Tag: crucified

CRUCIFIED

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CRUCIFIED

By Rick Mathes

1 Corinthians 1:23 (NASB77) 23  but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness,

The Jew as well as Roman Catholic and a host of other faiths are what are called ceremonialists. They have a variety of rituals, sacrifices, processions, holy celebrations and so forth that they participate in as they attempt to petition God and explain the unexplainable.

The Greeks were not much for feelings or experiences. They were thinkers and needed to be reached through logical persuasion or intellectual assent. One and one had to equal two so that the supernatural was not a consideration. God dying on a cross then a dead body rising to life was written off as nonsense.

Paul kept it simple for those simple and preached only Christ crucified. He saved the deeper waters for those experienced swimmers. This took not only to be called but also to be chosen. As any minister will confess, we are door mats for the general public to wipe their feel on. As an evangelist, I prefer to view myself as an anvil that has been the cause of many broken hammers.

When you put your face in the mud, blood and tears at the foot of the cross, you become born again: the minute Jesus is your Lord. This transaction unleashes God’s Holy Spirit’s power in you. You don’t need to be baptized again in the Holy Spirit according to both Paul and Jesus. You have the full power but you have a dimmer switch to turn it up or turn it down. The sin you have that reduces the power is one you want more than Jesus or you would repent of it.

As you stand in front of Christ on the cross you realized how rejected he really was.

As you stand in front of the empty cross you sense the triumph he has had over your sin.

As you stand before the empty tomb you realize how admired you are by the angels and all who have passed into glory for being believers.

And lastly, how proud Jesus is of you His trophy of grace!

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!

YOU WILL SEE

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YOU WILL SEE

By Rick Mathes

John 1:39 He •said to them, “Come, and you will see.” They came therefore and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

How can anyone resist His central command, “Come.” When the King issues a demand, all he wants to hear from you is, “Yes Sir!” Yet, with just a gentle invitation, one of the greatest Apostles, John and his brother stepped forward and spent the afternoon with Him.

I don’t know what Jesus discussed with the two teenagers but they never left His side until James was martyred and John lived out his old age in Ephesus.

Here are more notable requests:

  • Follow Me:
  • John 1:43 The next day He purposed to go forth into Galilee, and He •found Philippians And Jesus •said to him, “Follow Me.”
  • Come to Me:
  • Matthew 11:28 Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
  • Learn of Me:
  • Matthew 11:29 “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and YOU SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.
  • Abide in Me:
  • John 15:14 “You are My friends, if you do what I command you.

I can’t tell you how many times I have taught my sheep to hear, listen, learn, apply and evaluate. We are the sum total of all our choices and for the life of me I will never understand why anyone would have a problem with the Lord’s good news.

He lays out for us to follow, come, learn and abide.

Many shallow, carnal Christians will put on a wonderful show of following Him. They are dot-to-dot perfect in the church attendance, Bible studies, good works and fellowship. But when things don’t go their way the turn inward to self and lose themselves in their own feeble and failing efforts.

Others only come to Him in time of need. They believe that Jesus is their servant not the other way around. Our mentors, those we learn from, are found often by chance instead of choice. We all need to hold on to Paul and drag along a Timothy. It is then that when you follow His steps the Holy Spirit will make His dwelling in you like your father’s blood runs through your veins; He will abide in you and you in Him.

YOUR BODY

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 YOUR BODY

By Rick Mathes

Romans 12:1 (NASB77) 1   I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

In no creature except man is there any act which involves such an interactivity of matter and spirit, boy and soul.

We are the sacrificing priests within the Temple of our bodies. This Temple is a house possessed by the Holy Spirit and preserved by the faith and blood of believers throughout the whole world. We, men of God, must be diligent keepers of His law in our heads and His passion in our hearts. As obedient slaves we go about the Father’s business and we don’t even notice we are doing so. Being a saved believer is a serious choice that cannot be violated or broken: a covenant.

C.H. Spurgeon: I scarcely like this word “sacrifice” because it involves nothing more than a reasonable service. If we gave up all we had and became beggars for Christ, it would display no such chivalrous spirit or magnanimous conduct after all. We would be gainers by the surrender.

Faith keeps the man who keeps the faith.

Our Body of Faith has:

  • Eyes to see
  • Ears to hear
  • Hands to grip
  • Feet to walk
  • Mind to think
  • Heart to love
  • Taste to appreciate.The first most grievous sin is to have a god more important than God. The second is to desecrate the Body which is the Temple of God. Immoral sex, obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, etc. is essentially spitting in the face of our crucified Savior!How dare you shame the House of God, your body and then yet expect God’s blessing.God is reaching out to touch you physically, mentally, educationally, vocationally, and spiritually. It’s your body to do with as you choose. It is my expectation that this devotional will motivate you to do some housekeeping and wash your soul in living water.

YOUR CHURCH

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YOUR CHURCH 2

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 16:18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.

