WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE
This blog is to prepare us for the coming Kingdom of God, the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, and adheres to the Holy Scriptures as its authority.
Sunday 31 May 2015
Saturday 30 May 2015
Friday 29 May 2015
Thursday 28 May 2015
Wednesday 27 May 2015
Tuesday 26 May 2015
Monday 25 May 2015
Sunday 24 May 2015
Saturday 23 May 2015
Wednesday 20 May 2015
15 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RAPTURE AND THE GLORIOUS APPEARING
15 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RAPTURE AND THE GLORIOUS APPEARING
Tuesday 19 May 2015
Monday 18 May 2015
Saturday 16 May 2015
CROSS-DRESSING (Part 3)
CROSS-DRESSING (Part 3)
Deuteronomy 22:5. The adoption of clothing of the opposite sex was forbidden because it obscured the distinction of the sexes and thus violated an essential part of the created order of life (Gen. 1:27). It was also perhaps associated with or promoted homosexuality. The same Hebrew word translated detests (tô‘ēḇâh, lit., “a detestable thing“; KJV, “an abomination“) is used to describe God’s view of homosexuality (Lev. 18:22; 20:13). Also some evidence exists that transvestism may have been connected with the worship of pagan deities. Since this law was related to the divine order of Creation and since God detests anyone who does this, believers today also ought to heed this command.
Deere, J. S. (1985). Deuteronomy. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, pp. 301–302). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
Thursday 14 May 2015
CROSS-DRESSING (Part 2)
CROSS-DRESSING (Part 2)
“A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God.(Deuteronomy 22:5 NASB)
Anything that pertains to a man … woman’s garment. Found only here in the Pentateuch, this statute prohibited a man from wearing any item of feminine clothing or ornamentation, or a woman from wearing any item of masculine clothing or ornamentation. The same word translated “abomination” was used to describe God’s view of homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). This instance specifically outlawed transvestism. The creation order distinctions between male and female were to be maintained without exception (Genesis 1:27).
MacArthur, J., Jr. (Ed.). (1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed., p. 280). Nashville, TN: Word Pub.
CROSS-DRESSING (Part 1)
CROSS-DRESSING (Part 1)
“A woman is not to wear male clothing, and a man is not to put on a woman’s garment, for everyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 22:5 HCSB)
Cross-dressing was forbidden by God in ancient Israel. In the ancient Middle East, dressing in the clothing of the opposite sex was a magical practice intended to bring harm to people. For example, a transvestite male would predict that the soldiers of another army would be as weak as females.
Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson’s new illustrated Bible commentary (Dt 22:5). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
Tuesday 12 May 2015
Monday 11 May 2015
ISLAM - JOHN MacARTHUR - Mark 13:22
ISLAM
JOHN MacARTHUR
Mark 13:22
Go over to verse 22. You heard me read this, “False Christs, false prophets will arise, show signs and wonders in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect.” They can’t lead the elect astray but they will lead those who are not true believers to follow them.
I want to just talk about that for a moment, in a way that perhaps will be interesting to you. There are always false prophets, always false teachers, we know that, always people who claim to be Jesus, claim to be Jesus Christ, some more notable than others. But as you get to the end of human history and you get in to the period of time called the Tribulation, there is a specific fulfillment of this prophecy that I want you to understand, and it has to do with Islam.
Most people think of Islam as an utterly distinct religion from Christianity, with no connection to Christianity. We would think if someone is a Muslim, they have absolutely no connection to Christianity. And there are many religions that have no connection to Christianity, Hinduism has no connection to Christianity, Buddhism has no connection to Christianity, many others have no connection. It’s amazing how many do connect because Satan wants to counterfeit and deceive and get as close to the truth as he can.
