This is a 4:00 in the morning message on a Wednesday not a Sunday night. It's short and prompted no doubt by a conversation I had with someone - another Christian - yesterday about Sin. The experience weighed heavily on my mind. So I went to bed praying and thinking about it and woke up this morning to read God's Word and to listen to His voice. And this is what I heard.
That's the only context. But I am mindful of the foundation prayer of this Ministry:
" Lord renew thy church beginning with me. Lord renew thy church that the church may renew the nation."
As always, then, this "urgent" message is for me first and then for others in the Ministry.
" For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with conviction....in spite of severe suffering you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers ........They tell how how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath"
1 Thessalonians 1:4-10 NIV
Just as I am without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bidst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God I come....
Verse 1 of a well known hymn
" Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
Matthew 22:21. NIV
OSWALD CHAMBERS MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST OCT 5.
THE BIAS OF DEGENERATION
"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned". Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man's sin; but that the disposition of sin - my claim to my right to myself - entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away ( Hebrews 9:6)
- an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong doing, but the disposition of self-realization -- I am my own god.......
Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches it in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man or woman responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. " And this is the judgement" ( the critical moment), " that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness more than the light.
..........................................................................................................................................................................
That men and women elevated "Caesar" over God. That men and women elevated their own wisdom and desires over obedience to God - even when they heard the gospel. That Jesus died to rescue us from such a disposition. Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment