Tag: Jerusalem

Does anyone go the second mile anymore?


There is a passage in God’s Word which speaks of going the second mile with someone. Do you know anyone who does that anymore? Do we, as Christians and believers, go the second mile with anyone or do we just give them a platitude to help them and pray for them and send them on their way?

We are being unfair and disingenuous in our faith if we do and being lukewarm in our walk with Christ too! He doesn’t want lukewarm Christians! Can we become more active in our faith and in our service to Him and to others as well? It is necessary for ALL Christians to get more involved in their faith and in the work of the Church, especially now, since we are coming to the end of the Church age.

I know, many preachers and so-called prophets have been saying doom and gloom for many hundreds of years, but if you read and study the prophetic books (Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation) you get an eerie feeling that you are reading today’s headlines! That is why I am saying that we must wake up and begin letting people know, whether they really believe it when you tell them or not, but they need to hear the news of Christ and how they can be saved from the wrath to come!

We need to go the second mile to help someone who is a new Christian as well. Show them how to study the Bible, help them to understand some of the hard teachings in it because if we don’t, who will? Many pastors don’t have the time these days with all of the functions going on at church, such as weddings, funerals, baptisms, study groups, etc., their time is further taken up by preparation of the sermons which they deliver during the week and every Sunday. It is up to us, each of us who may be born-again Christians, to teach and instruct our children and those new to faith in Christ. Help them to understand the fantastic gift that they have, give to them by God through Jesus!

Going the second mile with someone who is hurting from a divorce or the loss of a job or a family member, this is what Jesus would do so doesn’t it stand to reason that He would expect it of us as well? We are not perfect, we are not destined to become “gods” at some point, we are His bond-servants because of His love for us and our duty to Him. The perfection of God and His creation is that it is unchanging. He loves us with a love that is above anything that we can understand, for no reason except that He wants to love us that way!

In some things moderation is good, like eating, rest, recreation, exercise, and finances. But when it comes to spiritual warfare, moderation is a sin. When it comes to believing the Bible, moderation is a sin. When it comes to loving the Lord, moderation is a sin! We have to go full-throttle, not just ten percent in our service to Him, in our belief in Him and in our love toward Him!

If you are a Christian, your life is in Him, so it should be all in Him not just a little bit or once a week. God doesn’t want someone who begins on a row, like a planter planting a field, and then quits a few feet down the row. We can’t expect someone else to take up our slack because we get tired of being the one who is making the sacrifices or taking the time to do things. How much food would we have to eat if every farmer just planted a quarter of a row and no more?

If Jesus and His disciples had not made all of the journeys that they did to tell people of the Good News, there wouldn’t be a church today! If they had sat down only five miles outside Jerusalem, none of Paul’s letters to the churches would’ve needed to be sent or written! We need to have that enthusiasm and drive to get the message out to the world, even if it is just through the medium of pages like this. Pray about what you can do, how to do it and get started!





 /* Style Definitions */
 table.MsoNormalTable
	{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
	mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
	mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
	mso-style-noshow:yes;
	mso-style-priority:99;
	mso-style-qformat:yes;
	mso-style-parent:"";
	mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
	mso-para-margin-top:0in;
	mso-para-margin-right:0in;
	mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
	mso-para-margin-left:0in;
	line-height:115%;
	mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
	font-size:11.0pt;
	font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
	mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
	mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
	mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
	mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
	mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
	mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Jesus comes into Jerusalem


In Matthew 21, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey. The coming King of Israel rides into Jerusalem on a beast of burden and not a war-horse. Is it any wonder that He was rejected?

Yes, it is, since the Pharisees knew the Law and the Prophets! They read the Scriptures in the temple and taught them and yet, they didn’t recognize their Messiah or even the one who came before Him to prepare the way, why? In Zechariah 9:9 it says: “9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

The reason for His rejection is that they enjoyed the praise of men and the position that they held. When Jesus came into the temple area, He chased the money-changers and those who sold animals out of the courtyard again. This fulfilled the scripture references from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 when Jesus quoted them saying that: “It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer:, but you have made it a “den of thieves””

Our Lord, the Lord of all Creation, is a jealous One and rightly so. It is He who created all of the things which we have and which we can see in the world and in the cosmos, so why do people try to worship the creation or the things that have been created rather than the Creator? He is the One deserving our praise! We are nothing without Him and the grace that is given to us in order to live and be where we are every day!

