Psalm 31: The LORD Our Rock

The Christian can never have peace by doing that which seems right in their own eyes. The Christian can only have peace by following the leading of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Psalm 31:1,3 speaks to this: “In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.”

V18 spoke to my heart in a time of difficult trial when all I could do was stay silent and trust the Lord to carry me through: “Let the lying lips be put to silence; which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.” Even though I see myself as a sinner saved by grace, the Lord sees me as righteous through the precious blood of Christ which atoned for my sins. The following verses speak to this: Romans 4:5-8 “…to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness even as David also describeth the bessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Those verses bring peace.

V19 speaks of God’s goodness: “Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men”. This fear is a reverential fear of who God is. The Christian is to trust in the Lord before the unsaved, the “sons of men” This is not easy to do, but we have to trust and say “Lord, this is in your hands.”.

David closes Psalm 31 with encouragement. V24 “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.”
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John 15:18-27 - The World and The Followers of Jesus

In the King James bible, John 15 uses the word "hate" in Jesus speaking to his disciples. Noah Websters 1828 defines the word "hate" as to dislike greatly, to have an aversion to.  According to their definition it is less than "abhor" or "detest".    I can attest that this is certainly true with regard to some family members who are anti-gospel, and even Christians who do not want to stand for the truth but are willing to compromise for the sake of "unity"..   but on to the verses in John 15.

V18-21  (Jesus speaking to his disciples) "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you........if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you......but all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me."

These are tough words.  No one wants to know that the world of the unsaved will greatly dislike us, or have an aversion to us.  But the bible shows us that the scribes and Pharisees hated the Lord Jesus so much that from the beginning of his ministry they sought ways to kill him.  For Christians now, mostly it is that if we stand for the truth of God's word or the gospel, we are avoided and would spend a lonely life but for the presence of the Holy Spirit who is our comfort and encourager as well as being our teacher.  If we were still in the world,  if we were still lost in our sins,  we would be accepted.  But again Jesus teaches that "I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."  And may I say that many Christians do not want to accept that Christ has chosen them, they would rather believe that they chose Christ of their own "free will" and this alone makes for hard feelings towards any Christian who holds to the truth that the bible teaches, that Christ chose his own.  Christians are not hated for who they are so much as what they believe.  The gospel divides families, the bible divides families.

V22-27 "if I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin but now they have no cloke for their sin...if I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father....But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye  have been with me from the beginning."

Those that were on this earth during Jesus ministry of teaching, preaching and healing, are now without excuse when they rejected Christ because they were witnesses of him.  Now they had no covering for their sin, because even though they were witnesses of Jesus' ministry, they  had an aversion to him and rejected him.  Now Jesus tells his disciples that when the Holy Spirit comes, they would bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the promised Redeemer, and they will spread the gospel and carry forth the teachings of the Lord Jesus.   For Christians today who look back to the cross by faith, and believe on Jesus as their Saviour, we also testify of Jesus, and bear witness of  his teachings, and of the gospel.

The next post will summarize chapter 16 and 17 before moving on to Chapter 18, the betrayal and arrest of Jesus.

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John 14:15-31 - The Comforter Will Come

Before the Lord Jesus went to the cross, the Holy Spirit did not permanently dwell in his disciples.  The Holy Spirit gave them faith to believe, but he did not indwell them. In the old testament the Holy Spirit came upon people such as Elijah and David for specific tasks or as a sign of God's favor upon that person.   In the Psalms David prays that the Lord "take not thy holy spirit from me".  But since the Lord Jesus ascended to heaven,  the Holy Spirit now indwells those who by faith believe on Jesus as their Saviour and are saved by grace.  In John 14, after speaking about heaven and that He is the way to heaven, Jesus tells his disciples of the Comforter to come, the Holy Spirit.

V15-18 "If ye love me, keep my commandments.  And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he........ shall be in you.  I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."

Jesus' new commandment was for the disciples to love each other.  Not in a romantic way, but in an action way, of serving each other, helping each other, bearing each other's burdens, encouraging each other.  Jesus had  just finished telling the disciples that he was leaving them, and going to heaven.  During his earthly ministry, Jesus was a comfort to his disciples.  The one they loved, trusted, the one they believed on as the Son of God, the Christ, the promised Redeemer.  Now Jesus tells them that another Comforter would come, this being the Holy Spirit.  Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will be in them, and in Acts 2 the Holy Spirit comes as with tongues of fire and "they were filled with the Holy Ghost." (Acts 2:4)  Jesus promises that his disciples would not be comfortless.  He says that "I will come to you."  the Holy Spirit will come, and Jesus will, as he has already said in V3, Jesus will come again to receive those who believe on Him.

