Libya

I don’t make many political statements in this blog and this one is not intended to be.

I would like to use Momar Qaddafi as a great example of how Satan is clinging to his illegitimate throne.

Momar Qaddafi is the classic example of a dictator. He leads by force and threat. A true dictator makes good on his threats when he is cornered and losing his power over the people he rules.

Qaddafi will stop at nothing to hold power over his people. The more the people push back the more the leader grasps hold of his power and resources to keep that power.

This is an earthly example of what is taking place in the spiritual realm.

Satan was defeated at the cross by Christ. Jesus rose and ascended to the throne of both Heaven and Earth. He is now Lord of lords and King of kings. Everything is now being brought under Christ’s Authority.

There is a problem with this. Satan still believes he is the ruler of this age. He has stolen the throne and as an illegitimate leader he will stop at nothing to keep hold of his false reign and rule over the people of earth.

As Satan realizes his time is running out he will ramp up his activity to hold people hostage to his power and control over their lives.

Just like a falling dictator, Satan will stop at nothing to keep a hold of his illegitimate position. He will lie, deceive, trick, cheat, threaten, and force people to submit to his rule. The more people he can deceive the more power he has to maintain his illegitimate position.

People give leaders their position. If you are willing to follow a dictator, whether it be by force, threat or fear, you are allowing the dictator to rule.

Satan understands that his only hope is to keep people deceived to keep power over them. If the people are deceived they will not stand against the deceiver until things get so bad that they want out from under the oppressor. To gain your freedom from a dictator you must be willing to stand firm and even fight to the death for that which you desire.

Christ set up a new kingdom. It is not a kingdom of force. It is a kingdom of free choice. You either freely submit to His rule and reign or you can stay under the rule of your present oppressor.

By the way, you must not love your life so much that you are not willing to die to gain your freedom. Those who win the victory overcome by the blood of the Lamb and their testimony.

I pray this has been an eye opening read for what is happening in our midst.

Authority

Have you ever thought much about authority?

We are all under some form of authority.

Who have you allowed to have authority over your life?

When you stand to declare your thoughts and opinions, what is the authority from which you established your foundation?

In the world we live in people justify their opinions and thoughts by that which they know.

Where did you acquire your knowledge to base your opinion?

Many of the people we listen to have acquired great knowledge through hours of study. Everything they have studied has been learned and taught to them by someone else.

Who is the authority behind all this knowledge?

When you submit to an instructor or an author of a book or any other form of teaching, why do you believe what they teach?

Do you realize that you are submitting to an authority every time you accept someone’s teaching?

So, my question is, have you ever traced the line of authority backwards to find out who is really instructing you?

You and I do not have any knowledge of our own. We have acquired everything we know from those who have taught it to us. We have had experiences in our life but they are all interpreted by the knowledge we have.

What if the knowledge base from which you look at the world around you has a false foundation? You wouldn’t know it. So, you would base everything that you experience upon false assumptions.

What if everyone around you is being taught from a foundation that is built upon false ideas? Not only would you not know it but everyone around you would be deceived, and what you and they taught to others would start from a wrong base.

What if we have decided to submit ourselves to an authority that is not true?

How would we know? If we do not know the truth and those around us do not know the truth we will begin to determine our own truth and lead everyone else into the same false beliefs.

We must all search for the truth. We must quit accepting things people say just because it fits our desires. We must find the truth and begin to base our foundation upon the truth.

So, who has the truth?

God is truth. God is all knowing. All true knowledge then begins with God. If what we hold to is not based in God’s truth, the knowledge we gain and attain is false, and it will lead us down a path of deception.

No matter how well intended we are, if we have submitted to a false authority, we will not be able to make life work out the way it was intended to be. We will be without a true foundation so we will continually chase every new idea that comes along till we find something that works for us. If the idea we elect to accept is not based upon God’s truth, no matter how well it works, we will fail to succeed in the end.

Throughout the Bible God lets us know that He is the Authority over all things. Jesus tells us that He is the truth. He tells us that His teaching is the true foundation and everything else is shifting sand.

To try to build on any other foundation will not work. You may ask why not? To build on any other foundation is to raise someone other than God to the level of God.

Why won’t this work? No one else can sustain the universe. No one else can save man kind. No one else can sustain his own existence. Everything created is dependant upon the Creator. So, He is the only truth.

Some would say that we evolved from nothing to this point. If this were true there would be no way of knowing it. Knowledge had to exist before we could know anything at all.

There has to be an all knowing being for us to have a basis for what we know. Therefore God is the Authority over everything and our only hope is to reestablish our lives upon the true knowledge He makes available to us.

What Authority have you submitted to?

