~Archibald Brown
“A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon
An evil is in the “professed”
camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most short-sighted
Christian can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years this evil has
developed at an alarming rate. It has worked like leaven, until the whole lump
ferments!
We live unto the Lord, Rom. 14:8
“If God had willed it, each of us might have entered heaven at the moment of conversion. It was not absolutely necessary for our preparation for immortality that we should tarry here. It is possible for a man to be taken to heaven, and to be found meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, though he has but just believed in Jesus. It is true that our sanctification is a long and continued process, and we shall not be perfected till we lay aside our bodies and enter within the veil; but nevertheless, had the Lord so willed it, He might have changed us from imperfection to perfection, and have taken us to heaven at once.
The Half-Converted Cowboy
(A.W. Tozer)
Psalm 29:2,
"Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness."
There is grief in my
spirit when I go into the average church, for we have become a generation
rapidly losing all sense of divine sacredness and reverence in our worship. God
has been abridged, reduced, modified, edited, changed and amended--until He is no
longer the high and lifted up God whom Isaiah saw! We've reduced the God of
Abraham and Jacob, to a "stuffed God" that can be appealed to by
anybody at any time. The religious clown on the radio can break into his fun
and say, "Now we will have a minute of prayer." In the religious concert,
the half-converted cowboy dressed like an idiot will say after he's twanged out
some catchy numbers, "Now I'll do a holy number for you."
A reality of the Old Testament was God’s dealings with the Hebrews. Beginning with calling out one man, Abraham who was called out of the race of men, since there was not yet a “race” of Jews. God worked to bring about a righteous holy people for Himself who would (should) evangelize the world. We’ve all heard the phrase “the best laid plans of mice and men” and in this case God too... “do often go astray.” Yes, indeed! But God is not surprised or foiled... all part of the plan.
Jonah 2:6+9 says, “You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You… Salvation is of the Lord.
There is much in that whole chapter of Jonah that relates to God, and to Jesus, and to Israel, and to us. But I would direct our focus this morning to, “Salvation is of the Lord.” How does God save sinners? By taking the penalty for sin (death) which was due man, onto a body of His own to enter death, undeserving, under His own power wherein death had NO power over Him so He could destroy it, and sin, and satan. That is my nutshell version. There is SO much more there on that theme that you could write a book on it. In fact… He did. You’re holding it.
In John 18 and 19 we read of Jesus’s arrest. Then He was sent to Caiaphas, then to Pilate who questioned Him and scourged Him. After that, Pilate brought Him out to the crowd and said, “Behold the Man!” John 19:5
Pilate was essentially saying, "Here is Jesus. He is not your
Messiah, He is not your king, He is not God. He is just a man."
Let us consider the man... Who
for the joy set before Him endured
the cross.
What
joy could possibly be worth enduring the pain, torture and humiliation of
crucifixion? Could it be that Jesus would be exalted above all else in Heaven
and Earth? Or that He would be King of Israel... and the world? Wouldn't that be selfish and vain of Jesus? The joy set
before Jesus was redeeming the human race and all of creation, for God so loved the
world.
See
also John 10:11.
John 1:1, In the beginning... was the Word, and the Word was WITH God, and the Word was God.
This study begins with “the beginning” because it requires understanding. In the beginning is a vague and indistinct phrase. There is no definite place in time specified. We naturally think of Genesis 1:1 as the beginning of the time of creation. But in John 1:1, we should consider a “time” before creation, which was not a “time” in our sense of the word, but the eternity before time, or it could mean during the time of creation. In any case, the entire triune Godhead is outside of time but works within time as well. We are here introduced to a relationship before anything is created; the relationship of “the Word” to God.
Jeremiah 2:27-28 says, "They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet when they are in trouble, they say, 'Come and save us!' Where then are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them come if they can save you when you are in trouble!"
God warns His people of old, that if they persisted in looking to their false gods in the time of prosperity--that they would have none but their idols to assist them in the season of adversity. In the same way, in times of prosperity, the unsaved not only neglect God but despise Him as well! They cast off all fear of God and serve their idols, to the utter neglect of God.
