The Must of Salvation

“Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again” (Luke 24:7).

God delivered His only Son into the hands of sinful men to be crucified. It doesn’t seem fair for God the Father to desert His Son in that manner but He did. Why? Because it is the only way to be saved from sin. Do you see the “must”?

God must take on human flesh if we are to be saved. He must be seen as the sinless Son of God. God must show His sovereignty and control. God’s must is divine and purposeful. His must is for you and for others is to be saved from SIN.

Are you saved? Why are you waiting to repent? Why would you tarry so long when you understand the drawing of the Spirit saying, “Come to Jesus.” You must be born from above. You must be born again. The only way for you to be saved is you must come to Jesus. He must come again. He must judge sin. He must and you must!

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  • Amusement, Children, and Prayerless Disciples

    “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).

    Our children are bombarded with “fun and done.”  After one event of fun then we go on to the next.  Water rides, the pool, cookouts, trips, videos, gaming, eating out, and taking off from church ministry are the norm today.  America’s Christian Culture is entertaining our kids and ourselves to spiritual and emotional death.  It is not healthy.  We teach them inadvertently how to whisk their days away instead of numbering their days.

    While we teach our children how to live by “do your work and then we play” attitude, adults are living continually on spiritual autopilot.  In our highly educated, technologically-hyped and prosperous society, and within our theologically almost astute Christian culture, we tend to settle for “zipper prayers” to open or close our days and gatherings.  Prayerlessness has become the attire of our independence from God.

    Vance Havner said, “Few people would want to live where there are no churches but millions live as though there were no churches.” Church attendance is taken lightly today.  Hearing the Word of God cost aplenty in days gone by.  Where much is given, much shall be required.  Today’s land sees a famine of the hearing of God’s Word, not because we cannot hear it, but because we do not listen to it.  Moreover, as the text declares, there is the duty of doing it when we hear it.

    Some things are inevitable, the status quo is here, but we do not have to be a part of this.  We should raise our heads and say, “Thy will be done.” I’m going for God and I’ll do my part and see that it is done. “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord“, Joshua of old said to the people of Israel.

  • Autonomy

    “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

    Anytime you and I walk outside of the Spirit of God we are using our own thoughts and actions. We are fraudulent in our true salvation. When we were born again God the Holy Spirit baptized us into Christ. Everything we do should be in obedience stayed upon Jesus Christ.

    If we walk according to the flesh, our old unredeemable nature, then we are walking alone and making decisions without God’s power and presence. Yet, God has prearranged for His children to abide in His Son. Therefore this abiding assures us of God’s mighty work through us by His Spirit.

    The radical part of our salvation is that God saved us, and will save us, and does save us. He saves us from ourselves if we abide in humility and staying power.

    What a great God we have. Practice the presence of Christ today in your life and see if it does not make a great difference. No longer are we running the show, which is worldly, but God is working out His plans and purpose through each of us individually. No autonomy here, just God’s economy.

  • People of the Word

    “How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, Who seek Him with all their heart.”

    Psalms 119:2 NASB

    Our nation has a problem with allowing God’s Word to penetrate the spirit and soul of his/her life. We are absolutely void of any type of righteousness in God’s sight and filled with much selfishness. Even with the new nature we are void of practical righteousness apart from Him. This is called sin.

    Only the Word of God can pierce  and separate soul and spirit. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. All is laid bare to God. And upon that premise we will be judged.

    The Word of the Living God tells us that without Christ’s living reality we are doomed and left to ourselves. When a people turn away from God and His written Word then that people will find no hope or help. Everything we do or think should be confirmed by the Word.

    Woe to a nation that forgets God. Woe to a people that does not apply the whole of God’s Word. When we turn our hearts away from His Word then we turn our lives toward the world, the flesh, and Satan. Unless there is repentance of falling short of God’s full intention in our lives, we hurt ourselves and those around us.

     

  • Quietness

    “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).
    “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Eight words. Two qualities. One result. This is how to decode life. When we are rattled we can become loud. When we become loud and rattled, we’re weak. No wonder the world is in the state of confusion as it is today. A heavy truck rattles, an unlatched gate beats against the gate post, but a silent river runs deep, and a quiet and confident person stands out like a giant tree among the pines.

    What is the tale behind the text? What did the prophet’s pen mean as he wrote? Isaiah saw an envoy of men headed down to Egypt to broker help. Israel was afraid of the impending invasion of different countries. Isaiah told the people in his sermon that God owned them and cared for them. He said to them to return back to their Creator, Redeemer and He would watch for them. Isaiah demonstrated, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”

    The last phrase of the sentence is stunning–“but you would have none of it.” The people of Israel would not listen to the “seer”. They rejected God’s vision for safety and security, for they were hell-bent on their own agenda.

    God has spoken these words to our nation and to our souls. He promises quietness and rest if we would repent and return. To rest in Him is our hope, to trust in Him is our strength, and to turn back to Him is to find quietness for our souls. Quietness is horizontal; it’s our attitude toward circumstances and difficulty. Confidence is vertical; it’s our trust in God. When the horizontal and the vertical come together, it becomes our inward strength.

  • Behold Your King

    “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod, the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem” (Matthew 2:1).

    Head knowledge is useful, but unless it is sanctified by the Holy Spirit it can be the most dangerous thing in the world. It will rob you of right thinking and give you nothing but wrong living. Gipsy Smith, when asked how he kept fresh in soul well into the eighties, replied, “I have never lost the wonder.”

    God never intended His Word to remain indoors. It was designed for the outdoors! It was made to be communicated to the world by means of our own walk and our talk. The gospel is for lifeboats, not showboats, and a man must make up his mind which boat he is going to operate.

    God left heaven to communicate to us…God! He has shown to us and is revealing to us Who He is and who we are. God meant that we adjust to the Gospel–not that we fit the Gospel to us. When the Gospel hurts the devil’s business, trouble begins. God came to destroy Satan’s work. The story of Christmas is about this great enterprise of our great God and Savior.

    Christmas lights are seen from the road as we travel by. People light up their homes so that the joy of Christmas, the hope of a better time, is revealed in us and to us. The lights are not shut up and closed down, but opened up to be seen by others. When the gospel is fully given in its most powerful manner, then the Light of the World is seen.

    The church is not a gloried glee club staging holy hootenannies and the Gospel was never meant for entertainment. Nor is the gospel meant to be hoarded but a story to be heralded. Too many of us, too many Christians are stuffing themselves with Gospel blessings, while millions have never had a taste or a look.

    There is so much more than what the eyes see. The heart feels it and desires it, so God gives us Himself, the Light of the World. The grace of our God transcends all our feeble efforts to describe it. God’s amazing Christmas grace cannot be poured into any of our mental receptacles without running over. May our hearts enlarge and our eyes behold Jesus this Christmas season so that our cups runneth over.

  • Dreams

    “But while he (Joseph) thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream…” (Matthew 1:20).

     

    The phrase “in a dream” is found six times in Matthew’s Gospel, five times in the narrative of the birth of Jesus (1:20; 2:12,13,19, 22). The dreams revealed God’s loving care and protection for His Son and His servants to aid them from their enemies.

     

    The Lord spoke in dreams to Joseph and to the wise men because they had to act quickly at a time of great danger and there wasn’t time to send a prophet to warn them, even if one had been available. (Israel had not heard from a prophet in four hundred years).

     

    Today, in our decision making process, we have Christian history behind us, the Word of God before us, the Holy Spirit within us, and loving Christians around us. For believers today, we have what we need to make correct and wise decisions. We do not depend upon dreams but upon the resources He has given to us.

     

    Does God still move in dreams? We are told by missionaries that He does. There are difficult people groups who are hard to reach with the gospel. So they dream of Jesus or “a black book” (the Bible) and then seek out Christians to help them understand their dreams. And many of these place their faith in Christ.

     

    Whenever there are sincere people who seek truth, God can reveal His truth to them as He did to Abram in Ur, to Cornelius the Gentile soldier in the Book of Acts, or even to someone in Iraq, Turkey, or Iran. If they would only “touch the edge of his cloak” (Luke 8:43-48), He will graciously respond to the weakest faith.