Six Day Creation?

How important is it that we believe God created in Six Days?

Many people don’t think that this is very important.

We live in a very scientific world and the scientists have supposedly proven beyond any doubt that the earth evolved over billions of years.

God’s Word to us opens up with the phrase, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. (Genesis 1:1a)

Is this important?

If God lied to us in the first line of His letter to us, I’d have to say this is pretty important. If the first sentence in the Bible is a lie, why should we believe the rest of it?

This is why so many people want to prove that the earth wasn’t created. If God didn’t create then the whole of the Bible is discounted from the very first line.

So, why is a Six Day creation so important? For the same reason. God went to some pretty great detail to explain the days of creation as normal sun up to sun down days. Once again if this is a lie, why believe the rest of what is written? If God is a liar why do we need forgiveness of our sin?

Many people have a tendency to disregard the explanation of the beginning from Genesis. They don’t believe it has any importance to the plan of salvation. Just believe in Jesus the rest doesn’t matter.

I don’t think you have to believe in a literal six day creation to be saved. But with this being said, why would you believe that Jesus was God’s Son sent to save us if the rest of the book was a lie?

God slipped a line into the Ten Commandments that is very often over looked. In Exodus 20:11 God says, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy”.

I believe God placed this sentence in His giving of the Ten Commandments for a reason. The reason is people might in the future discount the book of Genesis. But they will keep the Ten Commandments well into the future.

Have you ever stopped to think about why the Ten Commandments are such a problem for our world? The last six are good rules and principles to live by. The first four are the problem. They tell us about God, they tell us about a six day creation, they cut to the core of who we really are and what we believe about God.

Now, with all this being said, I do not condemn people for not believing in a literal six day creation. If the person has come to Christ for their salvation and are believing in Him for their redemption and forgiveness of sin, it’s only a matter of time before the Holy Spirit will begin to reveal all truth to them.

I can’t explain how an all powerful, all knowing, always present supreme being can do the things God says He has done. I do though believe, without a doubt, that He told us the truth. God is true and their is no deception in Him. He loves us enough to tell us the truth.

I believe we must take God at His Word. To do anything less is not believing, by faith, in the God of Scripture.

So, is it important that we believe in a Six Day creation?

Heaven: Part One (Audio)

This is the first session in a series on Heaven. There is a question and asnwer time after the message. The questions are hard to hear as the congregation did not have a microphone. The answers should help explain the questions.

http://www.firstchurchofgod.info/sermon.php?date=2011/02/20

Morality Doesn’t Birth Christians

The so-called Christian cultural morality movement is not accomplishing the mission many are desiring it to accomplish.

If we, as Christians, were to eliminate abortion, pornography, homosexuality, gambling, drugs and alcohol, verbal, sexual and physical abuse, as well as all the debt problems of our government entities, we may not have produced a single Christian.

If we could all come together on the same page and everyone get along in peace and understanding with one another we would still be missing God’s reality of redemption.

Today’s church is so concerned with social problems that we have forgotten the mission. Our mission is to take the Gospel to the world.

We need to be bringing people to Christ. Yes, this is hard in a society that has long ago left its Christian foundation. For us to reestablish Christianity we must first awaken people to the reality of God and then teach people how to be right with God through Jesus Christ.

Our churches have fallen to the idea that moralizing our communities and societies will make Christians. This is not true. Christians don’t become Christians by following moral laws. A person that lives a good moral life may not be a Christian.

Christianity is not a religion that forces itself on people. Christianity is not a religion that makes people moral. Christianity is the way for a person to be made right with God.

Once a person comes to God through Jesus Christ they are given a new Spirit. This new Spirit begins a good work in the person to sanctify them unto the Lord. In other words God goes to work via His imparted Spirit to change the person from the inside out. This is not a religion of rules forced upon someone but a miraculous work of God in a person to recreate them into something they were not before.

Many people accuse Christians of forcing their morality upon others. This is not what Christianity is all about. Christianity calls people out of the world and into the Kingdom of God.

As a minister I would never force my beliefs upon another. If you desire to live in the sins of this world and follow its way you are free to do so and I will not stand in your way. I love you enough to inform you of your eternal destination and freely offer you another option but I will not force you to come to Christ for your salvation.

I see Christianity as a needed product and the Christian as its salesmen. We have a product that you need. You may not want it and you are free not to acquire it. We can’t force you to want our product but that doesn’t mean we have to quit advertising it. That would be the world forcing their will upon us.

So in conclusion, Christians should get back to the mission of offering people salvation through Jesus Christ and quit trying to make people moral. That’s God’s job by way of His Spirit.

King James Only???

