Category: works-religion

Arrayed in Hypocrisy

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (Matthew 23:27,28 KJV).

“Looks can be deceiving” is not only true during Halloweentime, but confirmed year-round within Christendom.

Today is Halloween, when children dress up and feign themselves to be creatures they are not. Likewise, many church leaders today wear “Christian” garbs, but their ministries do not bring the Lord Jesus Christ glory and honor. They promote their denomination, and seek to perpetuate it, rather than serve and exalt the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. The Bible manifests these who appear to be good, as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

In today’s Scripture, Jesus Christ exposed Israel’s corrupt religious leaders who misled the nation in His day. In His Parable of the Tares, Matthew 13:24-30,37-43, Christ explained how just as He had sown good seed (wheat, believing Jews) in Israel, Satan had also sown tares/weeds (unbelieving Jews). Tares resemble wheat; unbelieving Jews resemble believing Jews. The unbelieving Pharisees and scribes, for instance, looked like God’s people (believing Israel). Judas Iscariot was another example of Satan’s tares—the apostles never realized who Judas really was until it was too late!

But Satan’s counterfeit believers are not confined to Israel’s program. Today, within local assemblies of the Body of Christ, there are people feigning themselves to be Christians: For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).

Beloved, beware of the church leaders who are arrayed in hypocrisy, “and avoid them” (Romans 16:17b). If their teaching does not agree with the rightly divided King James Bible, you have no business as a child of God to be following them.

*This is excerpted from a larger Bible study with the same name. The Bible study can be read here or watched here.

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

Sunday, October 28, 2012

“For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29 KJV).

Saints, let us be mindful that today’s Scripture is truer today than ever before.

In the context of today’s Scripture, the Apostle Paul is bidding the Ephesian church leaders farewell. He is determined to return to Jerusalem, unsure if the Jews will kill him there (verses 22,23). Paul warns these church leaders to “take heed therefore unto [themselves], and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made [them] overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (verse 28).

They need to be on guard, for in the next verse—today’s Scripture—he cautions them that false teachers will come in and spiritually devour these Christian leaders and their local assemblies. Satan’s ministers, denominationalists/religionists/legalists, will devastate the spiritual health of God’s people. They will come in from the outside world, and infiltrate the church with heresy so Christians become ineffective.

But, the subsequent verse says, “Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (verse 30). Not only will people outside the local church come in and deceive, there will be false teachers within the church (already doing the damage subtly and hypocritically). They claim “Jesus is Lord,” they talk about God’s love and grace, and some will even go so far as to agree with us by teaching the special ministry and gospel committed to the Apostle Paul’s trust. But, when you read the King James Bible for yourself, and compare their teaching to it, you realize that their ministry confirms today’s Scripture.

“With tears,” Paul warned the Ephesians for three years about false teaching (Acts 20:31). By the end of Paul’s ministry, several years after that warning in Acts chapter 20, Ephesus and the rest of Asia (Turkey) went into apostasy (2 Timothy 1:15). Dear saints, how we would STRONGLY URGE you to be very careful about what preacher, ministry, and/or church you follow. “Many corrupt the word of God” (2 Corinthians 2:17).

A Burdened Musician

Thursday, October 25, 2012

“That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart” (Romans 9:2 KJV).

With the passing of another saint I knew personally, we remind ourselves that our family and friends need to hear from our lips the salvation found only in Jesus Christ.

Mr. Hadley Castille, a world-renowned Cajun fiddler, passed away earlier today at age 79, not too far from my home. A few years back, when we had our newspaper ministry, he read and enjoyed our Bible study columns. The last couple of months of his life, he battled brain cancer, and I was privileged to recently visit him in a rest home and minister to him and his wife.

During his last few days alive, Mr. Castille had such a burden for his lost friends, two of whom were visiting him the same day I was there. He expressed his grief to me that he wanted to tell them how to go to heaven, but he was unsure of where to begin and what to say exactly. I gave him gospel tracts, and suggested that he simply give those to them when they approached his bedside.

Those two friends and I shook hands, and then they went to Mr. Castille’s bedside. I heard the urgency in the dear man’s voice as he softly stated, “I want you to go to heaven with me.” Nevertheless, these two friends—both in bondage to world religions—refused the gospel tracts he offered them. One reassured us that his pagan religion would certainly get him to heaven, and the other friend preferred not to have a “theological discussion.”

In today’s Scripture, even the Apostle Paul sorrowed that his fellow Jews were lost and going to hell (cf. Romans 10:1-3). He preached that he “might save some of them” (Romans 11:14). Saints, we should be burdened to share the Gospel of God’s Grace with everyone we know and meet. After all, even those currently suffering in hellfire, have an intense desire that their living loved ones do not come and meet them in that awful place of torment (Luke 16:27,28).

Let us be burdened, just as that musician….

-IN MEMORIAM-
Mr. Hadley J. Castille
(March 3, 1933 – October 25, 2012)

An Abomination and a Delight #3

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

“The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight” (Proverbs 15:8 KJV).

