Matthew 10:24-25 ESV
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.”
There are people in this world of ours who profess faith in
Jesus Christ, but not in truth. Their confessions of Christ as Savior and Lord
are superficial only, but not in practice. They put on a show of righteousness
to impress others, but it is in pretense, a lie, deceitful, a scam. For they
are those who deliberately and habitually engage in sinful addictive behaviors
in secret. Their minds are set on the flesh, not on the Spirit of God, and so their
actions follow with where they have been sinning already in their minds.
Their relationships with God (with Christ) are one-sided,
for they have no intentions to change who they are or their behaviors, for they
don’t want to let go of their sins. They want God to, thus, take them just as
they are, but they want him to give his all to them, to serve them, but not the
other way around. They want him to do everything for them, but they are not in
the least compelled to want to serve the Lord or to obey him. And they want him
to be faithful to them but they have no intentions of being faithful to him.
So, instead of walking according to the Spirit in faithful
obedience to our Lord they are plummeting headstrong deep into their sins. They
are crashing and burning because sin is their master and God/Christ is not
their master. But they know that they are doing wrong, for they know right from
wrong, but they are choosing to do the wrong and not the right. And so they end
up hating those who are living righteously, for they are resentful of their
walks of faith. And so some of them end up maligning those who are upright.
They will end up plotting evil against the righteous, and
they will treat them in ways which are mean, malicious, spiteful, and
vindictive. And they may act out their meanness in many of the same ways as
Jesus’ opponents did to him. For they slandered Jesus, and they laid traps for
him hoping to find a way to accuse him of wrongdoing. And they used trickery on
him to try to get him to fall into their traps. It was kind of like
gaslighting. But he did not fall for their tricks, for he knew what they were
up to.
But eventually they arranged for him to be falsely accused
and falsely put under arrest and given a mock trial, and they were successful
in turning the people against him who only a week prior were singing his
praises. And that is one of the tricks of people such as this to try to set up
situations where they can make the one they hate look bad in front of others, or
they will tell lies about (slander) the ones who are living righteously in
order to turn others against them, because they want others to hate them, too.
And then Jesus’ enemies arranged for him to be put to death
on a cross, although he had done no wrong but only good. And our enemies may
arrange for our deaths, too, in many different ways. And this is because we are
an offense to them because we do take God and his word seriously, and we are
following our Lord in obedience, and we are walking in righteousness and holiness
and not in sin. And so they want to do away with us. Or they want to at least
silence us so we stop sharing the truth of the gospel.
[Matt 5:10-12; Matt 10:16-25; Matt 24:9-14; Lu 6:22-23; Lu 21:12-19;
Jn 15:1-21; Jn 16:33; Jn
17:14; Ac 14:22; Rom 5:3-5; Phil 3:7-11; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 4:12-17; 2 Tim 3:12; 1
Thess 3:1-5; Jas 1:2-4; 2 Co 1:3-11; Heb 12:3-12; 1 Jn 3:13]
Matthew 10:26-28 ESV
“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Although our enemies may work at trying to make us fearful
of them and of what they might do to us, we are not to fear them, for God is
fully sovereign over all that he has made. And nothing can touch us unless God
allows it for a purpose, and he will carry us through it if we will trust him.
It doesn’t mean that they cannot harm us, for Jesus said we will be hated and
persecuted, and that some of us will be put in prison and beaten and put to
death on account of our faith in Jesus Christ. But God will help us.
And then he also lets us know here that one day the truth
will all come out. Although our enemies are now able to sin in secret and to deceive
many with their lies, and perhaps to turn many against us who are following
Jesus with our lives, one day the truth will be revealed. And so we have to be
willing to have people think badly of us and even to treat us badly because of
our walks of faith in Jesus Christ and because of our testimonies for Christ
and for his gospel, for it means the salvation of human lives.
So, we need to keep speaking the truth, even if all people
turn against us and think evil of us and believe the lies being spread about
us. For we cannot control what others are saying about us behind our backs and
we have no control over what other people are going to think about us, but by
sharing the truth of the gospel we can get the truth out to people, and we can
expose the lies, and perhaps many will believe in Jesus Christ. So, we must not
fear opposition, but we must keep speaking the truth.
For we must fear God, instead. We must honor God for who he
is, and we must take him and his word seriously, for he indeed has the power to
send people to hell who refuse to bow the knee to him in humble submission to
him as Lord, and who refuse to forsake their sins and to follow him in
obedience. Jesus said, in fact, that not everyone who says to him, “Lord, Lord,”
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one DOING the will of God who is
in heaven (Matthew 7:21-23). Please take this to heart.
Matthew 10:32-33 ESV
“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
We need to take this seriously, too. For we can acknowledge
God/Christ with our lips but deny him with our actions. For there are many who
give lip service to him only but who do not follow him in truth. So
acknowledging God/Christ is much more than a verbal nod his direction. We
acknowledge the Lord Jesus by our submission to him as Lord, and via dying with
him to sin, not just once, but daily, and via our walks of obedience to him and
to his commands. For if we do not obey him, we deny him, and we do not have eternal
life in him, regardless of what our lips have professed.
Above All
By Paul Baloche / Lenny Leblanc
Above all powers
above all kings
Above all nature and all created things
Above all wisdom and all the ways of man
You were here before the world began
Above all kingdoms above all thrones
Above all wonders the world has ever known
Above all wealth and treasures of the earth
There's no way to measure what You're worth
Crucified laid behind the stone
You lived to die rejected and alone
Like a Rose trampled on the ground
You took the fall and thought of me
Above all
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