We have an enemy. ( Psalm 51 )

I was listening to my very favourite preacher,Chuck Swindoll, and one of the first things he said was.''We can be our own worse enemy''.That's very true,take king David,he had many enemies, the giant Goliath, the Philistines,King Saul, and later on his own son ,Absalom, but the biggest enemy he had to face was,you've guessed,himself. Which led him to commit adultery,then murder,no one forced  him to do such a terrible evil.it was all about David.Shakespeare wrote,'Man know thyself''.If we would take seriously what God 's word teaches  us as regards our fallen nature,things can be different,to be forewarned is to be forearmed.Our fallen nature is inclined to cause us to fall, Chuck quoted someone who said,'Don't just read the Bible,let the bible read you',that means we will be left  with no excuse if we fall morally into sin,its not just self awareness,but Bible awareness that will be to our advantage in dealing with public enemy number one, ourselves.How do we avoid falling into sin,by avoiding those things that can trip us up. Joseph ran from sin,so often we run into sin,the result disaster.And again as Chuck said,'' we must fight our battles on our knee's'', we must take these things very seriously,as our dear Saviour said to the disciples,'Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation, why?,'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'.Matthew 26 v 41.

 

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Are you desperate? Psalm 34.

 I heard a preacher speaking of a godly man who  prayed a wonderful prayer ,the preacher spoke of the desperation in his  prayer,many of you I'm sure have in desperation, prayed to God. Such a prayer has no frills in it,when bold Peter  who walked like our Saviour on the water ( Matthew 14 v 25 -31 ),lost faith,and began to sink, he cried out to the Lord to save him,it was a desperate prayer.One translation puts it like this,'he was terrified and began to sink, 'Save me Lord!' he shouted.One reads of many people being healed by our Lord,they were desperate, and out of that desperation they cried  to the Lord,and the Lord answered.Let me say this again desperate prayer,is not about the niceties,it comes from the heart, often  from a broken heart .In Psalm 34 v 18 , we read,'The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit', Desperate prayers get to the point,God is not impressed by empty words that go on and on, spoken as if to impress God,we can't impress God, nor should we try. In our desperation we need to get to the point ,desperate prayers come from the heart,the center of our being,our inner self, not our intellect CP Proverbs 3 v 5.Desperate prayers come from the poor in spirit,our poverty of being,Psalm 34 v 6 reads 'This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles'.

                                            'I call out at the top of my lungs,

                                            ''God!Answer! I'll do whatever 

                                             you say.'  ( The Message)

 

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One thing leads to another. 2 ( Revelation 3 v 1 - 3 )

Lets continue looking at Isaiah 29 v 13,'And so the Lord says,''These people say they are mine. They honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote'.Consider,'but their hearts are far from me',one has said if we feel that sense of distance with God ,we can be assured that God has not moved.Let us put it in  a modern setting, they were just going to church,they must have thought that was all that was expected of them.Of course its not if that all it is, its legalism, when we attend our local fellowship it has or it should have, the ministry of the word of God .That word should touch our hearts,and create in us a desire for our God. The problem with the people we are considering is they were not getting the word of God, they were getting as  Barry Webb puts it, 'false religion',he writes,' False religion is the very worst kind of pride because it attempts to make God our servant instead of recognizing that we are his'.Let us move to the time of Jeremiah ,the weeping prophet, were we see nothing had changed ,in 5 v 31,we read,' The prophets give false prophecies, and the priests rule with an iron hand. Worse yet, my people like it that way!Our dear Lord was faced with the same thing CP Mark 7 v7.The result would be as foretold in v 14 of Isa 29,I quote Barry Webb,' God's judgement would reduce proud Jerusalem to the most abject weakness and helplessness'.

