matthew’s gospel: Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?''
And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. "For many will come in My name, saying, `I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
"All these are the beginning of sorrows. "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. "And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. "Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. "But he who endures to the end shall be saved. "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:3-14
Scoffers like to point out that the things which Jesus called the “beginning of sorrows” have been happening throughout history and are natural occurrences or, in the case of human interactions, the results of natural behavior and inclinations. The word translated as “sorrows” is actually from a Romanized Greek word “odin”, which might be better translated as “throes” and refers to the pains of child birth prior to the actual delivery, or “birth pangs.” The Apostle Paul, used similar language when speaking of creation awaiting the time of the revelation of the sons of God: For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Romans 8:22
What these verses suggest is that the trials of the earth grow in frequency and in intensity as the time grows near for Christ’s return. Again, unbelievers claim that things go on as they always have been since the formation of the earth, but in my own short life span, I would say that things have indeed gone from bad to worse.
I frequently hear scoffers deify nature when they refer to the way that “Mother nature” seems to be going out of control, yet can’t give a reason for the changes that they themselves have noticed in the world’s “natural” events. I’ve even heard people go as far as to attribute an anger and vengefulness to nature, as though these events were a response to environmental damage caused by human carelessness and abuse. People can sense a response in the world around us to the sin that is in us, but are unable or unwilling to name sin for what it is, or acknowledge mankind’s guilt in rejecting our creator.
Then there are also those who say that they believe in God, yet refuse to hear what He has said, or to do His will, preferring to believe their own vain imaginations about God, rather than what He has chosen to reveal to man and proven through prophecy and its fulfillment, as found in the Holy Scriptures. These same are unable or unwilling to admit what the signs of the times say about themselves and their own rebellious hearts.
Yet, God’s grace remains what it is, a free gift of forgiveness and the offer of eternal life in His good presence, through acceptance of His Son and submitting to His will. What has He said about His salvation? But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, `Who will ascend into heaven?' '' (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, " `Who will descend into the abyss?' '' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.'' Romans 10:6-11
God’s gracious offer remains to this day and for all who will receive it, a gift by His word and in His covenant through the shed blood of His Son, given freely to pay the price of our sin and to redeem us to Himself. It is this good news that He will forgive the sin of all who believe Him and turn from their sinful ways to follow Him, which must be preached throughout the world prior to His return.
You might say, if God has predetermined to judge the world for transgression, why should the gospel be preached throughout the world, seeing that faithless men largely reject it? The Apostle Peter, explains it simply: For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which now exist are kept in store by the same word, reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:5-9
This scripture does not say that all will come to repentance, nor does it say that God is waiting for all to come to repentance, but only says that it is not God’s will that men should perish. Put another way, the scripture also says that God takes no pleasure in the death of those that are dying, so repent and live.
The scriptures tell us that there will be a time when “the cup of God’s wrath” will be full and then poured out upon the earth. They say that the Lord will cleanse the earth of all things which offend (His righteous character) and establish His kingdom for eternity, dwelling among His elect (those that He has chosen to believe in Him). The Apostle Paul wrote at some length of the rejection of Christ by the Jews and of the eventual restoration of Israel, with a hint of when this all will take place: For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that hardening in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; Romans 11:25-26
The term “fullness of the Gentiles,” has been misinterpreted to mean a number of things, but what Paul was actually referring to was a prophecy from the book of Daniel: "And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, having fierce features, Who understands sinister schemes. His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power; he shall destroy fearfully, and shall prosper and thrive; he shall destroy the mighty, and also the holy people.
"Through his cunning he shall cause deceit to prosper under his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart. He shall destroy many in their prosperity. he shall even rise against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without human hand. "And the vision of the evenings and mornings which was told is true; therefore seal up the vision, for it refers to many days in the future.'' Daniel 8:23-26
Daniel was a prophet that God raised up during the Babylonian captivity, when the inhabitants of Jerusalem were carried away as captives to the kingdom of Babylon. Daniel lived most of His life in Babylon and is sometimes called “the prophet to the gentiles,” because much of the prophecy which he spoke was given to gentiles or given in reference to the gentile kingdoms.