There are actually confessed evangelical people who think that. Muslims not only believe in God because they are monotheist, believing in one God, but who think that Muslims are okay because they actually believe in Jesus. And by the way, they do. Brian McClaren an Emerging Church heretic writer in his book The Secret Message of Jesus says, and I quote, “All Muslims regard Jesus as a great prophet. A shared reappraisal of Jesus’ message could provide a common ground for urgently needed religious dialogue. This reappraisal of Jesus may be our own way of saving a number of religions, including Christianity,” end quote.
So if we want to save Christianity and save other religions, we need to all get together and that should be easy for us to do because we can start with the Muslims because they already believe in Jesus. A popular speaker and author, Tony Campolo, says, quote: “When we listen to the Muslim mystics as they talk about Jesus and their love for Jesus, I must say it’s a lot closer to New Testament Christianity than a lot of Christians.” Really! So you think that the Muslim Jesus is the same Jesus?
I can help you with that because they describe Jesus. The Muslim Jesus plays a crucial role in Islamic eschatology. Now you do know that the Muslims have an eschatology. In other words they have a theology of the end. They know where they’re going, according to their writings. They know where they’re going.
Let me describe the Muslim Jesus to you. This is out of their own writings, the Koran and the Sunnah. The Koran is supposedly the word of Allah, actually the word of Satan, but they think it’s the word of Allah. The Sunnah...the Sunnah are the words of and the works of Mohammed. The Koran then constitutes their holy Scripture and the Sunnah, sometimes called the Hadith constitutes their holy tradition. Their theology comes out of the Koran and the Sunnah, just as Roman Catholic theology comes out of the Bible and Tradition, or Judaism comes out of the Old Testament and rabbinic tradition...the Muslims have two sources of authoritative truth.
In their system they have Jesus. Jesus was a man, he was not God. He did not die, he went to heaven like Elijah. He did not die, therefore he did not rise. He did not rise, therefore he did not provide an atonement for anyone because no one can provide an atonement for anyone else. He is a man. He is a prophet. He is nothing more. He went to heaven like Elijah. And he’s in heaven right now, standing alongside Allah, waiting for Allah to send him back. In their system, this man, this prophet Jesus who is now in heaven, never having died, plays a key role in the end times because he will return from heaven without dying, he will come back when Allah sends him back.
Now the question to ask, is why would Allah want to send Jesus back? He has a lot of prophets to pick from, why does he send Jesus back?
Answer...so that when he shows up he can correct all the Christians who have misunderstood who he is. The sources for this, again, are the Koran and the Sunnah. The great event of the coming of Christ, or coming of Jesus, is so that this prophet, this man who comes back can straighten out the misdirected, misguided, misconceiving Christians who think He was God who died and rose again and provided atonement...he’ll come back and straighten it out. And by the way, after he gets here, he’ll get married, have children and die and be buried next to Mohammed. That’s the Muslim Jesus.
In Islamic eschatology, there are three great signs of the end of history...three great signs. There are some lesser signs, or some minor signs, or some major signs. In their eschatology, again quoting their sources exclusively, there are three great signs of the end of history. And each of them is a man. Let me tell you about those three men.
First of all, the first man that will come in the end of history is the Mahdi...M-a-h-d-i. Sometimes he’s called the Twelfth Imam. Every time Ahmajinedad over in Iran gives a speech, he gives glory to the Mahdi, glory to the Twelfth Imam, every time. He’s waiting for the coming of the Mahdi.
What is he coming to do? He’s coming, listen carefully, to slaughter all who will not worship Allah, convert to Islam. They are identified in their writings as pigs and dogs. And to establish the everlasting world dominating kingdom of Islam. That’s what he will do.
The Mahdi, or the Twelfth Imam, that means the guided one, is the long-awaited savior. He is the establisher of the final Caliphate. The world must follow him as he takes over or he will destroy all enemies of Islam. He will come and he will carry on holy war and either you convert or you’re killed by the Mahdi. He will have an army. His army will be a massive army and his army will go from nation to nation to punish the unbelievers. The holy writings of Islam say that this army will carry black flags. And on those black flags there will be one word and that one word will be the word Punishment. By the way, the Iranian army today carries black flags. They want to be ready for the coming of the Mahdi.
