Good Morning, Meetpastordan Readers…Last week I wrote about the fate of unbelievers. I find that to be a very sad subject to write about because God’s Gift of Grace is available to anyone who wants to escape the promised wrath of God! (And make no mistake…it IS promised!) The logical question now should be, “Why would anyone not accept this opportunity to escape the fate of eternal Hell?”, and I would have to say I believe there are two answers to that question. First, I believe it is ignorance of the Truth. (I don’t mean ignorance here to imply “stupidity”, but rather to imply they haven’t yet heard the Truth.) But there is still good news in the “yet” part of that statement, because God has promised that Christ will not return until everyone has had the opportunity to accept His gift or reject it. This choice is THE choice of choices, because it ultimately seals our eternal destiny.
I believe the second answer to this question is wrapped in pride and arrogance. Nothing challenges the intellectual mind more than surrendering to “something” greater than self, especially when that “something” is outside our paradigm of rational thinking. The world teaches us to rely on empirical evidence; the Kingdom of Heaven relies on faith from start to finish. (Ephesians 2:8) To rely on faith is admitting our own insufficiency, and that is the ultimate challenge for those who want to be their own god. As I said last week, I believe it takes either an epiphany, a trauma, or a catastrophe – many times of our own making – to challenge our own sufficiency and to get our attention. With no place else to turn, many times people become willing to cry out, “God help me!” That pitiful three- word surrender is all it takes to open the door to a new way of life. I know that for a fact, because that was my cry on April 21st, 2000, and I haven’t had a drop of alcohol, nor have I turned to any other substance since that day.
The word to describe the quality I’m talking about is “humility”. James 4:10 hits the bullseye with this statement: “When we come humbly before the Lord and admit our dependence on Him, He will lift us up and give us honor.” In verse 6 of the same chapter, it also states that “He opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Under the Old Covenant, Man tried to earn right-standing with God by keeping the Law (the Ten Commandments). Romans 5:6 is the report card on our progress: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.” Remember, God gave Man from “the Fall” until 2018 years ago to wrestle with the dilemma of sin, and instead of becoming more successful in our quest for victory, we became utterly helpless! Therefore, since we obviously proved ourselves incapable of overcoming sin through our own effort, God implemented His plan to save us from ourselves by providing a Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Romans 3: 21-25 describes this perfectly:
“But now God has shown us a different way of being right in His sight – not by obeying the Law, but by the way promised in Scriptures long ago. (Ref. Ephesians 1:4-5) We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet now God in His gracious kindness declares us NOT GUILTY! He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy His anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed His blood, sacrificing His life for us.”
“What a contrast between Adam and Christ, who was yet to come! And what a difference between our sin and God’s generous gift of forgiveness. For this one man, Adam, brought death to many through his sin. But this other man, Jesus Christ, brought forgiveness to many through God’s bountiful gift. And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but we have the free gift of being accepted by God, even though we are guilty of many sins. The sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over us, but all who receive God’s wonderful, gracious gift of righteousness will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ! (Romans 5:14-17)
The whole Gift of Grace is a marvelous portrayal of God’s unconditional, unending, unfailing love for us. His plan was in place even before the world was created. But through His omniscience, He knew we were going to be problem children; He foresaw that we were going to follow a different path than He had planned for us, but He created us anyway. That, my dear Brothers and Sisters, is Love!
We must also remember that we were created for relationship with Him, and not just a here and now relationship, but an eternal relationship. The truth is, prior to implementing His own plan for our redemption, none could even qualify to enter into heaven because they were stained with sin. Sin, as you know, contaminates, spreads, kills and destroys; Sin keeps us separated from God! Therefore, God proclaimed that for us to enter into His presence, “we must be holy because He is holy.” (1 Peter 1:16) Holy means to be sin free; to be set aside for a sacred purpose. Therefore, the ONLY way for us to be sin free is to accept the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as payment for our sins. When we do that, in God’s eyes we are redeemed, or “justified” (made right in His sight), because we are covered with the blood of Jesus. As the song says, ”we are washed white as snow.”
No other religion in the world offers the Gift of Grace, and that is what makes this message of Truth so valuable and appealing. All other religions or philosophies are based on earning God’s favor through works, but many times those works are based on a desire for self-exaltation, or there may be other ulterior motives. God doesn’t judge based on works; His judgement is based on the state of our hearts. As Jeremiah 17:9-10 tells us, “the heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I know! I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”
James 2:26 tells us that “faith without works is dead.” Our faith in God and the truth of His Word is what brought us to Jesus Christ. The more we grow in that truth; the more we become transformed into His image, the more we want His light to shine through us and manifest itself in action. The works that result from that endeavor are not about earning God’s favor, that was taken care of when we accepted His Gift of Grace. (Our sins were immediately forgiven!) Now we look forward to our works because it is our way of saying, “Thank You, Jesus, for what you did for me.” Through you I now have salvation. This is the motive I believe God is looking for when he examines our hearts, and it begins with humility.
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May God Bless Ya…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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