All men and women fight the
same battle: “I have found the enemy and it is me”. The world's human
code says, "it's all about me." This was devil's original lie to
Eve in the Garden of Eden. Satan said, "God's not God, you are. If
you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall
be like God." God had originally created Adam and Eve without the
knowledge of sin. They knew that God is good, but they had no knowledge of
evil (the absence of good). God gave them only one command: "of the fruit
of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it. For on the
day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die." When humanity sinned
by doubting God and disobeying God's only command, the knowledge of evil and
sin entered into the world. Adam and Eve died spiritually that day. They
lost their spiritual connection with God.
All evil is rooted in pride.
The most insidious form of pride is self deceit. The devil is the deceiver
and the accuser. The religious man or woman does all the right things for all
the wrong reasons. They do all for their own gain and not for the Lord
Jesus Christ. For all of their external religion, they are deceived in their
heart. Jesus said, "not all who
call me lord, lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven." Although
the religious person attends church, Jesus said of us, "this people draw near unto me with their
mouth and honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me."
Hypocrites serve in the church for their own gain.
Religious people think they
are saved but they're really not. Nominal Christians have a false
salvation. How do you know if they are really saved? Jesus said, "you'll know them by their fruit." A
good tree produces good fruit. When God told his prophet Samuel to anoint
Israel's next king he said, the man that
I've called to be king is not the one who you think. Man looks on the outward
appearance but God looks on the heart.
The gospel is both bad news
and good news. One side is that all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. The other side is in John 3:16. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ his son. Naturalistic
political correctness says that if you preach Jesus Christ and the truth of the
Word of God, you're guilty of hate speech. It takes people of God who know that
they have eternal life to speak truth to the lies of this world. God requires
men and women of courage for such a time of as this. God limits Himself
according to His word. When we come to Him according to His terms, we will be
saved. God's terms for salvation are in Romans 10:9, "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth
the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved."
Let's continue Michael's message on "Knowing" in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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