He will lead the army of black flags first to Israel, slaughter all the Jews, and then he will establish his rule in Jerusalem on the temple mount. That’s what their literature says. Slaughter the Jews, establish his rule on the temple mount.
According to their holy writings, the Mahdi will bring rain and wind and crops and wealth and happiness so that all will love him and no one will speak of anyone but him. Their writings say the Mahdi will come and make, at first, a peace agreement with the Jews and the west for seven years. The reign of Mahdi will last seven years in which he establishes Islam on the earth.
Their holy writings say this, the Mahdi will come riding on a white horse, and it even says in their writings, “As it says in Revelation 6:1 and 2. Saddam Hussein, by the way, painted murals of this Mahdi on a white horse all over Baghdad. And he comes carrying a sword to kill the infidels.
When the Mahdi arrives, he will discover hidden scriptures, he will discover them, interestingly enough, somewhere near the Sea of Galilee and there will be there hidden scriptures, hidden gospels and a hidden Torah and they will be the true scriptures which will be used by the Mahdi to show the Jews and the Christians they were wrong, that their scriptures were the false scriptures.
Let me summarize. The Mahdi will be a messianic figure. He will be a descendant of Mohammed. He will be an unparalleled, unequaled leader. He will come out of a crisis of turmoil. He will take control of the world. He will establish a new world order. He will destroy all who resist him. He will invade many nations. He will make a seven-year peace treaty with the Jews. He will conquer Israel and massacre the Jews. He will establish Islamic world headquarters at Jerusalem. He will rule for seven years, establish Islam as the only religion. He will come on a white horse with supernatural power. He will be loved by all people on earth.
If that sounds familiar, that is a precise description of the biblical Antichrist...absolutely step-by-step-by-step-by-step. The Bible’s Antichrist is their Mahdi. We know that the rider on the white horse in Revelation 6 is the Antichrist. They use that verse to describe their Mahdi.
Why am I giving you all this? Because the description of the Mahdi is exactly the description of the biblical Antichrist, the beast of Revelation 13, and you go into any kind of a study of that and you will find that all the details match up perfectly. The Bible’s Antichrist is Islam’s Savior and world conqueror who establishes a universal Islamic kingdom.
And there’s a second sign, a second person, and it is Jesus. The Mahdi is not Jesus. The Mahdi is greater than Jesus, and that’s important to their system because if you have somebody greater than Jesus then the Christians were wrong. So Jesus will return. Yes, Muslims believe that Jesus will come again. They believe in the return of Jesus, not the true Jesus, the Jesus of Islam, not God, didn’t die, didn’t rise, didn’t provide a sacrifice for sin, but he does return. He’s a prophet and he comes back and he has one purpose when he comes back and that is to assist and aid the Mahdi. He returns, listen to this, as a radical Muslim. He comes back as a radical Muslim. He will arrive, by the way, at a minaret near Damascus. And he will come back holding the wings of two angels who flew him down to meet the gathering army of the Mahdi in the east, the army of the black flags.
Jesus when he comes back will pray to the Mahdi who is greater than he. He will acknowledge the Mahdi as his lord. He will make a pilgrimage to Mecca. He will worship Allah and thus he will lead all Christians who will follow him to reject their notion of Jesus and accept the real Jesus who is nothing but a prophet and a man. He will establish worldwide Sharia law. He will become the greatest Muslim evangelist and he will be the final witness on the day of judgment against non-Muslims. Christians everywhere will affirm that they were wrong, that the gospel is wrong, the New Testament is wrong, He didn’t die, He didn’t rise, He isn’t God, He isn’t the Son of God. He Himself will come back and point out how wrong we’ve been. He will correct all misinterpretations and all misrepresentations.
Let me quote what their literature says. “He will shatter crosses.” That’s metaphoric for the destruction of the church, a symbol of Christianity being placed in the church. He will kill pigs. He will abolish the tax on non-Muslims because there won’t be any living non-Muslims, can’t tax dead people. And then he will do one more thing. He will kill the Islamic Antichrist. He will kill the Islamic Antichrist. Then he will die and be buried by Mohammed, but not until he has destroyed Christianity by revealing who he really is.