Salvation Simply

John 3:1-19
 
In the darkness Nicodemus stands listening to the Lord Jesus.  This deeply religious man has been told by the Lord that to see God's kingdom he must be born again.  To enter God's kingdom Nicodemus for all his religion, must be the recipient of a spiritual birth brought about by God, the Holy Spirit. V5 "..verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Jesus taught this religious man that true religion is being born again.  Jesus teaches that the true religion is being born again.  Jesus teaches Nicodemus that God initiates this new birth, and Jesus teaches Nicodemus that to be born again is absolutely essential.  It is not an optional extra experience that some Christians have and others don't.  You must be born again or you cannot see God's kingdom. 

We must remember that Jesus is talking to this man who is a religious pharisee.  The pharisees liked to be in complete control of their religion.  That is why Jesus says in V8 that Nicodemus has as much control over being born again as he did over the wind. V8 "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."    You must be born again.  Jesus says that in V7 "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again."  did you know that this Greek verb means that it is an action completed in the past..it is a passive verb.  You don't do it.  To be born again is something that God does to you.  To be born again is of God.  John 1: 12-13 "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:  which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."    Born of God.  The new birth is of God.  Nicodemus is astounded and he says "how can these things be"

To be born again is hard to understand:    This religious man cannot understand the kingdom of God because he is not born again.  He doesn't have spiritual life.  The person who is not born again is a natural man (1 Corin 2:14) who receives not the things of the spirit of God, they are foolishness to him, neither can he understand them because they are spiritually discerned.   Jesus says in V10 "..Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?"   Master means teacher.  Of Israel means renowned in Israel.  Jesus tells Nicodemus that he is a renowned teacher among God's people and yet  he was ignorant in these matters.  

Nicodemus should have had a knowledge of what it says in Ezekiel 36:26 "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."   God is going to take way hearts of stone and give living hearts of flesh.  That is God in the old testament talking about the creation of spiritual life within people being born again.   Nicodemus was a spiritual leader who was unacquainted with the basics of spiritual life.  In V9-13 Jesus goes on to say that these things are real, they can be explained.  People being born again change from the inside out.  How these things originated in heaven in God's plan and purpose, Nicodemus doesn't understand.  Jesus said that he was in heaven and that he had planned it all.

What Has Led to So Many False Professed Christians?

What Has Led to So Many False Professed Christians?  What is a False Christian?  This is a long read, but worth it.

Philippians 3:17-21

What does the bible say the church is?  What are the churches  truly like?  Many, many people in the churches in the Western world today who say they are Christians are not.   What is a false Christian? how can there be such a thing?  This is a contradiction in words because a false Christian is not a Christian, but the term is used for ease of understanding.  Someone who thinks that they are a Christian when they are not. 
Philippians 3:17-21 is the true situation.  The theme runs through the bible, Vl8-19 "For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."   The context is that these professing Christians were in the church in Philippi and in other churches that the apostle Paul was writing about.  This is a biblical thing, but the scary bit is that in V18 it says that there are "many"  The word "many" in Greek means "altogether common"  and Paul weeps "wails out loud" because it is a terrible thing for the church of Jesus Christ, and a terrible thing  for those who think that they are Christians when they are not.  There are some who disagree with apostolic doctrine, they serve their own desires, and this is seen in their disobedient lives.  If there were many like this in the days of the apostles, surely there are many more in the days when the apostles are gone.   The question then is, what has led to so many false professed Christians?  

In the 1860s Charles Spurgeon said these words:  "Their life is not consistent with the great things of God.  I do fear that the evil (of false professions) instead of having decreased has multiplied and grown in danger.  We have more professions now and consequently we have more hypocrisy."  Spurgeon said that because when Spurgeon was a boy a man called Charles Finney who was then a famous evangelist in America was evangelizing.  He didn't believe in original sin, he believed that sin was a choice, that we were not sinners by nature, free will.

The True Gospel

Romans 1:14-17 "I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.  For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith."

I would like you to come back with me in your minds to the year AD57 and you are going to come into a room in a house where the preachers have their lodgings.  It's more than likely at night.  In this room there are two men, one is writing, one is speaking.  The man who is speaking is the apostle Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.  God the Holy Spirit is inspiring him to speak the very words of God.  In this room the epistle to the church at Rome is being written.  Paul V16 says "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."     The letter to the Romans, the church at Rome is thought by many people today to be complicated, hard to understand and really only for professors of theology, but that is not the case because the apostle Paul was speaking to the majority of Christians who made up the church of Rome who were uneducated slaves (for the most part) and they understood what it says.  That means that modern educated man is not so smart as what he thinks he is if he finds difficult to understand what uneducated slaves understood in the first century AD. 