First of all I’d like to wish the King James Version of the Bible a Happy “400th” Birthday.

With that being said, close them up and put them on your book shelf with the rest of your classics that are very seldom read.

There is a reason King James sanctioned the third Bible translated into English. There were some perceived problems with the other two.

The Great Bible or the first English translation was took place in 1538. the Bishop’s Bible was released in 1568 and the “Authorized King James Version was completed in 1611.

Enough with the history.

The reason the Bible was translated into English was for the purpose of getting God’s Word to the people in a way they could understand it.

Martin Luther was known for the protestant revolution. What brought this about was the printing of the Bible in the German language of his day. Once common people could understand the Word of God in their own language the whole world began to change.

Today we have people wanting to hold to a version of the Bible that was written 400 years ago in a language we do not speak any longer.

Yes, it sounds so rich and highly religious but does it speak to the common person?

I had a young lady tell me that she always attended the “Latin Mass”. I asked her is she spoke Latin. Her reply was no. So I asked her what she was getting out it. Her reply was, “It’s a wonderful religious experience.”

How can some one be built up and encouraged in their faith if they don’t understand what’s being said

Acts 2:7-11

7 They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, 8 and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! 9 Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, 10 Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!”

God’s amazing work on this day was allowing people to hear His Word in their own language so that they might repent. By the way, 3000 people were added to the church that day.

I have a niece that lived in Ecuador as a Wycliffe Bible translator. They did not go down there and teach people to read the King James Version of the Bible. They worked to make God’s Word understandable to the people of Ecuador.

Now for my personal story.

When I was a youngster I was given a Bible by my grandmother. Yes, I still have it and even had it out reading a passage from it yesterday. It was a King James Version. When I was young I never read it. It was just too confusing.

When I was in my mid to late twenties I was sitting in a Sunday School class when Bruce Kelly, the teacher, handed me a Bible to read from.It was the Everyday Bible. This was the New Century Version. I spent the rest of the Sunday School session reading God’s Word in a translation I could understand. The very next day I went to the local Christian supply store and bought this version of the Bible. It was the first time I read the Bible. It was as plain and clear as it could be. I was a sinner and I was not living according to the Word of God.

I credit Bruce as one of the people that God put in my path to lead me to Christ. Bruce Kelly handed me the most powerful tool ever for life transformation. My revival began when God’s Word was written in a language I could understand.

I know that there are people who can read the King James Version of the Bible and understand it. They are the people who think we have trashed the English language. They are people who don’t communicate well with the common man on the street. Are you starting to see a problem here?

We are called to take the Gospel message to the world. I pastor in a community that has a fast growing Hispanic population. I, like many of you, have a problem communicating through this language barrier. If I can’t understand them and they can’t understand me I am not going to be a very effective at spreading my message to them.

The King James Version had it’s place in history. Four hundred years later it’s time we quit holding to the past and start communicating God’s Word to the people around us.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 King James Version

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

* Just a side note, the 11 bold words in this passage gave my spell checker a rather difficult time.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 New Living Translation

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

I pray that you understand what I have written here today.

The King James Version is not what makes the Bible Holy. The Bible or God’s Word makes people holy. If they don’t understand it or desire to read it because it’s difficult we’re losing the battle. We must communicate to the people we intended to reach. If you want to reach the younger age groups that so desperately need the Lord, I suggest you give them a Bible written in their own language.

Galatians Five (Five)

Galatians 5:24-26

24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. 25 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. 26 Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.

Once again, we cannot go back to allowing the self will to rule our person. This will only lead to evil.

Paul teaches us in Romans 7 that we are constantly at war with the sin nature that resides with in us. The only way for us to win this battle over sin is to submit daily, hourly even moment by moment to the Holy Spirit.

We must nail the passions of our self-willed sinful nature to the cross of Christ and crucify it. In other words kill it. Put it to death. The only way this thing that lives in us can be overcome is by the power of God working in us.

I would like to ask you to put on a verse of Scripture as you would put on a pair of glasses.

If you were to use this one verse of Scripture as your looking glass, I believe you would see the world in a whole new way.

This one verse will be like a telescope to see that which is far off and it will be like a microscope to see the small details that surround us.

This one verse of Scripture will bring to light every motive and action of yourself and the people who surround you.

If you really want to see the world for what it is I am asking you to view it through this one passage of Scripture.

Galatians 5:24

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.

Don’t be surprised if your first response to seeing the world through this Scripture is to fall before a holy God and say, “Father forgive me for I knew no what I was doing”. And then don’t be surprised if you are compelled to help others see the truth also.

Our world has been blinded by the god of this age far too long. It’s time we see with a clear view what is happening all around us.