Who is this? You compare what he does to the false prophet in the book of Revelation, chapter 13, 16, 19, 20 refer to the beast coming out of the earth, the false prophet, who aids and abets the Antichrist. He is as the Mahdi is the exact replica of the Antichrist, the Jesus prophet in Islam is the exact parallel to the false prophet who aids and abets the Antichrist. One of their writings says he espouses the cause of the Mahdi. He is the Mahdi’s executioner. He is the Mahdi’s enforcer. He is the Mahdi’s prophet. And it is he who kills the Antichrist.
That leads me to the third person. The Antichrist will show up. The Muslims call him Dajjal, he is the great deceiver. He comes to earth on a mule and he’s blind in one eye. He is an infidel. He is a false miracle worker, this Antichrist, this Islamic Antichrist. But you know who he claims to be? He claims to be Jesus, the son of God. He claims to be deity. He will attempt to stop the Mahdi and the true Jesus but the true Jesus will slaughter him.
This is their view of the true Christ. Our Jesus is their Antichrist. Our Antichrist is their redeemer. It is a satanic counterfeit that is in complete reverse. The army...this is a quote... “The army of Satan will be led by a person who will claim to be Jesus Christ.” There will be a battle. The Muslim Jesus will fight the false Jesus and kill him and establish Islam forever. The truth is, the true Jesus will destroy the Antichrist and the false prophet and establish His Kingdom forever. This is Satan’s complete counterfeit, Muslim world domination.
Now somebody might say, “Well, when you think about the future and what’s going to happen in the world, don’t we have a revived Roman Empire? Doesn’t that mean the west? You remember that the image in Daniel 2 of the final world empire had two legs and the Roman Empire had the west and the east? You know, of course, if you know history that the western part of the Roman Empire basically dissolved and the east survived for a thousand years or more so that at the time of the New Testament, sixty percent of the Roman Empire was land that is now under Muslim control...at least 60 percent. The vast majority of the Roman Empire in New Testament times is today under Muslim control and Islam is moving across the west rapidly in Europe, isn’t it?
When you have a picture in Ezekiel 38, you have a picture of the Antichrist, Gog and you have the listing of eight nations, that will be a coalition for the Antichrist. All eight of those are Muslim nations, all eight of them. And they ring the Mediterranean to Libya.
In Revelation 17:9 to 11 it says there were six kingdoms and then a seventh and finally an eighth. What is the seventh? Well there’s been a discussion about that, it well could be the Ottoman Turk Empire which lasted five hundred years and didn’t really fall until the modern era. The Turkish Empire was the last Caliphate which ended in 1923 and they’re waiting for the restoration when the Mahdi comes.
So right at the very end somebody is going to say, “I’m Jesus.” Somebody else is going to say, “I’m Jesus.” Who you going to believe? That’s just one form of this deception that will show up at the end, and even now it’s deceiving people. There are a whole world of Muslims who think Jesus is someone He is not and consequently reject the true Jesus. Do not be deceived. There’s a world of Muslims deceived about the person of Jesus Christ. You cannot accommodate that by saying, “Isn’t that wonderful, they love Jesus.” They don’t. Any other Jesus than the true Jesus is not Jesus. And if you worship any other than the true Jesus, you are cursed.
