“For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.” (Heb 9:24-28)
So, do you all ever watch, read or hear some of the news about things that are going on in our world and just think to yourself, ‘How can this go on much longer?’ It seems that not a day goes by anymore that some ‘new’ or ‘outrageous’, sinful, something is thrown at us by a ‘them’ or ‘they’, pardon the pronouns- at least ‘thrown’ or ‘stuffed’ is how it feels! But then Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, “That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, "See this, it is new"? Already it has existed for ages Which were before us.” (Ecc 1:9-10) So, I guess I’m wrong when I think that there couldn’t have ever been a time as sin filled as this as a matter of fact, the time that Jesus was on the earth, in the Roman empire, may have had this time beat. I mean, right around the time Paul and Peter were being beheaded, Nero, the ‘ruler of the world’, the ‘son of a god’, was getting married to a boy! Wow, looks like Solomon, uh, God is right, He always is! You see, ever since the fall in the garden of Eden, mankind- everyone- has been corrupted by Sin: the result being the sins that each of us were guilty of before God, deserving of His wrath and punishment just as guilty as anyone committing one of the ‘newsworthy’ sins you and I gasp at every day! But Jesus died to atone, to forgive us (and them) of our sins, to cleanse us, and to justify us (and them) before God, when we (they) believe in Him. And then to put His seal on the redemption, He rose from the grave and sent us the ‘seal’, the ‘guarantee’, of The Holy Spirit. Our ‘Sin’ has been taken care of, nailed to the cross in Jesus. Our ‘sins’ we will war and struggle with while in this body, but when that day comes Glory! So, while you watch a ‘world gone crazy’, remember, there is hope for mankind, but that hope will only be found in Christ.
We will continue this Sunday in our study about defending our faith by knowing the scriptures, with the doctrines of Mankind (regeneration) and the Church. Once again we will go through scripture- but I have added some questions- they are attached to this email so you can get a head start if you want to. I am also adding below a reading by Oswald Chambers and after that a two part video series by John MacArthur on being 'Self-deceived'.
Enjoy everyone, and see you Sunday!
Randy
"My Utmost for His Highest, Updated Edition" by Oswald Chambers -
"The Nature of Reconciliation
“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
“Sin is a fundamental relationship”it is not wrong doing, but wrong being”it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins”the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power. The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross. A man cannot redeem himself”redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life."
Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/2joV1BN
John MacArthur, “Self-deceived” Part 1 and 2
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