The Word of God

Hebrews 4:12 says it all: For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The reason that I am beginning with this verse tonight is that it is true! God’s Word is alive and His Word, the Bible, does have the power to read your heart and bring you to the point of knowing that you need Jesus as your Savior…but only if you will read it and ask God to show you why you should believe in Jesus. Having a Bible in your possession doesn’t help you, having one on the table in the living room won’t help you until you pick it up and allow God’s Holy Spirit to show you exactly who you are and why you need Christ!

Our lives are short and we are never promised that we even have the rest of today let alone the promise of waking up tomorrow. No one has that promise. That is why my messages have been briefer these past few months. We don’t have the time to waste. There is nothing left to do, no more prophecies to be fulfilled except for the number of people who will give their hearts to Jesus. It is possible that you are the holdout or maybe a family member. Whoever it may be, when that person has been reached with the message that brings them to the conviction that they need Jesus and they have accepted Him…then the entire world will know that the Bible is the Truth. It may happen at the very instant that they accept Jesus and when the rapture of the church happens, the world will know beyond any possible doubt that “thy Word is true!”

If you’ve never given your heart to Christ and allowed His Spirit to change your heart and your life, then you need to know for sure that He is the Way to Salvation. He is the only way to salvation and there is no other name by which we can be saved. God loves all of mankind but He knows who will and who will not accept His invitation to become an adopted son in His Kingdom. Many people say that it is too simple. Belief in the name of Jesus…that is all that is required of each of us. But some want to help God save their souls.

God doesn’t need our help to do anything! How arrogant of us to think that we would need to help God when it was He Who formed each of us in our mother’s womb and gave each of us a measure of faith that would allow us to believe in Him for salvation. Most of us spend many hours and possibly years trying to find that part of us that feels empty. We try to fill it with money or drugs or sex but the only Person that fills that space is Jesus and until we feel that and know that we need Him, it will always be empty.

Isaiah 53

The Suffering Servant
(Acts 8:26–40; 1 Peter 2:21–25)

1Who has believed our message?

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?a

2He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no stately form or majesty to attract us,

no beauty that we should desire Him.

3He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Like one from whom men hide their faces,

He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

4Surely He took on our infirmities

and carried our sorrows;b

yet we considered Him stricken by God,

struck down and afflicted.

5But He was pierced for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,

and by His stripes, we are healed.c

6We all like sheep have gone astray,d

each one has turned to his own way;

and the LORD has laid upon Him

the iniquity of us all.

7He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet He did not open His mouth.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,

so He did not open His mouth.

8By oppression and judgment He was taken away,

and who can recount His descendants?

For He was cut off from the land of the living;e

He was stricken for the transgression of My people.

A Grave Assigned
(Matthew 27:57–61; Mark 15:42–47; Luke 23:50–56; John 19:38–42)

9He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

and with a rich man in His death,

although He had done no violence,

nor was any deceit in His mouth.f

10Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him

and to cause Him to suffer;

and when His soul is made a guilt offering,g

He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days,

and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

11After the anguish of His soul,

He will see the light of lifeh and be satisfied.

By His knowledge My righteous Servant will justify many,

and He will bear their iniquities.

12Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great,i

and He will divide the spoils with the strong,j

because He has poured out His life unto death,

and He was numbered with the transgressors.k

Yet He bore the sin of many

and made intercession for the transgressors.

Make sure that you know the Savior that is described in this chapter.

Be patient with each other

with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Ephesians 4:2 KJV https://bible.com/verse-of-the-day/eph.4.2/56519

Entertainment?

Have you taken notice of what is offered to us as entertainment? We have so many outlets to view it on today until it is overwhelming. All of the channels that are on satellite television, then there are all of the “streaming” channels from the Internet including all of the channels on YouTube. Then there are the channels from Apple and Disney, with a subscription of course. All of these can keep you focused on your “smartphone” or on a “smart TV” for hours.

But what about living life itself? What happened to all of the things that we should do to keep our family fed and healthy? How about the teaching that is supposed to go on in the home outside of school hours?

God’s Word says that we are supposed to teach our children about Him at home, especially now when His Word isn’t allowed in schools as a textbook anymore. Even reading one chapter or even a few verses to them each night would be helpful in their life later on. I have to admit that I didn’t do this when my child was growing up but I did take him to church and we discussed the sermon later, especially when he had questions about it. I was a pastor during his teenage years so that helped a little.

What is the point of this post today? Something that I have seen too much of since the first iPhone came out years ago…allowing the phone and its content to be the teacher and babysitter. Children today know more about these hand-held computers and how to use them than they do about their parents or about almost anything else in the world. Because their world seems to revolve around their phones whether they are from Apple or Samsung really doesn’t matter.