THE TABERNACLE, TEMPLE, AND ARK IN HISTORY AND PROPHECY
THE TABERNACLE, TEMPLE, AND ARK IN HISTORY AND PROPHECY
Sunday 10 May 2015
THE DIVISION OF THE LAND DURING THE MILLENNIUM
THE DIVISION OF THE LAND DURING THE MILLENNIUM
Ezekiel 45:18-25; Isaiah 56:7; 66:20-23; Jeremiah 33:18; Zechariah 14:16-21; Malachi 3:3-4
Ezekiel 45:18-25; Isaiah 56:7; 66:20-23; Jeremiah 33:18; Zechariah 14:16-21; Malachi 3:3-4
Saturday 9 May 2015
Thursday 7 May 2015
Wednesday 6 May 2015
Monday 4 May 2015
BE WILLFULLY IGNORANT
Finally, we come to the fourth way to die in your sins:
BE WILLFULLY IGNORANT
When someone hears a speech about Christ, but doesn’t let it register, that person is willfully ignorant. The Jewish leaders had enough evidence about Christ, they just refused to believe, and in their chosen ignorance, even mocked Him.
They were willfully ignorant of Christ’s identity: “So they were saying to Him, ‘Who are You?’” (John 8:25). Far from being an honest question, this could be paraphrased, “Who do you think you are, fella? These are some pretty ridiculous things you are saying, telling us that we’re going to die in our sin. Do you know who you’re talking to? We’re the spiritual elite. Who do you think you are? You’re some nobody from Nazareth, who has come down here to tell the leaders of Jerusalem how to run things. What gives you the right to assume the role of equality with God?”
Such willful ignorance is manifested in other places in Scripture. John 8:19 says, “So they were saying to Him, ‘Where is Your Father?’ Jesus answered, ‘You know neither Me nor My Father.’” Jesus is saying, “You are hopelessly ignorant. You think you know God, but you really don’t. And you think that I’m a fake, so you don’t know Me either. You can’t recognize the truth because you are so dominated by sin.”
Do you recall the blind man healed in John 9, and all the Jewish leaders wondered how the blind man was able to see, admitting their disbelief in Jesus’ power? Verse 30 says, “The man answered and said to them, ‘Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes.’” This blind man had more sense than these Jewish leaders. Why? Those leaders willed to be ignorant of the truth. Hell will be filled with people who are there simply because they willed to be ignorant, not wanting Jesus making claims on their lives. They didn’t want to know the truth; they were satisfied with what they already believed.
To the close-minded Jews who questioned His authority, Jesus said, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself” (John 7:17). In other words, for the willing heart the truth is available. But they weren’t willing.
You say, “But how can people be like that?” The answer is simply stated in John 3:19. Men are like that because they love their sin: “Men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” Because of their sin, the Pharisees didn’t want to expose themselves. They were so smug in their self-righteousness and confirmed in willful ignorance that they turned their backs on the truth. That’s tragic, because that puts them right into the category of those who have heard enough information to believe the truth, have rejected it, and are going to receive a punishment more severe than others: “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29). In other words, the greater punishment in hell is reserved for the people who knew the truth but trampled on it.
These Jews were also willfully ignorant of Christ’s authority: “Jesus said to them, ‘What have I been saying to you from the beginning? I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world.’ They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father” (John 8:25–27).
Because the Jews refuse to accept what Jesus had been saying, Jesus doesn’t provide them with any further revelation. But He does say that He has words of judgment to speak concerning them, which come from the Father, who “has given all judgment to the Son” (5:22). Willful ignorance brings judgment, as do unbelief, earthbound attitudes, and self-righteousness, and the Pharisees were characterized by all of them. In their spiritual blindness, they didn’t recognize who He was or understand He spoke to them about God the Father. They just thought He was talking about some judgment on His own part. Judgment is a terrible result for those who continually refuse to hear the truth. That is why Jesus warned, “He who has ears, let him hear” (Matt. 13:9).
The Jews also gave evidence of their willful ignorance of Christ’s immortality: “So Jesus said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me’” (John 8:28).
“How were the Jews going to know that?” you ask. What did the Father do at the death of Christ to verify the claims He had made? He raised Him from the dead. Repeatedly the Bible teaches that. In effect, Jesus says, “When My resurrection comes, then you are going to have to look honestly at My claims.” And many of the Jews did. When it became known that Jesus had been resurrected, the church was born, and literally thousands of people in the city of Jerusalem did see the truth and believe (Acts 2–3). There was a great response. Maybe out of the very crowd before Jesus there were some people who later became a part of that early church.