What is Romans about?  It is about the gospel. That's it.  V16 and 17 are all about the gospel, the good news.  The gospel is not just the love of God, the gospel is not just the crucifixion, the gospel contained in the bible begins in the book of Genesis with the creator God, man's fall into sin, God's grace and his plan to sacrifice his Son for sinners, and his offer of forgiveness that is given indiscriminately to all and the salvation of those who believe.  The gospel continues on with instructions for Christian life to the final glorification in heaven.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is the whole counsel of God from Genesis to Revelation and its important for us to remember that.  Many churches have a limited view of what the gospel is.  The gospel is not just a little part of the bible.

What Does it Mean to be Saved: Conviction and Confession of Sin

John 16:7-13 "...I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away,the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.  And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.  I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come."

This is the second in a series on What Does it Mean to be Saved. Other sermons in this series to follow are repentance, faith and justification.

What does it mean to be saved?  What makes a true Christian? It means to be born again, to be made spiritually alive from the dead; suddenly they now have a consciousness of spiritual things that they did not have before.  They have a consciousness of God's law and his standard, and of their own sin, their transgression.  What happens next is this:  conviction and confession of sin.  The very things that modern Christianity is downplaying, conviction of sin and confession of sin.

What is that? what is conviction and confession of sin.   Sometimes the bible says "reprove" sometimes "convince" but it means to expose suggesting shame.  Another word used is  "guilty," to feel under judgment.  Conviction is a feeling or burden of guilt, the weight of  your  sin, feeling that you are a sinner and you stand guilty before a holy God.  That person realizes that they need help.  Confession is you confess your sin, you admit "I have sinned I am a sinner"  When you are convicted you don't feel good, you have a burden about your sin.

Looking Unto Jesus

Looking Unto Jesus

Do you ever have this thought come into your mind - "You are not REALLY saved" or do you ever do something that you know you should not do, but you give in to the flesh and speak a word, or do an action that you know grieves the Spirit within?  Do you ever, at that time, feel very away from our heavenly Father?

Brother or sister, those are attacks of the evil one..the one who tempts you where he knows you are weakest.. the one who urges you to not be an overcomer, but to give in to his temptation.

  Looking Unto Jesus - from Morning Devotions by C.H. Spurgeon

It is ever the Holy Spirit's work to turn our eyes away from self to Jesus; but Satan's work is just the opposite of this, for he is constantly trying to make us regard ourselves instead of Christ. He insinuates, "Your sins are too great for pardon; you have no faith; you do not repent enough; you will never be able to continue to the end; you have not the joy of his children; you have such a wavering hold of Jesus." All these are thoughts about self, and we shall never find comfort or assurance by looking within.

But the Holy Spirit turns our eyes entirely away from self: he tells us that we are nothing, but that "Christ is all in all." Remember, therefore, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee-it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee-it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that be the instrument-it is Christ's blood and merits; therefore, look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ, as to Christ; look not to thy hope, but to Jesus, the source of thy hope; look not to thy faith, but to Jesus, the author and finisher of thy faith. We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by "looking unto Jesus." Keep thine eye simply on him; let his death, his sufferings, his merits, his glories, his intercession, be fresh upon thy mind; when thou wakest in the morning look to him; when thou liest down at night look to him. Oh! let not thy hopes or fears come between thee and Jesus; follow hard after him, and he will never fail thee.

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Hebrews 1-2 "........let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.  Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Christ's Resurrection

The following piece on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is of notes taken from a sermon preached by Rev. Paul Dowling of Whiteabbey Congregational.  Here is the link to the sermon at Sermon Audio:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=41807143440

Luke 24:44-49 "And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.  Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,  and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  And ye are witnesses of these things.  And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."

Christ rose from the dead and faithful Mary Magdelene saw him first, and that evening two downhearted disciples met him on the road to Emmaus..  they did not recognize him until he broke the bread.  Later on the Lord appeared to 10 apostles in the upper room, and then to Thomas and then to other people.  Make no mistake, the resurrection of Jesus Christ bodily from the tomb is central and foundational to the Christian faith.  Over the centuries Christ's resurrection has been questioned, doubted and denied.  Mocker's and sceptics views are easy to refute, they are untenable, they do not explain the facts.   No unbeliever has ever come up with a logical explanation of the facts.  The resurrection is a fact.  

That Jesus would be raised from the dead was foretold:.

1.  King David wrote Psalm 16:10  "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption."  David was not talking about himself but he was prophetically talking about Jesus Christ, the holy one, whose body would see no corruption.

2.  Acts 13:33-37 "God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.  And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.  For David after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep (died) and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.

3. Christ himself,  Matthew 20:19  "And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again." Mark 9:9, "And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead."  Mark 14:28 "But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee."