Tag: Christ

AFFLICTION

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AFFLICTION

By Rick Mathes

Romans 12:12 (NASB77) 12   rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer,

Sir John Powell: By affliction, God is spoiling us of what otherwise might have spoiled us. When He makes the world too hot for us to hold, we let go.

Jesus doesn’t’ tempt, He tests. It is good for us to learn the pressure points of backsliding so that we can see Satan’s punch coming if our Lord’s permissive will. Satan cannot lay a finger on us without our Lord’s permission and empowerment. Think about this

Sin of course is the final nail in the coffin that couldn’t hold our Redeemer in the tomb. It wears many masks to entice us with its counterfeit pleasures. The devil’s method-of-operation (M.O.) hasn’t changed. First your eyes linger, then your flesh tastes and then your pride holds you captive.

Backsliding is a lapse of spiritual weight-lifting. When you stop pedaling a bike uphill, what happens? You roll back. So when your tongue gets out of control, when resentments rear their ugly heads or pride and self-importance overcomes you, get into the Word!

Some will complain that their environment crafted them to be the creatures of sin that they have become. They claim that they were born into sinful circumstances and to a large extent, this could be true.

Mistreatment, a heart, idolatry, and hypocrisy, wait on every corner to collar you and take you captive in the chains of hell and the home to the fallen angels. Lucifer is there, always there, to welcome you with open, flaming arms.

Matthew Henry: Outward afflictions, wants and burdens are the great arguments Satan uses to make people of God question their Sonship as if afflictions, could not consist with, when they proceed from God’s fatherly love.

No pain, no gain is as true here as it is anywhere. We are to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Consider that there wouldn’t be a shadow if there wasn’t a light in front of us to follow It came to pass….

ABSORBED

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ABSORBED

By Rick Mathes

Ephesians 3:19 (NASB77) 19  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

I am an evangelical Baptist, conservative, Calvinist, fundamental no nonsense ordained minister. Whew! I am not dazzled by others claims of celestial fireworks, the raising of thousands of the dead in Africa and testimonies of those who died and then went bowled a line or two with Jesus. However, I did have a theophany personally that made a profound change in my attitude toward death.

I was in my bedroom praying at night and repenting of sins back to the day I was born whn my invisible body burst from the darkness into an expanse of sky blue. I knew my body was there but I couldn’t see it. All of a sudden love encompassed me like being under water except it was love. Then like a sponge, I soaked in all that love and I became love. What an unbelievable rush

I believe Jesus gave me a taste of heaven.

Now let’s get back down to earth with you and ask, “What can you hold of the Holy Spirit?” Do you have the will and capacity to soak up love into not just your heart and body but completely including your soul? What would you think then of being filled with the Holy Spirit?

Let me put in the best words I can. Father God is the lover, the Son is the loved and the Holy Spirit is the love between them. It really is because I personally experienced this infilling of the Holy Spirit that I understand this on a new level.

Can you even imagine the works of God you could accomplish if this happened to you? I have now continued in Him by turning lives from crime to Christ for over 30 years. What would happen to you? God only knows!

What is the fullness of the Holy Spirit? How much Holy Spirit is there and how much room do you have for Him in your life? And what would happen if you received all the fullness of God? Wow!

When you were drinking and drugging to the max you weren’t afraid to die so why are you afraid to mainline Jesus and live? Try it you will like it and life will never be the same again.

ABLE NOT TO SIN

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ABLE NOT TO SIN

By Rick Mathes

Romans 6:22 (NASB77) 22  But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

Was Jesus able to sin? Yes, He was able to sin in the flesh as we all are but in His Spirit, He was able not to sin. This same thing happens to you when you receive the Holy Spirit in your baptism: you are able not to sin. We move from captivity to freedom and salvation by being set free. When He stepped out of the tomb, death stepped out of the sting. We are eternal now and will never see death, only life in His presence now and until He calls us home.

This transaction of imputing sin on Him and righteousness on us infuriates the devil and when He discovers you were baptized he assigns a legion of demons to terrorize you with doubt and fear: the keys to hell.

Sin however keeps out of your path as darkness flees from light as you walk “in Him.” Your commitment to body, mind and soul is certainly noteworthy but probably the hardest promise you have ever had to keep. It’s worth the payout: set free.