Finally, the statement in John 8:29 shows that many of the Jews were willfully ignorant of Christ’s unity: “And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” The Pharisees could not comprehend Christ’s unity with God. So Jesus says, “You are going to know the Father is with Me and has sent Me and that all the claims I made are true, in the day that I am lifted up to be crucified, because the result of death is going to be the resurrection.” But for now, they didn’t know. Many of them never knew and consequently died in their sins to be separated from God for eternity.
I wish we could transport ourselves back in a time capsule and meet those people so we could understand the tragedy of rejecting Christ. You would get a little idea of the intensity and the fearfulness of such a warning as Jesus made here. Those self-righteous, earthbound, unbelieving, and willfully ignorant Jews didn’t need to die in their sins—there was and is another option: “As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him” (v. 30). Aren’t you glad for that?
You can’t always preach the positives; sometimes you have to preach the negatives, because the negatives are needed to bring some to Christ. If you have never committed yourself to Jesus Christ, you are separated from Him by a gulf that you could never span on your own. Not all of your good deeds, self-righteousness, or religion could do it. The only way that gulf can be spanned is for you to recognize your sin and receive the Lord Jesus Christ. If you have a desire in your heart to do that today, just simply in your heart pray something like this: “God, I want Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I receive Him now. I don’t want to die in my sin. I want to go where You are.” And if you do that in sincerity, He will hear that prayer and your life will be “transferred . . . to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). If your faith is weak, ask Him to help you to believe. If you need more information so you can make that decision, and you truly want to know Him, ask God to teach you the truth about Christ.
Sunday 3 May 2015
BE UNBELIEVING
There’s a third way to die in your sins:
BE UNBELIEVING
In John 8:24 Jesus says, “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” So the third way to guarantee you will die in your sins is to be unbelieving of the gospel. You don’t have to go out and kill someone and be bad to go to hell, because hell is not just for criminals, it is for everyone and anyone who refuses Christ. If you refuse Christ in this life, God isn’t going to force you to dwell with Him forever in eternity.
You say, “What am I supposed to believe?” I remember a song that used to be popular, called “I Believe,” which kept on repeating the words “I believe.” I believe what? Another song is “I Believe in Music.” If that is all you believe in, you’re in trouble. You find the same kind of vague or misdirected faith when you ask people, “Do you believe in Christ?” And they respond, “Yeah, I believe in Christ, He lived and so forth.”
But Jesus had something more definite in mind. Notice what He says: “Unless you believe that I am He.” It isn’t enough to believe that Jesus is the One you think He is; you must believe that He is the One He claimed to be. He claimed to be God by such phrases as, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), “he who believes in Me will never thirst” (6:35), “I am the Light of the world” (8:12), “I am the good shepherd” (10:11), “I am the door” (10:9), “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). Because Jesus was identifying Himself with God, saving faith not only becomes a question of turning from sin, but trusting the Son as well. It’s a question of believing Jesus is who He claimed to be. You ask, “Am I going to die in my sin unless I believe that He is all that He claimed to be?” That’s right. You ought to find out who He claimed to be, for Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing a message about Christ. You can never have true faith unless you hear the truth about Christ. True faith is the result of hearing and believing with your heart that Jesus is who He claimed to be, and that God verified that claim by raising Him from the dead (Rom. 10:9).
Jesus promises His opponents that they will die with their sin unforgiven if they do not believe He is who He claims to be—God in human flesh. Not to believe and turn away shatters hope and leaves only hell’s gloomy foreboding.
On one occasion when I was sitting on a plane, I had a man ask me, “How do you become a Christian?” after he found out that I was a Bible teacher. So I shared the gospel with him, telling him that he must believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be: God in human flesh, the Savior who died for your sin and rose again. A person can go to hell and remain there eternally for just not believing those few things. Faith in Christ comes by hearing a message about Him, and if you haven’t heard enough, then you ought to read some more or find someone who can tell you. There is no sense in going to hell for something you failed to do, because not believing is the same thing as rejecting: “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Matt. 12:30). Don’t be like the Pharisees who should have known, but continued to mock.