Your life is to serve Him, if it is not then your priorities are out of sync with the life that you have been given. In the world that we live in today, we must be vigilant about our faith and in what or Whom we place that faith! There are many in our nation and in the world who would like nothing better than to sweep any reference to Jesus and God completely out of our lives and out of our government’s documents, founding and otherwise. Take, for instance, the group which is working to take religion and specifically Christianity out of our military, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). They sound like they are working for our freedom, but their purpose is hidden in their name.

Although I am not going to get on a soap-box about them, the One that I want to talk about is Jesus! He is our Savior and our Lord and yet, we forget Him and leave Him out of our lives much of the time. If we did that to our spouses or our friends, we wouldn’t have any would we? It is good that Jesus is patient and loving toward us who haven’t loved Him and may not be treating Him with love even now! Is it possible to know someone intimately and not want to know them better and more deeply? I don’t think so! To me, that would be insulting, but to Jesus your Savior and Redeemer it is just wrong!

He gave us this cosmos to live in and a planet to live on that is perfectly positioned so that it is neither too hot or too cold to sustain life. We complain about the heat and the cold all of the time, but the truth is that our next door planets in the solar system have temperatures which are too cold  or too hot ( like seven hundred plus degrees hot on Venus). He knew what He was doing and who He was doing it for, so why do we complain about the little things in life? We do it because we can, but more importantly because we want to complain!

Israel, as a nation, complained to Moses and to God for forty years in the desert. It isn’t any stretch for me to understand why Moses struck the rock when God had told him to speak to it in order to get water out of it. It was their complaining constantly that had stretched Moses’ patience to the breaking point, then the consequences of his anger caused him not to be able to go into the promised land. It is our lack of patience today that causes us to ignore God’s advice and the sermons that we hear because we have become so accustomed to nearly instant gratification from drive-thru eating places to microwaves which prepare our food in minutes instead of hours. Can we change? Will we change?

No, we won’t change on our own but we can if we will submit ourselves to Jesus and humble our lives to Him. Follow Him daily, get to know Him by reading and praying over His Word. Ask Him to reveal Himself to us through it because, if you are not attending a church regularly, getting to know Him through His Word is the only way that you will! It doesn’t take but a few minutes out of every day, but it needs to be done every day!

Getting to know Him and love Him is like getting to know your spouse, it needs to be practiced every day. Not just once a week or on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Think about it and then get to know Jesus, because you won’t want to meet Him for the first time at the throne of judgement and if you don’t get to know Him now, that is where you will meet Him for the first and last time!

 

Pentecost


Repentance is not a single event but rather a point of crisis along with a continuing relationship choice. Repentance is part of a Christian’s regular spiritual life and routine. When you repent of something, regardless of what it may be, you turn away from it and choose another, better path.

Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?
11 b, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Our lives in Christ are important to God, which is why He sent His Son to take the punishment for our sins and die on the cross so that we might be able to receive forgiveness through Jesus. The only requirement on our part..that we have to do is to repent and ask for the forgiveness that has been provided. Now, some might say that they don’t feel compelled to repent of anything in their life so why should they? In that instance, either you are not ready or it isn’t the time yet for your spirit to be called. Which doesn’t mean that you are not wanted by God, He is just waiting until the time, His time, is right. He alone knows when that may be, although you can still pray and ask Him into your life. You will not be refused.

God never will turn away a sinner who asks from their heart and truly repents of things that they know that they have done. It is not a one-time event in your life, just as changing the oil filter on your car isn’t a onetime maintenance item either. We are all sinners and we do it on a daily basis. Nobody is exempt from this fact, even Jesus was tempted but He didn’t sin. What can we do about those temptations? Are we able to control them and ourselves? In many instances, no we are not able to do this with our own strength. But God provided us with the same Spirit that was given to Peter and the disciples that day, which will enable us to resist temptation.

Many people think that He didn’t sin because He was God in the flesh, but it was because He yielded His will to God each and every day..every minute. This is what we are supposed to do, but many think that once they have given their life to Christ, they don’t have to do anything else. If you don’t do anything else, your life won’t really change at all from what it was before you accepted Christ.

