Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
Thanks for joining us again as we continue our discussion on the topic of life under the New Covenant. Generally speaking, I believe that the life of a committed Christian should be a life of VICTORY. That doesn't mean it's without difficulty on occasion, perhaps even frequently. But one of the clear promises from the New Covenant is that the Christian who pursues humility, who's DILIGENT in valuing the things of God and ferocious (firm in the faith) in resisting the enemy will in due course be EXALTED by the God of all grace out from every difficulty (1 Peter 5:5-10). With few exceptions, whatever difficulty we find ourselves in today isn't the same one we used to be in because we've most likely already been delivered out of that previous problem. Read the promises in 1 Peter for yourself and while your Bible's open, take a look at these verses also:
John 10:10 = "I came that (you) may have life, and have it abundantly."
John 15:7 = "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be
done for you."
1 Corinthians 15:57 = "...thanks be to God who gives us the VICTORY through our LORD Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 2:14 = "...thanks be to God, who ALWAYS leads us in TRIUMPH in Christ..."
2 Corinthians 9:8 = "God is willing to make ALL grace abound to you, so that ALWAYS having ALL
sufficiency in EVERYTHING you may have an abundance for EVERY good deed..."
Philippians 4:13 = "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."
When I see something promised in the Word I believe it. How about you? Quite a while ago I decided that whatever I found in the Bible was the Truth and since real God-type Truth is absolute and never changes, it would be up to me to do the changing if any changing became necessary. And this brings up the main focus for this week's article: at various times in our Christian development we're each going to have to decide whether we believe the Bible or not, whether we're going to take it literally or not, whether we believe it's the Truth or not and whether we submit to what it wants us to do or not.
The Prevalence of Double Mindedness
Now I've known for a long time that in any local church there are believers who're involved in seriously unrighteous conduct. That's a poorly kept "secret" and the fact is they've always been there starting with churches back in the first century. Many of those folks know very well that their conduct doesn't agree with the Word but they've chosen to ignore that and go ahead with their conduct anyway. An example of this would be the prevalence of divorce all around the Body of Christ. God says He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) and the New Testament states clearly that divorce ought not to be considered except when adultery is involved (Matthew 19:8-9, 1 Corinthians 7:10-12). But many, many believers go ahead with it anyway instead of submitting to the authority of the Word in the area of marriage.
I try not to judge other believers even though as a serious (but still imperfect) believer it's easy to discern the presence of unrighteousness. As long as their unrighteousness is private, I would say it's pretty much a matter left for God to deal with. His ways of doing things will eventually prevail. I wouldn't want to particularly associate with those people though and as an ordained minister their conduct would only become my business if I saw that it was affecting other believers in a negative way. Still I would try in love to isolate the behavior without judging the people. According to Scripture, no person has the authority to judge God's people (Romans 14:10-13). However, their conduct is a different matter and usually people who truly DO have a heart for God will be open to bible-based correction that's given constructively in love.
But there's another group of folks to discuss tonight who say they're Christians but have no intention of trying to submit to the authority of the Bible. In fact, they're running in the opposite direction. And we see a lot of those folks preferring political correctness when it directly disagrees with biblical correctness. For example, some of them are pro-choice in the face of the biblical definition of life to the contrary. They're proponents of life styles and conduct that Scripture clearly condemns. And the net effect of those ways of thinking and speaking and doing things is to confuse and weaken the influence of the Kingdom of God when the Bible says to put the interests of the Kingdom as our first priority (Matthew 6:33). Indeed, the Kingdom of God has been established and endures on the power and the truth of the Word of God.
What's of special interest about this group of Christians is that they are busily creating a division within the Body of Christ and according to them the Christians who believe that the Bible is the literal Truth are called EVANGELICALS and FUNDAMENTALISTS. Meanwhile, they call themselves PROGRESSIVE or MAINLINE Christians and by that they mean that they follow a modern, enlightened and "more balanced" version of Christianity that identifies more closely with the secular culture than does traditional Christianity even though the Bible instructs to NOT identify with the things of the World (1 John 5:15-17). Today more than 70 percent of the American population calls itself Christian but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that more than half of them for whatever reason aren't pursuing a literal interpretation of the Word of God.
A Few Conclusions
Jesus said through a number of scriptures that He EXPECTED us to keep His commandments if we wanted to enjoy the full potential of life under the New Covenant (John 15:1-11). The fullness of Christian life comes by abiding IN Him which requires that we keep His commandments. There aren't all that many commandments to be concerned about and the main two can be found in Matthew 22:37-40. The first is to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. In addition, to those COMMANDMENTS there are a number of instructions to pursue that are for our own good because they connect us to the Grace that God has made available through the work of Christ at Calvary.
Keeping the commandments of Christ isn't a requirement for salvation which is THE major change from the Old Covenant. Rather, as discussed previously salvation comes by making Jesus your LORD, stating verbally to others that you've made that decision and then believing with all your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 10:9). But a LORD is a Master who has the highest authority and among the many things that Jesus is recorded to have said is that there will be at the end of days MANY who call Him LORD whom He will reject because they did not do the will of the Father (Matthew 7:21-23). How does anyone DO the will of the Father unless they submit to the authority of the Word because there's no other authoritative place where the will of the Father has been divinely expressed?
I'm not saying we have to be perfect in keeping His commandments but the desire of our heart is to do our best. It's important to Him and because we love Him we want to please Him by doing our best. Many folks these days are trying to make up their own religion, their own brand of Christianity that only takes into account the love OF Christ and omits our obligation to return His love by making Him LORD and submitting to His ways of doing things. There's an exchange to be made: we receive forgiveness of our sins and eternal life but in exchange we have to make Him our LORD by submitting to His ways of doing things.
In short, let me say clearly that people can try all they want to redesign Christianity so that it fits their ever-changing political persuasions and agendas but it won't work out well because the Word of God is absolute Truth that NEVER changes. Certainly it makes it more difficult for the EVANGELICALS and the FUNDAMENTALISTS to do what God wants us to do, but Truth ALWAYS prevails and the one who willfully rejects the authority of the Word for their lives is in danger of an eternity that won't be what they had envisioned. Therefore, out of love for those people we must faithfully pray for God's mercy and command the enemy to take his blinders off their minds so they can see the LIGHT of Truth (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on November 15. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), pushing you to VICTORY in every area of life!
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Sinners' Prayer
If you've never invited Jesus to be your Lord, you can do so today by believing and saying out loud the following simple prayer:
Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and I believe that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven for all time and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.
If you were sincere as you prayed, God has already come into your life and you're a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.
When you get a moment have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer and believing what you said:
Romans 10:9
2 Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 2:8
Prayer Requests
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