Saturday 2 May 2015
BE EARTHBOUND
There’s a second way to die in your sin:
BE EARTHBOUND
In John 8:23 Jesus says, “I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” Jesus draws another contrast. He tells the Pharisees that they are part of the world system of which He is not. The term “world” simply refers to the invisible spiritual realm of evil. We use the word to identify a particular system, such as the world of politics, the world of sports, and so on. The system Jesus has in mind here is the system of evil opposed to God and Christ. If you want to guarantee that you will die in your sin, just be a part of the world system and accept whatever it offers. Then you can be classified as “sons of this age” (Luke 16:8) entrapped in “this present evil age,” from which Jesus seeks to deliver man (Gal. 1:4). Opposed to the truth of God, the world propagates its own self-righteous systems.
You could characterize the system in this way: it is materialistic and humanistic, believing that man is going to solve his problems by himself and rule his own fate; it is lost in preoccupation with sex; it is plagued by carnal ambition, pride, greed, jealousy, envy, self-pleasure and selfish desire, murder, and so on. Its opinions are wrong, its aims are selfish, its pleasures are sinful, its influences are demoralizing, its politics are corrupt, its honors are empty, its smiles are phony, and its love is fickle. Furthermore, it is in the process of dissolution; according to 1 John 2:17, “the world is passing away.” It will self-destruct.
Jesus identifies those mocking Him as being a part of the world system. They were sinful, selfish, and earthbound souls, who were controlled by the dictates of the evil system run by Satan. They had separated themselves from Jesus Christ with a gulf in between that was impassible. Even though they were religious, and maybe even humanitarian at heart, they were still part of Satan’s evil system opposed to God. Jesus is simply saying to them, “You’re going to die in your sins for two reasons: number one, you are self-righteous, and number two, you are totally engulfed in the system—you buy whatever the world is selling.”
Friday 1 May 2015
BE SELF-RIGHTEOUS
Now, there are four elements that I see in John 8:21–30 that show how a person can die in his sin.
BE SELF-RIGHTEOUS
The first way to guarantee that you will die in your sin and not go to the Father’s house in heaven with Jesus is to be convinced that you don’t need to be saved, that you are spiritually all right. By far, those who deny their need of a Savior are the most difficult people to reach. People who claim to be righteous apart from Christ by saying, “I belong to this special group,” or “I’m one of the 144,000,” or “I’ve got my papers that say I’m a righteous person,” are only deceiving themselves. Self-righteous people, who have developed a system that they believe gives them the right to enter God’s presence, are the hardest people to convince that they need a Savior because they already feel they are fine. Satan is clever. When he puts together a phony system based on human achievement and works-righteousness, he does it in such a complex and supposedly biblical way that it is tremendously deceiving. People become captivated in cults and falsely assume they can gain righteousness by what they do. But no one ever comes to Christ who doesn’t see Him as a Savior who takes away sin and himself as a sinner who needs his sin taken away.
The Jews that Jesus confronts are clearly self-righteous, as you can tell from their answer. Jesus had just given them a loving warning, and their response is a mocking joke: “So the Jews were saying, ‘Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, “Where I am going, you cannot come”?’” (John 8:22). They implied that Jesus was going to commit suicide.
The Jews believed suicide was the worst sin, for which the blackest part of Hades was reserved. People who had killed themselves had no possibility of ever entering “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22). Therefore, the Jews concluded that if Jesus killed Himself, He would be going to Hades, the opposite place to where they assumed they were going. They didn’t even understand what Jesus was really saying. They were so self-righteous, having systematized their religion so carefully, that they believed they were the ones who would populate heaven. Nevertheless, Jesus mercifully warns them with an announcement of impending doom. How deaf could they be? If you read the whole New Testament, you would be hard-pressed to find a story of the conversion of a Pharisee. There are a few, but not many because they were such hard people to reach with biblical truth.