If you don’t, your mind and heart will collapse into your soul. Your temple will be condemned when the lights go out. Your joy, comfort and contentment will evaporate in the smoke and sulfur of that caldron of liquid flames called hell.

Your family is first to suffer if you abandon His calling and get caught up in the devil’s entrapments. Your first love will be yourself and your stubborn attachment to sin will eventually splinter your family into divorce and estrangement. This demolished family unit, the nation’s building block will begin a coast to coast demolition of Judeo-Christian values and a disregard for the precepts of our constitution.

The ripple effect of a national meltdown has world consequences that apart from the grace of God are irreversible. The cost of all this destruction is not worth letting Satan get his nose in your tent when you have been set free. It only takes a single match to light a universe. Is that you?

 

A SPECIAL BAPTISM

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A SPECIAL BAPTISM

By Rick Mathes

Luke 3:21 (NASB77) 21 Now it came about when all the people were baptized, that Jesus also was baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened,

Let’s join for a moment and take in the wonder of why our Savior would willingly experience the outward manifestation of baptism by immersion. Jesus was sinless, so what was the significance of this unique event?

First of all it was to equip, anoint and strengthen the manhood He has clothed Himself with and secondly to demonstrate obedience, humility and prayer to all generations that would follow.

What an astounding set of circumstances that clearly brought together the visible and audible Trinity of the gospels. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all sharing truth in a single verse. How blessed is the Word of God to us as it shares this precious and golden moment, never to repeat itself in the infinity of time.

What a wonderful seal of approval for our God-man to launch His ministry of salvation and begin His death walk to the Cross, one firm step following another. From this point forward, He never looked back. Oh, how I wish we could do the same and not ever be ashamed Him with our doubts and fears. Just to put on the armor of God, lift up the sword of the Word and firmly place my feet on holy ground is my fervent prayer!

The dove quietly settled in peacefulness, not known to mankind until that moment. The gentleness of the flight, the landing and the harmlessness of the message of affirmation: the Holy Spirit had arrived to anoint Christ the man for the timeless message of the ancients who spoke of Him in times past.

The voice rang out to a startled universe of angels and every devil shook in mortal terror. God became man on a mission that only the Triune god could ever accomplish. In an eye-blink, salvation arrived with healing and deliverance in the wings of a dove. The provision of love for His elect and eternal doom to those who would reject and murder His Son as your sin does to this very moment.

Submit to the reality that you are owned by the Father, saved by the Son and anointed by the Holy Spirit and you too will have that once in a lifetime special baptism a was demonstrated by our Lord Himself. A moment that will change a lifetime of eternities if only you will accept and savor the fullness of the Trinity of which you were made in Their likeness: body, spirit and soul.

A CALLING

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 A CALLING

Ye call me Master                and obey me not;

Ye call me Light                   and see me not;

Ye call me Way                    and walk me not;

Ye call me Life                      and desire me not;

Ye call me Wise                   and follow me not;

Ye call me Fair                     and love me not;

Ye call me Rich                    and ask me not;

Ye call me Eternal               and seek me not;

Ye call me Gracious            and trust me not;

Ye call me Noble                  and serve me not;

Ye call me Mighty                and honor me not;

Ye call me Just                     and fear me not;

                                                If I condemn you Blame Me not!

FAITH:

  • Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible, and receives the impossible.
  • Faith is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.
  • Faith is ideal when circumstances are right, only when they are adverse is one’s faith in God exercised.
  • Faith, like muscle, grows strong and supple with exercise.
  • Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
  • A little faith will bring your soul to heaven; a great faith will bring heaven to your soul.
  • Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will!
  • Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.
  • Faith in God is indispensable to successful statesmanship.

Arabic Proverb

He that knows not and knows not that he knows not:

He is a fool; shun him!

He that knows not and knows that he knows not:

He is simple; teach him!

He that knows and knows not that he knows:

He is asleep; wake him!

He that knows and knows that he knows;

He is a wise man; follow him!

 

 

 

SEVEN WOES

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7 WOES

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 23:8 But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers.