Jesus, Himself referred to one of the prophecies from the book of Daniel, when speaking of the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the tribulations of the last days of this age: "Therefore when you see the `abomination of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place'' (whoever reads, let him understand), "then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Matthew 24:15-16
So, what is the fullness of the gentiles, or the fullness of transgression? The Jews were given a covenant of law by God and through Moses. The Apostle Paul, said that the law was added “because of transgressions”: What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Galatians 3:19
Paul’s writings show us that the law is good in that it reveals God’s will for us. It also reveals our sinfulness, through our inability to faithfully keep the law. Moses said that the law would be a witness against the rebellious children of Israel: "Take this Book of the Law, and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there as a witness against you; "for I know your rebellion and your stiff neck. If today, while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the Lord, then how much more after my death? Deuteronomy 31:26-27
Although the gentiles were not “under the covenant of law,” the sinfulness of their nature is still revealed by the law, in that we see the same things at work in them and in their response to civil law. The issue with the Jews though, as under law, was that they would be judged for their transgressions, not just individually, but as a nation; God promised this at the time that the tribes of Israel were actually entering into the promised land to take possession of it.
The prophets of the captivity recognized that God had indeed brought judgment against the nation of Israel for their transgression against His law. We also find in the same writings that God would one day judge all the nations of the earth for their transgressions as well, but the nations were not given “the law” as the nation of Israel was. The nations were given something far greater than the law. The nations were given Jesus and His church, a light to the gentiles and a standard for all the nations. The world is given the gospel.
Jesus, after His resurrection from the dead, instructed His disciples to spread the gospel and make disciples of men: Afterward He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. Mark 16:14-16.
What Jesus said should make it clear enough, but the Apostle Peter also proclaimed, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that there is no other name by which we may be saved: "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'' Acts 4:12
Jesus said, "And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. John 12:47-48
Israel was judged, collectively, for rebellion and transgression against the law. So also, the world will be judged, collectively, for rebellion and rejection of the gospel, which is itself a deliverance from the judgment of the law, and specifically for rejecting Jesus, the Son of God, who came to fulfill the law and redeem us from sin.
As there was a terrible judgment for transgression against the law, there will be a greater judgment for rejection of the gospel, for this is the free gift of God, paid for with the blood of His beloved Son: Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? Hebrews 10:28-29
The book of the revelation of Jesus Christ tells of the terrible and eternal consequence of rejecting Christ: "He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.'' Revelation 21:7-8
Should we be tempted to call God unfair for His righteous judgment against sin, because we all should recognize the fact that we ourselves have sinned and will most likely do so again, we need to remember that God, in His mercy, has prepared a way of deliverance from judgment and condemnation. The scripture calls Jesus, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. From the very beginning, God, understanding what the consequences of evil choice would be, had the plan of shedding His own blood, in the person of His Son, to satisfy the righteous requirements of His own law, for as many as would receive Him and trust Him for their salvation.
This was not some immense cosmic exercise in futility, but the perfect plan of God to create children, renewed in His own image, as revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ.
How are those children created? When a person recognizes their sin, and rejecting it, turn to God for salvation, putting their faith wholly in the gift of Jesus Christ, God seals such a person with His own Spirit, making one alive to Him, who was dead in trespass and sin. His Spirit, like the breath of life in the story of creation, transforms the spirit of man, and creates anew from what was spiritually dead and headed for destruction. A man’s spirit is given life in an instant of time and his mind may be renewed through obedience and the hearing of God’s word. The greatness and wonder of His new covenant is that the living God Himself, takes up permanent residence in His creation, and by His own will teaches us, guides us, and reshapes us into His desire for us, which is only good. He does not leave us to our failures and weak attempts to satisfy His requirements, but instead meets them on His own, through our surrender to Him and conformation to His image.
The extreme wickedness of man is not that he lives for pleasure, because God designed man to be able to experience pleasure. No, the wickedness of man is that he wills to take his pleasure in his own way, without regard to what is good or pleasing to God, and in direct rebellion to God’s will for him. Since God intends only good for us, in rejecting His will, we intentionally choose evil along with its consequence. God, because He is good, can not allow the pain and suffering of our evil choices to continue indefinitely, but will come to put an end to it, once and for all.
We don’t know the exact time that Jesus will return, but now is the time to reject sin. Now is the time to cry out to Him for His salvation and to experience His love and His goodness first hand. Those who reject Him can never experience peace with God, nor can they ever experience the good that He has planned for them, not in this life, nor for eternity. When He does return, it will be too late for anything but judgment to those who chose to ignore His call to faith. Seek Him while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. He is as close as the word of your mouth and the belief of your heart. Turn to Him and know your God, now and forever. Amen.