Then you will be counted among the hypocrites because you didn’t allow the Holy Spirit which you received to really change your life. This is why there are so many who are not in church, they know the Truth, they may have accepted Christ but they have not followed through with Bible study, daily prayer asking for strength to get through the day, etc. The spiritual fire that some have and many do not and the reasons for the difference is found in that, follow through. The gospel could be preached simply by saying “Believe in Jesus who was sent to die for your sins and ask Him to come into your heart and cleanse you from your unrighteousness”. One sentence, but without prayer and study of scripture allowing you to get to know God, what will change in your life?

William Blake wrote a poem about Pentecost and a few lines from that poem read:

Unless the eye catch fire, God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire, God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire, God will not be named.
Unless the Heart catch fire, God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire, God will not be known.

We are to be on fire for our Lord because He came down to us. We are to be on fire for God because a part of Him resides within each person who has accepted Jesus as Savior. If we are not on fire for God, why not? Do you not realize that the Creator of the universe came to earth specifically for each person here? Not only here in this church building, but all people are the ones that He came for, whether they know Him or not at this moment or even whether they care that He loves them, he still came.

I have seen a book called “gods at war” and it is written by a pastor who teaches a study based on it. The problem is that there are no gods at war, there is only one God, all these others are inventions of men. These man-made gods cannot fight with the One True God. They have no power because they are man’s imaginings of the “god” that he wishes to be the true god.

Even many people who are in church do this. You may hear people say that “My god would never condemn someone to hell”; in fact, it is not God that condemns people to that place but we ourselves.

Getting back to the day of Pentecost, those who heard the sermon in their own language wondered what they must do when confronted with the truth of Jesus. During the Festival of Weeks, many Jews would come to Jerusalem because they were required to by their religion. All of those that Peter spoke to were from Rome, Crete, Turkey, what is modern day Iran and many other places. Peter answered them and said that they must repent of their ways and be baptized. We can do no less than this.

Are you content in your life? Are you satisfied that you are in a right relationship with our Father in heaven? Many people are and the truth of it will condemn them. They are like the Pharisees, they see no need to repent because their religion and their practice of it feels just fine. As time and our lives will show that one day every person will bow before the King of Kings and we will all be shown the truth of our life. What kind of truth will your life show you?

How does society shape your beliefs?


In the western part of the world, consumption of material things, selfishness, greed all play a part in our society. Whether we like to admit it or not. Many people look at their religion in the same way. They want it to be their personal religion, not a religion that everyone follows but something that is uniquely theirs. The problem with this is that when you “choose” your religion it is like a pair of jeans or a shirt in your closet, it is yours alone. No one else has to believe in what you believe and that is fine because that is the way you wanted it anyway. There are many religions that have sprung up in the past one hundred years like this. The preferred religion of Hollywood, Scientology, was created in the past eighty years and yet claims to follow beings who are trillions of years old. It also claims many of the same things which are exclusive to Christianity and yet it says that one day you can be like a god. Really?

No person on earth has ever been a god except one…Jesus. He is the only prophet, Priest and King who can claim this title because He is the only person to have been resurrected and Who now sits next to His Father, ruling the universe and watching over everything until the time for His second coming is fulfilled.

I know that there are many who don’t want to hear this and I understand that it upsets your personal life and belief in the “god” of your choosing, but listen to this argument and if you don’t take it to heart then I have done what I set out to do, tell you about the One who can show you the way to eternity.

Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth as a baby and grew up as any other child does. The only exception to His life is that He was always in contact with His Father. They likely had many discussions about His mission and His purpose on earth, although we don’t know of it. The only parts that we can be privy to are in God‘s Word. Some of those narratives are more detailed than others but suffice to say, His mission began when His cousin baptized Him.

From that point on, He went all over and around Judea or Israel, teaching, healing those who were ill, telling the religious leaders that they had missed many things in the prophets because they did not or would not recognize Who it was that was speaking to them.

His followers, the twelve disciples who were the closest to Him, also took up the message after His resurrection. He told them to take the message of salvation to Jerusalem and to all of the world and that is what they did. Even the Pharisee called Paul who was trying to get rid of the sect that they called “the Way” became Jesus’ disciple who would take the gospel to the Jews and the gentiles. It was he who wrote nearly half of the New Testament.

The world would be a very different place without Jesus and the Bible as well as Christianity. Many of the laws and moral teachings that we take for granted came from the Bible. Our world has been irrevocably changed because of its influence so it cannot be ignored or pushed aside. Think about it, read it, check the facts contained in it, then let your heart decide!