Our world is very close to a time that is prophesied in the Bible as the Tribulation. Seven years of persecution and totalitarian rule by a person called the anti-Christ. Who is he and where does he come from? Prophecy doesn’t give that much information but the world will see him as their savior and it will happen after the church is taken away. I pray that every person who doesn’t want to go through this terrible time will seek Jesus as soon as possible.

Crucify your old way of life

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. Luke 9:23‭-‬24 KJV https://bible.com/verse-of-the-day/luk.9.23-24/42343

We are blessed

Regardless of the situation that we may be living in today, compared to much of the world we are blessed. America has not fallen…yet. Why did I place that qualifier in there? Because it is likely that America will fall soon. Maybe not in my lifetime but it will happen. If it does happen in my lifetime then God had already prepared that for us and we did not see it or we weren’t supposed to see it. Everything that happens in our lives and in the world around us is orchestrated by God. Nothing significant happens in this world without His hands guiding it to be that way.

No leader of a nation, regardless of how incompetent they may be, attains their office without being placed there by God. I pray that all who read this will seek out your answer in this life in God’s Word because your answer is there. Pray that He would show you where your place is in His Kingdom because you have a place and a purpose there as well.

I never knew or even realized that I had a place in His Kingdom until He called me to be a preacher eleven years ago. Now, I only preach here due to COVID and its effect on worship services. If you have given your heart to Jesus and are a follower of His, please tell others about Him while there is time. When that day comes and the church is taken up to heaven, many will still come to know Him but it will be harder then than it is now. Why?

Because by that time the next “leader” of the world will be the Anti-Christ and whether people know that or not it will happen. God’s Word says so in the book of Revelation. He may be the “savior” for a time but he will be a dictator and a very hard one at that. At some point during the seven year treaty that he will have signed with Israel and the country’s around it, he will break the treaty and begin a persecution like the world has never seen. It will be against the Jewish people and those who have come to know Jesus during this time as well. Anyone who doesn’t worship him will be killed.

We live in an uncertain time

But…it is not an unknown time. Many of the things which have happened in the past few years have been foretold in God’s Word. The re-gathering of the Jewish people in their land in 1948 was the first and there have been many more since then. In 1967, Jerusalem was restored to Israel as the capital. All of these things were prophesied by God through the prophets and His ministers, the apostles, who wrote of Jesus and His gospel.

Why do so many people disagree with the Word of God? It is backed up by many more original copies from the first century than any other “ancient” document. Yes, there have been many translations but if they are compared to the originals their content is true and correct. Some may argue that the Bible has many errors in it but it doesn’t. Some words translate easily from Hebrew to English but many do not simply because of the Hebrew alphabet.

I am not a Hebrew scholar but I do own a Hebrew Bible with the Old and the New Testaments in it and it backs up every scripture, even the King James Bible. Yes, some words are different but the context and the meaning of the Scripture are the same. When you read the prophecies from the Old Testament and then compare them to what happened in the life of Jesus and His apostles, even if you have to use more than one or two commentaries to make sense of them, they are accurate as if the writer was there. David described His crucifixion exactly in Psalm 22 right down to the casting of lots for His robe and this was written over a thousand years before Jesus was crucified.

We are living in a time where the “time of the Gentiles” is coming to an end. I pray that everyone who is seeking to know Jesus and the explanation of what is going on around the world will look it up in God’s prophecies, specifically Matthew 24 and in Isaiah 53 and the entire book of Daniel. Seek the truth in God’s Word while there is time.

Worship together

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Matthew 18:20 KJV https://bible.com/verse-of-the-day/mat.18.20/10823

What will you do?

There will be a day sometime soon when the church will leave in the twinkle of an eye. That is faster than a blink. You may be talking with someone and in between words and the blink of your eyes…they’re gone and all that is left is their clothes and their watch or phone. Will you know what happened? Will you wonder about it or have you heard this story before? There will be many millions of people missing and there will be many car wrecks and planes crashing on that day. The news will be so busy reporting all of these disappearances that they may not realize that some of their crew is missing.

What will that day look like around the world? It will likely be chaotic with many people missing and so many wondering why wasn’t I among the number that was taken? Others will be asking why were they taken in the first place? There will also be many mothers who will lose their young children and babies right in the delivery room because they are still innocent in the eyes of God.

There will be many people in the world who will be asking many questions and some who do have the answers but the time to make the decision about your eternity is not after the Rapture has happened but before…like today! Have you put it off because you enjoy living without “rules” to ruin your nightlife? Have you just decided that being a Christian is too much to ask right now? The day of salvation is today, not tomorrow. No one is guaranteed to live a certain number of years, so even tomorrow is not promised to any of us.

Make sure of your eternal home today because on that day when all of the world is wondering what happened you want to be included in the group that was taken. What comes next for the rest of the world will be like hell on Earth for seven years.

Give your problems to God…

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. Psalm 55:22 KJV https://bible.com/verse-of-the-day/psa.55.22/52781