You call me:

  • Master but do not obey me
  • Light but do not walk with me
  • Wise but do not listen or learn from me
  • Rich but do not ask of me for help
  • Eternal but do not live like you believe it
  • Gracious but do not trust in my generosity
  • Noble but do not serve me as my slave
  • God but do not fear offending me

If I call you condemned, do not blame me!

Woe is you as you plunge down the flaming pit because of your preoccupation with everything and anything that was self-gratifying. The sum total of all your love and ambitions now and in the future is only your well-being and materialism. All that matters to you is you. Your egotism is so prevalent that you barely comprehend the purpose of those around you but to satisy your needs and wants. You are oblivious to all else.

There is a total vacuum of spirituality within you mainly because your unconfessed sin keeps getting in the way. You can only wall off righteousness for so long until it bursts its walls and destroys itself and all within its path. Now the challenge you face is to put up a face of righteousness around you so that no one will be able to penetrate your façade of holy living.

This impenitence arouses God’s anger at your audacity and deception. He will try His best to have you take a good hard look at who you really are on the inside that place in you that no one is welcome but you.

It’s been over 2,000 years of this nonsense with no change in your perverseness. The sad thing is that there is never another second chance. You may have used them all up and you have no options left. This delusiveness of living is denial of sin, Satan and hell will open up within you.

Go back over this article and see if you can’t pick out the 7 woes and then whip them to submission for the glory of the King of Kings, your Commander in Chief or else!

YOU’RE A LOSER

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YOU’RE A LOSER!

By Rick Mathes

My name is “Unbeliever.” I’m also known as Liar, Criminal, Jerk, Stupid and worse. I’m going to do it my way. I’ve lived with the Devil so far and I will deal again with him when I see him eye to eye. Life is Hell, admit it! When J.C. said, “Depart from me I never knew you,” He declared war on me and my kind. It was at the moment that I knew I was bound to the flaming throne awaiting me. I decided to “get what I can get while I can get it. I know, I know, don’t keep harping on me. I’m undeserving, ill-deserving and on my way to an unforgivable eternity in hell. So what’s new!

My heart has hardened to you bleeding heart do-gooder wimps!

I have chosen to be obstinate to your pleadings with me to get born again. I have the parents that born me. Why would I want to be born again? Once was enough for me besides my thoughts are so volatile hey shoot in and out of my mind and I have no peace to sort them out. I can’t even approach a moment of contentment.

My imagination of God, hell, angels and demons is out of sorts and very ungovernable. My sinful desires are extraordinarily evil and running wild, preying on the victims within my reach. These mind altering drugs I take mixed with alcohol cloud my mind so that I don’t have to think, just flow from one feeling to another. There is a den of wild beasts within my deepest and most hidden places.

Let’s face it: the world we live in removes you from thinking out the consequences of your choices and overlooks the causes.

There was a time when it was fun to say it was fun,

There was a time when it was crazy to sad it was fun,

But now it’s crazy to say this is fun!

There comes a time when you put your life on pause and consider the only thruth God or man has ever learned. God’s Word is Truth and it is the total annihilation of Lucifer and his fallen angels. Jesus said, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Duh! I think you may be getting the message by now. How many times are you going to hit the bottom? Think, do you even have one more new start in you? I doubt it. Only He can remove the penalty, power and presence of sin. Your only relief, are you listening? Your only hope is believe and trust in Jesus as Lord. Don’t let Him say those deadly words to you, “Depart from me.” You’re a loser!

WHY NOT?

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WHY NOT?

By Rick Mathes

There are two questions that have nagged me from as far back as I can remember: Why and what is Truth? Apart from Jesus and the constant teaching of the Apostles, neither question can ever be objectively answered. To this day my mind goes haywire when I hear people philosophize in a relative and often circular manner of reasoning. To them, truth is whatever they believe to be true. They cross their eyes when I remind them of the law of non-contradiction: A cannot be both A and B at the same time or A and B cannot both be true.

Socrates drove everyone nuts with his incessant questioning of “Why?” His dialectic method of questioning made fools out of those who lived without constants, nothing objectively secure.

My parents would say, “You need to be in by 10PM!” I’d ask, “Why?” and they would say, “Because we said so!” Made no sense to me the difference between 9PM and 11PM so I would stay out until midnight which made more sense to me.