The Jews were correct in concluding that Jesus was going to die. However, they were completely wrong in thinking that His death was going to be by suicide. Rather, it was going to be a self-sacrificial, voluntary offering of Himself to be crucified. Acts 2:23 says, “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” It was murder, not suicide. But He was a willing victim, in order to accomplish redemption.
Self-righteousness is the big lie of Satan. The truth is you are saved by Christ; the lie is you are saved by anything other than Christ. That lie can come in all kinds of packages: you can be saved by following certain rules, doing specific routines, belonging to a particular system, being good enough to outweigh your shortcomings—there’s a myriad of possible systems to counter the one truth, and they are all part of Satan’s big lie. If Satan can get someone into a system that says they are righteous, it’s very hard to extract them from it. One reason is that self-righteousness is very proud. I am reminded of what Job said to those who judged him: “Truly then you are the people, and with you wisdom will die” (Job 12:2). Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” Luke 16:15 says, “That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” When men believe Satan’s lie and develop a system that is highly esteemed in their eyes, it is an abomination to God. Salvation can never be earned by good works and keeping religious rituals.
So, the first way to die in your sins is to be self-righteous and laugh at anyone who talks about sin or hell. The world does that all the time. It mocks Jesus, making a joke out of His warnings about hell. It gets no more serious about hell than to put devil suits on little kids at Halloween. It refuses to admit its sin and its need of Christ’s forgiveness as it trusts in good works or self-made religion for salvation. A person who gets wrapped up into the kind of self-righteous systems that the world offers, whether it is a religious institution like Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or one’s self-made system, can become very belligerent once he becomes committed to it.
For example, I read an article that was sent to a Melbourne newspaper by a person after he had heard Billy Graham preach, which said: “After hearing Dr. Billy Graham on the air, viewing him on television, and seeing reports and letters concerning his mission, I am heartily sick of the type of religion that insists my soul and everyone else’s needs saving, whatever that means. I have never felt that I was lost nor do I feel that I daily wallow in the mire of sin, although repetitious preaching insists that I do. Give me a practical religion that teaches gentleness and tolerance, that acknowledges no barriers of color or creed, that remembers the aged and teaches children goodness and not sin. If in order to save my soul I must accept such a philosophy as I have recently heard preached, I prefer to remain forever damned.”
Now that’s a precarious position to be in. Evidently the man has developed a system in which he believes he has attained self-righteousness before God, and therefore fearlessly mocks the truth.
That letter exactly reflects the attitude of the Pharisees and scribes. Desiring to give a correct analysis of the situation, Jesus responds to their mockery: “And He was saying to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above’” (John 8:23). Jesus understood their intention in mocking Him that He was going to kill Himself and go to Hades. But Jesus says, in effect, “It is you who are from Hades; I am from above. You’ve got it reversed.” With this cutting reply, Jesus does not mean that they were literally from Hades; He means that their unbelief, hypocrisy, false religion, ignorance, and willful self-righteousness were spawned from the enemy. He makes the distinction clear that they are following Satan while He is following God. They were, like all unbelieving people are in this world, from beneath in the sense that they were part of the evil system. In John 8:44, Jesus said to them, “You are of your father the devil.” Such people operate their lives “according to the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2).
Whereas the unbeliever is unknowingly guided by Satan from beneath, the believer is guided from above because his citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), and he positionally resides in “heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3; 2:6). We are connected to either heaven or hell while we are alive by virtue of who we identify with. So Jesus, warning the Pharisees, puts things in perspective, saying in effect, “Your roots run downward to Hades because your lifestyle makes it manifest. You had better recognize the source of your religious system.” If you want to die in your sin, just follow the Pharisees’ attitude: believe you don’t need Christ as your Savior, assume you are okay, have solved all your problems, and have attained righteousness. Convince yourself of that and you will die in your sin.
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