Isaiah 53:1-3 “Who has
believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been
revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out
of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him,
there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised
and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised,
and we did not esteem Him.”
Continuing Pastor Obie’s
message on being “In the World, but Not of the World”, he explains that the third
reason that the God-rejecting world system hates Christians is (3) because it
is a fulfillment of prophecy. The Old Testament Scriptures state that the
Messiah of God would be hated and rejected by men. In John 15:25, Jesus said “But this happened that the word
might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a
cause.’” Where is this in written? Psalm 35:19 “Let them not rejoice over me who are wrongfully my enemies; Nor
let them wink with the eye who hate me without a cause.” Prophecies
made hundreds of years before Christ saying that the Messiah would be heated
without cause. The Old Testament talked of these things and they came to pass. Jesus
said that we are “in the world”, surrounded in a hostile environment.
1 John 2:15-17 “Do
not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world,
the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is
passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
Pastor Obie listed three
ways that “the world” (this God-rejecting world system that we live in today)
tempts Christians. The adversary Satan (the tempter) has had the same 3-step
process as a tactic to tempt humanity since the dawn off time. The first way is
by “the lust of the flesh”. Our mind, our body and our nature (everything we
are apart from Christ) forms our flesh. The lust of the flesh is satisfying the
appetite of your physical and psychological desires that are against God’s Will
for our life. In Galatians 5:16-25, the Apostle Paul explains, “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and
you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts
against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to
one another, so that you do not do the things that you
wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry,
sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish
ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness,
revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also
told you in time past, that those who practice such things will
not inherit the kingdom of God.” Giving in to this list disobeys and
dishonors God. So, walk in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit and be filled with
the Spirit.
Pastor Obie's message is vitally essential for application in our personal and spiritual life today, so let's continue his sermon on being in the world, but not of the world in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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