                                                'There is no substitute for the word of God'

God speaks. 1 ( Isaiah 1 v18 )

 In Isaiah 29 v13, God speaks to His people, the chapter is about a people who were far from Him,it starts with ,' What sorrow awaits Ariel,a special name for Jerusalem'. Verse 13 highlights their state spiritually, 'And so the Lord says,''These people say they are mine, they honour me with their lips,but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man made rules learned by rote''. On a general application of the words,'These people say they are mine',most people would say they are children of God,but they are not unless they have truly trusted Jesus as Saviour. ( John 1 v 12- 13).These people say they are mine, but where they?,everything they were doing  was a denial of that relationship.Remember what our  Saviour said by their fruits you shall known them Matthew 7 v16,There must be an evidence that we are Gods children, even as Christians we will sin, 1  John 1v 8, but we do not walk in sin,and act as if sin does not matter, it does.John Stott writes,' The divine nature within the regenerate believer asserts itself against all evil. It is impossible for him to make a practice of sin.' We are children of God, and sin is unnatural to us'( Dodd').'The believer may fall into sin, but he will not walk in it. (Smith)We will continue this next time.

                                                                Augustine

                                           'It is a human thing to fall into sin

                                           A devillish  thing to persevere therein,

                                           And an angelical or supernatural

                                           thing to  rise from it.'

Such love.( John 1 v 10 - 13)

While on holiday in the town in Tavistock I saw something that is in most towns in the United Kingdom a monument with names on it, the dead  who died in war who sacrificed their lives for our sakes.0n top of  this particular monument there is a cross, that reminds all who see it of  one who sacrificed his life for mankind. They both made sacrifices,those whose names are mentioned on the monument, lead down their lives for friend ,family,and their fellow country men,and we applaud that, Consider the profound difference between the sacrifice that Christ made , from the sacrifice of those who laid down their lives ,in wars.Christ sacrifice was for his enemies Romans 5 v 8,the fact is, all mankind are  total enemies of God, lovers of darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil,in fact they hate the light John 5 v 19-20. The supreme reason for crucifying Jesus is summed up in the words of Luke 19 v14,'We will not have this man to reign over us'. Mankind has always objected to God's rule ,and when they crucified him, they showed their hatred for God in the most extreme manner imaginable. Yet in spite of such ingrained brutality,Christ sacrificed his life that mankind's sins could be forgiven,and that they may be reconciled to God, and receive eternal life. 

                                              'We love Him, because he first love us'.

                                                                 1 John 4 v 5 .

Emptiness. ( Hebrews 11 v 24 - 27)

Jack London a famous author  said ,' 'The function of man is to live. Not to exist'', he lived a very full life ,what he said has a ring of truth about it. It meant not being a couch potato ,of putting effort into life and he did that. But there is a greater meaning to these words,our Saviour came that we may have life,and have it abundantly.I believe that what people call life is a life without Christ, and that can only be described as an existence, without Christ, life will always be just an existence,and when one dies it will still be just an existence.A life without God is missing the true meaning of life ,everything is but an anti climax without God.  I asked a lady how she was keeping,she replied in a negative way,and I said to her that Christ makes all the difference for life ,and for eternity.Most people live just for the here and now,with not a  thought for eternity, the prodigal went looking for a life that he thought would be wonderful, but it did not turn out that way. We have a choice if we really want to live  and not just exist, the answer is very simple,  Christ.

                                              O what emptiness without a Saviour,

                                              Mid the sins and sorrow here below!

                                             And eternity,how dark without Him!

                                             Only tears and endless woe!

                                            What though I might live without the Saviour,

                                            When I come to die what will it be?

                                             O to face the valley's gloom without Him?

                                            And without Him all eternity!.

                                                      Words David Hanson.

                                            

He see's,He hears, He delivers. (Psalm 34 )

 Let us consider v15 of this lovely 34 Psalm written by David ,at a time of great distress.  'The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,and his ears are attentive to their cry'.Another translation puts it like this.'The eyes of the Lord watch over those who  do right,and his ears are open to their cries for help.'Sometimes a parent may say to a child  ,'I'm watching you',well dear child of God, he is watching you, you are never out of his sight, 24/7.He saw Jonah in the belly of a whale,he saw Daniel in  a den of lions. It is a great comfort that God is always watching over us,there are dear children of God who are in prison,their families do not know where they are,but the Lord is watching over them.This should be a great comfort to every child of God,but it is also a challenge, to live as to be always in the sight of God. Next he says that God listens to  his children when they cry out to him, He is always available, He will always come to your aid,for' when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles' v17.

                                 Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,

                                 Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,

                                  When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He;

                                  His eye is on the sparrow,and I know He watches me;

                                  His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He cares for me.

                                                       Words  Chas ,H. Gabriel.