Psalm 121 ESV
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does
my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven
and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps
you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither
slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is
your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by
night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep
your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out
and your coming in
from this time
forth and forevermore.
Amen! The Lord, The Lord, The Lord will do all of this for
us and no other!! Amen! No man or woman will do this for us. No institution of
man will do this for us. Our own good works will not do this for us. And, our
lack of works of the Spirit out of disobedience to God will definitely not do
this for us.
How Does He Help Us?
So, how does the Lord do this for us? Jesus Christ, God the
Son, died on a cross one day nearly 2000 years ago. Even though he was sinless,
he became sin for us on that cross so that when he died, our sins died with
him. He did this so that we might die with him to sin and live to him and to
his righteousness (Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; 1 Pet 2:24; Eph 4:17-24).
But, this isn’t optional. This is required for salvation
from sin and for eternal life with God. We must be crucified with Christ in
death to sin, we must be born anew of the Spirit of God, and we must walk in
obedience to our Lord, according to the Spirit of God, and no longer according
to our flesh.
For, we can’t claim these promises of God if we have not died
with him to sin, if we have not been born anew of the Spirit of God, and if we
are not walking according the Spirit and no longer according to the flesh. For,
it is as we walk by the Spirit that we will not gratify the sinful cravings of
the flesh.
Watch Out for This!
Not everyone is teaching the truth of the gospel, though, so
not everyone is going to tell you what I just told you. In fact, the majority
of people in these last days will not only not tell you that, but they will try
to convince you that what I just told you is a lie, even though you can read it
for yourself in the Bible, and you can see that what I shared here is not a
lie.
But this lie they are telling is not something someone just
made up and it caught on one person at a time. This lie came from Satan, first
off, but then he passed it down through people at very top levels of government
and church denominations and through Bible seminaries and Bible colleges.
So, pastors were trained in the lie, and then they have passed
down the lie to their people who have then adopted the lie, and then they have
spread the lie to other people who then have adopted the lie, so that now we
have a large number of people professing faith in Jesus who are headed to hell.
So, What’s the Lie?
What they basically did is that they removed all of God’s
requirements for salvation and for eternal life with God from the gospel. And,
those requirements are that we believe in Jesus, which is a God-given and
divinely persuaded faith, and the fruit of that faith is that we submit to
Christ as Lord, repent of sin, and walk in obedience to the Lord’s commands (Rom
6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; Tit 2:11-14).
And, they replaced the true gospel of grace with a false
gospel of grace which teaches or which implies that submission to Christ as
Lord, turning away from sin, and walking in obedience to our Lord are not required
by God, and in fact, they say they are works of the flesh which don’t save us
and so we don’t have to do them.
Since all they require for salvation and for eternal life
with God is some mere acknowledgment of Christ or some words said in a prayer
or some acceptance of God’s love and grace, and no repentance is required, their
“gospel” gives free license for the “believer” to continue living in sin
without guilt and without any need for remorse.
So, they are promising people freedom while they leave them
in slavery. They are promising them eternal life with God while they are
sending them straight to hell. They are promising them a life worth living
while they continue to live just like they did before they “believed” in Jesus.
The thing of it is, though, they are very deceptive in how
they do this. They do use the Scriptures, but they remove them from their
context and so they make them say what they want them to say. The other thing
they do is that they will place Scriptures in writings so that you think what
they are talking about is Scriptural, but they don’t actually teach on that
Scripture.
Another deceptive tactic they use is implied language. They
use hidden messages, inuendoes, and hints to get across their messages, too.
They say what they want to say indirectly, in other words. That way they can
deny they said it, if confronted, but the message still gets across.
And, the purpose of it all is two-fold. First, they want to
tickle itching ears which are hankering for feel good messages which console
them in their sin, and which tell them that God loves and accepts them just the
way they are, and that they don’t have to change because God does it all.
The second part of their purpose is to discredit the true
gospel of salvation and its messengers so that those they want to deceive will
know to automatically reject the true gospel as “works-based salvation” which
they are to avoid because they say it is “evil.”
So, basically they are calling good evil and evil good.
So, instead of their converts coming to faith in Jesus
Christ and entering into a relationship with Almighty God, they are believing a
lie which is of Satan and they are entering into a relationship with their own
flesh, which now gives their flesh permission to reign supreme.
Rejection of the Gospel and Its Messengers
And, the true gospel they have no room for. It doesn’t fit
their business goals and their marketing schemes, and neither do we who are still
teaching the true gospel. So, we will be told to go someplace else where we
will be a “better fit,” but a place such as that these days is rare, indeed.
And, we will be charged with teaching a false gospel and a
false grace, and we will be accused of being legalists, hyper-religious,
self-righteous, hateful, and intolerant, etc. And, we will be attacked, and
censored, and fought against because we are following the Lord and not the
crowd.
But we are to be encouraged. We are to lift our eyes to the
Lord, and to call on him to help us when we are being hated and persecuted. We
are to trust him with our lives and with our circumstances and believe in him
to work it all out for good in our lives.
We are not to be afraid of what our enemies may do to us or
say about us, but we are to commit it all to the Lord and allow him to heal our
wounded hearts. And, then we must keep on loving others and keep on serving the
Lord until the day our Lord comes to take us home.
Give
Them All to Jesus
Phil
Johnson / Bob Benson Sr. 1975
Give them all, give them all,
Give them all to Jesus -
Shattered dreams, wounded hearts, and broken toys.
Give them all, give them all,
Give them all to Jesus,
And He will turn your sorrows into joy.
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