Have you nailed the passions and desires of your sinful nature to Christ’s cross and killed them?

It’s time to look in the mirror through your new glasses. Once you recover from the shock then you will be able to see the world in a whole new way.

Are you prepared to live by the Spirit?

Galatians Five (Four)

Galatians 5:19-23

19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Laws are established with undesired punishments as a deterrent to human actions. If the punishment is severe enough the human should reason with himself and not do the action. What we find is the opposite. The human reasons a way to justify why his actions should not be punished.

Evil is alive in all self-willed human beings. The self-will is the problem. The self-will is expressed outwardly in sinful activity. And then the self-will justifies why the actions were not really wrong. This is the world of humanity that is lived before us daily.

Now, there is no law against love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control. Why? The outward actions of these attributes are not sinful. There are no laws written to punish a person for loving his neighbor. There are no laws written for controlling your self desires.

I mean really, sin is the inability to control the self-will.

A human being needs power to overcome the self-will.

When I, as a human, decide I want something, I begin to institute a plan to attain it. If I desire something I can’t get on my own, I institute a plan that will manipulate others to help me in gaining what I desire. If I have any physical or financial limitations in getting what I want, I plot and plan ways to gain what I need to realize my goal.

There is no stopping the human being from gaining and attaining his selfish desires without a power greater than the will.

Once I speak the phrase, “I will”, evil is there with me.

The “I will” does not operate by way of faith. The “I will” is not of the Holy Spirit.

The “I will” must be overcome by a higher power. In some cases the only way to stop the human and his will is to kill the human to stop his actions.

In reality the human must put the self to death daily. We allow the power of God to overcome or override the self-will.

Isaiah 14:12-15

12  “How you are fallen from heaven,
O shining star, son of the morning!
You have been thrown down to the earth,
you who destroyed the nations of the world.
13  For you said to yourself,
‘I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars.
I will preside on the mountain of the gods
far away in the north.
14  I will climb to the highest heavens
and be like the Most High.’
15  Instead, you will be brought down to the place of the dead,
down to its lowest depths.

More tomorrow.

Galatians Five (Three)

Galatians 5:7-10

7 You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth? 8 It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. 9 This false teaching is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough! 10 I am trusting the Lord to keep you from believing false teachings. God will judge that person, whoever he is, who has been confusing you.

Once again this is not about living in sin like we would think. Sin is just serving self. Faith is living in line with the Lord. Our faith gives us power over the self desires. Our trust in the Lord allows us to live in a manner worthy of His high calling. As we grow in our knowledge of the Lord we better understand Him, His ways and His desires for our life. Because of our love for the Lord and our desire to relate with Him we begin a process of transformation. We are being transformed by a new way of thinking. Not following the self but the Spirit of the Lord.

Galatians 5:11-15

11 Dear brothers and sisters, if I were still preaching that you must be circumcised—as some say I do—why am I still being persecuted? If I were no longer preaching salvation through the cross of Christ, no one would be offended. 12 I just wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves.
13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.

Sometimes I think it would have been easier to communicate God’s truth to pre-evolutionary thinkers. Before we became so tied to naturalism people knew that man was more complex that just an evolved creature. They knew that man was a body, soul and spirit. They knew that man had a conscience that was not just a product of the brain but of the mind.

Our mind is an invisible yet real part of the self. Our bodies die but our soul or mind, will, emotions and personality are eternal. We are born, by nature, with a self-willed spirit. Through our knowledge and understanding of the Lord we must be reborn to a God-willed or Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5:16-18

Living by the Spirit’s Power
16 So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. 18 But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.

When someone says evil in our world today we automatically think to the most unbelievable sins possible. We think of terrorist attacks or mass killings by dictatorial leaders. Yes, these are evil acts but they are nothing more than self-desire escalated to a large event.

Timothy McVay, the Oklahoma City Bomber, was no more of an evil man than the kid in the school yard that butts in line to get the position he desires. It’s people acting out of their self-will.

We try to control these people with laws, rules regulations, teaching, training, discipline and even education. But the problem is spiritual. They are acting upon their natural inner self-spirit. The natural man is evil to the core.

So, we then try to get them in touch with their inner self all the while failing to realize that we are not trying to improve the inner self but we need to be putting that inner evil being to death.

Until the self is put to death evil is still in charge of the human house. Man will act upon his self will and the result will be the world we are living in.

There are those who have died to self and are allowing the Lord to lead their lives. These people are loving, caring, compassionate people that seem to be aliens and strangers in the world we live in. Their mind is set more upon God and his will and ways than their own.

More tomorrow.

Galatians: Part Six (Audio)

http://www.firstchurchofgod.info/sermon.php?date=2011/02/13