And my second nagging question was, “What is truth?” I read almost every word in the Great Books Library, had a I Q of 140 and still didn’t know what truth was. I didn’t learn until I read the Bible Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

I still can’t understand how Jesus can be the truth. I can understand how he has the truth, or he knows the truth, or he teaches the truth but how can a man be a concept, and why?

There I go again, I’m right back to where I started!

WHICH DONKEY ARE YOU?

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WHICH DONKEY ARE YOU?

By Rick Mathes

(Author of Allah or Jesus)

When I study the Word to prepare for a sermon I try to sink my toes into the Israeli sand, look around and absorb all that is around the obvious message the Holy Spirit intended me to preach.

One such scene is the Lord’s triumphant donkey ride, as King, into and through the Jerusalem gate and the throngs of those attending this parade. Let’s do a 360 degree turn and soak in the drama that is surrounding god’s Son as He has His victory march on the Holy Hill.

Can you see them? There’s Peter of course, leading the entourage with John and James marching oh so dignified on the Lord’s right and left followed by the future potentates of the 12 kingdoms. They are so proud and holier-than-thou.

Not so the Pharisees, Sadducees and other officials. They are seething in jealousy and anger just waiting for their hired assassins to put a dagger in our Lord’s ribs. Look over there at the cheering mob of leftist liberals shouting for their entitlements. After all, Jesus could heal their diseases, raise the dead and feed the multitude. They will never have to work a day in their life. Long live King Jesus! Enough of this silliness.  Let’s get serious and ponder, “What was the donkey thinking about all of this?”

I’ll bet he was really angry that on this hot and humid day he had to labor away carrying this heavy body on his back while the crowd was shouting with ear-splitting noise during his migraine headache. Unbearable!

Let’s give this donkey some slack and suppose he really thought the parade was all about him. How excited and proud he must have been with his head held high, his chest pressed out, his tail up and footsteps in precision and perfection of a a pure-bred donkey. I don’t think so.

If I could get into his head, I would bet my last dollar that he was totally astonished that out of all the donkeys in the world, God chose him. How humbling can it get? He knew what unworthy an unworthy ass he was and yet out of all the donkeys that were behaved and more worthy, God chose him.

You know out of all those in the excited and cheering mob, I can relate to the donkey best. Within hours that same crowd was shouting “Crucify Him!” while the donkey wept for his precious Savior. I can feel his pain and I too weep for what I did to cause His death on the Cross for me.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

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WHAT IS TRUTH?

By Rick Mathes

You have to be real careful when you list the absolutes of your life. When you insist something is “always” someone will come up with an exception. The only yardstick we Christians stake our eternal life on is that only the Word of God holds within it 66 volumes of the only truth.

When Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus didn’t even waste His breath to tell him, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” “Thy Word is truth.” We have the answer and anyone who disagrees is dead wrong.

So what is truth? Let me begin with original sin. When Adam and Eve believed Satan and defied God, hey knew good and learned evil. That same sin is passed on to every living soul through our DNA. You don’t teach a baby to be bad, it just comes naturally. Good comes supernaturally.

Another truth that so many people just plain hate is election. Consider just good logic. If God is all-knowing, he knows who will be saved and who won’t be before they are even born. After they are born they can’t change what God pre-knew, can they? That’s election or predestination. No one “accepts” Jesus as Lord, He “chooses” them!

When Jesus wants you, He’s going to get you because He is all powerful. Like a worm on a hook, you may squiggle and squirm but you are hooked. This is His effectual calling. A hen has a general calling to let her chicks know where she is and she has her “get under my wings” cluck for the chicks to hurry, they are in danger. Get the point?

My favorite truth is “once saved, always saved.” We just don’t quit. We keep the faith, fight the good fight and finish the course. You can’t knock us down and keep us down. We always get our back off of the canvas and press on!

The least favorite truth is that Jesus didn’t take the unbelievers punishment on that cross. He died for those who would believe. If you are without faith in Christ, you will suffer your own hell that He suffered for me. This is called “limited atonement.”

I just know I know you know the truth. You may hide in denial or your might invent a convenient religion for yourself but in your heart of hearts, you know the truth, Jesus is Lord!