Blessing to be a part of Gods family today, we serve a great God! Transcript of todays message..... Our Day Eleven Walk This Way 1 For the past several weeks we have examined the nature of a people whom God Blesses. We have been reminded of His continual Grace upon all people living, as such, if you are alive, it is by His Grace and Favor, for I believe He is present in the creation of every human soul, and He has given life for the express purpose of knowing each one, having provided a pathway to Him through His Son, Jesus Christ. If you are alive and breathing today, it is by His Grace, for His Purposes, and that is a blessing for sure and certain. You are alive for His Purposes, and His Purpose is clear, 2 Peter 3:9, explains the first part of that purpose, salvation, saying He is patient toward us regarding His coming for us, [whether it may be His Second Coming and subsequent rapture of the Church, or His private coming for you at the end of your days in this body], He gives us time to come to Him in saving faith in Jesus Christ, for it is God’s Will all men, everyone be saved unto Him. He hasn’t blessed you with life today in order for you to make more money, although money is a necessary resource and you may become quite successful financially, I hope you do. I hope you know He hasn’t blessed you with life today so you have time to ‘sow your wild oats’, that is never His Will! He hasn’t blessed you with life today so that you may become famous, even a famous religious leader, known for righteousness, which is entirely possible. He hasn’t blessed you with life today, so you may build and carry on a strong family heritage or a patriotic hero, which would be very good things in and of themselves. Saint Paul had and did all of those things and more, and one of the reasons Paul was such a powerful force and witness for Christ is due to the fact that he understood what is most important, his purpose for being alive. He writes of this in, Philippians 3:7-11 7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. If you are alive today, it is only by His Grace, His Blessing, so that you may know Him, and follow Him in life, fulfilling your purpose having been created by Him, for Him, and completing Christ Mission on earth, which is to seek and save the lost. The primary question for you today, is the same for everyone. Do you know Him? Is Jesus Christ your Savior? And is Jesus Christ your Lord? Please make no mistake today, religious activity does not save, even serious religious study and going to Church and Bible Study does not save. If, Heaven forbid, you walk out these doors today and are hit by one of the many trains that pass by and are killed, you will immediately meet the Savior Face to face and the question will be, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and made Him Lord of your life. He will not ask if you have been to Church today. As important as it is. He will ask if you have surrendered your heart and soul to Him, trusting in Christ only by faith, for your salvation. What is your answer to Him? Oh that we would all live to know Him and share in His Mission, even if it means sharing in His Sufferings, which it most often does. I think of our brothers and sisters dying in Iraq and pray for their witness, and for ours. Along with creation and salvation, we also need and long for God’s Blessing on our lives and on our land. We need once again for God to love us as a people, and to care for us the way He did for Israel in Isaiah 5:1-2a, the way He once did for America. Now let me sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard: My Well-beloved has a vineyard On a very fruitful hill. 2 He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it We know the rest of the song, that even though the Lord deeply loved His vineyard (His people), had built, prepared, protected and provided every good thing for His vineyard, and expected good fruit from His beloved, they produced wild fruit, wickedness and rebellious living. And the resulting discipline from the Father is harsh, for the crime of rebellion against God is harsh, and thus the vineyard, the Nation of Israel, and also the same for us, the Nation of this United States of America, even the Church on this Continent, even though He loves us so, and is willing to save us all, He is withholding God’s Blessing of protection from our enemies, even spiritual enemies, His provision for prosperity and other things. It is not obvious that wickedness is engulfing our land? This Christian land is being consumed by darkness, and not only here in America but all across the world wickedness is exploding all around! At a time when the Church of Jesus Christ in America needs to be shining brightly, we find ourselves as a whole, quite dull, because we are by and large more concerned and even consumed with personal comfort and convenience than we are with knowing Jesus and following Him, sharing in the fellowship of His Sufferings. I have sort of gotten ahead of my outline. Concerning God’s Blessing. During the forty years of wandering in the Sinai Desert, God gave Moses 613 Commandments for the Hebrew people. These commandments or mitzvoth we call the Law of Moses are made up of 365 Positive Commandments to act or think a certain way, (one for every day of the calendar year) and 248 Negative Commandments, to abstain from certain acts, (one for every bone and major organ in the human body). Nearing the end of his mission on earth, Moses gave a summary of God’s plan for the Hebrew people written down in what we call Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 28: Moses gives us this amazing instruction concerning God’s Blessing. Deuteronomy 28:1-14 “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to bserve carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God: 3 “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. 4 “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. 5 “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. 7 “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 “The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. 