Sad to say but His Church can and probably is a far different place than your church or the ones that Paul preached in. I can’t help but apply simple logic to my faith and understand form the Word that if my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, where I stand is Church. However, like metal drawn to a magnet, others of like blessing are drawn to each other to form the visible Body of Christ which is the fellowship we attend corporately. So there is the invisible Church within us and the visible Church where we can gather together.

Putting worldly merchandising and marketing strategies to building a successful church really depends on what we consider successful and the manner in which we seek to attain it.

Inevitably we end up with programs and no prayers. We feverishly do all we can to have classes on anything that will attract the masses to attend. Prayer, if there is any at all is manufactured, mechanical and without life. People go to church on Sunday morning because they love the fellowship. They go on Sunday night because they love the Pastor but they attend the Wednesday night prayer meeting because they love the Lord. If your church has abandoned the mid-week prayer meeting, run from it!

So the main effect of this worldly effort to stage church gives you religion (in the image of man) without regeneration. All it becomes is a lot of ritual that escapes the reality fo the pure Gospel that if perverted. Paul said you would be accursed. Can you see the deplorable condition of what we accept as church? It has become nothing more than as entertainment center in most cases. Anything to draw a crowd but too much like a bright blue bug light that is eventually the demise of the unsuspecting bugs that fly too close to the flame and get zapped!

The sermons offer no salvation to those in the congregation who are not looking for it. Preaching “turn of burn” is not politically correct. It is ancient and certainly old-fashioned to preach “Repent, the Kingdom of God is here!” as John the Baptist did followed by Jesus, Peter and Paul. Open your spiritual eyes and pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you to His holy ground.

CORRUPTION

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CORRUPTION

By Rick Mathes

1 Corinthians 1:10 Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you, but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Corruptions on every front occur in the world and the church before our very eyes and we let them happen; everyone, whether in politics or in the pulpit is afraid to speak the truth because truth has been corrupted beyond recognition.

In either circle it begins by following humanist leaders. We call them liberals but the fact remains that they are conservatives with masks on. They are not just “Joe six-packs” in taverns or legislators in government; they are also graduates of seminaries.

They favor earthly, carnal, self-centered wisdom no matter how it’s packaged or marketed. I live in the real world but my heart is in the heavenlies. I see and you do too the nonsense that is offered as good-sense.

You can’t help but flounder in the flesh of relativism. It’s like throwing darts at a moving and changing target. There is no objective bull’s eye there is only bull s—t.

With an ever changing truth we give little or no thought for future judgment because what is there to judge? When there is no right there is no wrong and the lie becomes the truth. The Word of God warned us and the fulfillment is upon us. Why fear a judge of no laws or punishment. Muslims call it “kismet.”

The spiritual leaders flatter themselves by the attendance and wealth of their churches. All of hell has put its weight on their eyes to look outward instead of upward.

When you aren’t eye to eye with Jesus you are well on your way to sink to the depths of Satan’s evil abyss of fire. Faithfulness to Christ is measured by three words: repent, submit and obey If you will do these corruption wherever you feet are planted will flee.

Otherwise you are fragmenting the Body of Christ. You have corrupted to the point where you are not the solution, you are the problem. Guess what happens when you spit into the sky; it falls back on you.

DECEIT

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DECEIT

By Rick Mathes

Acts 13:10 and said, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?

The devil keeps his prey in sight and on friendly terms until the time is right to strike and make him a child of Satan. Jesus said, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” Satan is the wrong way, a father of lies and an executioner of your soul. When you sin you are declaring, “Satan is my Lord.” Let that sink in a minute.

The sewer of truth is deceit and we all have a place for it in our hearts that we are not willing to give up. It’s this resistance to repentance that hinders knowledge. Didn’t the Word warn, “My people perish for lack of knowledge?” The lies you choose to nurture keeps you from God. Oh how He wants to hold you in His arms and love you but the slime of deceit, dripping from your soul makes God gag.

It’s buying the lies Satan throws at us that leads to pride. We have success with a little lie; get more things so we escalate our lies and deceit to get a bigger slice of the world’s toys and trinkets. We become like a decorated Christmas tree blinking and beautiful. But when the decorations are put away we notice that the tree is dead. It was all a false façade with no living substance to sustain it.

Everything contrary to truth is a fraud. When Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Jesus didn’t waste is breath explaining it to him because all Pilate was doing was concealing that hate that throbbed through his heart. Most inquirers are only conceiving evil plans and distracting truth by semi-truth twisting or circular reasoning. It’s all relative they claim because they don’t want the light to shine on their darkness.

Lies and deceit can only encourage sin. They have no other motive but to slash that whip on the Lord’s back one more time. The dirty-duo grinds that crown of thorns into His head again and again. They thrust the sword of death into His heart again and again all because you have polluted your souls with unconfessed sin.

In the last analysis your heart hardens I was shocked to learn I had four hardened arteries. Within two days I was on the operating table and my physical life was extended. But a hardened heart has no cure but to repent, submit and obey Him. Otherwise you are going to burn baby burn!

BELIEVE

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BELIEVE

By Rick Mathes

Acts 16:31 and they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your household.”

