Habakkuk 2

Then the Lord replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay."

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

So Your Faith Might Not Rest on Human Wisdom

With Eloquence and Human Wisdom

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 NIV

 

“And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”

 

Much of today’s church in America joined forces with the US government and the world of big business and they turned God’s house of prayer into a marketplace to be marketed to the world just like any other business with all the marketing schemes, tricks, manipulations, and trappings of the world.

 

So, they rearranged (remodeled) the church and the gospel and even the character and divine nature of God in order to make “the church,” and God/Jesus, and the gospel of Jesus Christ more attractive, inviting, pleasant, agreeable, and enjoyable to the world and to human flesh.

 

Thus, they discarded much of the teachings of Scripture and the gospel as Jesus and Paul and the other apostles taught it, which teach living lives separate from the world, and which teach repentance, dying with Christ to sin, obedience to God, submission to the Lordship of Christ, and walks of holiness and righteousness by God’s Spirit (Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17).

 

And it is becoming more and more apparent that the support behind all these alterations is a one world religion of the New World Order, which is eclectic (diverse, wide-ranging, and encompassing all religions and diverse lifestyles and all walks of faith into one). For, the altered gospel can easily fit into or be acceptable to any religion the way it is taught now.

 

For they teach God’s love and his grace as salvation only from the punishment of sin and as the promise of eternal life with God, but they do not teach that Jesus died to deliver us out of our slavery to sin and that we must die with him to sin and live to him and to his righteousness by God’s Spirit if we want to be saved from our sins and have eternal life with God.

 

[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; 1 Jn 1:5-9; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-6; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; 1 Co 6:9-10; 2 Co 5:10]

 

Thus, they give their adherents free license to continue living in sin, only now without guilt and shame and with no requirements for remorse and repentance. So, nothing has to change in their lives. They can keep living like they did before guilt-free. All they have to do is say they believe in Jesus or all they have to do is accept God’s grace in its altered form.

 

Thus, they turned the altar of God into a one-sided relationship where humans call all the shots, where they decide how they want to live and what they want to do and where God/Jesus isn’t even part of the relationship. His name is just being used so it sounds “Christian,” but it isn’t Christian, for Christ is not the master of people’s lives in this scenario. Flesh still is!

 

The Deep Things of God

1 Corinthians 2:6-10

 

“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

 

“’What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ — the things God has prepared for those who love him — these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”

 

Those who are teaching the true gospel of our salvation will not teach a diluted gospel or a false (another) Jesus, but they will expose the lies for what they are, and they will proclaim the truth (the whole counsel of God). For, they do not want to see people dying and going to hell on the basis of a lie and a false hope based in human wisdom and not in the wisdom of God.

 

For, those of us who are relying on the wisdom of God and not on the wisdom of man are not concerned with people flocking to us and liking us and following us. What we are concerned with is people loving God and following Jesus in obedience with their lives and with them forsaking their sins and living in freedom from bondage in victory over darkness.

 

We do not teach the wisdom of this age with all its compromises with the world and with all its alterations of truth and with all its lies and false hopes which promise people heaven while sending them to hell (Matt 23:13-15). For, that stems from hate, not from love, from Satan, not from God, and from the world, not from God’s Spirit and the Word of God.

 

If we are teaching the true gospel of Christ, we also don’t teach from our own minds but from what we have been taught by God’s Spirit via the Scriptures, as best we understand it, so that our wisdom is not human wisdom, but it is the wisdom of God. And I am not saying here that it means that we have perfect understanding of everything, for we won’t until Jesus returns and takes us to be with him (1 Co 13:9-10, 12).

 

The True Gospel of Christ

 

So, the true gospel, in a nutshell, is this. By God’s grace we are saved through faith, and this not of ourselves. It is a gift of God, not of our own fleshly works lest any of us should boast. But we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared in advance that we should walk (in practice) in them (Eph 2:8-10; Tit 2:11-14).

 

So, we are not saved by our own fleshly works, but by faith in Jesus Christ we become God’s workmanship and we do (in practice) the works he had planned for us to do before he even created the world. And we learn about those works he planned for us to walk in by reading the Scriptures, for we are called to live holy and godly lives, pleasing to God (Rom 12:1-2).

 

But before we can become God’s workmanship we must, by faith, be crucified with Christ in death to sin and be resurrected with Christ to newness of life in him, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness so that we no longer live as slaves to sin but so we now, by God’s power, live as bond-servants of the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 6:1-23).

 

And then we must walk (in conduct, in practice) according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. For if we are still being ruled by the flesh we are not servants of Christ, we are not God’s children, we don’t know God, and we will die in our sins. We will not have eternal life with God (Rom 8:1-17; 1 Jn 1:5-9; Lu 9:23-26; 1 Jn 2:3-6; Jn 6:35-58; Gal 5:16-21; Gal 6:7-8).

 

So, if we want to be saved from our sins and have eternal life with God, we must die with Christ to sin and live with Christ to his righteousness, not in our flesh, and not necessarily in absolute perfection, but in the power of God’s Spirit now living within us, daily dying to sin, daily denying the flesh, and daily submitting to the Lord to walking in his ways (Lu 9:23-26).

 

Walking in The Light  

 

An Original Work / November 16, 2011

Based off 1 John 1-2

 

When I lift up my voice, and

Sing praise unto God,

I will fellowship with my

Lord and Savior, King.

In Him there is no darkness.

He is in the light of truth.

If we walk in His light,

From sin He purifies.

 

If we repent of our sins,

He’ll forgive us now,

When we humble ourselves, and

Before Jesus bow.

The man who says, “I know Him,”

But does not obey His truth,

There is no truth in him.

In darkness still he’s found.

 

Do not love the world of sin,

For it is hell bound.

If you follow the world, you’ll

Not in Christ be found.

The world and its desires

Will not last; they’ll expire.

The one who does God’s will,

Receives eternal life.

 

See that what you have heard from

Christ remains in you.

Then, you’ll remain in Christ, and

In His Father, too.

This is what He promised us –

His eternal life with God.

So, continue in Him, and

You’ll receive a crown.

 

https://vimeo.com/114160122

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