Rock of Our Salvation
Psalm 95:1-2 NIV
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout
aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol
him with music and song.
Jesus Christ, God the Son,
the second person of our triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is the Rock
of our salvation. He is our foundation, our support, our mainstay, our tower of
strength; the strong ground on which we stand; the basis of our hope. He is the
one who established, by his death and resurrection, how we are saved and what
we are saved from and to. His teachings and those of his apostles and prophets
(of the Bible) also serve as the foundation of our faith and of the gospel
truth, upon which our spiritual house is built.
When Jesus began his earthly
ministry he preached repentance and belief in the gospel. He taught that we
must repent or perish in our sins. He was not willing that any should perish
but that all should come to repentance. He called sinners to repentance. And, he
taught repentance for forgiveness of sins. His NT apostles taught the same.
And, repentance means to have a change of mind about sin and about God, which
involves turning away from the sin and turning to God to follow him in his
truth and in his ways.
Jesus said that if we want to
come after him, we must deny self, take up our cross daily and follow (obey)
him. He said if we hold on to our old lives of sin we will lose them for
eternity, but if we lose our lives for his sake, i.e. if we die with him to
sin, then we will have the hope of eternal life with him. He said that unless
we partake of the death that he died for our sin, we have no part of him, for
he died that we might die to sin and live to righteousness (See: Luke 9:23-25;
John 6:35-66; 1 Peter 2:24).
Jesus also said that his
followers listen to him and that they follow (obey) him (See: John 10:27-30).
And, they are the ones who cannot be snatched out of his hands and the Father’s
hands. He said if we love him, we will keep (obey) his Word, and he and the
Father will make their home with us. He said if we keep his Word, we will never
see death. The NT apostles reiterated this message when they emphasized the
connection between love for God and obedience to his Word. The two are
inseparable. Repentance and obedience are required components of genuine faith
in Jesus Christ.
Bow Down in Worship
Psalm 95:6-7 NIV
Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel
before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are
the people of his pasture,
the flock
under his care.
The Bible describes our
worship of God in these words from Romans 12:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (vv. 1-2).
This message is all
throughout the New Testament in the Bible. The whole object of our salvation is
that we forsake our former lives of living for sin and self, that we live
separate from the sinful ways of the world, and that we yield our lives (our
whole being) to our God to live lives which are holy and pleasing to him.
When Jesus died on that cross
he bought us back for God with his blood. This means our lives are no longer
our own to be lived how we want, for we belong to Christ. Therefore, we are to
honor him with our lives!
We aren’t supposed to have
the same minds as we did before we believed in Jesus. We are supposed to have
minds transformed of the Spirit of God away from sin and self and the flesh and
now dedicated to God. We are to now have pure minds, and ones fixed on Jesus,
and listening to him, and following him in obedience to his will. Jesus didn’t
die just to give us a free pass from hell. He died to change our lives, to make
us new creatures in Christ Jesus, created to be like God in true righteousness
and holiness.
When we come to faith in
Jesus Christ with God-given faith which is divinely persuaded as to God’s will
for our lives, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin, and we are
resurrected with him in newness of life.
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin” (Rom. 6:6-7).
Jesus died to set us free
from slavery (addiction) to sin, not just to forgive us our sins, and
definitely not to give us a free pass to continue in willful sin against him.
He and his NT apostles were emphatic on this issue! To worship him means to bow
down to him, and to bow down to him is to submit to him and to do what he
commands. If he is our Lord, then that means he is our owner-master and we are
his possession.
He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Titus 2:14).
Hear His Voice
Psalm 95:7-11 NIV
Today, if only you would hear his voice,
“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did
that day at Massah in the wilderness,
where your ancestors tested me;
they tried
me, though they had seen what I did.
For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said,
‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they
have not known my ways.’
So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall
never enter my rest.’”
Many hearts today are
hardened to the truth of the gospel, and I am meaning within the walls of our
churches, and even among the clergy. And, this is largely because another
gospel and another Jesus are being taught within the church which are not
founded in the Word of God, or are only partially based in the Word of Truth. This
false gospel and its messengers are shallow, superficial, diluted, phony. They
are “bragging liars” who boast of what is only half truth or is diluted or
twisted truth, and to their advantage. This gospel of which they speak is
shortened, manufactured of humans, and is being strengthened, as it is
spreading like gangrene.
Basically, these “thieves and
liars” have cheapened God’s grace and have reduced it to nothing more than
forgiveness of sins and the hope of heaven when we die. They have made God’s
grace common and collective of many thoughts and ideas of human origin. This
lying gospel which boasts of much is a departure, a separating from the truth
of God’s Word. Although there is truth contained within, it is only partial
truth, often taken out of context. The faith required for salvation is thus
generated of man, not God-given faith.
A steady diet of this “Bragging
Liar” gospel has led many people astray, which has resulted in many hard hearts
which are resistant to the truth of the gospel and the voice of the Holy
Spirit. And, many people are craving this false gospel because it tells them
what their ears WANT to hear rather than what they NEED to hear. But, there is
no hope in this lying gospel, because it leaves its followers still dead in
their sins, without hope, without God, and still bound for hell, and not for
heaven.
The lie says that all you
have to do is “believe” in Jesus and you have heaven guaranteed you no matter
how you live your life from this moment forward. But “believe” is rarely even
explained. It reduces faith often to some intellectual acknowledgment or to
some emotional decision, but which does not lead the “believer” to die with
Christ to sin or to live with Christ to righteousness. It does not put sin to death,
but it pacifies it, instead. And, since so many Christians these days have been
caught in this web of deception, they have hardened their hearts to the truth,
and they are living a lie, thinking they are going to heaven, when they are
not.
The Bible is perfectly clear
on this subject. We reap what we sow. If we sow to please the flesh, from that
flesh we will reap corruption (or destruction). If we sow to please the Spirit,
we will reap eternal life. If we say we have fellowship with God, but we walk
in darkness (in sin), we are liars. If we walk according to the flesh, to
gratify our sinful cravings, and if we make sin our practice, and if we hold on
to our old lives of sin, we will die in our sins. This is the truth! And, we
need to take it seriously! For, not only does your relationship with God depend
on it now, but your eternal life depends on you walking in the truth and not
following after this “Bragging Liar” gospel.
Lord Have Mercy
Michel Coeuriot / Michel Jonasz
Jesus, I've forgotten the words that
You have spoken
Promises that burned within my heart
have now grown dim
With a doubting heart I follow the
paths of earthly wisdom
Forgive me for my unbelief
Renew the fire again…
Lord have mercy on me
Sunday, March 11, 2018, 4:44
p.m. – Thank you, Jesus, for this teaching from Your Word. Bring it home to our
hearts, I pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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