Faith is reaching beyond your grasp and when you do in Christ you become a believer. So the Christian faith begins with you believing in Him. Once I knew I knew He rose from the dead, I believed and have never turned back since. It is finished business because the Lord said so from the Cross but it isn’t done. He doesn’t announce that until after the white throne judgment when He will say, “It is done.”

The bone chilling consequence of this is that there will be a moment, a blink of an eye from that point forward no one will be able to be saved. It will be too late for those that have put it off and rejected Jesus as their Lord. The Muslims, Roman Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science and other eastern cults will drop into the flaming pit, the abyss of the dark-side with evil personified in Father Satan.

Receiving our Lord’s offer is the best choice you will ever have to make. His grace is handed to you and all it costs is everything you have and you are. In fact, the rest of your life is none of your business. You didn’t come to Him, He extended His hand, the Master’s hand and you reached back a slave evermore subservient to His slightest wish. This is the biblical truth! Don’t let anyone “soft-soap” you out of this fact with any scripture twisting.

He earned your trust through the witnesses of the sixty-six book library we call our Bible. They looked forward to the Cross and now we look backward to the same Cross.

WE do this to hear His voice ring through the ages in word and deed; As Josh McDowell has put it in his book “Evidence Deserves a Verdict.” Is Jesus a liar, lunatic or Lord? Let the Holy Spirit open your eares to hear the saints as they speak to you from the precious pages of His gospel.

“Look and be saved!” Moses had a foreshadow of His crucifixion. By His stripes we have been healed. Once you look into those pitiful eyes of our dying Savior, what choice is there but to yield to His call, “Believe in Me and be saved.” What is your plan B compared to Him?

BELIEVE OBEY

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BELIEVE-OBEY

By Rick Mathes

Luke 6:46 And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?

When you confess Jesus is Lord you have attained intellectual ascent. But when you reach down 18 inches to your heart and confess Jesus as Lord, you have put him on your throne and made Him the boss: you are under new management. There are a few guidelines along the way that you should use as a check-list and it is my purpose in this article for you to live under His Lordship and leave easy-believism in the dust of your history and step into His-story.

Jn. 3:7 There is no justification without regeneration. No matter how politically incorrect it is, you must be born-again. This is the catalyst for all that follows.

Jas. 2:20 Faith without works is a dead faith; no faith at all. For every cause there is an effect. When I’m happy I smile, sad I cry. When I love Jesus I work for Him.

Mat. 10:22 The mark of true justification is perseverance in righteousness. This means that if you are truly born-again and He’s your Lord, you never give up.

Lk. 6:46 Faith in a Jesus who is Savior but not Lord is a faith in another Jesus. It is an inevitable experience of a true believer that if you believe you obey.

Lk. 9:23 If one wants to serve Christ: pick up your cross and follow Him. You have no one to blame for your sins and their consequences but you alone.

Heb. 12:14 We must pursue holiness. To be holy we must be wholly His. We can’t hold anything back. You can’t be part saved. Indecision is a decision: you remain in the filth of sin.

In total these sign-posts are there along the way to measure your relationship to Jesus. Satan’s greatest delight is for you to live the illusion that you are saved when you are not. That’s what carnal religion is. It is a faith in Father Lucifer’s doctrines, ceremonies and traditions.

Satan uses men to invent a religion when they make God in the image and likenss of God. They turn your eyes out instead of out. You begin to obey the Lord of Hell and in short you become a Satanist if you confess you believe and don’t obey. (Read this last sentence again.)3

BELIEVE IN HIM

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BELIEVE IN HIM

By Rick Mathes

Romans 4:24 but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,

What we do with our belief is not prescribed by manmade rules or rituals such as the Church of Rome are so choked by. No, real belief results in a real spontaneous response from our mind, to our heart and from our soul. Hands up, down, folded, all this is not something to follow because others do it that way.

What I do know about believing in Him, worship just happens. So as not to be distracted by others, when I want to approach Jesus and worship Him I close my eyes and get into my own little private chapel. I also have observed that everyone who approached the Lord fell on their face and were overwhelmed with shame at the sin they were still infected with. How horrible can it be to be transparent before our Lord and have Him see us as no one else can?

Repentance is the issue believers constantly wrestle with. Repenting of our sins is the absolute opposite of what our natural self wants to do. It is down-right ugly how we resist the holiness required of us by God’s breathed Word in the Bible.

Once we make an honest confession as believers in the Holy of Holies, we are supernaturally to let Him live through us. We imitate in our flesh the Lord of heavens that is clothes in our skin. When people get to know us, they get to know Him. As a bond servant, it is not too hard to conclude that we are to live to serve Him.

This can be done in a number of ways but it all begins with selflessness and sacrifice. The Lord knows all that needs to be done by us to advance the Kingdom but the heart of all efforts is our relationship to Him. It isn’t what you do t counts, it’ who you are in Him that is everything. St. Francis of Assisi said it so well when he said, “All I want to do is go about the Lord’s business and not know it.” That’s what I call humility.

Would make this suggestion to you, “Do the best you can for Jesus and let someone else get the credit” or “Replace thyself.” It’s all about Him not you.