9 “The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. 10 Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. 14 So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them. This passage is immediately followed by another outlining the curses which apply as well, to those who ignore God’s Command. It’s amazing isn’t it? Everything you ever wanted or needed in life is available to you, by direction of the One True God of the Universe, if you will only live, walk the Bible says, in the way He has told you. If you read and comply with all of the laws and commandments, you will have a good life, these are literally the building blocks of a life well lived. Only it’s not a formula which simply works for anyone. God’s Law and Commandment are expressions of His Character, His Heart, His Integrity and directions for life for His people. The real Blessing comes from knowing and following and being close to Him. Therein lies the rub, we are sinful people, and God is Holy God, and sinful man cannot come close to Holy God, and sinful man cannot keep the perfect Law. And so God made a way for His people to be reconciled to Him, through the forgiveness of sin by the work of the priest on the Day of Atonement, in which all who would come and confess their sin and be forgiven. Even when they couldn’t keep the Law entirely, when they tried to live to please Him, and returned to Him when they failed, He still blessed them. Day after day, year after year the Priests offered the blood of animals as sacrifice for the sin of God’s people, and by and large, they were offered in vain. They could not keep the Law. Knowing they would never be fully capable on their own, (the Bible says the very best of our righteousness is like filthy rags), the Lord sent His Son, to do something very special. The Lord Jesus would take on sin, and death and the devil at Calvary, and would purchase redemption for ever more on behalf of all who would believe on His Name and place their trust in Him for Salvation, like we discussed earlier. And He would do something else for those who trust Him, something foretold by the Prophet Jeremiah, and taught as evidence of His Salvation by the Apostle Paul. He would send His Own Spirit to come and literally dwell inside His followers. At a time when Israel had been under God’s Hand of Judgment for their sin, He promised a new Covenant, in which He would write His Law upon their hearts. Jeremiah 31:31-34 31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” For our purposes today, may I say, the capacity to receive God’s abundant Blessing, is now available to every single person on the planet, through the New Covenant God revealed to Jeremiah. Hebrews 10:11-24 11 And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, 13 from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. 14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. 15 But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” 17 then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” 18 Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. 19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and having a High Priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ is the fulfillment of this prophecy, and more, He is the Mighty One of God, who lived a sinless life, literally fulfilling every Law of God as written and as intended, much more than keeping the Law, He genuinely filled each one full of life and purpose from a heart dedicated to pleasing the Father, empowered by His Own Spirit, He now gives to us through the New Covenant. With the Word of God so close to us, in our mind and on our heart, and His Blessed Spirit living inside us, and the Lord Himself our Savior and Lord, we can please God. In short, the way, the Only Way, to please God and fulfill all that He would have of us, is to receive Jesus as Lord and Master and follow Him. I would remind you of the passage we recently quoted from 1 John 2:6, which says, He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. Honestly, if you read all of 1 John Chapter Two, you find obedience to Jesus Christ is the true evidence of one’s salvation and membership in His Body, the Church. We are taught the greatest commandment of all is to love the Lord our God with all our mind, strength, heart and soul. We cannot say we love Him, if we refuse to obey Him. It is that simple. And here is something very important, Christ has purchased our pardon, the forgiveness of sin for us at Calvary, and He Himself stands in the gap for us, and when we do sin, He will forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness when we confess our sin. So here is what I am thinking. If we try to please God through the keeping of the Law, on our own, we will fail. That is an Old Testament, Old Covenant process that is obsolete. (Read Hebrews 8 and 10). And yet we need His Blessing and if we have been reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ, we should very much want to please Him for His Sake because He is Worthy. Jesus Christ pleases His Father. Literally upon His Baptism at the hands of John the Baptizer, the Father spoke from Heaven expressing His pleasure in Jesus His Son. Jesus pleases the Father, and has commanded that we follow Him. That is how we please God, by following His Son, and according to the Bible, doing everything that Jesus commands us to do. So for the next several weeks we are going to learn to walk in the Way of the Master, together we are going to follow Jesus, learning what He said, and did from those who were there and gave testimony by the power of the Holy Spirit Himself. We are going to study the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and literally learn the Way of the Master. Today, know Him, please surrender heart and soul to Him and receive in yourself new Life, the forgiveness of sin and His Spirit. Prayer Lead Me Lord 84
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 18:58:21 +0000
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