In today’s Scripture, we read of an abomination to the LORD and a delight of the LORD.

All too often, churches capitalize on vain religious performance. They encourage us to pray, but they never teach us how to pray in this the Dispensation of Grace as God’s Word instructs. We are begged to “support the program” monetarily, but they never teach us how to give in this the Dispensation of Grace as God’s Word instructs. They implore us to walk aisles and make “professions of faith,” “turn from our sins and then trust Christ” (?), and “follow Jesus in ‘believer’s baptism.’” Friends, it may come as a shock to you, but these “godly” activities are abominations to the Lord: they literally are wickedness.

Faith is first and foremost, and faith in God’s Word to us—Paul’s epistles, Romans through Philemon—does not lead us to walk aisles, it does not lead us to forsake our sins to be saved, it does not lead us to follow Israel’s legalistic tithe, and it does not lead us to be water baptized. These emphasize our performance, not Christ’s performance. Satan enjoys religious performance—he desires to rob Christ of His praise by getting us to boast in what we do!

We go contrary to what God is doing today when we promote denominational theology. Today’s Scripture speaks of “the sacrifice of the wicked” as “an abomination to the LORD.” This is someone doing what he or she wants in religion: offering a sacrifice, but doing it wickedly (no faith). Such activity does not honor the Lord.

If we want God to “delight” in our Christian service (today’s Scripture), let us first study and believe His Word to us—Paul’s epistles—and then, by faith, apply those Scriptures to our lives, daily speaking to God about our lives in light of what we read in His written Word (prayer). In doing so, we exalt not ourselves, but we magnify our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone deserves our delight. 🙂

An Abomination and a Delight #1

Monday, October 22, 2012

“The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight” (Proverbs 15:8 KJV).

In today’s Scripture, we read of an abomination to the LORD and a delight of the LORD.

Especially during Isaiah’s time (circa 700 B.C.), apostasy was rampant in Israel’s southern kingdom (Judah and Benjamin). The LORD went so far as to call it (spiritually) “Sodom and Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:10)!

Read God’s reprimanding of Israel’s southern kingdom: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats…. Bring no more vain [worthless] oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood” (verses 11,13-15).

God is sick of Judah’s double mindedness—she murders His prophets, yet she performs the Mosaic Law religiously (animal sacrifices, Sabbath day keeping, et cetera). Despite their godly façade, God can read their evil hearts. They were practicing Judaism, but not by faith: it was just worthless, mindless repetition, which God literally hated.

Jesus chided Israel’s religious leaders of His day, who were so fixated on executing ceremonies that they ignored having faith in why God had instructed them to perform those rituals (formalism): “Well hath Esaias [Isaiah 29:13] prophesied of you hypocrites, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Mark 7:6).

Let us not be like Israel, in Jesus’ and Isaiah’s day, who blindly performed religious ceremonies just to appear good. Faithless religious performance is “an abomination to the LORD,” just as wicked as indulging in the sins of the flesh.

What is the Grace Life?

Friday, October 19, 2012

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;” (Titus 2:11,12 KJV).

The only life acceptable to God in the Dispensation of Grace is the grace life!

When the Bible speaks of God’s grace to us in Christ (as in today’s Scripture), it refers to “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” The cost to enter heaven is far, far too great for us sons and daughters of Adam to ever pay. But, we have a wealthy relative who paid our sin debt in full. God became one of us: “God sending his own Son [Jesus Christ] in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). Sin separated man from God, so God did for man what he could never do for himself—pay for his sins.

Unquestionably, the greatest life ever lived in a human body was that of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is always well pleasing to His heavenly Father (John 8:29). Even in death, as His body beaten beyond recognition hung limply on Calvary’s cruel cross, His sinless blood literally gushing from His veins and falling to the ground, Christ was well pleasing to Father God. The greatest human life ever lived then ceased…. He gave up His life, to take it up again (John 10:17,18)!

On Calvary’s cross, Jesus Christ gave His life for us, allowing us to die to sin with Him (Romans 6:3,4a). But then He was raised again, so He could give that resurrected life to us (Romans 6:4b,5). God accepts us in Christ (Ephesians 1:6). We appropriate (impute) Christ’s perfect sacrifice on Calvary by faith alone in the Gospel of Grace—“Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised again the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4).

The Gospel of the Grace of God is not only meant to impact our eternal destiny, but our life now (today’s Scripture!). The Christian life is not us keeping rules, but us walking by faith in God’s Word to us, letting Christ live His life and through us (Galatians 2:20). That, dear friends, is the grace life! 🙂

*These past seven devotionals are advanced versions of our “Original 7.” With our blog’s second foundation laid, we now press on to deeper Bible teaching!

Walking in the Spirit #7

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:24,25 KJV).

Now that we have trusted Jesus Christ alone as our personal Saviour, we have a new identity, and this identity should impact our lifestyles for God’s glory.

“For in that he [Christ] died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members [body parts] as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Romans 6:10-13).

We Christians “yield [ourselves] unto God,” not by keeping a list of church rules and regulations (which we can never obey perfectly anyway), but by simply “walking in the Spirit,” walking by faith in our resurrection life in Christ (described in this sound Pauline doctrine). We let the Holy Ghost take His written Word that we study and believe rightly divided, to transform and renew our minds, and produce in us Christ’s life.

“That ye put off concerning the former conversation [lifestyle] the old man [old nature], which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man [new nature], which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24). “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:9,10).

Beloved, the indwelling Holy Spirit desires to transform our lives to match our new nature in Christ. Will we allow Him?

Saints, let us “quench [hinder] not the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), but let us “walk in the Spirit” (today’s Scripture).

Walking in the Spirit #3

Saturday, October 6, 2012

“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:24,25 KJV).

Now that we have trusted Jesus Christ alone as our personal Saviour, we have a new identity, and this identity should impact our lifestyles for God’s glory.

“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (verses 16-18). Notice how the Bible links our “flesh” (sin nature) to the Law. The Mosaic Law demands that we perform, and our flesh loves to perform because it can then boast, “Look at my religious ‘goodness!’”

As Galatians 5:16-18 said above, introducing the Mosaic Law into the Christian life is counterproductive: it creates a war, a struggle, between you and Christ, which is vividly described in Romans chapter 7. The Mosaic Law demands you perform to gain God’s acceptance (Deuteronomy 28:1ff.), while the Christian life is Christ performing in you the believer because you already are accepted of God in Christ (Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 1:6). This is why Mosaic Law-keeping does not belong in our Dispensation of Grace. It “frustrate[s] [hinders] the grace of God” (Galatians 2:21), since God’s grace teaches us it is Christ, not us, who must perform to make us accepted of God!

Galatians 5:18 said, “If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” The Holy Spirit does not lead anyone in the Dispensation of Grace to operate under the performance-based acceptance system of Judaism (Mosaic Law-keeping). If a Christian attempts Law-keeping, it is literally his or her own doing (not God’s doing), and it is done to their spiritual detriment (misery and defeat)! The indwelling Spirit of God leads us to enjoy the life we have in Christ, and we should walk by faith in His performance (today’s Scripture).

Walking in the Spirit #2

Friday, October 5, 2012

“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:24,25 KJV).

Now that we have trusted Jesus Christ alone as our personal Saviour, we have a new identity, and this identity should impact our lifestyles for God’s glory.

Sadly, it is often assumed—even by some professing grace believers—that grace is a license to sin. Since “[we] are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14b), some erroneously conclude that we are free to live any way we want. Verse 15 cautions us, “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid [May God never let that happen!!].” God’s grace teaches us to “[deny] ungodliness and worldly lusts” and it teaches us to live “soberly, righteously, and godly” (Titus 2:12).

In Galatians 5:13, we are exhorted: “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” Christ has made us free from the burden of the Mosaic Law, the “yoke of bondage” (verse 1), a system of rules we could never keep, but this does not mean that God does not care how we live.

We are not under Israel’s performance-based acceptance system. Nevertheless, grace teaches us that God fulfills in us believers the righteousness the Law demanded. Never should we abuse God’s grace by using it “for an occasion to the flesh;” grace should never be (ab)used to promote selfish living (preferring to serve sin rather than serve God and fellow Christians). Verses 14,15: “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.”

“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (verse 16). We have new life in Christ, and when we by faith let Him live His life in us, we will not live sinfully and selfishly (today’s Scripture).

The Flesh Straineth, Christ’s Love Constraineth #8

Monday, September 17, 2012

“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:14,15 KJV).

We would do well to memorize, meditate on, and believe today’s Scripture, a wonderful encapsulation of the Christian life.

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate [hinder, disrupt] the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Galatians 2:20,21). We could not achieve righteousness (salvation) by our performance, and we cannot achieve righteousness (godly living) by our performance. If our performance was ever the issue (for salvation or godly living), “Christ is dead in vain [is (present tense) dead for nothing].”

Our Christian lives are really Christ’s life! “Christ liveth in me.” We live by His faithfulness, by His performance working in us. Compare “the Son of God… who loved me, and gave himself for me” with today’s Scripture: “the love of Christ constraineth [motivates] us… [Christ] died for all… [Christ] died for all… [Christ] died for them.”

God’s grace—everything that He has done for us on Calvary’s cross—teaches us: “Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly [responsibly], righteously [acceptable to God], and godly [reflecting God’s values]” (Titus 2:11,12).

We who have trusted Christ are “new creatures in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our lives should reflect this new position/identity. God died to save us from our sins, so why should we return to them? We should let Christ Jesus live His life in and through us, “to prove that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). We do this by placing our faith in this sound Bible doctrine, which God uses to transform our minds, and then our lives!

“The flesh (always) straineth, Christ’s love (always) constraineth….”

*The past eight devotionals have been combined and expanded to form a larger Bible study with the same name, which can be read here or watched here.